beta_vulgaris (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
beta_vulgaris) wrote2014-11-03 04:48 pm
beta_vulgaris) wrote2014-11-03 04:48 pm
Entry tags:
Kinky November Day 3: Kink_Bingo
This is a post about kink_bingo, and how it helped me work through a lot of my feelings and interests around kink enough to begin practicing it with my physical body and in non-fannish spaces. This is absolutely only my journey and how it relates to kink_bingo and is not a comment on the things anyone else does or should get out of this community, whose members may have wildly different experiences and reasons for participating and following than I do!
This is an example of a![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
kink_bingo card, taken from the communal card post.
I came to kink through fandom. Fanfic may not be the best and most reliable source for accurate information about BDSM (understatement of the year), but exploring fantasies in an environment as rich as fandom, particularly in meta-conversation with other fans via chats, recs, and more, can be hugely empowering and a relatively safe way to begin to suss out one's interests. Participating in creating fanworks, whether that means writing, drawing, vidding, betaing (aka editing and/or cheerleading someone's fanwork), recommending, etc. can be fascinating ways to explore one's own feelings in fiction. Further, discussing kinky fic with other fans helped me to develop my vocabulary around kink and to become comfortable communicating about it, as well as helping me to overcome initial feelings of fear and shame I had around kink.
I've also found fanworks useful in helping me to understand and value kinks I do not share (or don't think I share). Reading peers working through the emotional valence of particular acts/kinks/feelings can be crucially eye-opening for me, and I recommend trying it with an open mind if you think to yourself there's no way you would want to do a particular kink. IMO, that's totally fine and reasonable--if you're not into something or if it may be a problem for you for whatever reason in your personal experience, that's plenty reason not to do something! Reading about and working through the mindset of some kinks has been a way for me to do self-work around respect and valuing people in the community who play differently than I do, and also to help me clarify my own limits and boundaries. Exploration through fiction may not be for everyone (and even for me there are a couple of kinds of kinks I sometimes avoid reading about for personal trigger reasons), but I feel that it has been an important, significant way for me to find my way through kink and work through some internalized misconceptions about the emotional reasons behind some peoples' approach to kink.
One of the major community resources I have relied on within fandom to explore kink through fanworks has beenkink_bingo. This fanwork challenge is currently on hiatus to give the mods a much-deserved break. It ran for several years and I followed along as a reader for most of them and as a participant for a couple.
The mods and members ofkink_bingo amassed a great deal of information about a variety of kinks in their kink_wiki, which remains a really good resource. They also tagged the main community beautifully, so you can sort and find fanworks of all different varieties that were filling prompts for dozens of kinks.
The format of the event encouraged exploration of kink in a way that I found really valuable, and continues to inform my approach to both fiction and real life kink. I appreciated that the bar for participation was quite low and very forgiving, while still gently nudging one to try something out in a fictional way. The 'bingo card' format was randomly generated from a list of kinks (the list was adjusted each year based on member feedback), and participants were encouraged to create fanworks to fill each space in a line. I might love to write breathplay but have no idea how to approach tickling, but if they were in the same line I'd be encouraged to at least consider it as an option. The focus on fanwork rather than personal kink practice really made experimentation through thought-process work without feeling as scary as if one is being personally asked to participate in something as themself. I still use this groundwork of exploration and evaluation today in my personal kink practice.
The format also equalized kinks, encouraging folks to think about them as different rather than hierarchical--furries/plushies get a bad rap in many fannish and some BDSM spaces, but they can appear side-by-side with vanilla kink on your bingo card and the mods have always been great about requesting participants not to employ kink-shaming language in community conversations, which has made kink_bingo feel safer to me than many fannish spaces for exploring some of the kinks that are less commonly accepted as 'okay' for whatever reason.
All of that said, the fanworks inkink_bingo are largely fiction, and their creators vary in terms of their interest or intent in portraying any sort of 'realism' in kink. Kinky fanwork is often about fantasy rather than practice (though of course that isn't true of all fanworks). Kink_bingo is a great emotional resource for exploring kink. Many fanworks posted to the community may include depictions of kink that are physically impossible by human standards (tentacles!) or violate common community norms of consent or safety in physical practice. I generally consider kinkfic as an exploration, not a guide, and any practitioner of kink is well-advised to seek educational rather than fictional resources for learning how to do it. Kinky fanworks helped me reach for why to do it, and to explore emotions and personal narratives beyond what I would consider working through in a real-life sexual or BDSM situation, and the rest has been a matter of research and personal development.
