Doubling up on dungeons

The closure of kink.com’s armory space got me wondering what’ll happen to all the fancy equipment they’ve built or collected over the years. I can’t imagine there’s another single place in the US with quite the depth and range of BDSM toys and furniture that they have. Losing it would be a great shame. Although maybe there’s a business opportunity here?

BDSM play spaces in the US are normally tucked away in odd corners of cities, with unclear rules about who can rent them and elaborate protocol for how to approach them inconspicuously. There’s always an understandable desire to avoid annoying the neighbors or drawing the attention of local authorities. Some have great equipment, but it’s often squeezed into a few small rooms, and the soundproofing can be less than ideal. If kink.com is going to spread filming to new locations in different cities, how about building out these facilities so they can be rented by others? That would allow them to get value from the space when they weren’t filming, and allow kinky people to play with the fancy equipment. Plus, any space already zoned for filming kinky porn with a cast+crew shouldn’t have an issue with 2 or 3 private people turning up to use it.

Obviously they’d need something a bit more permanent than a set that gets torn down between each shoot, but with some themed areas and equipment that can be moved easily, it should be possible to make it flexible enough. I can imagine pro-dommes would love to be able to offer clients a play experience in a setting they already know from watching kink’s movies. Alternatively, given the popularity of clip stores, they could rent it out to dommes wanting to do their own filming. It’d already have all the infrastructure in place ready for setting up lighting and sound.

When it comes to interesting play spaces, it’s hard to beat Germany. The photographs below are from Avalon Studios, and specifically their private residences. They offer a complete self-contained complex for rent, with multiple guest rooms, a dungeon, a clinic, a school room, a set of cells, etc. It’s can be rented by pro-dommes, BDSM film makers or just people wanting a kinky themed holiday. How many other dungeons out there boast a confessional for sharing all your naughtiest sins?

End of an era in SF

By strange coincidence, just after my previous post on Kink.com and their famous San Francisco studios, this article popped up in my news feed – End Of An Era: Kink.com To Stop Filming In Its Famous Porn Dungeon.

It seems that this change was triggered, in part at least, by a combination of falling revenue and the difficulty in maximizing use of the Armory building. Less people are buying porn and mainstream companies don’t like to share space with famous kinky porn studios. The new approach will be to keep just the kink.com offices in the Armory, making it easier to lease/repurpose the remaining space, and then spread the filming to other sets and studios. Given the high cost of San Francisco rent, that may mean directors building their own facilities in LA or Vegas.

I certainly wouldn’t hold kink.com up as an exemplar for femdom porn. Their shoots tend to play to a lot of the classic femdom stereotypes. High in leather, snarling and sneering. Low in emotional connection, sensuality and fun. They’ve also had allegations of workplace mistreatment. However, all that said, I am sad to hear they’re no longer going to be shooting at the armory. It always seemed amazing that a kink dedicated company could buy a run such a big and impressive property in one of the most expensive cities in America. I can remember when kinky material was obscure, hard to find and (frequently) cheaply shot. Now we have dedicated riggers and set designers putting together complex scenes and fiendish equipment in a huge army building in the middle of SF. For me that building was a physical embodiment of kinks transition from obscurity to mainstream success.

I hope their new approach will allow them to stay viable. If you like their stuff, then now would obviously be a good time to subscribe. Femdom is a lot lot more than humiliation, pain and fancy bondage, but there’s no reason those elements can’t also be some part of it, and kink.com often did a pretty good job on them

These two shots are of Claire Adams and EuroSex from the old Men in Pain channel.

Kink: The Documentary

I finally got around to watching the documentary on the Kink film studios by James Franco. Not sure why it took me so long, given I blogged about it being available on Netflix back in 2015, but there we are. Verdict: OK but not great. Probably if you knew nothing about BDSM then it’d be eye opening, but for me, and I suspect most of my readers, it was watchable without being particular deep or informative. On the plus side, it did have a good balance of Fm, Mm, Mf, etc. I was concerned it’d be heavy on the Mf side, but it was pretty even with a lot of screen time for people like Maitresse Madeline and Princess Donna.

