Tears

Look at me, continuing my post! Two posts in one month! This year is off to a good start…well, in terms of posts anyway.

Let’s get into it right away and look at scenes 6 – 10 in my top ten favorite scenes of 2016!

 

6) Sister Trouble from Momma Spankings

This scene was shot when I was in Vegas at an event with friends early in 2016. It was during this time when Adriana Evans and I were first starting to bond. Getting close to Adriana and building our special relationship (one part lovers, one part like sisters, one hundred percent normal, don’t worry about it) has really been one of the most special things that’s happened since 2016, and I hope that we get to spend a lot of time together in 2017. She’s very previous to me. *heart eyes*

Anyway, during this event, I was shooting for my friend Sarah Gregory and her sites and she asked if I wanted to do a scene with Adriana. Of course I said yes! The plot that she made up for us once again worked very, very well. Adriana was teasing me for being too babyish and always wearing overly cute things while she prefers to have a more grown up, sexy appearance. This is like, the core of a lot of our interactions in real life, to be honest, except it’s just playful teasing. In this video, we started really fighting, and our mom, played by Miss Anna, had to come and punish us for it.

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I was in a kind of emotional mood that day (I don’t remember the reason, probably because I was at the event without Paul since he was still in England at the time) and I started crying real tears right away, even during the hand spanking! Whyyyyy could those tears not have come when I was getting bathbrushed? There are no answers to these questions.

7) Up All Night from Kitchen Sink Spanking
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nother thing which I really loved in 2016 was the fact that my friend Princess Kelley made her return to shooting spanking videos! I got to shoot with her a handful of times, mostly with me directing her for Northern Spanking (but a few of her topping me there, too) and also when we shot for Real Spankings as mentioned earlier, where she topped me for quite a few scenes.

Kelley moved to the East Coast at the end of the summer, after having been a good friend who I enjoyed spending a lot of time with in LA. Before she left, we got together at her house to do one last shoot together, where we shot scenes for both Northern and for my side project, Kitchen Sink Spanking. KSS is sort of a hodgepodge of things, often becoming a home for scenes that we film that don’t otherwise fit in with Northern’s themes. It was originally a place that was meant to be about me, personally, though, so we filmed a couple of scenes with Kelley that fit that original concept.

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In this scene, I’m Kelley’s roommate and I’m horribly irresponsible with my sleep schedule (again, we’re getting a little too real here with the sleep thing). Kelley gets up early to go to the gym and discovers that I’m still awake and lounging on the sofa. She decides that I can’t make good choices on my own, and that she’s going to spank me for staying up all night. She does exactly that, then makes me change into very childish pajamas to emphasize what a naughty little girl I’m being before strapping me and sending me off to bed. I really love the sort of forced ageplay theme, and Kelley and I had very good energy together for that.

8) Busted for Blackmail from Cheerleader Spankings

Cheerleader Spankings just came out in 2016! It was (I think) the only new site this year and it was a very exciting launch. I had filmed some scenes for it before it was set up, and one of them is this scene, which features me and Maddy Marks.

Maddy is one of my favorite people to Top. I know her very well and we’ve been close friends for a long time, so I know how she likes to play. In fact, I think she was one of the very first people I ever topped, and she was definitely the first person I topped on camera. I was very excited to get to shoot this scene with her, since it was kind of darker, bullying scene, and that’s something that I really enjoy exploring. I like this when in both roles, but it’s something I’ve taken a strong interest in as a Top. I like the way that Maddy responds to having mean and unfair things done to her, and playing with her in this capacity has really let me learn how to let that side of myself loose.

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In this scene, I’ve caught Maddy trying to blackmail me, and I’m going to really make her pay for it. I get to be quite bossy, and Maddy is caught in a bit of a  pickle, since she can’t exactly protest against anything that I do to her, or else I’ll reveal her blackmailing scheme. She gets spanked, the hairbrush and a hard paddling, all of which I take great delight in dishing out.

Honestly, this is one of my favorite scenes I’ve done as a Top, period!

9) Three Girls Paddled After Gym from Real Spankings Institute (once again, this isn’t the real name, sorry)

Earlier in the day when I shot the “Rematch” scene I was talking about a few scenes ago, I got my customary school paddling that I always seem to get when I shoot for Real Spankings. School paddlings are tough. They’re a different kind of pain than most other spankings. It’s so much hurt coming down on you so suddenly. I don’t do these kinds of paddlings often, because there are few Tops who I feel comfortable taking them from (and at home, there’s a strong preferences for caning to fill the same kind of disciplinary niche).

The scene was planned so that Maddy, Harley and I were all going to be paddled and I was going to be the first one to go. In retrospect, that seems a little bit unfair to me: I probably should have volunteered to go to last, since sitting and waiting while you can hear your friends getting spanked is pretty intimidating, and I’m the only one of the three of us who had ever been paddled by Michael before, so that made me the senior girl out of us. I should have taken one for the team. But, at the time, no one thought of that (and I probably only thought of it now because it’s a theme that’s been coming up a lot in the erotica I’ve been reading, for full disclosure).

That all said, I know Michael Masterson very well, and he knows exactly how much I can take. When playing with him, that’s an awful lot. He didn’t know either of the other two girls, so I was probably in for the hardest spanking. We were to get ten swats total. The first five were from The Dean (that is to say, Michael) and the second set were from Miss Kelley. Kelley isn’t a soft paddler, either, but she and I have never played in such a limit pushing way, so I was less nervous about taking her swats, although I probably shouldn’t have been.

