Fetish or Fashion Revisited #4

Welcome to the 4th post in what I’ve decided will be a series of 5 (for now). We’re once again playing the game of Fetish or Fashion.

Congratulations everyone who guessed that the previous post was from a Fetish source. That image is from Natalie Noir’s Twitter feed. She’s a Zurich based pro-domme whose beautiful images have graced this site in the past. I thought the featured shot had a moody, ambiguous vibe that might be mistaken for fashion. However, as some commenters pointed out, the extensive collection of corporal instruments by the fireplace was a bit of a giveaway.

Here’s the penultimate shot in our series. What’s everyone’s guess here?

The Pain Lab

The post title sounds like the playspace of a particularly high tech and sadistic Domme. That sounds even more believable when I tell you that the lab in question features a fantasy VR world that can inflict pain via electric shocks. Sadly, as this Guardian article describes, it’s not staffed by leather clad sadists but by scientific researchers in Oxford. The professor in charge there has the following to say about pain.

It’s also fundamental to the notion of who we are. Nothing else ties you to your own body, to the present moment. I’d argue that pain is the requirement that precipitated the evolution of movement. Even an amoeba knows the most important thing is not to get squashed.” Like amoebae, humans spend pretty much every waking moment trying not to get squashed or hurt either.

I think that means that the masochists among us are evolving faster than everyone else. It’s not a weird kinky sex thing – it’s a project of self-improvement. I look forward to growing some handy extra appendages next time I get some needles shoved through a delicate body part.

Here’s a medical professional looking like she’s well equipped to push the scientific boundaries of pain research. With your help of course.

I believe this is Vivian Rose in a fetish shoot for Gagged Fantasy.

Encouragement

I was amused to read in this comment that ‘forced bi’ is being replaced by ‘encouraged bi’ on clips sites. Apparently  forcing is another one of those things the payment processors frown upon.

As silly changes go, it’s not the worst one they could have done. After all, there are lots of ways to encourage someone. I’ve always found a whip provides an excellent means of encouragement. Particularly if it’s used in conjunction with bondage, just to ensure the submissive sticks around for the maximum amount of encouragement possible. Just be careful the submissive doesn’t feel so encouraged he has to pass out.

Of course, some dommes don’t have to resort to such crude means. With the right kind of positive attitude, a kind word might be all that’s needed.

Captioned image courtesy of the ever imaginative Servitor over at Contemplating the Divine.

Vacation

I’m taking a vacation over the next week. Hitting up some good restaurants and getting hit by a wonderful domme.

Normally, at this point, I’d say something about my posting being potentially more erratic than usual. However, given that posting is already pretty erratic these days, I doubt it’ll affect the blog. Getting away from home and work might even give me a bit more time to write. I’ll at least have a session or two to report on. Assuming I can avoid any of the seasonal bugs that are floating around that is.

While I go off to pack my case and figure out what gadgets go with what USB cords, I’ll leave you with this from Servitor. Hopefully, I’ll not oversleep and find myself in similar trouble.

Big Day

It’s a big day in America. A presidential election. We’re faced with a choice between an intelligent, competent woman and a sociopathic grifter man. In any sane world it’d be a slam dunk, but that’s apparently not the world we’re living in. I’m hopefully we’ll get our first woman president, but I was hopefully in 2016, and look how that turned out. Fortunately, Kamala is a much better politician and campaigner than Hillary ever was.

I’ve already voted using Washington State’s sensible and well run postal voting system. Of course, thanks to the wacky electoral system, my vote doesn’t really make much difference. If you are in a swing state and voting for Kama, then please do so. If you’re voting for him, then I’ve absolutely no idea what you’re doing on this blog.

Lesbian Nuns on Rollerskates

I’m not sure it’s really femdom, but the story was too good to skip. Apparently a stage show in Germany, featuring the aforementioned nuns, has caused a bit of a stir.

Eighteen theatregoers at Stuttgart’s state opera required medical treatment for severe nausea over the weekend after watching a performance that included live piercing, unsimulated sexual intercourse and copious amounts of fake and real blood.

Now that’s entertainment!

If you’re interested in more detail – and who wouldn’t be? – the guardian has actually had two related stories. The recent one with the fainting patrons and this one a few months back on the director. The shot below is from the latter one. Good to see that’s she wearing kneepads – safety first!

Want

Gillian Anderson has edited a new book – ‘Want: Sexual Fantasies’. It’s a collection of anonymous sexual fantasies written by women and curated by Anderson. It’s obviously inspired by the 70’s classic ‘My Secret Garden‘ by Nancy Friday. I remember sneaking a copy of that off my parents shelf and shocking my teenage self with how explicit and unfiltered it was. That was of course pre-internet. I suspect modern readers will be a bit harder to startle.

It’d be interesting to compare the two books, given the 50 years gap between them. Amazing to think how much the world of media, erotica and communication has changed since then. Human desires in contrast are far slower to shift, if they ever do.

The only thing that gives me pause is that the stories this time were collected via an anonymous internet portal. I hope there was some sort of guards in place to ensure the submissions were actually from women. Nobody needs the collected fantasies of horny online men. That’s already a significant fraction of the internet.

This is Gillian Anderson shot for Porter magazine. Apparently one of the fantasies in the book is hers, although she has not said which.

Top of the Kinks

The Clips4Sale site is celebrating 20 years of existence by sharing some of its popularity and sales trend data.

In new and popular, cuckolding and farting are on the way up. The first doesn’t surprise me – that seems to have become quite a thing in recent years. The latter is a little odder – I haven’t seen that as a trend in porn or social media. Maybe I’m just behind the fetish cutting edge. Boots, heels and smothering are all down from 2004, which is probably down to how common they are as kinks these days.

In the top revenue generators it’s good to see femdom coming in at #4. That actually contrasts to its popularity rank over the last 20 years. It didn’t feature in the top 10 from 2004 and it’s only just in at #10 in 2024. I think that means that femdom fans might not be the most populous group, but they are amongst the most generous with their money. Yay team!

I’ll finish with an image from another rising fetish favorite – Giantess. That’s gone from 35th to 3rd in sales rank over the last 20 years. Although I guess this could be counted as a microphilia shot. Is it a giant lady or a tiny cameraman?

I’m afraid I don’t have an original source for this shot.

AI Revisited

I’ve been pretty disappointed with the progress of AI generated images over the last 12 months or so. I was hoping we’d get some really interesting new ideas and creative uses of it. Instead it’s devolved into a lot of very similar looking content – attractive but overly shiny smooth people in very limited poses. Great if you want to recreate fashion magazine photoshoots, but nothing that really resembles the gritty and nuanced look of the real world.

Some of the better examples I’ve seen are from creepycrawleys on DeviantArt. Not because they did something different but because they leaned heavily into that aesthetic. There’s still a sense of unreality but it works well with the artificial and heightened nature of the images.

This shot is from here and entitled Emily. You can see more from their Deviant Art gallery.