Answers to the SD! and Blogging Questions

Sana writes:

I hope you’ll come back to SD at some point, or write some more here.

Since this seems to be a common sentiment/question, I’m answering it here in hopes that people will stop asking:

• My owner removed me from SD!. He told me at the time that this was permanent (ie not a break). He has posted his reasons for this on SD! I have no reason to doubt him when he says that I will not be back. I don’t understand why other people seem to doubt him.
• My presence on or absence from SD! is not a decision in my realm of control, so asking me to come back is completely ineffective and ignores the power relationship that exists between myself and my owner. It is a staple of M/s courtesy to ask the owner if you want something from his property, not to ask his property.
• I will not be writing on this blog for the foreseeable future (at least the next year). Perhaps I will never write here again. I’ll reconsider this next year.

I hope that is clear. It pains me that I must be this blunt, but thus far it seems that people truly don’t understand when it is phrased more circuitously.

Best Fantastic Erotica – Good Reviews!

I am absolutely delighted. Cecilia sent an email with reviews (all good) of Best Fantastic Erotica. (Here is the UK Amazon listing.) A lot of them mentioned our short story, which appears in it. I am delighted that it brought joy and humor to the collection and that readers enjoyed it. Here is a sample of what reviewers said about our story.

Even though I am egotistically pulling out the reviews of our story, the rest of the stories are great as well. You should definitely pick up a copy of the book. Also note that I am only quoting the sections of the reviews that deal with our story in particular, please do click through to read the entire reviews. Cecilia has really selected a lot of wonderful erotic stories and packed them into this book.

From Publisher’s Weekly:

Other highlights include Carolyn and Steve Vakesh’s wry “Capture, Courting and Copulation: Contemporary Human Mating Rituals and the Etiology of Human Aggression,” a scholarly lecture by and for dragons;

From Uniquely Pleasurable:

“Capture, Courting, and Copulation: Contemporary Human Mating Rituals and the Etiology of Human Agression” by Carolyn and Steve Vakesh-One of the anthology’s kookier offerings, this throwaway bit of fun about a pair of dragon scholars researching the mating habits of damsels in distress and the knights who love them really hit the spot after the heaviness of “The Harrowing”. The insider’s view of academia skewed through the perspective of the scaly scholars was fresh and silly and although not a turn-on, per se, the dragon sex was creative and balanced with lots of humor

From Coffee Time Romance:

“A fun look at how another sentient species might view humanity and its courting and mating rituals. This story was quite humorous to me, although it took me a few pages to realize that dragons were the main characters. A great read that I highly recommend for its laugh factor.”

From The Fix:

“Capture, Courting, and Copulation: Contemporary Human Mating Rituals and the Etiology of Human Aggression” by Carolyn and Steve Vakesh is a welcome relief from the intensity of emotion and imagery in the preceding three stories. A dragon professor and her student kidnap and imprison a maiden to study the behavior of the first knight in shining armor who happens upon the scene. The interplay between dragon lore, academic research jargon, and bodice-ripping rescue is hysterical.

From Erotica Revealed:

Last, but hardly least, Carolyn and Steve Vakesh offer the clever, funny “Capture, Courting and Copulation: Contemporary Human Mating Rituals and the Etiology of Human Aggression”, part of the dissertation research of a young dragon sociobiologist. (“We are educated, politically correct dragons. We do not eat humans anymore.”)

From Erotica Readers and Writers Association:

Best Fantastic Erotica is also not without humour. One of my favourite stories from this anthology is “Capture, Courting and Copulation: Contemporary Human Mating Rituals and the Etiology of Human Aggression.” The title alone is irresistible and the story produced by Carolyn and Steve Vakesh is an outstanding achievement of eroticism, wit and perhaps the most grownup realisation of dungeons and dragons that this reader has ever seen.