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When we were all sitting outside the room listening to Michael and Kelley talk about how badly behaved we’d been and what they were going to do to us, I got very, very nervous. I hadn’t had a paddling like this in a long time and I knew that it was going to hurt, and a lot. The scene was very immersive, sitting in the chairs in the other room with the door open and listening to these authority figures talking about what was going to happen to us and knowing that it was going to happen soon. It was very, very, very my kink. I fell deep into the headspace of a naughty student awaiting discipline and in that moment, the whole thing became completely real for me. There’s no other way for me to say it. It didn’t feel like a fantasy at all. It just felt like I was in it, sitting in front of the Dean’s office awaiting an undeniable spanking. When I caught glances at my two friends, they looked very scared as well.

Honestly, it was one of the most immersive scene experiences I’ve ever had. I feel a feeling that I can only express as a love/hate relationship towards really intense and immersive scenes, but that’s not exactly accurate. I don’t feel this way about every scene, but in certain cases, when playing with people that I know well and know are able to bring me there, I want it to be really scary. I want to not like it. I want to truly wish that it was over, or that it wasn’t happening to me. I want to feel that scared and regretful “Why did I do such a dumb thing to get myself into trouble, I promise I’ll never misbehave again” feeling in my stomach. So, when a scene feels real, I don’t exactly like it while it’s happening. But I crave that headspace, and I love it pretty much the instant it’s finished. That headspace is rare for me, but it’s remarkable when it does come through, and it’s a memory that will remain gratifying for a long, long time.

It was my turn to come into the office and to bend over the desk to be paddled. The Dean told me to place my hands flat on the desk and to keep my feet on the floor. This is hard for me. I like to grip things and hold on for dear life, and I tend to kick my feet around a lot. He made it clear that if I moved in either way, I was going to get extra. In reality, I don’t know if he meant it or not, but I wasn’t in reality when this scene happened. I knew that I needed to be still, even though it was going to be hard to.

I had kind of stopped caring about being still and taking spankings “well” at some point. It generally looks more visually interesting on video if you move around a lot, so I had sorted of adopted that as a go-to. And I do like resisting. And I do like being overpowered. But I found in my head a space that I used to enjoy going to a lot, where I could overpower myself. I focused on that and told myself that I was not going to move.

The descriptions that I have for the first paddle swat are really, really cliche sounding. I feel like I saw stars, my whole mind alight with how hard the swat had been. I felt like I was physically moved forward by the force of it (which is kind of impressive because I’m not exactly a wisp of a girl). The air was practically knocked out of me, and I lingered in this very long second where I felt the impact before I felt the pain, and then everything went double fast in order to catch up. I made a truly pitiful noise and my knee buckled, but I didn’t take my hands or feet away from where they were supposed to be.

The second swat followed directly. It was still hard, but not as shockingly so. My wailing didn’t sound any less pathetic, though. The third swat brought me to tears, which was a relief. Crying felt right. It felt real. And it let some of the tension out of my body.

After the third swat, I knew I had two more to go before there was a break as the Tops switched. This meant that I was more than halfway to my first goal. I have a theory that I tell myself when I’m taking spankings and I get concerned that I can’t take what I’m getting: anyone can take ten swats with anything. This, of course, isn’t actually true, and the use of the word “anyone” can get a bit hairy if you think about it too hard, but it’s a useful thought to go to when things are (intentionally) overwhelming. But there is a sort of truth to it: a lot of “taking it” comes down to “letting it happen.” Accepting that this hurts. Not resisting or panicking. So I got myself to that point, and I cried a lot. The last two swats seemed close together in my mind.

We switched over to Kelley paddling me, and I was honestly a bit surprised by how hard her first swat was. I had kind of had the idea that because, in the real world, Kelley is a close friend of mine, that meant that she wasn’t going to punish me so severely. I don’t know where I got that idea from: it was wrong. My bottom was already incredibly sore from the swats that had come before and I was already in tears when she started spanking me, but at least my resistance was pretty gone. I counted each swat so carefully in my head. I actually made a little puddle of tears on the desk, I think. My palms were tremendously sweaty as they pressed against the desk’s surface. But I didn’t move.

When the paddling was over, I was told to go sit back outside and listen to Maddy and Harley as they got their spankings. I kept crying for a little while as I sat there, but I was a little bit less immersed in the scene. I was out of it just enough to be sky high happy about what an intense experience I had just had.

I was so sore when this scene was over. My butt felt swollen and like it should be absolutely purple. But by the time that my friends had finished receiving their punishments and we all lined up to show off our marks, I was hardly even pink. I appreciate the fact that my body recovers quickly in terms of color, because it allows me to continue to shoot after doing tough scenes like this. But it drives me crazy that I don’t get the satisfaction and gratification of having people look at my butt and know exactly how sore I am.

10) By Order of the Court from Northern Spanking

It’s probably no surprise that my favorite scene that I shot this year was for my own site. It was REALLY hard to pick a favorite because I really pour my heart and soul into everything that we do for Northern. This scene was particularly fun because it was a group scene that involved a lot of people that I really like: my friends Cupcake SinClair and Harley Havik, plus Violet October, who I got to know and become friends with because of this shoot. Plus, Paul was the Top, and he’s my favorite Top!

