Putting the dragon in the dungeon since [redacted]
@genderhawt
Rarely used slutposting blog for a Tumblr user whose main you might be able to guess and who goes by A.P. at kink events || Slut / they/them / over 25 / aromantic and solopoly
I was taking a shower today and thinking about advice I might give to submissives, and I've come up with two things that I'm now going to share with you.
The first is to practice saying no. Practice saying no to your dominants in particular. Say no for no reason other than to say no, so that you get better at saying no when it matters. Develop your own sense of your own boundaries to a point that when you really need to say no to something, you both know that you can say no, and you know how your dominant will respond to you saying no. You'll learn a lot about how much your dominant respects your consent when you tell them no. If all you ever say is yes, you may give them the impression that they can do whatever they like to you without having to consider your own wants and desires. If all you ever say is yes, your dominant may second guess what they do with you because they won't know if you can or will say no.
The second is learning how to translate the things you enjoy into things you can actually do with others. If you come forward saying you're very into a particular kind of fiction, but don't tell Me what it is about it you want to be subjected to I may take inspiration from the parts of it you find less enjoyable. Identify what kinks you enjoy with from it: is your favourite part of the kidnapping story you read the part where the characters were taken care of, hypnotised into compliance, beaten into submission, or their devotion for their captors? Work out the actual tangible play the fiction inspires in you, and then - perhaps most importantly - communicate that to your dominant. A shared enjoyment of a piece of fiction can get you started, but roleplaying a part in that fiction will only get you so far in developing your own relationship and play with your dominant.
These are, essentially, both about communication - as a submissive you need to be able to communicate both your desires and your limits!
PrEP definitely goes high on my list of "most significant and undersung inventions". its borderline a miracle drug, its cheap as piss and it has basically no side effects and 'it just works'
PrEP has less side effects than the birth control pill. I know it's stigmatised but you really, really should be on PrEP if you are having anal sex or sex with anyone who has anal sex, or if you otherwise engage in 'high risk for HIV' sexual behaviours or have sex with anyone who does. You really will not notice any side effects after the first two weeks. americans, you should be able to get it for free if you can find a clinic in the know.
the kink spaces you see are predominantly white for the exact same reasons most social spaces you see are predominantly white. the reason fandoms are white. white people are, broadly speaking, racist - its not that theres no people of color out there wanting to have kinky sex or engaging in problematique tm fetish spaces! stop putting forth people of color as this Sterile and Pure group of people who dont also fantasize about the same kind of nasty shit everyone else does. for fucks sake
if you want to talk about the racism issues in kink spaces you have to actually respect the people of color in them who face constant fetishization and dehumanization by white folks. instead of pretending like We Don't Exist and if we do, its because we've been Corrupted by White Sexuality
getting serious for once. (I am going to talk about some important concepts, to me, about kink and about beliefs about kink and about relationships in the context of kink)
i think it's important to be able to engage with the world at different levels. Recognize that something that is true in kayfabe isn't true outside it. That something that may be true at the individual level ceases to be useful above it. That something may be true in a momentary now that ceases to be true later. Logical organization promotes a nesting doll-like. Of course the hierarchy can be queered. But it still exists and is useful. For some, our ability to perform sanity healthily depends on keeping a healthy nesting doll as such.
All this to say, I hope we can establish some things to be true, necessarily, and work backwards from that to show that some things must then also be true. I hope that even if you disagree with my initial claims, you may agree with my later beliefs.
An underlying assumption that I like to make is that there is no fundamental difference between a desire for a receptive action and a desire for a proactive action. The desire to achieve orgasm by another's hand is not magically different from the desire to guide another to orgasm by your own hand. The desire to tie someone up is not magically different from the desire to be tie up by someone. The desire to be hurt by someone is not magically different from the desire to hurt someone. Desire exists in a social context, and while such desires may come from different places, I do not believe their character is meaningfully different.