Factors in M/s Failure: The Online Experience

One of the very troubling things about interacting on TSR is the number of online relationships. Online relationships truly exist in a different realm than co-resident M/s relationships. They have different challenges and different methods of maintaining commitment and seem to blow up quite a bit more often. In Less Is More: The Lure of Ambiguity, or Why Familiarity Breeds Contempt a paper written by Dan Ariely, Mike Norton, and Jeana Frost they discuss why getting more information about a person leads to less liking rather than more. I think some of what is said has implications for understanding online M/s relationships, why they seldom transition to real-life M/s relationships, and possible strategies for making them work. A good synopsis of their paper can be found on Dan Ariely’s blog, Predictably Irrational.

When we get partial information about others we tend to fill the gaps optimistically, assuming that they are just like us and that they like the same things we like. However, when we learn more about that other person we can no longer hold this optimistic interpretation, the disappointment begins, and from there on the disappointments escalate.

It seems likely that part of what keeps online relationships working is this very lack of deep information sharing. Issues that would be critical deal-breakers in a co-resident or face-to-face relationship can be elided or not mentioned, allowing the relationship to progress in peace. By contrast, the nature of being face-to-face with the person 24/7 means that difficult truths must be dealt with and one cannot pretend that they do not exist. So, by the time a M/s couple moves in together, they’ve already learned quite a bit that might destroy the relationship. Deal-breakers, predictably, break the relationship up. So, the relationships that remain and move on to deeper levels of M/s are the survivors of this process and likely to be stronger for that.

Protein

One of my Group Power instructors complimented me on my increase in strength today. It was quite gratifying since I’ve been working very hard to improve. She noticed that I’m lifting more weight in my clean and press than anyone else in the class other than the strongest guy there. I told her my beloved adores muscles and that I want to build more and strip off the fat that covers my existing muscles. She recommended that I get additional protein and that I add creatine to my diet. She’s a former bodybuilding competitor who has added fat to please her husband, so she was thrilled to hear that my beloved wants to see muscles on my frame and is willing to help me achieve it.

In researching protein, I ran across this audio interview with Peter Lemon on protein and the information is quite good though the audio quality is bad. Peter Lemon is a researcher on the effects of protein on athletic performance and muscle building. He’s been researching the topic for more than twenty years and is fascinating to listen to.

In addition, this article from SeriousAboutFitness.com interviews Peter Lemon and covers some of the same things but is faster and easier to read.

BodyBugg

Click image for larger image.

I haven’t written for a while because I am entirely smitten with my newest toy. My owner bought me the most fascinating new gadget: the bodybugg. It is a device that attaches to one’s upper arm and reports the number of calories burned all the time. It determines one’s BMR as well as the number of calories expended in exercise. I finally know how many calories I burn in my hour-long weight-lifting class (340) and how many calories Ashtanga yoga burns (400 per hour) as well as the pitiful few calories I burn in Iyengar yoga (200 per hour). The treadmill totals and stationary bike totals match quite closely to the Bodybugg’s figures, though I burn a bit less than the machine claims.

The bodybugg comes with a three-month subscription to their website that allows you to track food and upload the bodybugg’s data to the web. Once there, you can view your data in all sorts of interesting ways. I’ve been spending much of my free time experimenting with the website, playing with food plans, workout plans, observing how many calories I burn at what point in the day and so forth. One of the very nice things about the site is that it allows you to plan your meals for the week in a separate part of the program which means that one can track and plan at the same time. Another very nice thing is that it has quite a lot of vegan food and even has specific food plans designed for vegans. My owner is also quite impressed with the site’s thorough information, though I think he is tired of me pointing out that the bodybugg has noted the exact time I was climbing the stairs looking for my user’s office or some such. Since all the data is stored on their site, I can update my food anywhere. I’m using my work computer and home laptop to stay on top of my calorie input/output. It really does encourage me to work out a bit harder and to eat a bit better so that I can observe really attractive charts.

Downsides:

• Bodybugg is not compatible with Macs unless you use bootcamp to load Windows (which is what I’m doing).
• It is a bit of a hassle to set up.
• It is way, way expensive. We found it on sale for $240 and my owner bought it and the wrist display (for another $60) but its normal price is $399 or $479 with the wrist display.
• It makes my tricep look a little odd under tight sweaters.
• It is really addictive and encourages solipsistic preoccupation with oneself, which is probably not a good thing for someone who should be self-forgetful.