One thing that did surprise me was the lack of experience that a lot of the performers demonstrated. Some years ago, a pro-domme who’d actually filmed a number of scenes for the studio told me  – with some disparagement in her voice – that the directors really drove the scenes and the performers did as they were told. As someone who liked to create her own scenes with their own dynamic, this wasn’t a happy situation for her. Having watched the documentary, I can see what she meant. The directors and Kink employees were obviously experts, but some of the performers seemed to be fairly inexperienced with BDSM techniques. I’m certainly no expert, but I think my scene negotiation is crisper and clearer than one of the early Fm shoots they showed. The guy who was about to do a submissive role on camera seemed initially confused by the concept of caning, and was pretty vague in most of his answers. I guess the overlap between experienced BDSM players and hot, fit people willing to appear on camera is smaller than I thought.

As far as the documentary structure goes, I think they’d have been better off picking a very inexperienced new kink performer, along with an experienced older performer, and then following their personal stories. That character focus would have made for a more relatable film, and allowed them to dig deeper into the why and how people get involved in both BDSM and BDSM porn. All that said, it was a positive documentary that showed kinky people in a generally good light, so that’s at least a win.

This is Mistress Madeline with Curt Wooster in a shoot for Kink’s Divine Bitches site.

Kinky Pigment

The two drawings below are by the artist Kinky Pigment or Knky Pgmnt (as the signature has it). You can see more on their tumblr here.

I only discovered this work recently, but I’m glad I did. The style and focus is interesting. I hesitate to say realistic, because some of the other drawings are quite extreme or surreal, but it does capture some of the sense of real kinky play. There are quite a few images featuring clips and zippers. I personally love playing with these in scenes, but it’s relatively rare to see them in kinky artwork.

Tips for the talented

Adult content on the internet is in kind of an odd space right now, at least from an economic perspective. At one extreme there’s a handful of premium content creators (like Kink, Femme Fatale Films, Femdom Empire, etc.) and at the other extreme there are countless free sites (blogs, tumblrs, instagrams, etc.), often packed with content from the premium creators. In between there really isn’t much. If you’re not making expensive movies, or making ad revenue by stealing other people’s expensive movies, then it’s hard to see how money can be made. That strikes me as an unhealthy situation to be in.

Of course this isn’t unique to the adult area – as newspaper, magazine and encyclopedia companies will tell you. It’s the classic micropayment problem. There’s no good way to make quick, easy and small financial transactions for online products. It gets even trickier in the adult realm however, thanks to the persistent discrimination by banks and credit card companies against sex related industries. Engadget published a very depressing and eye-opening article on that back in 2015, and the situation certainly hasn’t improved since then.

One possible solution to this is the Patreon model. I’ve written about this briefly in the past. It’s a system that allows you to set up just a single account with a credit card and then give just a few bucks a month to content creators you like. They aggregate the payments together (minimizing the hidden credit card fees) and users don’t need to enter credit card details anytime they want to tip a content creator.

It’s an approach that seems to be gaining some traction. For example, Bacchus at ErosBlog has set up one to support more in depth writing and deep dives on his site. Violet Blue has one to support her work on her Tiny Nibbles site. Erika Moen has one for her excellent Oh Joy Sex Toy comics, and so on.

The challenge can be finding the interesting stuff. So what I’ll try and do in the future is periodically put up a post with some femdom and kink related Patreon creators. That’ll point readers at fun new stuff and hopefully send a few dollars towards the people who actually create all this great art. For today’s post I’ll take the chance to (again) feature something by one of my favorite artists – Yumine Guo. Her Patreon account can be found here.

This image is from her Storyland tumblr.

Time well spent

You know you’ve probably spent too much time hanging out on kink and fetish tumblr’s when you see an article titled – We Talked to a Professional Cuck About the ‘Alt-Right’– and your first response is ‘I bet I recognize the guy’. Sure enough, the gentleman in question is Jimmy Broadway, a familiar face to me (and doubtless other readers). I’m positive he’s featured in past posts here, although I can’t currently put my finger on them.

Anyway, the article itself is thankfully light on the political slant, and heavier on his experiences filming and performing. He also has a twitter account if you’re interested in reading more from behind the scenes and how the sausage gets made, or I guess in this case, sucked.

Here’s Jimmy in a Divine Bitches cuckold shot that feature a pair of classic expressions. I almost feel I should run this image as a humorous caption competition.

Make America Golden Again

As I’ve written in the past, I try not to feature a lot of politics on this blog. However, when politics and kink collide, I figure people are playing on my turf and the story is fair game. If the major TV networks are going to talk about golden showers, then the least I can do is cover the story.

