A Sort of 'startle' on "So You Think You Can Dance"

In the reality TV show, "So You Think You Can Dance", presenter British-born Cat Deeley acts as a sort of link between contestants and judges.  She stands alongside them on stage, after the dance as ended, to sympathize if reviews are less than stellar, and give high fives for high praise.

This week, a group of 10 dancers put on a Broadway routine in which top hats and canes were used as props.   After the performance was over, the ten crowded around Cat to await to hear the judges comments on how well they had performed.

Cat took one of the canes, and asked the group "Now - who has been naughty?"

No actual mayhem followed, but most viewers would have been startled by Cat's open invitation of action well suited to our way of thinking.

Getting to the bottom

As authors of spanking fiction, sooner or later our tale has a spanking (or more) in it, and we have to decided what to do about the recipient's bottom.   Apart from whacking it, I mean.

Our reader might like to know something about the size, shape and quality of the bottom about to get beaten, and we, as the author, have to decide how much to detail to give.   And whether to be detail oriented, let fly with simile and/or metaphor or leave it pretty much to the reader's imagination.

Leaving it pretty much to the reader's imagination has a lot to be said for it.   All bottoms worthy of smacking consist of two roughly equally sized hemispheres and, since everyone has one, it is not as the position and shape of it will come as a complete surprise to the reader.   Furthermore, our readers will have their own preferences as to size, weight and wobbliness of the ideal bottom.   We authors will have an inclination to make the victim's butt be of a size, weight and wobbliness that meets our own ideal, and the more we add to the description, the more we are turning off one or more of our readers.  I have a preference to trim, neat and fairly lithe buttocks - and have incurred the wrath of readers who like bottoms to be big and quite gelatinous - so large that spanks cause fleshy tremors to roll back and forth.

Furthermore, if our POV is first person singular, the act of describing our "own" bottom in a detail oriented manner is not only awkward, it might seem a tad strained.   Starting a sentence "My bottom is ..." gives an impression that we have an unhealthy interest in the size and shape of it, and that impression will only be strengthened by the amount of detail we add to the narrative.

So, the problematic case is when our POV is third person singular and we have decided to spend some time giving our reader a glowing picture or a butt that will soon be glowing.  Back in Victorian times, underground publications that gratified the spankos back then just had to have detailed descriptions of bottoms, or fail to live up to expectations.    Here is a typical passage:

At last the bottom of the Bellasis was really exposed to view. It was a real perfect posterior. It swelled out grandly, properly, and gradually from a sloping small of the back that would have satisfied a Grecian sculptor. There were two lovely dimples just above the top and below a couple of sharply-defined creases, caused by the over powering swelling of the hemispheres, now that the thighs were tightly pressed together. They showed health by their hardness, and terror by the goose-flesh look they had.  It was a regal bum, yet tough withal. One that would take a fair amount of punishment.

Well, it is a description.

In my book "The Gleam in Her Eye" I trapped myself into one of those holes we spanking authors usually go to great lengths to avoid - I had clearly implied that the heroine had the most beautiful bottom known to mankind - and had set myself up to describe it immediately prior to its first spanking.   The most beautiful?    What had I done?   Using one of the standard "chicken out" techniques, this is what I wrote:

She flipped up her skirt;,placed both placed both arms ahead of her, thumbs and fingers linked, and her legs straight back to make a perfect arch over my knees.   She was not wearing any underwear or stockings.   Her bare pink butt lay at my hands, waiting for whatever I wanted to dish out on its perfect form.

It would take a great deal of time to detail the absolute perfection that ass represented.   Metaphors of strawberries and cream would abound.   Similes about Fourth of July fireworks would be included as well, no doubt.   For now, to say it was absolutely breath-taking, jaw-dropping, teeth-sinking, heart-stopping, eye-popping perfect will have to be sufficient.   I had far better ways of passing the next five minutes than composing odes to beauty.

And what is more incredible, I swear to you, it was as if that bottom was on bended knees pleading with me to give it some good, tenderizing, spanks.

Well, mine was somewhat light on description.   But mine was supposed to be a comedic piece, so I used my poetic license to fill the promise with having to have a butt that swelled out grandly and properly.  I guess my readers were grateful for that.

Back to the tread mill

My vacation was very restful and we wined and dined well, if not wisely.

