What is your favorite gag?

Gags for me are even more important than restraint for making a damsel completely helpless. The tightest and most devilish hogtie conceivable is nothing against a scissors-toting roommate just one shout away. That's why it's important to make a gag not only effective but challenging. The more a damsel has to deal with wearing a gag the less she'll be able to struggle. She can try to yell but opening her mouth lets that bit gag sink even deeper and pry open her mouth even more. She can try to scream but all that mouth-packing held in by gauze makes it hard enough to breath. She can try to shout but then all the drool backed up behind that huge ballgag will spill out all over her bare breasts.

A challenging gag presents a damsel with both limitations as well as choices. She can struggle but when you can only breath through your nostrils you run out of breath very quickly. She can scream but not too loudly because there's so much drool and packing in her mouth she needs her tongue to push it away from her throat. The poor girl has to fight both the physical demands of the gag as well as the mental demands. Their mouths are pried open, their lips are sealed and their faces are encased. It's often far more uncomfortable than even 500 feet of rope. I've had people tied into pretzels but it's always the gag they want out first when it's all over.

My own gag preferences have evolved over the years. I still find it amusing that I used to hate ballgags. Now nobody gets through the door without having one popped into their mouth. Layering is my favorite thing now. Ballgag a damsel, tape over it, gauze over that ... the more the better. If a gal keeps saying something and I reply, "What?" over and over I know the gag is done right. And there's just something about the struggling you get when a damsel knows it's the real deal and not a simple ballgag. A model told me that when you can't breath through your mouth or swallow your drool you want it to be over. You don't know if you can bear having the gag taken off and then put back on again so you just keep wiggling hoping that the next thing the rigger says is, "got it, lets get you out of that." Of course, they wiggle a lot longer than they'd hope!

The image is from Kendra James in I Can't Get Away If You Tie Me Up Tight!

Escape is sometimes an option

I tend to lean more toward escape being impossible, but I must admit that I like letting a damsel get away if she has to work for it and if she has to make certain sacrifices for her freedom. I've tried escape scenarios in the past, and they always turned into attempted escapes. I just tie far too tight and intricate for anyone to get away. Yes, the occasional damsel will struggle until something pops loose or they get a knot undone, but hundreds of feet of tight rope and dozens of knots make one slipped rope or an undone knot worthless. The damsel always runs out of steam or can't take the discomfort before getting anywhere close to loose.

After getting numerous requests for escape scenarios I was forced to revisit the idea and come up with a formula that worked. Restraint is about tipping points. Where does the balance swing in favor of the struggling damsel and how does the captor make sure the balance is always on his side. In general that's easy: tight, intricate and a lot of rope and a girl is furniture. That really doesn't work for an escape sequence. You can't just throw scissors at someone and instantly make escape a possibility. I've tied people up with scissors, knives and box-cutters within easy reach and had them get nowhere. Hell, I tied up Ashley Graham less than two months ago with scissors right on the floor with her and she never even got a hand on them. She didn't even have to go anywhere for the scissors, but the balance was far much too in favor of going nowhere ever. A nice escape sequence requires the balance to be at going nowhere fast.

Having tied up a billion people (I'm prone to exaggeration) it's very obvious that if you control the hands, you control the damsel. If they can't use their fingers effectively or get their hands to the right spot all they can do is wiggle and roll around and hope something gives. That's a recipe for being on my living room rug all day and not for getting away. Having cut more than one damsel out of an excruciating tie it's also very obvious that nylon rope requires a few cuts and it just falls off while cotton rope requires cutting a lot of rope before it starts giving way. That's where the darn tipping point comes into play. Once a damsel starts cutting herself loose it's like a landslide. She's helpless and then free almost instantly.

My solution was to use cotton rope, dull scissors, an elbow tie and wearing next to nothing. I don't care how seasoned the model is, a gal will always try to be modest when she can. If you put someone in nothing but high heels, hose and a garter they have a choice between an awkward cut with the scissors and showing the goodies. I have yet to find a model that will just sit there with her legs wide open as she cuts away. Sometimes she has to but she will most often work at a more awkward angle and take longer to free herself utilizing a position that is more modest. As for awkward cut, dull scissors and elbow ropes will really slow a gal down. The hands have a lot of movement but the angle is limited by the elbows. Combine that with dull scissors and you have a lot of slow sawing instead of cutting. You also have a lot of failed attempts. On top of all that she has to deal with the cotton rope. Imagine the elation of getting through one rope but having everything still hold fast.