Then, an observation about material reality. Submissives can abuse their dominants. This may be counterintuitive to you. In our idealized model of kink, the submissive concedes their autonomy to the dominant. Can someone without autonomy do abuse? Surely not. However, nonetheless, it is true. Because the concession of autonomy is never truly complete, and you will always exist as an individual. This is where the concept of kayfabe becomes useful to me. In the kayfabe, you cease to be an individual, you are below your dominant, and you are fully an object that is acted upon. But, we must remember even if the knowledge is locked away, that this is not entirely true. That there exist layers of reality upon which this is false. And that these layers of reality are analytically useful and important.
(I tend to understand kayfabe as the narrative layer, the layer that is real because its emotions are real. But if I can fake an orgasm than you can certainly be a one-sided recipient of the emotions. And yes surely this is a failure of communication but personally I believe that doms deserve safewords and aftercare and this is why.)
Because, as I see it, outside kayfabe, the dominant and submissive role are essentially indistinguishable. Not meaningfully different. This may be where I get controversial, but I do not believe either role should be truly making all material decisions, either. And the safety equipment, the safewords and the aftercare, the other friendships an other relationships you can turn to, the communication and the way out. These all must exist outside kayfabe, then, if your kayfabe cannot support all of them. Because outside kayfabe always exists, regardless of your best efforts. We may queer hierarchies but they still exist.
And, finally, a special case. While my posts may seem to be within a kayfabe, and they are within a scene, so to speak. You are not part of the scene. You may bear witness to it, but you are watching it from within the dungeon as a non-participant. By my more hypnotic writing, you may feel as if you are, but any sacredness granted to it is granted by your hands alone. You and I do not touch, we do not know each other, and we do not make contact. But, let me restate this more clearly:
Everything I post, it is not me and I am not it. Every piece of writing is a complete work, cast off to the void, and you are finding it and making it special for yourself. But this is not a gift from me to you, it is a magic that you perform on your own. Nothing is sacred before you place your gaze upon it. I am glad that you can bestow such meaning upon my art but I believe that it is you that is doing that, not me.
And, I am just a not-quite-person. Please, always remember, that being a dom does not make me above you. We have no kayfabe between us, no scene, so there is no fabric for you to claim that you are below me, so we are merely individuals. Being this as it may be, perhaps you look up to me. Perhaps you see me as this great writer or brilliant kinkster or whatever. This is an illusion, granted to you by your own perspective. The brilliance and the greatness is contained in a layer of light within your eye. No one you look up to is better than you are.
Thus, I hope you can understand, if you wish to approach me, if you approach me assuming I owe you my dominance, assuming that I am above you. There is no fundamental difference between a desire for dominance and a desire for submission. I hope you can understand that to treat strangers as if they were below you in a sexual way is generally regarded as a particularly harmful form of harassment.
...
anyway, if you want to make friends on tumblr, try to be interesting at least. "Interesting" is the best compliment I can give you, and if you ever are so unlucky as to truly know me you would truly know that very deeply as well. in the future, i intend to switch to only answering anon asks with a rare few exceptions.
This post is basically a transcript of a speech I give to newbies to the D/s scene all the time IRL. I figured it might be useful not only to people curious about kink IRL but also to smut writers here on the smut writing website.
For the purposes of this post, I am sending specific physical acts out of the room. Right now they don't matter, because you can meet an emotional need through any number of physical acts. So when I say that there are many ways to dom and many ways to sub, I am not referring to many kinds of physical acts. I mean that there are many emotional needs that doms and subs bring to scenes, and those can change the scene more than the choice of physical acts that will occur in that scene.
I say this to newbies to the scene because they tend to have a narrow view of the motivations and needs that bring people to D/s, biased by both the newbie's own preferences and the depictions of D/s they've seen in media. The same is true of people who write kink fic. Kink fic is very biased to a narrow subset of the wide range of emotional needs that people might bring to this kind of play.