By Order of the Court was a custom film. It took a lot of planning to do: we had to rent a location, Violet flew in from Vegas for the shoot, and there were a ton of schedules to coordinate. I particularly like doing customs. I really enjoy the directing side of making a spanking video, and it’s fun to direct from someone else’s script. It just so happened that the script for this scene was a fantasy that I really enjoy: a judicial punishment. The film has no explicit setting but it has a generically English feeling, especially because of the fact that in addition to caning, one of us got the birch. The one of us was me!

This was my first proper birching. Previous to this I had gotten a few strokes from Pandora Blake during a photoset we did for Dreams of Spanking and Paul had given we a couple of strokes over my leggings when we were in the Inveraray Jail Museum in Scotland. They had a birching bench and a birch on display with a sign that said “please try.” It was the kinkiest museum of all time.

So, I was very curious to discover what full force strokes of the birch on the bare felt. I could take a guess and say that they were going to hurt.

When we arrived at the house that we had rented in order to do this film, we immediately started to look for branches that might be suitable for making birches. We pulled into the driveway, opened the house up, checked the rooms and then got right to work stripping long, thing, flexible branches off the trees. There had been no appropriate ones near our house. I could imagine that to an outside observer who didn’t know what we were doing it would seem like very odd proceedings.

Eventually, we decided that we couldn’t find enough branches there, either, so we drove to a nearby park. I was somewhat embarrassed to be looking for appropriate birch making materials in a public park, but Paul assured me that there was nothing weird about it. When he started stripping them down in the parking lot (BECAUSE HE HAS NO CHILL), someone came up to us and asked what we were doing. Paul lightheartedly joked that we were going to make a wreath. I don’t know if he was convinced or not.

We filmed the scene the next day. It involved the first three girls each getting 25 strokes of the cane, followed by me receiving my birching. First, we all had to strip naked, and I ended up directing parts of the scene that didn’t involve me that way. Porn life!

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I enjoyed watching as Paul thrashed each of the girls before me. I was fascinated by watching their different reactions to the punishment. I’m particularly fond of watching him Top other girls. I don’t get to see the way that his body moves or his facial expressions when I’m the one getting spanked by him, and I love these things.

After watching him deliver 75 cane strokes, it was time for me to get my birching. I was nervous, but mostly excited to see what it would be like.

What it was like was extremely stingy. Despite being bundled together, it still bore almost no weight. It was the whippiness of a switch but spread across a wider area of my bottom. It did have less bite because of that. It still left me whimpering and gasping. When it was finished, I was a little endorphin high and very sore. My friends were obviously in similar states.

In order to prevent this post from being EVEN LONGER THAN IT ALREADY IS I only included pictures from my segment of this scene. The full scene is over 40 minutes long, but the whole thing is extremely engaging to watch. I highly recommend it. It was, in fact, my favorite scene I did this year!

I haven’t done a Kink of the Week topic in a while. I looked at the list, and discovered that I’ve missed two full two week cycles, but that Jade left them open (possibly by accident, but I’m willing to take advantage of that). Both the topics that I missed are ones that I have a lot to say about. So, like the horribly naughty girl I am, I’m just going to slide this homework into the bottom of the pile and hope that my teacher believes it was there the entire time.

The kink of the week topic (from a while ago) was Dacryphilia, or the fetish surrounding crying. Without further ado, I shall now address this!

My most read post on this blog is one from 2012 entitled “On Being Spanked to Tears.” In it, I outlined the different ways in which a spanking could lead me to cry. Three years later, I’ve grown and learned and experienced many more things, and I’d like to add some new thoughts on the topic.

Why crying?

Crying is something which carries a great deal of importance for many spankos. I get the impression that spanking is one of the fetishes which most embraces, or even focuses on, dacryphilia. When I started crying on one of my first spanking video shoots, I felt almost embarrassed by it, but the producer called my tears “liquid gold” and told me that a tear covered face was “the moneyshot” of spanking videos. So what is it about crying that is so central to a large number of people’s spanking kinks?

The first is the idea that tears are tied into the “realness” of a spanking. I hear this often in comments various places where I post spanking photos on the internet: “It’s not a real spanking unless you make her cry.” I haven’t spent enough time immersed in other kink communities to know whether or not they have a similar obsession with verisimilitude as the spanking community presents, but I know that for spankos, we talk about what makes a spanking real all the time. Tears are very tied into this.

Part of this obsession with making spankings real comes from the fact that a lot of our fantasies are based on things that actually happened in the past. I don’t knock this at all, and totally embrace that many of my core fantasies are based around the recreation of school, institutional or domestic punishments that used to actually take place. So, sometimes the word “real” is meant to mean “similar to a historic/real life spanking situation.” And in our conceptions of those scenes, tears are a key part. The first hand accounts of these punishments that we read or hear almost always end with the spankee bawling, sobbing and crying uncontrollably. Of course they would: these punishments were painful, embarrassing and, whether we want to focus on this or not, non consensual.

Before I was ever spanked, I read as much writing about spanking as I could, and I remember being deeply engulfed in the fantasy of being helpless, overpowered, intimidated by authority, stripped, held down and thoroughly chastised. These fantasies always ended with me in tears. Now that I spend my life actually enjoying spanking play, I like to recreate these fantasies. I like to make them as realistic to what I imagined as possible. I buy uniforms from school uniform suppliers, or even better, find vintage ones that were being worn at a time when corporal punishment was actually practiced. I get implements that are also vintage, and which were actually used in the original situations. When I can, I like to dress up the setting, finding places to play that look like I’ve stepped into my fantasy world. And I like to be spanked hard and, if it’s possible, pushed to cry. My tears are part of what makes it feel like I’ve truly created the scene from my fantasy. In this situation, “realness” can be better defined as “authenticity” and tears add to that. [Author’s note: I do not actually support non consensual corporal punishment of any kind, and fantasizing about recreating something in a way which is positive and consensual is not the same as supporting the original institution from which my fantasies stem.]