Nyxon experienced a text-book escape scenario in Painful and Pantyless Escape. She was frogtied and wearing next to nothing. She got to the scissors easily but found out that getting them to the ropes was an uncomfortable challenge with her elbows together. She tried desperately to get the scissors to the ropes on her legs but they were too dull to cut. She tried sawing but needed to splay her legs to get close enough. The poor gal tried to be demure but needed to show all to get those dull scissors to work. After long picking and sawing at the ropes her legs and hands were free, but she faced the challenge of getting those elbows free. The balance was perfect. Nyxon had to work for release and the pacing was even. She was never free until those elbow ropes came off and even then had to ungag herself and rest up enough to walk on wobbly legs!

Heels, hose and helpless!

I consider myself a bit classical in nature when it comes to bondage. I was around during the days when pretty gals wore the bare essentials and got tied up tight. Images of ladies wearing nothing but high heels, hosiery and panties (and a lot of rope) were everywhere. I've always focused heavily on that but until I started going back into my video archives I never realized just how much. It seems like every model I've worked with at some point has been down to nothing but heels and hose. There's just something about the tease of being almost nude and the embarrassment of being helpless in your scandalous hose and heels. It takes the elements that a woman uses to tease men when fully dressed and making that her only bit of coverage. Amazingly those elements still hold just as much allure when that is all a girl can hold onto for dignity.

The above image is from Black, White and Helpless All Over with Lyric. If features what I consider the number one outfit for a damsel: black heels, black thigh highs and black panties. To be honest that probably ties with a garter instead of panties, but both rank well above anything else for my tastes!

Pretty Tied Up in Pink

I love statistics and check traffic on all my portals frequently. Something that I really like is to see so many visitors from all over the world. There is no better feeling than knowing that what you do is appreciated by people from so many countries. A huge thank you to everyone who visits my website, this blog and my clips stores. I couldn't properly say thank you without pointing out the tremendous number of hits that I get from Germany, France and Italy. I speak none of these languages so forgive me if I am incorrect when I say danke, merci and grazie!

My first poll has ended and thank you to everyone who voted! I frankly expected to get no votes and although the turn-out was slim it was meaningful. We had a vote for almost everything which means we'll keep doing a variety of dress for upcoming shoots, but I will be focusing more on sets that feature nude except for heels and garters, hose and heels. I have to admit I love a gal wearing only heals or topless and bottomless but not fully nude, so I got a smile seeing the results. Sales are my primary way of knowing what people like, so I like having this as another way to help me keep tweaking upcoming shoots to have what you want.

Things are getting very hectic in a good way. The studio was a lot of work but I like having a new area to utilize. I've already shot Angelique and Deanna Deadly out there. I also have Chrissy Daniels coming soon to roll around in the studio with Hannah Perez, Ashley Graham, Kendra James, JJ Plush and Stacie Snow waiting in the wings. The nice thing is that having a space that doesn't involve destroying my living room has resulted in a lot more shooting and that means a lot more damsels. Although I like the basement feel that it has right now, we're thinking of creating formal sets with painted walls. I have plans to make facades that give a warehouse feel because somethings you just need dingy.

When I'm not shooting and updating clips I plan to work on my website some more. I get a lot of hits and that deserves rotating content through there more often. I keep getting asked why I don't have a paysite, and I can't really answer. I guess I just don't get around to it with everything else, but I know if I buckled down I could get something up and going. I have a look that I like which is always the hardest thing for me, so maybe I should start buckling.

The image is from the first shoot I got to do in the new space was with Angelique. She wore this awesome pink latex outfit complete with a little latex bow. We wanted to do something with more intricate but simple ropework (less rope but cleaner restraint). Since she was doing latex I decided to just tie her up and start filming. The set was wonderful. I got some images to update my photography portfolio and a fun clip of her in a bitgag sweating and drooling! I called it Pretty Tied Up in Pink.

How do you like your damsel dressed?