It's really important to understand this in D/s IRL because a mismatch or miscommunication about these needs can lead to a bad scene. For example, let's take the approaches of sub-as-beloved-pet and sub-as-object. If a dom treats a sub as a beloved pet when what they really want is to be treated like an object, then a sub who went into a scene needing to be ignored, or at the very least the illusion of being ignored and disregarded, is suddenly in the spotlight of a lot of intense attention and affection. Again, I will note that both of these scenes could potentially involve the same physical acts, just approached differently. Let's say it's a service submission scene where the sub is naked and cleaning the room for the dom. Sub-as-beloved-pet would get frequent praise and lots of patiently repeated instructions, while sub-as-object would get one detailed instruction at the beginning and no reinforcement except a punishment if they get part of the instruction wrong.
I'm going to go through a bunch of different styles of dom and sub, with the emotional needs that underlie them. This list is not exhaustive. I'm sure there's more I haven't thought of or encountered, so feel free to reblog with additions. It may also be a bit dom-biased because I'm a dom, but I think that might be for the best, because the emotional needs of doms are generally less understood than those of subs.
Various consensual kinks discussed below. Kinkshamers in the notes will be blocked with extreme prejudice.
Dom-as-control: This may seem obvious or even trivial, but it shouldn't be dismissed: many doms are motivated by an emotional need to have some part of their life where they have total control over what is going to happen. Something that I love about this style of domination is that I always know exactly what will happen next (except if there's some emergency, safeword, or other issue to address.) There are no wild cards in a controlled D/s scene except for those I explicitly allow (like if I ask a sub to choose which whip I'll beat them with.) This is also a reason why I personally have a very hard time switching; I have difficulty with the uncertainty of not knowing what will happen next. It should be noted that this style of domination is fairly incompatible with the bratty style of submission, as the brat is constantly throwing wild cards into the scene.
Sub-as-blankspace: The other side of this coin is the sub who needs to not have to think anymore. They've spent all day deciding what to wear and what to eat and which toothpaste to buy and they just want to stop. This is a very common motivator. This sub needs specific and clear commands from a dom, without too many steps, or else needs to have a well-established protocol of kneeling and service that they can do by pure muscle memory. This sub does not want the dom to offer them a choice of whips they can be beaten with, because that forces them out of the blissful blankspace of not needing to choose.
Dom- or sub-as-service: The same emotional need can sometimes motivate domination or submission! Many people dom or sub out of a desire to please their partner. It's about taking on a defined role that you know will meet your partner's needs. It feels good to be needed, after all. This motivation for D/s is generally the best understood by the public, especially as a motivation for doms. It's generally more socially acceptable to want to control and torment people if you're doing it selflessly in order to please them. A big part of my motivation for making this speech to people, and for writing this post, is to point out that this is far from the only style of domination, and pleasing their subs is far from the only emotional need that doms might have.
Dom-as-whumper: I'm using this terminology because of the website I'm on. I'm not into whumpfic, but I recognize in people who have a visceral need to see their blorbos whimpering and bleeding the same need I have to tear apart a cute kitten with my bare hands, or to crush a sub beneath my booted foot. It's the cuteness aggression approach to domination: sometimes your sub is so cute your hands itch with the urge to destroy them. This is where domination and sadism bleed into each other; this style of domination does not work well for the sub who wants to submit without being hurt or humiliated.
Sub-as-object: Subs who like to be treated as furniture, robots, or objects are often motivated by a need to enjoy a sexual or kink situation while being free of attention and scrutiny. Obviously, some baseline level of attention is needed for BDSM safety; the dom needs to be able to notice if the sub is injured or upset. But beyond that baseline, it can feel very freeing for a sub to be turned on, blissed out in subspace, crying, drooling, whatever, without anyone closely watching or listening to them, so long as they fulfill whatever their purpose as an object is.
Sub- or dom-as-flex: Both doms and subs can be motivated by a need to feel competent. I definitely feel awesomely powerful and competent when I do a style of domination that requires specialized skill, such as hypnosis. Submission can also provide a feeling of competence: look how long I was able to stay kneeling on the hard floor! Look how perfectly I cleaned the room, exactly as Mistress told me to do it!