Not much to report on the spanking front.   "Astronaut's wives club" ( a newish prime time soap on ABC) seems to think that in the 1960's, American alpha-males would greet females by giving them a hearty swat on the butt.    I am not sure that was the case, but the actresses in the series give suitably startled squeaks when they are on the receiving end of a "Hello - pleased to meet you" wallop,

The Women's World Cup soccer games posed interesting questions for those of us who like to watch such competitions without necessarily bringing an interest in all things spanking to the fore.   For example, was it a matter of fashion design or genetics that gave the French team more smackable bottoms than their collective rivals?    And what precisely did the Colombian players do to make them seem to be the players most in need of a salutatory trip across a knee or two?   Perhaps some amateur psychologist will one day unravel those and similar questions that come to mind when we watch sports events.

Anyway, normal service is now resumed.    And you have been given fair warning that that is the case ...

Vacation Break

I shall be out of town for the next week, taking a break from work and, alas, from blogging.

My next post will be on Monday, July 13th and I hope to have a stack of new topics to intrigue and entertain you.

If you are in the USA, have a wonderful July 4th.   And if not, I do hope you can find some good excuse to have a family gathering in order to drink beer, have a barbecue and set off some fireworks.    (These activities do make a weekend more enjoyable and, perhaps, should be done more often).

Spanking by Remote Control

I shall return to the general aspects of automated spankings in a later post.   I thought today you might to want to share in one aspect of spanking machines: operating one from a long distance.

As far as I know, four different spanking machines have been constructed in modern times - three for commercial sale for private use, and one as a prop by a company that produces spanking videos: under various production names including the famed "Pain4Fem"..

Of the three that are available for sale to the general public, today we shall just look at how one of them gets turned into a long distance disciple machine:  the Spank-O-Matic II and its close twin, the Lite version of it.   For now, I shall refer to either interchangeably as the "SOM"

With a SOM, the machine that actually the delivers the spanks can be controlled by using a hand held remote controller, or by plugging it into a PC or laptop.   And when plugged in to a PC, the whacks can be issued from a control screen on the computer, or from a pre-set set of instructions.   Let us call the PC or laptop attached to the spanking machine by a USB cable the "local" computer.

Here's the trick - a second computer (the "remote" computer) can be connected to the local computer over the internet, and a person sitting at the remote computer can deliver instructions to the local computer as if the remote computer had access to the local computer's control screen,

That is, if your partner is in a position to get spanked from a machine attached to a local computer, you at the remote computer can decide how many, how quickly and how strongly the spanking machine will deliver its strokes.   And that is true if you are sitting in the next room, or if half way across the globe,

Even if you do not have a spanking partner with a local machine, you can try out the software to visualize how it would work in practice.   Free of charge.

You go to the SOM site where you can dowload two pieces of software needed to make remote controlled spankings a reality,   The first delivers a library of drivers and software under the generic title of Phidgets:  they give your computer the ability to send data to a second computer, provided that both have some compatible computer transmission software as well.

And the second download gets you a functioning copy of the SOM control panel.   Unless you are the local machine, most of the screens are academic.   But one screen is the actual SOM II manual control panel.   When it is on your screen, you can enter the IP address, and the local machine password to be sent over the internet to the local version of the same software.   If both id and password are correct, then your (remote) computer now has the control of the spanking machine attached to the other (local) computer.

Both downloads are free, so you can set the system up and play with it to get used to how it works, and what it is doing to your pretend partner.   Until some day you connect with an online user who actually has a SOM attached to their local machine.    And your role play will have taken on a whole new dimension.

Z is for Zane Grey

Some authors write mainstream fiction which sometimes carries one or more hints of a strong interest in spanking.   Zane Grey neatly fits into this bill.   His genre was Westerns - indeed some of his work is considered to be pot-boiler Westerns.   But sometimes his keen interest in all things spanking would shine through.   Usually to ambiguous references:  one of his heroines complained that after meeting the hero she had gotten black and blue mark in places she could not show.    The reader was left to draw their own conclusions - and if the reader was you or me, we would get it in one,

In his book "The Water Hole", his heroine actually goes across someone's knee for a spanking:  a scene that was the major publicity shot for a movie made out of the work.   (She hated being spanked, but found that it deepened her feelings towards the man:  a bit lame, but Zane was pretending that he was vanilla).

Robert Heinlein was foremost a sci-fi author but his works are so peppered with spanking references that he was clearly one of us.   He confused his vanilla readership by having a lady have an unexpected orgasm during her spanking, without giving any hint of why it had happened - or, more to the point, why he had included it as an unexpected element to the scene.