Another thing which I believe has influenced the spanking community’s interest in tears is the way which spanking pornography evolved. In the pre-internet days, before the first spanking videos were even available, spanking porn was delivered via magazine. It was much harder to find a like minded partner at this time, so spanking porn carried even more importance: for many people with spanking fetishes, those magazines would be the only way they’d ever get to interact with their kink. When you look at spanking in still photographs, it is very hard to tell whether someone is actually being spanked or if it’s just a picture. It’s even harder to tell if the spanking has been severe or “transient and trifling.” One can easily use acting to make a facial expression that depicts being in pain. There are only two things that can make a still image show that a hard spanking is actually taking place: the presence of marks and the presence of tears. Admittedly, neither of these things is actually a good litmus test for the severity of a scene, since some people simply never cry, others can cry from a light hand spanking, some people will be bruised purple by the same hand spanking but others can take a good, hard caning and have only a pink bottom to show for it after. But these visual queues at least suggest to us that a spanking is actually happening and that it actually hurts. Even now that our spanking pornography is primarily videographic, we often continue to identify the severity of a scene based on these two visual queues, hence the fact that my tears were liquid gold to the producer in my earlier story. Both tears and marks send us a strong visual message: that a spanking is happening here and it’s real: here, realness can be defined as a spanking carrying any level of severity.

Leaving aside realness, there’s another thing that makes tears very appealing to many spankos: vulnerability. No matter who a person is, they’re vulnerable when they cry. They’ve let their guard down and they’re showing you their inner emotion. They aren’t fighting against you or resisting you as you spank them. They are, in a way, letting you in. This is the draw of tears for many spankos. Tears are a sign of intimacy. Tears are a sign that your feelings are genuine. Tears are a sign that lessons are being taken to heart. Of course, a person can be vulnerable without crying, but tears give you a tangible sign of this vulnerability. For the person crying, tears can be refreshing. They can give an emotional release. They can get something out that words can’t articulate. Communicating this way can be very emotionally intimate and draw people together.

Of course, no matter the reason, not everyone likes tears. For some, the presence of tears makes them worry that they’ve really upset or truly hurt their partner. Others find tears or being made to cry triggering, as a reminder of a time when something non consensual brought about that sort of emotional state. Others don’t like to be that vulnerable, and that’s entirely okay, too. Despite all the reasons why tears may make something feel more authentic or more real, a scene can be perfectly wonderful and very real without them,

What makes a spanko cry? 

Personally, I cry all the time. Outside of the spanking world, I cry when I’m sad, lonely, scared, hurt, even angry. I’ve always cried a lot. I was made fun of for it throughout most of my life, often being called a crybaby or other similar taunts. As an adult, I was made to feel that crying was something I should find embarrassing, that it was a mark of lack of self control or that I wasn’t a “real adult” (another concept that has caused me a lot of struggle).

The first time I was ever spanked, I didn’t just cry, I sobbed. I cried until I shook, in a way which was extremely disproportionate to the severity of the spanking I was receiving. It took me a long time to unwind the tight ball of emotions that I felt there, but the primary one was relief. I was relieved that after eighteen long years of carrying around this seemingly dark secret, my most precious fantasy was coming to life. And, once I started crying, I was relieved to discover that it was perfectly acceptable in this situation to cry when I felt the impulse to.

Crying from a spanking isn’t something rare for me. I’d say that it happens about 40% of the time that I have a serious scene. It’s not uncommon for someone to specifically ask to make me cry, either in my personal play or during a video or session. Other people have asked me to make them cry when I was Topping them, or to teach them how to make someone cry. It isn’t this simple. Everyone is different and every spanking presents a different set of emotional and physical stimuli. Like during that first spanking I received, the cause of what brings one to tears can be hard to unravel. It can be caused or hindered by a variety of things. Here are some of those that I’ve discovered.

Crying fueled by regret for bad behavior: 

This was one of the causes of crying which I identified in my post three years ago. This is one of the causes of tears that people most often think about when imagining a punishment spanking. You feel bad about what you did, so, aided by the scolding words and pain associated with your punishment, you cry. It’s important to point out that just because someone isn’t crying during a disciplinary spanking, that doesn’t mean that they don’t regret whatever they did to earn the punishment. Everyone expresses their emotions in a different way. This reason for crying is something which the Top can influence to a degree, especially with the words they choose when scolding, and by creating an environment in which the bottom feels safe to be vulnerable. For me, sternness, seriousness and calm are important in creating this sort of atmosphere.

One thing I noted in my original post which I highly agree with is that if someone is crying due to regret for bad behavior during a scene which isn’t meant to be disciplinary, then something isn’t right. Sometimes, the differences between funishment or play punishment and real discipline can get blurred, and it’s important to make it clear to the person that you’re playing with what kind of spanking you’re really giving them.