Dom-as-troll (or mad scientist): The sibling to this kind of dom is the writer who thinks "wouldn't it be fucked up if....?" and then writes a freaky nasty little horror story about it. A great thing about D/s is that you can have a thought like "wouldn't it be fucked up if I tied up my sub and then ate their favorite snack right in front of them?" and then you can just do it (provided you know your sub likes to be tied up and tormented.) Then you can find out how your sub would react to your terrible ideas and laugh evilly at the results. The emotional need being served here is the goblin part of your brain that wants to break things just to see how they shatter. All you need to do is find someone who wants to be broken.
Sub-as-brat: Brats are often discussed as a single type of sub, but in my experience, there are two rather different emotional needs that drive brats. Some people are brats because they need the assurance that they can act out all they want, and it won't derail the action; the dom is strong or skilled enough to subdue them no matter what nasty tricks their goblin brain gets up to. Other people are brats out of a need to live in a predictable and fair moral universe. Those brats want a very clear system of rules and punishments for those rules. Then they test the rules, and they get meted out exactly the punishment they were promised. Within the world of this scene, the world is fair, and the same misbehavior will always face the same consequences, something that rarely happens in the real world. These types of brats are rather different, because the first kind of brat doesn't care as much if the consequences of their misbehavior are inconsistent, while the second kind cares a lot.
Sub-as-beloved-pet: Or beloved child, if they're an ageplayer. I find that subs that like to be a beloved puppy are driven by an emotional need to be loved, treasured, and supported unconditionally, even if they make mistakes, even if they behave messily or clumsily, even if they look silly, because that's how a good pet owner should treat a pet. There might be discipline involved, but the discipline is very supportive and patient.
Dom-as-nurturer: Some doms are motivated by a need to be in a nurturing role that their non-D/s life may not allow them to fulfill. For example, a man who wants to express affection and tenderness to his partner but has a hard time doing so because of the way he was raised may be able to unlock that ability if his partner plays a sweet puppy and he's playing the puppy's doting owner. Basically, the D/s scene creates a little world and a set of roles in which it's expected and normal for the dom to be nurturing, even if that's not true for the dom outside of that scene.
Dom-as-enfant-terrible: The other side of the coin is a dom who needs to be in a role where they can be unreasonable, demanding, and selfish, a role that their non-D/s life may not allow them to fulfill. For example, a mother who spends all day thinking about her family's needs may relish the opportunity to center her own desires without worrying if she's being "too much." She can be impatient and fussy and demand the sub do things over and over until she's satisfied, all of which she can't do when she's working as a teacher or other caring role.
Dom-as-artist: I think this is a hugely under-appreciated motivator for doms. Many have a need to be creative and imaginative that they fulfill through domination. I've been to workshops and demos at kink conventions where I've been awed by another dom's fiendish creativity. I once watched a hypno dom with a sub who got off on being afraid, and he hypnotized her and crafted an extremely elaborate horror scene in the room, filling it with menacing shadows and phantasms. This is where I'm contractually obligated to link A Dom DM because this is where domination overlaps a lot with game running and game design.
Sub-as-aesthetic-object: The flip side of this coin is that many subs enjoy being an aesthetic object or canvas for a dom's art. Very often these are subs chasing a need to feel beautiful, or at least enjoyable to look at. Subs who want to be aesthetic objects may enjoy wearing special outfits during scenes, or being posed in sexy or appealing positions. Subs in this kind of scene may enjoy letting go of worrying about whether they look good to the dom, because the dom is shaping them to their own preferred aesthetic, whether that's via poses, makeup, shibari, or something else.
Sub-as-sexual-creature: A lot of subs enjoy being called sluts, offered up for free use, or otherwise being hypersexualized. Why is that? Well, our society has a lot of shame and repression around sex, and it can feel much easier to relax and enjoy sex if it's couched in the fantasy that you have no choice because you've been reduced to a purely sexual creature. The sub has an emotional need to give up responsibility for choosing to have sex and be sexual, because that responsibility is a heavy weight to carry.
