Tag: Whip

Context Matters

The Guardian has a new article on a subject dear to both masochists and sadists hearts – pain. Its basic premise is that the perception of pain is highly contextual and complex. Someone might have a serious injury but power through the situation. The same person on another day might stub their toe and spend 10 minutes hopping up and down and swearing about it. Pain is perceived in the brain and so our mental state is a big factor in how intense we think it is.

It’s an interesting article but I don’t think its conclusions will be surprising to kinky folk who play with pain. I know my tolerance varies significantly, depending on things like stress, arousal, uncertainty and past history with my play partner.

One thing I hadn’t thought about was the how the perception of risk can affect tolerance…

“If we think ‘this is terrible, this is awful, it’s going to do me serious damage’ – those types of people will have lower tolerance.” This includes people who tend to be anxious or who catastrophise pain.

The perception of the damage being done can have a substantial role. A violinist is more likely to report higher levels of pain when a pain stimulus is applied to their dominant playing hand than when their other hand is subjected to the same stimulus, Moseley says – because an injury to their dominant hand could end their career.

That makes sense to me and is a useful thing to keep in mind when planning sessions. If you want to play harder then being able to relax and not worry about the end result is important. If you’re stressing about marks or injuries it’ll hurt all the more.

I hope this gentleman is feeling relaxed and worry free, otherwise that’ll really sting. I’m not entirely sure of the source here, but it looks like something from the Cruel Punishments site.

Monochrome

Apologies for the lack of recent posts. Last week was a crazy busy one at work, which left me zero energy and time for blogging. Hopefully, normal service should now be resumed.

My last post on black and white outfits got me thinking about monochrome porn photographs. Sometimes the images started out that way, but more often than not it’s manipulation of a color image after the fact. You can find an lot of tumblr content like this – for example. Why is it such a popular style?

Part of the answer is that it obviously makes the image less porny and more arty. Mainstream black and white photography is often by artists, so it’s an easy manipulation to do to create that connection. Fashion advertisements occasionally use the same trick.

However, that doesn’t really answer why it’s such a popular thing to do. My guess is that color images feel like depictions of reality, where monochrome is more distanced and abstract, which makes fantasy projection easier. A detailed color image captures the world as it was, making me simply a distant observer. A monochrome image is more dreamlike, allowing me to imagine being part of the story.

Here’s a story I’d happily be part of. I’m not sure of the original source. I found it via tumblr.

Rodzo

I think I’m due a series of posts on old school femdom artists. The kind that have been around for years and maybe not got the recognition due to them. First up is Rodzo.

Their artistic style and themes are unmistakable. You can always tell it’s a Rodzo drawing immediately. Scanned versions of their art has been online for a long time – I added it to my gallery back in 2011 – but I’ve never found any background information on the artist at all. As far as I know, there’s also been no new work produced in many years. I’d love to know the story behind the art and the artist but it seems destined to remain a mystery.

Guido Crepax

This artwork is by the Italian artist Guido Crepax. Based on this tweet it’s circa 1980. Searching through past posts, I’m kind of surprised to discover I’ve not featured his art before. He was a significant creator of erotic art through the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s, with the character Valentina being his most famous creation. While he wasn’t a femdom illustrator, kink is a common theme in his work. The Lambiek Comiclopedia has a good article on him if you’re interested to learn more.

Swinging in the Desert

Twitter remains a great place to stumble on new and interesting content, despite Elon’s efforts to screw it up. For example, I present the spectacular shots below that were posted by Temptress Pixie.  I love the drama of these. Dramatic setting can often clash or detract from kinky shots, but in these the brutality of the setting complements the scene beautifully. You can see the original full resolution shots, along with additional photographs, in this and this tweet.

Elegantly Poised in Blue

Here’s some lovely artwork to celebrate the weekend. I’m afraid I’ve no idea who the artist is, but they’ve done a beautiful job with the colors and composition of the scene. It’s both an intense and serene moment.

If anyone can help me attribute this to the artist then please leave a comment. The post title is a nod to an obscure cult movie, but I’d be surprised if anyone guesses which.

Mood Killer

A week or so ago I wrote a couple of posts on happy memories of dialog and sound effects from past sessions. I thought it’d be interesting to follow those up with a verbal interaction that didn’t go so well. This example is from a few years back. It’s rare that I have a bad memory of a session but this particular moment has stuck in my mind, partly because it seems so trivial. Odd for a small thing to make such a big difference to a dynamic.

It was my first session with this particular domme and part of it involved a whipping scene. I’m generally not a fan of doing whipping with someone I don’t know well, as the intensity levels can vary dramatically and it requires a certain amount of trust to relax into the headspace. However, I am a fan of being flexible and open to how a domme wants to compose a session, and so as long as it’s not a hard limit, I tend to go with the flow.

She had me tied facing a wall and the warm up period was relatively short. That already meant we had two strikes working against us. Not being able to see a domme, particularly when I’m playing with someone I don’t know well, always makes a scene harder. The pain becomes disconnected from the dynamic and simply becomes something to tolerate, rather than being channeled through my desire.

It wasn’t the most intense whipping I ever received, but it certainly wasn’t light. By the time we’d finished I was feeling pretty proud of myself for taking it all. At which point the domme said “Hmmm. Not bad I suppose. For a first attempt.”

That comment totally drained the energy out of the scene for me. Maybe it was intended as a combination of compliment and encouragement, but it had the opposite result. I felt like the scene had been set-up for failure, I’d powered through to make it work, and yet couldn’t even get a ‘Good Boy’ out of her. We didn’t play together again.

As I said at the start, it was a trivial thing. I’m sure the domme didn’t think anything of it. Yet for me, with the endorphins churning in the heightened emotions of subspace, it was a mood killer that I remember years later.

This is very much not the domme in question. Both her whip and her smile are a lot bigger than in my scene. I believe this is Mistress Ama K from the Latin Beauties in High Heels site. I’m not aware of a personal site for her.

Ambiguous Moment

My favorite femdom images are often those with a degree of ambiguity to them. The kind that let you project your own stories and fantasies into them. For example, what’s happening in the image below? Is this a candid shot captured between filming a scene? Aftercare at the end of a whipping? Or just a pause and a chance to inspect her handiwork before wielding the whip again? I like to imagine it as a caring sensual moment, a contrast of touch and sensations to the intensity of the whip. But that probably says more about my kinks than it does about the image itself.

I believe the domme here is Lady Diosa. I’m not aware of a professional site for her, but she does have films posted here.

That’s Hedy!

Continuing the theme of vintage shots of women holding whips badly (it’s a very narrow fetish niche), here’s Hedy Lamarr in a shot from the 1946 movie ‘The Strange Woman‘.  I’ve blogged about the awesomeness of Hedy before, but even a fan like myself would have to admit, she doesn’t exactly look committed to the role of fearsome whip wielder in this shot. You get the impression she has no idea why she’s been given it in the first place.

The post title obviously derives from a certain well known comedy film. Amusingly, Hedy Lamarr actually sued for $10M over the use (or abuse) of her name and ended up accepting money (presumably a lot less) in an out of court settlement.

Ruh-roh

Should I run such things, this image would make for a great caption competition. I can imagine it as both a before or after shot. Obviously, with a look this disarming, the whipping itself will be a brutal one. But is this the before look of someone who has been gently coaxed into giving BDSM a try, and whose partner is about to discover that one should be careful what one wishes for? Or is the after look of someone who might have just got a little bit carried away, and is now wondering if the neighbors heard the screams?