Crying fueled by letting someone down

I realized recently that, to me, there’s a difference between the feeling of regretting having misbehaved and feeling bad that I’ve disappointed someone that I respect. In detangling the feelings that I have when I get a real punishment spanking, I’ve realized that a large part of what makes it emotional for me isn’t just the fact that what I did was wrong and needs to be corrected, it’s also the fact that I’ve let down a person who I love and respect. This is part of the reason that I only have an interest in doing these kinds of scenes with someone who I know well and feel these feelings towards. Because, really, we all know which stings more: a hairbrush or the words “I’m disappointed in you.” Just knowing that I’ve let my partner down will almost always bring tears to my eyes, without even the need for anything else.

Crying fueled by stress relief or emotional release

Sometimes, a person who gets spanked just needs to be spanked. They have too much bottled up emotionally. They are having trouble focusing because their mind is full of distractions and they need something to center them. Life is just wearing them down, and they need to not have the responsibility of being in control all the time. This kind of crying can come from any kind of spanking, and I think that’s it’s actually fairly common, although you can intentionally try to create this atmosphere for a person who needs it by providing a safe and secure emotional environment surrounding the scene. For me, this works best when it’s a mixture of caring and sternness, and when the spanking slowly builds up to a place where I can’t resist it anymore and I *have* to let my vulnerability physically manifest.

Photo by Assume the Position Studios, still the most cry-face photo of me I have!

Crying fueled by submission or surrender

This is another one of the types of crying that I identified in my much earlier post. I wrote that post when I was a fairly new submissive, and when subspace was something which remained very alien to me. Here’s what I had to say:

Some bottoms talk about subspace- going off into some floaty, magical, trance-like, trippy state from getting a very hard beating which pushes them towards submission. They sink into the bed, they stop feeling pain, they float on endorphins, they get high, they can’t talk properly…

This doesn’t happen for me (although it did once). I’m a very cerebral person, and I’m uncomfortable letting go of my awareness. Instead, when I’ve been pushed to a place where I cease my fighting, I get to a point of submissive crying. It’s a calm sort of sobbing where there’s no urgency in the sound. I’ve given myself over to the spanking that I’m receiving and I have no will regarding when it will end. It’s certainly not as exciting to talk about, or as filled with mystery and intrigue as traditionally described subspace is, but the land of my submission is just a place where I lie still and take a lot of hurt and cry about it. It probably sounds pretty pathetic to a listener, and it doesn’t feel “good” in a traditional sense, but it’s a very peaceful place where I feel incredibly safe and loved.

Nowadays, the more traditional subspace is no longer illusive to me the way it used to be, but I still find myself getting into this kind of “submissive cry space” (that’s a technical term :P) on a pretty regular basis. “Traditional” subspace doesn’t actually feel so submissive to me: it feels passive, and I identify those two things as being related but different. When I’m in a deep subspace, I don’t really feel things the same way. I’ve let myself be taken to a place where spankings don’t actually really hurt. When I’m in this space, I still feel everything, but I’ve given up my resistance to those feelings and I’m willing to let them happen. This is a place that one should only go to with someone they truly trust, since it basically means that you’re just going to let someone do whatever they want to you and not resist, but it can be a very beautiful thing in the right situation.

Crying fueled by physical pain
When I wrote my original post, I said that I felt like it was taboo to admit that I sometimes cry because spankings hurt that much. I don’t know if I think that anymore. I think that’s dangerous for a Top to believe that crying is the *only* sign of physical pain, or that by increasing the amount of pain that you’re causing someone you can *make* them cry, but I do think that it’s very common for people to simply cry because something hurts. I have to feel safe in order to do this, and I have to feel some sort of connection to the Top that I’m playing with, but this is honestly a very common reason for me to start crying. This hurts: that’s what this is all about. And sometimes, this hurts enough to make me cry. Nothing more complicated than that. That’s okay. There doesn’t have to be some grand and difficult to explain background behind everything. Sometimes, it’s just that someone is hitting you with a piece of wood and that hurts enough to make you cry.

Bad tears
The spanking community puts so many positive associations on crying that it can sometimes be easy to forget that crying isn’t always a good thing. For some people, crying is a sign that they are upset and that the scene needs to stop. If someone starts crying in a way that you don’t expect from them, or from a scene that wasn’t meant to be that intense, it’s a good idea to check in. Sometimes, when a person starts crying, it’s because the spanking isn’t fun anymore. The scene isn’t working for them. But if they’re already in an emotional place where they feel particularly passive, it can be hard to use their safeword. While it might break up the scene in a way that isn’t ideal to check in with your partner, it’s better to be safe than sorry in this case.

Other times, a person cries during a scene because, to put it in the vernacular, the Top is being a dick. Using people’s fears, playing to their insecurities, saying insulting or hurtful things and other forms of emotional sadism certainly get inside someone’s head and make them cry, but it isn’t creating the kind of safe vulnerability that I talked about before: it’s just being abusive. The bottom is crying because they’re hurt in a bad way. It’s entirely possible to do consensual emotional sadism/masochism scenes: there are people who are into that. But this is something that has to be very explicitly negotiated before playing. Additionally, it’s important that if you are going to play this way, that the people who are around you (if you’re playing in a public space) know what you’re about to do and that what you’re doing is consensual: probably not the best scene for a suite party.

So, bottoms, do you cry when you get spanked? Tops, do you like it when the person you are playing with cries from a spanking? Do tears carry a certain emotional weight to you? What do they bring to the spanking? Let me know in the comments section!

[Final author’s note: I used the term “we” a lot in this post. I do not mean to speak for everyone in the spanking community: this is just shorter to say than “many people in the spanking community.” I hope this was not offensive to anyone.]