Enid Blyton was famous in England for her children's stories which had naughty fairies and naughty children often on the receiving end of more than one painful whack.    At the time, virtually all kid's reading material was built around kids who could and would get whacked from time to time:  so it was not so surprising that she followed suit.   What is a little disturbing are the accounts that she took her relish over into real life, and routinely took a hairbrush to the backsides of her two teenage step-daughters.

But for some reason, the heyday of fiction which also had one or more (unexpected) spankings is over.   In the 1970's and 1980's, even the alpha male heroes of Harlequin romances routine walloped the rumps of their true loves.    And then the mother lode ran dry.    There is probably a PhD for the person who can adequately explain why spankings turned from mainstream to suppressed quirk in such a short space of time.

But with out help, we can perhaps push the pendulum back.   All we have to do is write best sellers in which spankings are not the only purpose of the book.    Hmmm.    Put like that, it might not be such an easy task, after all.

Y is for Yachts

Well, yachts, dinghies and all sorts of other craft that float or sail out in the deep blue seas.

The link between spanking fiction and the maritime is varied and inevitable.

At the very basic, a yacht has a great big mast to tie the insolent whelp's wrists to, and a whole stack of ropes, bits of wood etc etc to utilize as a spanking implement.   Furthermore, mutiny at sea has always needed to be firmly quelled, and what better way of quelling an attempted mutiny by a teenage daughter than giving her a damn-good whacking?

The sea is a big and lonely place.   A place where instant justice was often the norm, and keeping good order was of paramount importance to the safety of the entire crew.  And even today, there are regular real life reports of spankings taking place on cruise ships around the globe.   (Not as much as takes place in spanking fiction, but at least we authors can point to clippings to rebut any claim that we are out of our minds to dream up such fantastic tales).

In reading the works of others, I guess I have come across a dozen variations of why some beautiful young woman is tied to the rigging on a pirate ship, to have her bare backside blistered with one form of nautical whip or another.   A scene repeated (in fiction) so often, it must have a deep meaning for both writer and reader.

The things that really happened at sea can inspire some fine tales.   But one must take care.   Females on convict ships en route to penal colonies got beaten so savagely that to recount it would be more likely to be a turn-off than a turn-on.   Turning it all down a notch or two is permissible, and since it is your story, who is to argue that what you describe is not what actually happened.

And the boat does not have to be the central prop of a tale - just a necessary element.   This tale was written as an entry to a challenge to explain why a lime green dinghy was moored at a dock.   As was this one.   My entries were very light weight.   Enjoy.

X is for Xmas

Christmas is rich in its traditions of spankings and its opportunities to invent new traditions.

In olden times, a child did not know until Christmas morning whether the afternoon would be spent playing with presents or nursing a freshly birched bottom.   Saint Nickolaus had no qualms in delivering a fresh birch rod to the parents of children whose behavior warranted one or more good hidings to even up the score.

And so, in some circles, Santa Claus (a modern-day corruption of the name Saint Nickolaus) is quite willing to dish out instant justice - especially to scantily dressed young ladies.    It is mainly in the visual arts that we are treated to the sight of a pair of feminine buttocks being paddled to become as red as Santa's robe:  it is rare to find a spanking fiction author to portray this particular scene except as a satirical parody.

Christmas comes with its own built in vibrancy.   And in only a slightly different manner, spankings come with their own built in vibrancy.   It is no wonder we authors find so many ways of combining the two.

There are a number of plot structures we can use to show that an Christmas spanking is not that out of the question.    Teenagers often get access to alcohol on Xmas Eve, which leads to all sorts of reasons why one or more might find mom or dad belaboring their backsides for conduct unbecoming during a religious holiday.    There are a stack of reasons why over-excited people might do something silly, and in spanking fiction, there is only one outcome for somebody who has done something that is considered to be "too" silly.

In fact, we fiction authors may be able to generate a new tradition of Christmas Spanking to supplement the wonderful work we have done to make the Birthday Spanking part and parcel of our modern culture, vanillas included.    If we can get everyone to link spankings with happy times, our need for secrecy will surely abate.

W is for Waiting

There is a sub-set of spankos who find the idea of corner time to be quite delicious.   Having whacked a butt until it is extremely tingly, the culprit is made to stand still, possibly in a corner but not necessarily, to contemplate further their misdeeds, with a very stern warning not to massage any relief into their punished backsides.   A hands-on-head stance adds to the emotions of the ordeal.

