As someone who grew up with "I'm not going to praise you for doing what's expected of you; that's not being good, that's doing the bare minimum" I want to encourage you to celebrate every little thing you can. Everything that takes energy and effort should be appreciated and you're allowed to be happy about trying.
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something you said has been on my mind for a while - "kink is not inherently sexual". good faith! I don't understand that at all, could you explain it a bit?
This post is educational, hooray! Extensive discussion of kink under the cut. Nothing explicitly sexual is described in detail.
Please note that in this post, I use the terms top and Dom/me interchangeably. This is because I personally identify as a "top" and not a Dom. Some communities draw sharp lines between these two terms, and it's useful to make sure that you're using the same definition as other people when you're talking. Some people use "top" solely to refer to the giving or penetrative partner, which is not synonymous with the dominant partner. Topping subs, power bottoms, and all other permutations exist. I just use that term for myself because I don't like being called a Dom. It sounds like a guy's name to me, I don't like it.
When I text my wife in every morning, "Please bring me my coffee," and she answers, "Yes, Sir!" is that sexual? I'm surely not feeling sexual when I'm barely awake. When I hold my other wife's hand when she's having a depressive fit and tell her, "Daddy's got you, it's okay," that's kink, but it's not sexual. In that moment, neither of us feel particularly sexy, and we're surely not engaging in sex, but it's kink that - forgive the pun - binds us more strongly together.
One of my girls wears a 24/7 collar that I locked in place. (She can ask me at any point to take it off, or she can take it off herself if she wants to, but she chooses this.) That's kink. It's also... a necklace. That's not any more inherently sexual than her wedding ring, though it - for us - certainly symbolizes part of our relationship that happens to sometimes include sex, exactly the same as a wedding ring.
There are a lot of types of kink that don't include sexual contact in any way or which might include sexual contact but don't need to. One of my friends is a sex-repulsed ace bootblack. They literally take care of the boots of tops, usually at play parties. For them, this act of service and submission allows them to go into a particular headspace that's very fulfilling for them. They are explicitly serving the people whose boots they clean and polish. The Dom/mes receive that service and not only get really great-looking boots out of the deal but also get the feeling of power from having someone eager to take care of them and serve them. For some of us, that kind of service allows us access to a feeling of power that can be hard to access in our daily life, and that feels really good.
Sometimes, it can feel good in a sexy way, and sometimes it feels good in a "makes lizard brain feel powerful but not sexy" way. Neither one is inherently better or worse or more or less kinky than the other.
Sometimes, people who like being whipped like it because the line between pain and pleasure is like a wave on the ocean, and they want to surf it. Sometimes, that involves mashing squishy bits together, and sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes, it's just about riding that endorphin wave and then having someone take care of you afterwards.
Sometimes, people want to be tied up in elaborate shibari knots and fucked. Sometimes, people want to be tied up in elaborate shibari knots because that process requires a lot of trust and is an intimate ritual that takes a lot of time. Sometimes, it's both. Sometimes, people want to tie up others because it's a beautiful work of art, because that ritual of binding is a ritual and accesses something sacred for them. Sometimes, they want to be tied up because it's playtime, and that's fun for them! Sometimes, they want to be tied up because when they're tied up, they are 0% in control, and they want to just surrender control to someone whom they can trust.
Some people want to go into sub space - that headspace I talked about earlier - because in their everyday life, they have a lot of responsibilities and stress, and going into that space where nobody can ask anything from them, where they have no responsibility to make any decisions at all, is a relief to them. That might involve squishy bits, or it might not. Some people like going into that sub space because being someone's Good Boy, Sweet Girl, or Good Pup is gender-affirming for them. A friend of mine only feels really safe when he's got his pup hood on, because that means he's With Master, who will protect him.
Some people get gender affirmation out of being in control, being someone's Daddy or Mistress, Sir or Boss. It allows them to access a power that helps them to square their shoulders and take on the world.
All of this entirely skips over the fact that a person's primary sexual organ is between their ears, and some people do get sexual fulfillment out of kink even when no genitalia are involved at all, but I cannot stress enough that the reasons that people enter into the multitude of kink situations in the world are as varied as the people involved. People gain access to comfort, to feelings of stability and order and control over their lives, to gender affirmation, to endorphins that are or aren't sexual in nature, to release from responsibility, to ritual and intimacy, to the ability to provide for others and take care of others in a way that their outside lives may or may not permit. For that matter, they may simply gain access to a paycheck, and that's fine, too. That's no more or less "selling your body" than when I used to run my ass off for 13+ hours a day at my retail job, and I guarantee they're making way, way better money.
The fact that so many people see kink as only and purely sexual means they're missing out on so much of what kink can offer, and narrowing down the experiences of others to this tiny little sliver of what actually exists. Yes, it can be sexual, but it doesn't have to be. The reasons that people engage in kink are as varied as the reasons that people engage in any other kind of interaction, and the fulfillment they get from it is as varied, too.
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Mothman Teddy Bear Plushie!
A cute little harbinger of doom cryptid, lol. Perfect size to watch over you from your desk or shelf.
Use code JUSTBECAUSE for 20% off!
Check out the shop: https://teashopcrafts.bigcartel.com/
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First carriage ride of the year 🐶🌼
For anyone new, Holly Mop is a rescue dog who spent the first few years of her life in a cage. When we first got her she was terrified of being outside and would become ill with stress when we tried to take her on walks. We got her a stroller to see if that would help and it became her favorite thing. Three years later she’s able to walk on leash in quiet spaces, but still loves the elevated view from her carriage.
The flowers are left over from renfaire last year:
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making up a guy to get mad at can actually be really lovely and rewarding like for example i was feeling understimulated so i crafted an alternate world where moby dick was super popular on tumblr and the most popular ship from moby dick was ahab x humanized whaleboy merguy moby dick who was always drawn as like a skinny little white guy with white hair and sharp teeth and sort of unusual eyes like maybe with black scleras or something. and it was literally inescapable and people made like hannigram aus where will was ahab and hannibal was moby dick and people also made human!boatless!modern! aus of ahab x moby dick where they were just like normal guys as well. and the moby dick fandom all thought they were so cool and countercultural because melville's unfinished novella billy budd was also really popular and the billy budd fans were at odds with the moby dick fans because billy budd fans described it as like a heartfelt queer story in comparison to moby dick being toxic and soulless (because ahab was trying to kill moby dick in canon) and moby dick fans described billy budd as basically steven universe but none of this ended up mattering because in four years the meteors came and all life on earth was lost
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drew her again… ms paint this time
(ver w/ the UI under the cut, i just thought it looked neat)
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