For those of you who don’t know, Kink of the Week is a biweekly prompt which opens up a conversation between bloggers across the kink and sex writing spectrum, each focusing on how they feel about a particular kinky topic. ❤︎

Check it out here:
Kink of the Week

I haven’t had a whole lot going on recently (as mentioned in my previous post). This is largely due to some health issues and other personal stressors that have been present in my life recently. Bit by bit, those things have been getting squared away and I’m back to feeling like myself on a daily basis and doing those cool human things like eating, sleeping and not feeling sick. w00t.

The level of excitement rose rather greatly, though, because Heather and I left for Northern California to do a shoot for Spanking Court’s new project: Sternwood Academy. The traveling wasn’t entirely easy: we weren’t able to get any sort of direct flight from South Dakota to NorCal so we ended up zigzagging around the country a bit, but I was very glad to have Heather with me on my three flights. As is often the case, having her around made something that might be a bit of a drag into a good time.
We arrived in Reno and got picked up and driven to studio in Lake Tahoe. I met two of the other models that I was working with this weekend, Cheyenne Jewel and Ela Darling in the car. They’re both super sweet and a lot of fun to hang out with. I knew that Ela and were a good match when we were talking about how to cry on command and she said that she just needed to think about Snape and Lily.

I honesty don’t think/talk about this very much because it chokes me up so much.

Then she showed me this video and I was smitten. 😀 I could really go on about how I think that everything about Ela’s brain is sexy, but I think you guys get it.

Getting into my uniform for the shoot was one of the most exciting moments of my life. I know it sounds stupid, but a world which combines formality, academia, cuteness and spanking is pretty much a world that was built for me. It’s true: when I got dressed, Dana Kane told me that I was born to wear the uniform.

Heather and I in our messy dorm room!

I’ve worn lots and lots of school uniforms before, mostly ones that I’ve assembled piece by piece from things I found online or at the thrift store, but being twinsies with a bunch of other smart, beautiful women was just over the top awesome.

The weekend was A LOT of shooting. This isn’t a problem for me because the point at which I get burned out from being spanked too much is something that scientists can only theorize about. I actually ended up creating an extra scene in which I get spanked with Katerina of Spanking Ms. Cali after class because I’ve always wanted to be spanked with her ever since I first met her at Spanking Court. That was a ton of fun. Heather and I also did our first ever professional video together! That was extremely exciting!

I love this girl with my ENTIRE heart!

We also had several scenes in which all the Sternwood girls get spanked in a row, which was pretty intense and fun to shoot. Getting to pass notes and screw around in class was out of character for me, but something I could totally get behind.

I don’t want to go to deeply into what, exactly, we shot (because I want you to buy the DVD when it gets released!) but it’s all very fun stuff that’s made by spankos and for spankos. I personally don’t usually enjoy watching my content, but I’m excited to see how the classroom looked through the camera. It’s got to be pretty freaking awesome.

From left to right: Cheyenne Jewel, Ela Darling, Alex Reynolds (THAT’S ME!) and Heather Michaels

In the evenings and other spare time, I got a lot of chances to talk to Miss Dana Kane (because we were staying in the same apartment) and this is something that I’m really glad that I got to do. She’s a really remarkable woman. She’s incredibly smart, talented at what she does, clever, hilarious, fun and amazingly kind. She’s also hella beautiful and she carries herself with an amount of confidence I’ve rarely seen a woman pull off. She’s one of the few people I’ve interacted with who presents herself with no apologies or shame regarding her femininity. In other words, she’s simultaneously a woman and a total badass and is entirely unapologetic for that, despite what our society teaches us about what we should be. I really aspire to be as awesome as she is.

On the second day, once I was feeling very in my element indeed, I asked Dana if she would spank me harder during our scenes and she happily agreed to that. Spanking videos are easier for me to film if I’m actually getting the hell smacked out of me because that’s my most pure and natural state of being. I got genuine tears going a couple of times during the weekend, but a lot of that was motivated by the happiness of being around a whole bunch of people who were celebrating the stuff that I love that I’d been long taught by my external culture should make me ashamed.

That and the fact that I was getting hit pretty hard!

In one of our paired scenes, Dana broke a spoon somewhere between Heather and I. It was Heather’s first broken implement, and we each took a piece that fits together in a sort of spanko friendship heart.

At the end of the weekend, I had a pretty red and sore bottom:

I’m trying to edit photos in my phone now. Thanks, Japan, for Purikura Apps!

In all, the experience was epic! I’ve been exhausted recently, but I’ll hopefully be getting more blogging done in the next few days. I’ve got LOTS more news! 

Note from the future: I don’t actually support a lot of what I said in this post anymore. There are A LOT of signs that my relationship was unhealthy that can be seen here. 

 

For the past few months, I’ve been working on a particular skill within the realm of submitting to spankings. I’m very, very good at taking hard spankings with the right atmosphere. The atmosphere, however, has always been highly important for my success with these things. I generally experience these things as if I am being “guided” to a particular headspace and then kept there. I think this is partially because my early spanking experiences were highly directed and I never learned how to create a headspace for myself and partly because when it comes to physical things, I’m far better at passive submission than active submission. Recently, we’ve been working on my ability to give myself over to a hard spanking without direct assistance.

It is way, way more difficult than it sounded to me in the beginning.

No atmosphere means no phrases of comfort or reaffirmation, no “good girl”s, no questions that focus my mind on submission like “to whom does your body belong?” or “do you want this spanking?” It turns out those things go an extremely long way towards creating a submissive headspace for me.