How to Kneel Without Pain (Part 2)

This is the second post in a multi-part series on kneeling. Part 1 can be found here. I will be exploring several fields for information on how to teach your body to kneel with grace and ease and without pain. Today’s post will discuss what it means when it hurts to kneel, how to determine what kind of pain it is, what to do if you can’t kneel at all, and what to do about pain and difficulty.

Before you can kneel without pain, you have to understand the pain, know why you have it, and figure out a plan for how to deal with it. It may be that there are a number of reasons why you feel pain when you kneel. As you go through the process of teaching your body how to kneel, you may find that as you get one area to kneel painlessly, other areas begin to hurt. Don’t despair. Getting the pain to move around a bit is progress.

Me and Spirituality

One of the differences for me between blogging and posting on TSR is that I don’t censor myself on my blog in the way I do on TSR. I don’t shy away from looking at more scientific topics or using big words and I don’t hide my true feelings about significant issues. In the comments section, Sanna asked about the “Law of Attraction” as delineated in The Secret and how I think it works with M/s relationships. She also suggested that I tend toward spirituality. So I want to address these two points: 1) what do I believe (i.e. am I spiritual?) and 2) what do I think of the Law of Attraction and its impact on M/s relationships.

Interesting Questions in M/s: Does Height or Attractiveness Affect M/s?

The Body Has a Mind of Its Own discusses The Proteus Effect: The Effect of Transformed Self-Representation on Behavior, a virtual reality experiment by Nick Yee and Jeremy Bailenson that demonstrated that the impact of identity cues (in this case, tall or attractive avatars in an online environment) changed the behavior of the person. People with tall avatars negotiated more successfully. People with attractive avatars were more intimate with and friendlier toward their fellow players. In their survey of the literature they note that

…taller people are perceived to be more competent (Young & French, 1996), more desirable as romantic partners (Freedman, 1979; Harrison & Saeed, 1977), and more likely to emerge as leaders (Stogdill, 1984).

What effect does height and attractiveness have on M/s? Do dominants tend to be taller than their submissives? Between male dom/fem sub couples is there a more significant height difference than usual? Does greater height confer greater control within the M/s relationship? Since females are generally shorter than males, what occurs in the case of female dominants?

What effect does attractiveness have? In the study they report:

The results from the first experiment provided support for the Proteus Effect – that our self-representations shape our behaviors in turn. Participants in the attractive condition were willing to move closer to the confederate and disclosed more information to the confederate than participants in the unattractive condition. More importantly, this effect was measurable and significant immediately after only a brief exposure to the mirror task.

Given the fact that transparency is so important in M/s, what effect does the submissive’s attractiveness have on this dynamic? Unlike height, attractiveness is something that can be improved. Perhaps the actions of the dominant to improve the appearance of the submissive will have other salutory effects as well by increasing transparency and affection. Or will efforts by a dominant to improve his submissive’s appearance cause other problems as the submissive views herself as even less attractive than she previously did?

lili’s Lovely New Studio

If you haven’t stopped by lili’s website in a while, it’s worth a visit. She’s remodeled (or perhaps Tanos has) and it’s sensual and bright against a black background. She uses fonts as decorative expressive objects, but it’s subtle and interesting, which is quite a feat when using a variety of fonts. She’s also rewritten her introduction and her voice is strong, confident, and mature. She seems far more at home with herself, which is nice to see. She’s categorized her photography and displayed the photos better and she discusses her influences for rope bondage. It’s worth stopping by for a peek.

Another Way to Look at the Idea of Being a Slave

A long time ago, I tried to explain that I thought that the idea of being a slave was both a continuum and a static state (using Tanos’ static definition, in fact). I think that I was wrong and that the idea is better explored using Wittgenstein and Rosch’s views of categories. My fundamental error was in seeing enslavement as occurring on a continuum, which implies a linear progression rather than as a family within a category.