I put up a new poll today. Correction, I put up my first poll today. I view my work as adaptive and evolve my content and style based on what is selling the best and more importantly the many emails I receive about likes and dislikes. Looking at the number of views I've been getting I wanted to try putting up some polls to give everyone a chance to express what they prefer when it comes to damsel in distress video. I still want those emails to keep coming, but this could be a great way to quickly take the temperature of everyone when it comes to bondage material. The first poll as the title of this post indicates concerns the attire of damsels. I'm always asked why I don't do more nudes or more stockings or more costumes or more latex. I shoot what I think looks nice is the simple answer. If I know what people are looking for then I'll shoot more around those preferences. No need to vote if that's not your thing, but any I do receive bring me closer to what you are looking for in future content!

One of the categories of the poll is garters, hose and heels. My formative bondage years were in a time when that was frequently seen in bondage images and movies. I've always had a strong preference for it going back to the beginnings of my photography. In fact the beginning of my photography was almost always that with some panties thrown in from time to time. Some of my favorite movies and images of this attire come from the film loops of the late 70s and early 80s, and they had a lot of garters, hose and heels. Hell there was even a bondage magazine called that. A little bit back I decided to try my hand at reproducing that look and style. The elements that I needed were a vintage looking model, the constant thrashing of the model, slight graininess to the film stock, the slightly accelerated movement speed, the look of 8mm celluloid film and that wonderful soundtrack.

The model was easier than I expected. I worked with this gal that called herself Betty Page and showed up to a shoot with this tussled throwback hairstyle and showing me the vintage shoes she just got at a rummage sale. I always keep garters and hose on hand, but would she go for the idea? I had worked with her twice before and although the bondage was strict the content was very mild. I went through all the elements from those loops that I could think of and she didn't balk at any of them. I was elated: noose, vibrator, groping, topless and bottomless were all now on the table. My video idea was one step closer to being complete. I coached her about the movement, and she nailed it. Gagged with her own panties held in by a strap she was dragged in by a noose and her sometimes rhythmic, sometimes thrashing movements were perfect.

Betty had given me perfect emoting and perfect movement. She had pulled off the vintage look and the movement from those old 8mm loops like she'd done it a hundred times. I had my footage, but the rest was up to me. The graininess was easy even shooting on DV film instead of celluloid. You can do it in post-production or while filming. With Betty I decided to shoot the video slightly underexposed and then bring up the brightness in my editing software. The grain effect came out perfectly. The slightly accelerated movement speed of the film proved slightly more difficult. I tried a dozen things. I sped up the play speed. I removed frames. I used plugins. I posted in forums. Everything I did though made it play far too quickly or made the playback jerk and hitch. I spent days on this effect and it was a fail. I decided to work on the funk soundtrack to at least make some progress. I found a great royalty free CD for around $60 and grabbed it. The songs were wonderful and very similar to the music tracks heard on the videos made using those old loops. That's when a very cool thing happened. I turned off Betty's audio and turned on the funk track. She seemed to be moving slightly faster. I turned her audio back on and she was moving at normal speed. I though I was going crazy, but somehow she seems to thrash more quickly with no sound or with the funk soundtrack. I decided that there must be some brain mechanism that makes time perceptions change when detached from the auditory experience. Regardless of the reason, the effect was there. Three cheers for dumb luck!

The last element was the look of old film stock. Anyone who's seen these loops or has some old home movies knows that the film has scratches, dust, blotches and those crazy hairs that float around while you play the film. They have plugins for that, but I didn't like the looks I was getting. I went back to looking and found some videos of actual 8mm film and videos that people created artificially. The actual 8mm was a bit distracting. The borders jumped all over the place and quite frankly gave me a bit of a headache. That's not a good thing watching a bondage video. The artificial one looked great but was a bit repetitive which made it seem artificial. The easy answer was to just pick one and be done with it, but I'd come so far to compromise. Again, there was a happy accident. In testing things I had both the actual 8mm and the artificial 8mm overlaying the video. I'd turn on one and turn off the other, but I accidentally left both on once and it looked wonderful. So I trimmed out that annoying border and used both merged. This did two things. It resulted in the longest video render of my life, but more importantly it nailed the look of the old 8mm film I wanted.

With that Betty in The Priss was born. As an homage to those loops I kept the story similar. Betty was a prissy wife who scoffed and her husband's bondage desires. Just like those loops a masked antagonist is brought in to teach her a lesson and make her into a compliant bondage model and toy for her husband.