The sound of silence

Silence?   In a spanking tale?   You have got to be joking.   And I am - the title of a classic Simon and Garfunkel platter has only the tiniest inkling towards today's topic:  which is more accurately entitled "The Sound of Spanking."

When a hand, implement or toy makes a sudden halt by coming into contact with a bottom, one effect of the impact is that a sound is made.   And in describing the sound, we can often imply what is simultaneously happening to the flesh side of the equation of the strike.  There is a group of words known as onomatopoeic words - they try to describe the sound made.   "Whoosh" is such a word, trying to impersonate the sound of something moving quickly through the air so as to cause a rushing sound.

Some people opine that "spank" itself is one of these words - not a full onomatopoeia, but a subset known as "imitative" words.    The word is not completely unlike the sound made by an actual spank.   Which is why newbies to the spanking genre often have the "There is a spanking" part of the plot reduced to repeating the word 'spank' over and over.   Sometimes, to show how hard the spanking is, the word is capitalized and exclamation points added as in "SPANK!!  SPANK!!  SPANK!!"

Now, while you and I might smile at the ineptitude of such a way of describing a spanking, there is an important lesson to be learned.   We may be more verbose, we may add all manner of explanatory text, and we may use more evocative onomatopoeic words - but we are, in essence, doing the exact same thing.   We are trying to describe a spanking by the sounds that the spanks make.

For instance, words like "Swissssh", and "cra-aa-aack" can be used try to add the impression of a long swoosh of implement moving rapidly through the air prior to landing.   

Even so, you should note that this area is one of those where "more is less".    In the way that repeating the word "spank" over and over quickly loses any element of narrative tension, the same is true of any onomatopoeic word.   You get far more bang for the buck by saying something like "Six times the cane swished and cracked into her defenseless bottom" than by writing "Swish - Crack!!" six times.    Letting the reader fill in the gaps sometimes is far better - for the reader may add extra color that enhances the personal reading experience (and give you all the credit for setting up the scene).

And - something you might like to try as homework - it is a very interesting exercise to create your own onomatopoeic word to describe the sound heard during a spanking.   "Ssw-i-i-itt!" is one I once came up with when the disciplinarian was using a crop.   I am sure you can do much better.

Masechuesetts takes on "Considered Spankings"

Have a guess:  as a group, where will you find the largest number of people who hit children in an abusive way?    The chances are that you got it wrong.   The answer is Sweden.   Not among adults, mind you - for Sweden totally outlawed all forms of physical discipline some 20 years ago.    And they now have 500 times the number of cases - of older kids beating younger kids to pulp - than any neighboring country.   20 years of indiscipline has created a whole class of adolescents who have never been spanked once, and, for reasons yet to be determined, have no measurable degree of self discipline.

That is why we should give kudos to the Massachusetts Supreme Court, which expressly ruled for the first time that parents may not be held criminally liable for the use of “reasonable” force in disciplining their children.   Very wisely they did not define "reasonable" nor its counterpart "abuse" relying on lower courts to recognize when unreasonable or abusive force had been used, by way of common sense and not a check list of indicators.

The latest research into spankings all point to the same conclusion.   A considered spanking - one that is sane and reasonably safe even if totally non-consensual - is the most effective tool for instilling the longest lasting change in improving behavior of young ones.

I would be very, very surprised if it turns out that in 20 years from now Massachusetts has the same wide-spread behavioral problems in its young adolescents that Sweden now faces.

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.