#kink dump

I’m still not sure what to do with Tumblr as a platform after the exodus-not-an-exodus.  It seems like everybody went over to Discord, with dozens of hypnosis kink servers that swerve into an area that I couldn’t keep up with and found overwhelming - I deleted my account there about a month ago.  With multiple servers and multiple channels per server, keeping up seemed increasingly impossible.  Maybe I’ll try again some day, but I’m sure all of us have had a busy season that takes us to the point of looking at any form of social media and asking “So what exactly am I still doing here, anyway?”

In July almost everything was on the virtual chopping block except FetLife - this Tumblr, Skype, Twitter, you name it - mostly because it was a lot of work to keep up with things.  Nobody was really messaging me on these platforms, but I do enjoy reading what people are planning as events and things go.   After unfollowing a few people that posted a few pages worth of stuff a day, I got things down to a manageable level.

I’ve had a lot of personal things over the last year. These tended to shake my foundation of what it is I am doing with these kinky spaces versus what it is I would like to do, in part spearheaded by an off-the-cuff note from Daja in some notes for a class presentation we did at Entranced 2018 - “Why are you here?”  It wasn’t directed to me, but it’s one of the rare things that really stuck in me like a harpoon that I can’t get out of my hide.  I still don’t have an answer - due to star alignment/my inability to ask, I’ve never actually played with anyone at a kink con or kink space - just the person I married.  As I get a little older, the question remains - why be on kinky social media? Why peruse chat boards?   Am I going to be doing anything with this beyond satisfy a curiosity about what’s happening with the world and scratch the itch of knowing what the cool kinky people are doing this season?

Using the metrics of “lunch” and “person picked you up at an airport,” I have made some friends and some very good friends on here.  I’ve learned a lot from people in 2017 and 2018, drawing inspiration from non-kink places to grow my skills as a person which have paid off handsomely in marriage areas (cookies) and work places (presenting more things.)   I can say there has been real value in being around here in general, but as to kink specifically?  I still don’t have a clue why I’m “here.”  As I have no interest in having teh sex with others and I’m not good at sniffing out what kind of play might be mutually interesting, well, at least I can say I’ve learned how to bake and sold what I thought were some very cool pins.

Who’s ready for some Saturday morning fun??

I’ve been mildly obsessed with collectible pins lately. I’ve amassed a few over the years from gift, work, samples from people, and goodness knows where else.   There’s a very on-topic reason for this.  (Maybe you know what it is.)   Since Dommestic and I had gone to a couple of kinky class things in dungeons, we sometimes get a look at people’s kink apparel from a slight distance - maybe it’s an AGOL patch (not to be confused with the binary star Algol), or a pin of some sort, or a button indicating one’s orientation. People at some kinky organizations wear these black leather vests with things on them that tell you something about the person.  It’s kind of like a letter on a jacket, or NASCAR.  Specific ones aren’t really easy to find online, even ones I’ve seen offered for sale.  It’s like a secret society, and that’s an inspiring thing to see in this era of everything being online.

But we’re not going to talk about that.  We’re going to talk about the pins you can buy.  Not the secret ones made by secret people in secret.

If you’ve been to a fan or comic convention, or a record or comic shop, or Etsy, you’ve no doubt been treated to a display of pins or buttons.  Many of these are licensed collectibles, but even more are not.  Fan-made items are a tradition dating back thousands of years, like slash, and often include things owners of the characters don’t want to see - like slash.  The runs are often quite low, and if you see it once that might be the final time you have a chance to buy it.

I was fairly familiar with a number of offerings from old TV and movies, but I didn’t take much time to look in modern interpretations of this time-honored tradition.  Until now.  And I saw some interesting if not entirely unexpected things.

The Magic Wand needs little to no introduction.  It is, of course, a back massager and you can get this to tell the world you have a bad back and like Harry Potter. There’s nothing else to see here.  It’s for your back. Right?

I guess you use this to cast out the pleasure from your body.   Mash-ups and fan-art are a big part of this world.  This is sold on Geeky and Kinky, which has a number of cartoon-related items.  But only 90s kids will get...

Mistress Daria.  (Ask your grandparents.)   It doesn’t reflect her specific appearance on the show - although hypnosis did come up once and I remember this sort of thing because of course I would remember this kind of thing - and this is a common motif on a lot of these fan pins.  It’s fan art you can wear, but you probably won’t, because the dress code at school or work probably isn’t into that.  Daria was a great show and was one of the times MTV played Buffalo Daughter.  Have you ever heard Buffalo Daughter?  Man, I love Buffalo Daughter.

Master Rick - well, you have to be hip to the animations of today.  I have not yet seen Rick and Morty, but from what I’ve read, this could potentially be something actually on the show.

Danger-Prone Daphne probably could be as well.  She is from the same company, but you’ll see numerous kinky Daphnes, and Velmas, and the rest around the web.   The Scooby Doo family of cartoons was basically a kink factory, with Fred’s fascinations with traps and ropes being on the forefront of the very good Mystery Inc. series.  Which also has great redesigns of the cast.  And guinea pigs.  And Harlan Ellison.  And Jeffrey Combs.  Velma is played by Natalie from The Facts of Life. Watch it.