Dom- or sub-as-taboo-breaker: This is a huge motivator for both doms and subs. We all live in a society, and sometimes we feel a need to break the rules of that society. Both domination and submission provide opportunities to do so. It's taboo to piss yourself as an adult, but a watersports scene creates a space where it is acceptable or even desirable for a sub to break that taboo. As a dom, I personally get a huge taboo-breaking thrill from slapping a sub across the face. There's something about the sheer disrespect of it, and the memory of being scolded for doing it as a child, that fills me with impish glee.
Dom-as-hunter/sub-as-prey: For the hunter to catch the prey, there must first be a chase, or at the very least an ambush. This need not be a literal chase (we sent physical acts out of the room, remember?) but it is a dynamic to hunter/prey-flavored BDSM: the hunter has to earn it. This fulfills an emotional need for both dom and sub: a dom who struggles with feelings of unworthiness can feel like they've earned their partner's submission, and a sub can feel that the dom cares enough to put in the effort to catch them. Hunter/prey also allows dom and sub to explore some pretty dark emotions within the safety of consensual kink, such as fear, obsession, and consumption.
Dom-as-shadow: I mean shadow here in the sense of shadow work. Many doms take inspiration from people who bullied them in school (and many subs enjoy re-enacting scenes of childhood bullying in a safe and consensual context.) There is a real emotional need served by claiming the power of those bullies for yourself. Those childhood cruelties can be utterly transformed by the change of context. For example, the catty whispers and sneers of straight girls who bullied me for being queer comes out very different when I perform those same catty sneers as a genderfucky adult.
Sub-as-lesser-being: While some subs like to be beloved pets, and others like to be disregarded objects, some like to be pond scum. There can be a real freedom that comes from occupying a role of being disgusting and horrible. Nothing good or useful can be expected of you, and nothing you do will ever earn praise, and so you're free from worrying about or pursuing any of those things. Sub-as-lesser-being is also a space to explore difficult emotions like shame and humiliation in a safe context.
I would love it if people shared what emotional or psychological need they get met by their particular practice of kink. either something on this excellent list or something separate. will try to write up my own
in this list I resonated most with the enfant terrible and rang the truest with my interests of late, from both sides of the slash if we're being real. the idea of somebody looking at me acting out or being incredibly picky and still wanting me, perhaps even wanting me more, is an absolute win.
Nurturing and service oriented dominance is a lot of fun to play with, a space of being needed and competent and needed rings my bell pretty hard.
however submission as an object d'art or a cherished entity of some sort delights me as well.
i think the through line has to be feeling needed/wanted regardless of whatever ugly parts of my desire might be showing
Transfem dommes should never talk to some of you ever again. I swear. Some of you are so fucking dangerous to trans women in kink.
No, the kink you don’t like and don’t participate in is not abuse. No, transfem dommes are not abusers. No, you should not be painting transfem dommes in a generalized abusive light. Yes, you are a hypocrite for accepting borderline worship from one of *your* followers after calling out other trans women.
Do NOT let anyone say that I'm a prude bc my sex scenes don't have very much body part description. I'm not scared I'm just not here for all that. Get off on the unethical power dynamic like a normal person.
cunt slaps are actually pretty loud like if you’re doing them right they’re pretty loud and the sound is magical. and if you’re doing them REALLY right you’ll let your middle and ring fingers barely dip inside their entrance each time. wet pussy being slapped over and over again paired to those whiny little hitches of breath between moans cause they expect you to push deep in that sweet cunt at some point but you just keep slapping it instead
I wish kinky sex ed wasn't so stigmatized even among left-leaning "sex positive" circles. Everyone's all "uwu I'm a sub I'll do anything you ask" okay mommy wants you to read The New Bottoming Book so you learn how to sub without hurting yourself since your sex ed up to this point is porn and your ex boyfriend Jared who liked to choke you incorrectly
I’m so glad you asked! Let me list off what I’ve got for you:
Books I personally recommend:
- The New Topping Book and The New Bottoming Book, by Dossie Easton and Janet W. Hardy
If you’re having kinky sex at all, you need to read at least one of these two books. Point blank. They’ll teach you the very basics of negotiating properly (which is critical!), and help you identify what you are and aren’t into.