Anyone watching the news in the last day or so will know where this is heading – Donald Trump has been dealing with a rumor that he was filmed enjoying some hot and messy watersports action with a number of Russian escorts. The resulting media fallout has been spectacular. Some of my favorite coverage has been this NYMag article, this Vogue one featuring Mistress Darcy, Colbert’s cleverly innuendo packed bit and Samantha Bee’s more caustic take. Plus, of course the endless social media jokes like this or this or this.

Personally, I think the story, or at least the salacious bit of it, is probably bullshit. The description in the original memo seems kind of ridiculous. However, while it might not be a verified story, it’s definitely a really funny one. And given Trump’s propensity for making stories up and claiming them to be true, I have zero guilt in enjoying this one.

If it is true, I just hope the escorts followed the golden (ahem) rule of sex work and got the money up front. He doesn’t have the best reputation when it comes to paying small independent contractors who do work for him. And if they were working for Russian intelligence, I don’t fancy their chances on filing an expense claim for it. That’d be a tough one to explain to the finance department – 12 bottles of mineral water, 2 packs of breath mints and 1 golden shower for the future US president.

This artwork is by Axel-Art.

Divine space

According to this article, the Chinese city of Shenyang has created special parking spots just for women. That’s not an entirely new idea. Some cities have dedicated spots for women with young children, or marked spots in well lit and camera covered areas for increased safety. Sadly the Shenyang spots aren’t for those practical reasons. These spots are simply longer and wider (and pinker) to make it easier for women to park in them. Apparently they (allegedly) need help with their parking.

At first glance this seems incredibly sexist and patronizing. But what caught my eye was the labeling of them – Goddess Parking spots. So maybe there’s another explanation. Maybe the city transport division is staffed by femdom fans. They’re not being sexist, they’re just showing respect. If the next rule is that male parking violators have to be whipped by female traffic police, or that the city transport division staff have to clean the parked Goddesses cars in the nude, then we’ll know it’s a femdom fan thing. If not, then I guess we’re back to ‘sexist and patronizing’ as the explanation.

Femdom Car CleaningSadly the Young Dommes site this image is from has ceased to exist.

Trouble in the tubes

My previous post talked about common search terms on PornHub in 2016, and the rarity of kink in them. One possible explanation for that is that kinky people don’t use PornHub. If that unlikely situation were to be true, it would reflect with credit on kinky porn consumers. PornHub, and more particularly its parent company MindGeek, are not healthy positive contributors to the internet’s adult ecosystem.

If you’re interested in some background to that claim then consider checking out this Slate article and this Economist one. Essentially MindGeek holds a monopoly on the free streaming sites (like PornHub, redtube, youporn, etc.), has purchased a bunch of commercial sites (like brazzers, reality kings, etc.) and uses its financial clout to host a lot of pirated content from anyone outside its control. If you’ve ever wondered why I never link to videos hosted by any of the free streaming sites, that would be why. They’re the 800 lb Gorilla that acts destructively but is too big and scary to oppose. I’d suggest avoiding all their sites is both a good and positive thing to do.

Of course there’s always money to be made in the niches. Some people get off on financial blackmail, bullying and predatory tactics. For anyone wired that way, people like Mistress Arella are here to help. She has all sorts of ways to consensually take your hard earned cash.

Mistress Arella

Large cheating ladies

A new year always means one thing – a lot of ‘year in review’ and ‘top trends’ article. They’re the staple of lazy newspapers and bloggers across the world. Throw some sex into the mix and you’ve got instant clickbait. The one that caught this lazy bloggers eye was this from the Independent. According to a very detailed end of year review from PornHub, two of the biggest gaining search terms in the UK in 2016 were ‘Giantess’ and ‘Cuckold’. So if you’re a adult producer targeting the UK, it might be time to start scouting for a very tall lady performer and a couple of guys, at least one of whom can pull off a surprised expression.

Looking across the most searched terms, kink was surprisingly absent. The French and the Italians shared the sudden British curiosity in giantess porn, while the Germans kept their reputation for hardcore S&M by sneaking ballbusting in as a top growing search term. Everything else was the cliched porn terms you’d expect, with ‘lesbians’ leading the way.

I’ll finish the post with a rarity – a cute cuckold shot. Nobody is pulling a silly expression, staring at the camera or being humiliated. I think it’s kind of hot.

Cute Cuckold