It also means no warmup. This is the biggest difference between the kinds of non-punitive spankings I was used to getting and the kind that I’ve been getting recently. A warmup eases me into a scene both physically and mentally. The mental side of it is what’s the most important for me. It gives me time to accept the fact that I’m being spanked and slowly start giving myself over to the spanking, suspending my sense of self preservation and surrendering my free will for the time being. It’s like slowly inching forward to get wet in a lake before going swimming (this analogy is particularly effective for me because I have a strong fear of water so preparing to submerge myself is far more mental than physical, but I’m sure that it will make at least some sense to others). You take one step, then another step, then another and at first every step makes you gasp from the cold but eventually, you put your head entirely under the water and then you’re ready and can swim for however long you want.

Without a warmup and with few words of guidance or correction, I’m more like a cat who has just been dropped into a full tub for her bath than a swimmer slowly preparing to enjoy the water. The first smack hits my bottom and I pretty much immediately start crying out, rolling back and forth on Malignus’ lap, yelling in the style that Ami would call “like a dying monster” and being entirely incapable of keeping position. This is relative to my normal ability to be extremely still: I’ve seen other girls who simply have to be held down and pinned in place to take a spanking, and recently, I saw one of my friends climb over a couch when her arms were being held down and she was trying to escape swats. The logistics of that maneuver still befuddle me. To my own credit, I will add that I’ve never put my hand back during a spanking, that I’ve never gotten off the Top’s lap, that I’ve only kicked a Top in the face twice and that it’s been over three years since that time that I broke a lamp. Basically, I’m not horrible, but I try to cling to my resistance as much as possible and relaxing and giving myself over to being spanked isn’t the first thing on my mind. In fact, instead of thinking about how much I want to be spanked and how I never want it to end, I find myself latching onto thoughts of how it’s too hard, it hurts too much, I can’t be still for it and I want it to be over. Not very productive.

That’s my brain, basically, when I’m not doing things right.

I’ve been working on this for a long time, and that’s not to say that every spanking I receive is done in this method and intended to work on this. Malignus had told me that I’d been making progress but I personally was getting frustrated with myself: I knew what things I should be doing during a spanking and I just never brought myself to do them.

Last week, we obtained a new implement. Peachy Keane sent it to me as part of a gift box. I’ve talked about Jenny before: the wooden spatula that Malignus loves and most girls hate. Here’s a photo of Jenny, in case anyone wasn’t sure what it looked like:


This is Ben, the new implement that scotchgrove had Peachy send us:

At first, I thought it was another Jenny in a different color. They do look the same!


From that angle, they look exactly the same aside from the color difference and the fact that Jenny is well worn. From other angles, the difference is far more noticeable:


Ben is about 1.5 – 1.75 times as thick as Jenny. This was EXTREMELY noticeable the first time I was spanked with it. Jenny was my “warm up” (this was quick and very firm) and then he started to hit me with Ben. I kicked and bucked around and screamed and could barely be kept under basic control. I’m pretty sure that the spanking ended earlier than intended because I was taking it with so little grace and dignity. But geeze! That thing is HORRIBLE. It’s the epitome of an awful spoon (you can tell because scotchgrove calls his “the perfect spoon.” )

The other day, I got into a mood and I started having a really awful attitude while Malignus and I were trying to get things done in a limited amount of time. I’m really ashamed of the way I acted. I was scolded about my attitude and just a minute later, he asked me something and I responded rudely and immaturely. He then started to scold me very, very harshly. I snapped out of my funk immediately and began to cry guiltily. I was suddenly aware of just how badly I’d been behaving. A minute or so later, he called me into the bedroom. He was sitting on the edge of the bed holding Ben. I felt a mix of terror and relief– despite my extreme dislike of that implement, I knew that I deserved to be disciplined for my behavior and I wanted him to spank me very hard. Once I had bared my bottom and gotten over his lap, he gave me another stern scolding and then did just that. It felt as though he really laid into me with it (I say this in non-concrete terms because the way that I experience pain during a disciplinary spanking is different than usual and often much more severe). There was no denying the fact that he spanked me very thoroughly, but because of my mindset at the time, I lay quite still and did nothing but cry submissively into my pillow. The spanking finished with corner time followed by a long, comforting hug and a chance for me to behave better. I spent the rest of the afternoon focusing on being cheerful and getting things done, and I was successful at both.

Later, when we were driving in the car to go out to eat, Malignus noted that I had been very still for my spanking. It hadn’t even registered to me that I had: I had been focusing on other things. This was important for me because it had reminded me just what I was capable of. When I want to, I can endure anything. This had stopped being a reality for me when I had continuously failed at my earlier attempts to fully submit. That night, Malignus gave me a bedtime spanking with a different spoon. My bottom was still sore from my discipline earlier that day, but I know he didn’t spank me as hard or with as fast a pace as he usually does. Still, I was able to channel the same feeling of wanting to be spanked and I successfully gave over to the spanking. I was very proud of myself, indeed, and Malignus told me that he was proud as well.

This post has too many words in it! It needs one of these!

Since then, I’ve only had one other spanking, which was also with Ben. I took that one similarly well. It’s exciting to feel like I’m on a roll and finally mastering something and making real, measurable progress.