Another seller, Kinky Dink, has a Daphne Bound to Please pin for sale in the UK.  It’s one of many, but to date there appears to be no Ghost Clown Daphne pin.  The same seller also had a number of items featuring characters from this show, and Frozen, and other stuff.  I wonder if Iwao Takamoto saw this coming when he designed the characters.   This is a link you might want to look at when nobody else can see your screen, as there’s another Daphne, and another Velma, and a lot of others.

BUNCEandBEAN has a Ghost Clown.  From the images, it looks like it glows in the dark.   

This BDSM Love pin is pretty straightforward.  It’s hard to find a lot of pins that are kink-specific so far, but they’re out there.   I saw some interesting ones on Etsy, some of which are very kinky and some of which could be for someone who just wanted to wear a rainbow kitty cat paw with toe beans.

I Heart Shibari was an interesting Etsy find - it also has a crop, because who doesn’t want to be on top? That’s why we’re moving to Montana soon.   To be a Shibari Pin tycoon.  (Yes I am.)

As I’m not sure if the person wants me to name drop her, someone in a chat thing pointed me out to this Kickstarter for Enamel Pins from Cunning Linguist Co., now over but you can pre-order them.  The stretch goals were also of interest.   These are also now on Etsy.

These are too, from someone named WoodRocket.

They’ve got everything on Etsy these days.

See? Everything.  That’s the Rainbow LGBT Feline Furry Pride Pin - and there are other versions too.

And I do mean everything.  (Shoot, that is pretty cool.)

I used to get old auction catalogs in the mail.  They’d have old buttons and pins for I Like Ike, or Playboy, or Planet of the Apes.  It was fun to see - this kind of thing isn’t really new, but the Internet has done wonders to make things of this nature visible and available to you.   I’m always itching to know what’s hidden - like is there some field guide to BDSM/Leather pins and buttons?  What were the kinky pins in the 1970s like?  Why is DommesticPet bringing up pins?

Anyone ever see the movie Logan’s Run?

When I first started looking up about kink stuff online, my kink wasn’t really online - tiny bits were hidden here and there, but the World Wide Web hadn’t been properly indexed yet.  This means I’m old, and I’m almost officially too old for part of the kink community for people without a ton of experience.  I don’t remember seeing or hearing about “TNG” as a kink thing (rather, as a Star Trek thing) back in the day but peeking in a dungeon group to see what’s what was a thing I’d considered doing for quite some time, since just slightly before I was legal to do so.  I didn’t, because I felt I was too young and now I can see at least as TNG goes, I’m on the calendar page that would say I’m about to  be too old.    It feels a lot like shopping at Hot Topic - in high school I looked around and thought “I don’t think this is for me yet.”  A couple of years later in college I peeked in the store and quickly thought “Well now I’m too old for this. When did that happen?”

Why yes, we are watching Star Trek Discovery here.   And in context that image is a lot less fun and a lot more disturbing.  Dommestic and I have been watching a lot of Star Trek and it’s probably a lot more fetishy than you expect (unless it’s exactly as fetishy as you expect.)   If sneering baddies scare you, you may experience panic at the Disco.  This sort of thing isn’t new, after all we got to see what a pleasure-seeking Kira was like during Deep Space Nine.  And who didn’t love that?

One of the small joys of being in a relationship is that you don’t have to hide absolutely everything that turns your crank.  When you’re single and lived at home, you have to try to pretend like you didn’t just see something hot on the goofy space show.  As an adult you can just jab the other person with your elbow and waggle your eyebrows, which is a much more effective use of couch time.  I’m sure filthy perverts worldwide blushed during this last episode at least that one time.  There’s very little mind control in Discovery, but there are lots of interesting twistings-of-personalities you’ll find as the series goes.  Aliens.  Mad science.  Mad science of aliens.

Echo and I are getting through Season 3 of The Next Generation.  We just watched “Hollow Pursuits” and it’s a heck of a lot more fun if you picture Barclay’s scenes with Troi as someone who’s got a hypnosis fetish who’s real nervous about being found out.  I’m not saying I’ve acted like that in a similar situation, but let’s see you watch Barclay get nervous and storm out after she tells him to relax and breathe, and not go “oh yeah, same.”

The amount of mind control stuff in The Original Series can’t be overstated as I sit the first season.   Sometimes it’s just a linguistic choice.  Maybe there’s BDSM subtext.  Sometimes it’s just plain text.    You’ve got your garden variety super-trance machine in “Dagger of the Mind,” parasite mind control in “Operation: Annihilate!,” and android replacements in “What Are Little Girls Made Of?”  You’ve even got a weird mind control body-snatcher thing in “The Return of the Archons” and once more, three episodes later, in “This Side of Paradise.”   You’ll also have to sit through the gleefully schlocky “Arena” and the ponderous “The Alternative Factor,” the latter of which makes me assume that future students of film and television will view Star Trek much like I felt when reading Great Expectations.  

I’m not saying you should watch 500 hours of Federation-themed spaceventures for your kink life, but it’s really an experience to sit on the couch with someone who is clearly watching with that in mind.   Of course, if you’ve seen Trekkies you already know that there’s a thing called The Secret Logs of Mistress Janeway and someone customized a toy for it.   I have to confess I’d never bothered to look until I wrote this post just to see what it was actually called, and sure enough it’s still online.   I’m impressed that the legal people have enough of a sense of humor to leave it up when MCStories.com purged its various franchise-featuring fap fodder a few years ago.