Happy Birthday to Me

Just a couple of days ago this blog turned one year old. It feels like I’ve been writing it for much longer, but the post dates don’t lie. 12 pages, 378 posts and 544 approved comments equals one year of blogging.

Looking back at my statistics for the first month I had around 100 visitors. Twelve months later and I’m serving in excess of 60,000 visitors a month with over half a million page views. I originally purchased a small site web hosting package, I’ve since upgraded through medium to large, and I’m heading towards the super size. All those figures are kind of amazing to me, given this is just a random collection of re-posted images and links accompanied by whatever thoughts are currently floating to the front of my brain.

I have to thank a lot of other established bloggers that linked to me and sent traffic in my direction. This includes (but isn’t limited to) Saratoga, Ms Marie, Suzanne and Her Majesty’s Plaything, who were all important linkers in the very early days. However, I have a special place in my heart for Shohei Yamashiro, who provided me with my very first incoming link from his site Slug on Leather. It therefore seems only fitting to illustrate this anniversary post with one of his fine pieces of artwork.

Shohei Yamashiro Artwork

Just hanging around

I had a comment on my ‘about’ page recently asking for some electrical play or inverted suspension shots. Now as the saying goes, I don’t normally do requests, but then I stumbled across this image yesterday and thought it was worth sharing. The suspension is via cuffs and a bar rather than a proper rope harness (as shown more clearly in this shot), but it looks like it’d be both interesting and intense to try. I’m also now looking at it and wondering if it’d help out with some of my screwy back issues. It’d certainly help stretch the spine out, although the marks might be tough to explain to a physical therapist.

Lady NatalieThat’s Lady Natalie Black and you can see more of her at her members site.

Tenderness

Here’s another piece of artwork that caught my eye, with once again a distinct shift in style and color from the previous days post.

The depiction of a submissive wearing a chastity device while simultaneously being penetrated by a strap-on is a fairly commonly one. The additional emphasis it places on the dominants sexual control and power has an obvious appeal. However, this image struck me as showing an usually tender scene. Despite the manacles, fetish wear and padlocked cock cage, there’s a real sense of tenderness and vulnerability. She looks like she’s more likely to whisper sweet nothings in his ear than call him a slut. Which I personally think would be a definite improvement from the usual cliched domme pillow talk that often gets scripted in these scenarios.

Strap-on and chastity deviceI found this on the True Servitude tumblr site, which contains a lot of hentai images of various fetishes

Combo Deal

Here’s a lucky submissive getting a three for one combo deal, with bondage, hot wax and strap-on play all served up simultaneously. I believe that’s the beautiful Mistress Jayden wielding the wax and sporting the strap-on.

Personally I’ve found hot wax play to be kind of relaxing, a little like a massage treatment. Once I calibrate myself to the initial sharp pain of the drips, the trickling warmth can be soothing. The subsequent scraping it off of hairy skin with a large blunt knife, less so.

Wax play with strap-onThis is from the K is for Kink site.

Quirky Smile

This image is entitled ‘Thigh Caning’ which should tell you all you need to know about the reason for her smile. It looks like she’s thinking “Hmmm, he’s making some funny noises. I wonder if I should pull his arms a little higher or try beating him a little harder? Or perhaps both…..”

Although I suspect in that position his knees and feet will be hurting him almost as much as his thighs. Probably the cruelest thing she could do would be to leave him tied in position and simply watch as the pain slowly builds.

Thigh CaningI found the image in this post on the Whipping Mistress blog (written in Japanese). It’s obviously originally from the Captive Male site.

Together and apart

An entertaining hour or so of clueless and confused wondering through Japanese femdom blogs (translation technology has a long way to go) brought me to these unusual bondage images (click to enlarge). It’s rare to see a coupled tied together like this. There’s some beautiful ropework, and a clever hood+scarf combination to pull their heads together. They’re intimately entwined, and yet cannot touch, move or caress each other. Together and yet apart.

Couple in BondageCouple in Bondage

Couple in BondageCouple in Bondage
The woman responsible for this paired bondage is Mistress Juri, shown in the shot below with another of her bondage subjects. She’s got a number of interesting shots on her website, so it’s worth a browse. I particularly liked this image of tightly bound solo male.
Mistress Juri

Explicit Japanese Artwork

There’s an awful lot of M/f Japanese bondage artwork available, but the F/m dynamic seems to be far less common. I came across this one originally on homer’s blog and then tracked down another source for him at the Mistress Fantasy blog. The artist is Akira Kito (1925-1994) and his work seems to be done in a traditional style, whilst incorporating some very explicit activity.

Akira Kito Femdom Artwork

Vintage Japanese Femdom

I spend some of this weekend ambling around various Japanese femdom blogs. It’s pretty hard for me to understand the text, even with the help of online translation tools, but images are a universal communication medium.

The two shown below are part of a set that I found on homer’s blog. As far as I can tell from his text it was shot in 1963 and the mistress/model was Keiko Otsuka. I think it’s a beautiful set of images. For a posed set of of shots it has quite a naturalistic feel, with just the rope and their semi-naked bodies. There’s no excessive fetish elements or exaggerated posturing. Just some tight bondage and a nice D/s dynamic. The bondage is also strikingly rigorous and efficient compared to the ‘3 lengths of clothesline draped vaguely over a limb’ style that was common in US bondage porn of that era.

Vintage Japanese FemdomVintage Japanese Femdom

Ride ’em Cowgirl

What I know about rodeo you could write on the head of a pin, but I believe the general idea is to stay in the saddle as long as possible. That being the case, I think she’s onto a winner, as she appears to have her horse well and truly under control.

Woman in cowgirl position on a tied manArtist is unknown, although based on the style I think he or she has done a number of femdom illustrations that I’ve spotted floating around. I found on the snail meilke site.

Haute Cuisine

The images below come to you courtesy of Mistress Troy Orleans, a pro-domme based out of NYC. I’ve never had the pleasure of playing with her, but by all accounts she’s one of the most skillful and talented dommes around. Not to mention very well equipped. The first image shows her bed/cage combo, along with a selection of her leather gear in action. The second image is something I’ve never seen before – a bondage suspension system using springs. I’d imagine heavy bondage combined with that kind of loose floating sensation would create an intense headspace. Particularly when it has been accessorized with the drip feed shown here.

I know in some kinky circles there’s a strong reaction to this kind of expensive custom equipment and leather gear. You don’t need all that stuff to create an intense scene or be a true domme is the cry. And of course they’re right. You don’t need it. In fact on a daily basis it’d no doubt become quickly tiresome. Nobody wants to get home from work each day and immediately jump straight into a suspended leather bodybag. But I look on these kind of images as a child might stare at a poster for Disneyland. I wouldn’t want to live there, but my God, it looks like it’d be fun to try out occasionally. Great femdom doesn’t have to feature expensive equipment and clothes, in the same way great cooking doesn’t have to use expensive ingredients. That doesn’t mean it’s not fun to splurge on an out of this world experience when the mood takes you.

Mistress Troy Orleans and bed/cage combo

Mistress Troy Orleans spring suspension system