It’s not a secret: I cry from spankings a lot. There are videos of me crying available from Spanking Court, Assume the Positions Studios, and Lily Starr Spanking. I talk about it here all the time, too, and I’ve posted about it on various fetlife threads from time to time. So it isn’t surprising that one of my friends sent me a message asking me for more insight into my ability to cry. This is the second time that I’ve been inspired to respond to a question in the form of a blog post, because my thoughts organized themselves so well that I figured that others might enjoy reading my insights as well.

There are several different ways in which a spanking can make me cry. I can break my crying during a spanking down into several categories:

*Crying fueled by regret for bad behavior.

This is one of the more common forms of crying from a spanking in general, and the psychology of it is very straight forward. This takes place during disciplinary spankings. In my opinion, if a spankee is in this mindset and that is not the intended atmosphere of the spanking, then something is wrong. Either the top has not communicated the intended purpose of the spanking effectively or the bottom is dwelling on previous or otherwise unaddressed bad behavior. This is the easiest way for me to cry during a spanking, although it is rarely ever particularly difficult.

The atmosphere of a disciplinary spanking keeps my mind focused on my wrong-doing and just how unenjoyable it is to be punished. This atmosphere makes me extremely vulnerable and therefore makes my experience of the spanking much more physically painful. For me, a spanking serves this purpose most effectively if it is delivered either very sternly or, in certain situations, harshly. What’s the difference? To me, a “stern” delivery is very calm and controlled, with some level of formality, but unbendingly serious. A “harsh” delivery involves some expression of annoyance (as opposed to just displeasure) and is a bit “gruffer”: there might be some raising of the voice or rougher shoving back into position. It’s the difference between “Bare your bottom and get in position” and “get your pants down and get over my lap RIGHT NOW!” The latter is generally more effective if the offense which has earned me the punishment is related to my attitude, just because it’s more jarring and it makes it much harder for me to keep feeling sorry for myself. 😛

Either way, the creation of this atmosphere makes me vulnerable and receptive, and it makes me most contrite and regretful, and therefore brings me to tears very quickly.

*Crying fueled by stress relief/emotional release.


This is the kind of crying that happens when I get that feeling that I just need a good spanking. This happens when I feel like I’ve been keeping things inside myself, or I’ve been struggling hard with something, or life has been wearing me down. These spankings have always been most effective for me i they begin with sternness until I reach the point where I’ve begun to cry and then the tone becomes more affectionate. Again, this is about being vulnerable: in this case, the spanking is effective because I allow myself not to fight against it (or, if I cannot do such a thing on my own, to break me down) and instead use it to push everything out. I originally imagined that a stress relief style spanking would be calm and soothing, but I discovered with experience that it works best for me when it’s merciless, hard and long. A good example of this sort of spanking can be found in the story told in the last couple of paragraphs of this post.

*Crying fueled by relief.

This is a different kind of relief than stress relief. It’s relief that a long anticipated spanking is finally happening. This sort of tears is generated by a spanking that is usually very connecting, reaffirmative and filled with caring. Alternatively, these tears can be part of the reason I cry during a long awaited punishment. The point is, I’m moved to tears by the feeling that I’m back where I belong and that I’ve obtained something that I’ve long desired, or that some sort of waiting period has ended. My first spanking was the ultimate example of this: I was overcome with the most extreme relief I’d ever felt, since the burden of waiting for my first spanking was finally lifted from me. These tears are very happy, and filled with satisfaction.

Photo by Assume the Position Studios

*Crying fueled by submission or surrender.

Some bottoms talk about subspace- going off into some floaty, magical, trance-like, trippy state from getting a very hard beating which pushes them towards submission. They sink into the bed, they stop feeling pain, they float on endorphines, they get high, they can’t talk properly…

This doesn’t happen for me (although it did once). I’m a very cerebral person, and I’m uncomfortable letting go of my awareness. Instead, when I’ve been pushed to a place where I cease my fighting, I get to a point of submissive crying. It’s a calm sort of sobbing where there’s no urgency in the sound. I’ve given myself over to the spanking that I’m receiving and I have no will regarding when it will end. It’s certainly not as exciting to talk about, or as filled with mystery and intrigue as traditionally described subspace is, but the land of my submission is just a place where I lie still and take a lot of hurt and cry about it. It probably sounds pretty pathetic to a listener, and it doesn’t feel “good” in a traditional sense, but it’s a very peaceful place where I feel incredibly safe and loved.

*Crying fueled by physical pain.


What’s that?! It’s kind of taboo in the spanking community to admit that crying happens because a spanking hurts, but for me, yeah, that happens. I know that the fact that it’s a safe environment where I’m engaging consensually in something that I love and that I’m allowing to make me vulnerable plays a part in it, but even with amazing atmosphere and the best, most loving connection between me and my Top (so, when Malignus is spanking me), I’m going to get to crying much more quickly from a hard paddling than from a hand spanking. It’s not like I cry because things hurt in my non-spanking life (except for the occasional migraine) so it’s clearly not all about the physical pain, but I won’t deny that a harder, faster paced, longer spanking (that is to say, one which hurts more) will be far, far more likely to bring me to tears.

Oh, Hai!

Alex

Los Angeles, California, United States

First and foremost, I’m a girl who loves being spanked. It’s at the very center of my being. I’m also a professional spanking model, which means I get to do what I love for my job. I’m twenty six years old, and currently located in Los Angeles when I’m not traveling around on my adventures. My vanilla interests include poetry, film history, academia, Pokemon, indie music, baby animals, baking and cooking, collecting vintage clothes and lots of cuddling.

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