- Mindfucking Mindfully, by Sir Ezra
Where this book really shines isn’t actually in helping you “mindfuck” people, it’s in taking a close look at how to do so ethically. It’s a great answer to the question “how do I get someone to consent to something and still surprise and shock them with it?”
- Real Service by Raven Kaldera and Joshua Tenpenny
This is a slightly niche pick but there simply isn’t a better book on the subject. It’s written from a 24/7 M/s perspective, which is not what I do, but the book itself is an indispensable guide to giving and receiving service. The phrase “if the Master doesn’t want it, it isn’t service” will be burned into my psyche for quite some time. I love this book a lot. Maybe my favorite out of all of these.
- Enough To Make You Blush: Exploring Erotic Humiliation, by Princess Kali
This one’s high on my reading list; I’ve heard it recommended by a number of people whose opinions on these things I trust.
- Pretty Much Anything Midori Has Ever Done
Midori is a great resource for this stuff - I haven’t personally read much of her work, but she’s a well known sex educator and great at what she does. She’s known for bondage, but has a lot of range beyond that.
- This Negotiations Worksheet from Bex Talks Sex
This is what I default to using a lot of the time for negotiations. Forget BDSMtest, you don’t need that, it’s no good. Just look through this worksheet’s wordbank with your partner. Big fan especially of the “how do you want to feel?” section.
Books I can kind of recommend:
- The Ultimate Guide to Kink, edited by Tristan Taormino
This book is weird. There’s a lot of good info for experienced players, but some of what’s written here skeeves me out. I think if I had a top that thought the way some of the tops in here think, they would not be topping me for long. But there’s some good techniques and so on to pick up that I wouldn’t have otherwise. I liked the distinction one of the authors makes between being sadistic in the sense of inflicting pain and being sadistic in the sense of doing something your sub doesn’t “enjoy.”
- The Ritual of Dominance and Submission, by David English
Man, this book fucking sucks. The writing and editing are garbage, and the fear and protocol play described need way more careful negotiation than he ever lets on, let alone recommends. This is some 50 Shades bullshit. The only time I recommend this book is to tops like me who tend to be very affirming to their partners and need a guide on how to really scare them - when their partner consents and when you negotiate it, which this book sucks at teaching you. Really good content on fear, punishment, and protocol play, really terrible presentation of the topic though. Don’t read this if you don’t already know what you’re doing.
- Paradigms of Power, by Raven Kaldera
I love this book. Great book. Very focused on 24/7 M/s play though, and, being an anthology, some chapters are better than others. If you can’t read something and pick out what is and isn’t for you, don’t bother. But some really great inspiration, and generally pretty well written. Big fan of the discussion of leather throughout the book.
Hope some of these are helpful for people ^-^ for the average person reading this I recommend New Bottoming/Topping, but they’re all important parts of my library and I’ve recommended all of them to friends at some point or another.
May I also suggest Hell on Wheels and Kneeling in Spirit by Raven Kaldera, d/s companion books that address kink with a disability. They're a should read for everyone, imo. You never know when you or a partner are going to have changes in your body that affect what you can physically do. Temporary illness/injury and even just age can affect your sex life.
I'd like to suggest Better Bondage for Every Body! It goes really in depth on anatomy, pain processing, self-tying, and has chapters specifically focusing on how to do rope bondage on/for someone who is disabled or has chronic pain, which was really important to me.
snowghoul
jbbartram-illu
theartofmadeline
2087
dededos
germansingergirl
kianamaiart
titsay