But clearly not everyone is of a like mind over this.   In fiction, as probably in real life, once the paddling is over, it might well be a time for cuddles of varying degrees of intensity that could lead to all sorts of romantic or erotic activity, now such a blazing fire has been lit.

But it is not that sort of waiting I wanted to discuss with you today.   There is a time lag between the spanker deciding a spanking is going to take place, and the spankee feeling the first swat to the rump.

And we fiction writers can use that gap to good effect.    At the simplest level, we can describe the reaction of someone who realizes that in the next couple of seconds or so, they are going to be subjected to some form of instant justice.   This might range from annoyance through to an unexpected thrill of anticipation, or to some degree of desire to put as much distance as possible between self and deranged disciplinarian with evil intent to inflict damage to the nether regions.   It is our choice.

Far more complex possibilities arise when there is a significant period between sentence being pronounced and the deed being carried out.    Many who recounted real life instances of genuine corporal punishment agree that the agony of waiting is often worse than the beating itself.   Six of the best do not necessarily have to result in uncontrolled agony - but for a first timer, waiting half a day or more for them to be delivered could prove to be a subtle and sublime torture.

This is because it can happen that a chemistry occurs between paddler-to-be and paddled-to-be during the waiting time.   A chemistry that can give the author the opportunity to explore what is going on inside their two respective heads.

On the other hand, as authors, we can blandly state that the victim had to wait some specified time - as part an parcel of the ritual - and let our readers fill in the missing detail with their own imaginations.    You do not have to say that waiting outside the headmaster's study for half an hour was hell:  everyone knows that it must have been.   Sometimes letting the readers' personal demons do our work is the most effective way of inducing a chilling reaction to a future event.

It is worth noting that, in general, the shorter the wait, the more intense it is.   The split second between told you are acting like a child and being face down across a lap probably is of a higher emotional pitch than being told you will be beaten at four o'clock tomorrow afternoon.    The longer the delay, the less intense the wait.   Putting the moment of reckoning off for a week or more dilutes the waiting time to nothing more than a matter of endurance.

Recognize the time lag your tale has created - decide how you are going to use it - and, if it adds to the experience,  make the most of this golden opportunity to get into the head of your characters.   Or into the heads of your readers.

V is for Vanilla

We spankos call non-spankos Vanilla on the grounds that they are bland souls who do not appreciate the finer nuances of the human experience.   But we respect their odd stance and it would be a very rare event for a spanko to set out to recruit a Vanilla to join our ranks.   "Never give hot spice to those addicted to vanilla ice cream" sums up our live and let-live attitude.

But we are afraid of them, for they clearly outnumber us and majorities have a reputation of being quite nasty to minorities, simply on the grounds that they are minorities.  When responding to spanking surveys, over 75% of us say that our spanking side is a very closely kept secret.   And when asked what Vanillas think of us, 40% of us think that Vanillas look on us as perverts who are a potential danger to children.   (No wonder we keep it a secret, if that is what we think).

Well, 50 people who identified themselves as being Vanilla took part in a spanking survey to tell us what they really think of us.   Here are the responses to that survey:

1.       Are you male or female

Male                 22
Female             24
Prefer not to say 4

2.       How old are you?

Under 30                    13

Between 30 and 40      2

Between 40 and 50      2

Over 50                       5

          Prefer not say            28

3.       Were you spanked as a child?

         Never                            3
         Rarely                          18
         Often                             8
         Very often                     6

Abusively                     1

Prefer not to say         16

4.      If you were to guess, how often do you think spankos were spanked as children

         Never                         0
         Rarely                       6
         Often                      16
         Very Often              12
         Abusively                 8
         Cannot Guess           8

5.     In general, which of the following statements do you believe to be true?

        I cannot understand spankos                           5
        They tend to be very nice people                  15
        They are perverts                                             1
        They need medical or pschr treatment             1
        They are harmless                                          18
        They are a danger to children                           1
        They are like everyone else                            25
         They are fun people                                         3
         Consensual activity between adults is OK     39

So, with one exception, vanillas do not see us as perverts in need of medical treatment.   And I mean one exception, for all three negatives came from the the same person,   Which, on the whole, should be some comfort to us all.

And having said that we spankos believe that you should not serve hot spice to those addicted to vanilla icecream, one of my colleagues points out that there are almost an infinite number of more subtle flavors inbetween that might be worth exploring.