I guess this post is a major thank-you to all the fans who have created kink_bingo, those who have participated in it, and those various people who have explored kink through frank discussions of fanworks and porn with me on chat, on twitter and dreamwidth, and in person.
I'd love some recs for kinky fanworks in comments! It doesn't have to come from kink_bingo, though it'd be cool if it does. If you feel like describing what about the fanwork appeals to you in terms of its depiction of kink, that'd be great but isn't necessary, either. A future Kinky November post will be fanwork recs, and I'd love to be able to collate recs from more sources than just myself :)
Also, anon commenting is now available on this blog, though there is a text captcha so I can avoid spam. This means you don't need a Dreamwidth account to comment.
This is an example of a
kink_bingo card, taken from the communal card post.I came to kink through fandom. Fanfic may not be the best and most reliable source for accurate information about BDSM (understatement of the year), but exploring fantasies in an environment as rich as fandom, particularly in meta-conversation with other fans via chats, recs, and more, can be hugely empowering and a relatively safe way to begin to suss out one's interests. Participating in creating fanworks, whether that means writing, drawing, vidding, betaing (aka editing and/or cheerleading someone's fanwork), recommending, etc. can be fascinating ways to explore one's own feelings in fiction. Further, discussing kinky fic with other fans helped me to develop my vocabulary around kink and to become comfortable communicating about it, as well as helping me to overcome initial feelings of fear and shame I had around kink.
I've also found fanworks useful in helping me to understand and value kinks I do not share (or don't think I share). Reading peers working through the emotional valence of particular acts/kinks/feelings can be crucially eye-opening for me, and I recommend trying it with an open mind if you think to yourself there's no way you would want to do a particular kink. IMO, that's totally fine and reasonable--if you're not into something or if it may be a problem for you for whatever reason in your personal experience, that's plenty reason not to do something! Reading about and working through the mindset of some kinks has been a way for me to do self-work around respect and valuing people in the community who play differently than I do, and also to help me clarify my own limits and boundaries. Exploration through fiction may not be for everyone (and even for me there are a couple of kinds of kinks I sometimes avoid reading about for personal trigger reasons), but I feel that it has been an important, significant way for me to find my way through kink and work through some internalized misconceptions about the emotional reasons behind some peoples' approach to kink.
One of the major community resources I have relied on within fandom to explore kink through fanworks has been
kink_bingo. This fanwork challenge is currently on hiatus to give the mods a much-deserved break. It ran for several years and I followed along as a reader for most of them and as a participant for a couple. The mods and members of
kink_bingo amassed a great deal of information about a variety of kinks in their kink_wiki, which remains a really good resource. They also tagged the main community beautifully, so you can sort and find fanworks of all different varieties that were filling prompts for dozens of kinks. The format of the event encouraged exploration of kink in a way that I found really valuable, and continues to inform my approach to both fiction and real life kink. I appreciated that the bar for participation was quite low and very forgiving, while still gently nudging one to try something out in a fictional way. The 'bingo card' format was randomly generated from a list of kinks (the list was adjusted each year based on member feedback), and participants were encouraged to create fanworks to fill each space in a line. I might love to write breathplay but have no idea how to approach tickling, but if they were in the same line I'd be encouraged to at least consider it as an option. The focus on fanwork rather than personal kink practice really made experimentation through thought-process work without feeling as scary as if one is being personally asked to participate in something as themself. I still use this groundwork of exploration and evaluation today in my personal kink practice.
The format also equalized kinks, encouraging folks to think about them as different rather than hierarchical--furries/plushies get a bad rap in many fannish and some BDSM spaces, but they can appear side-by-side with vanilla kink on your bingo card and the mods have always been great about requesting participants not to employ kink-shaming language in community conversations, which has made kink_bingo feel safer to me than many fannish spaces for exploring some of the kinks that are less commonly accepted as 'okay' for whatever reason.
All of that said, the fanworks in
kink_bingo are largely fiction, and their creators vary in terms of their interest or intent in portraying any sort of 'realism' in kink. Kinky fanwork is often about fantasy rather than practice (though of course that isn't true of all fanworks). Kink_bingo is a great emotional resource for exploring kink. Many fanworks posted to the community may include depictions of kink that are physically impossible by human standards (tentacles!) or violate common community norms of consent or safety in physical practice. I generally consider kinkfic as an exploration, not a guide, and any practitioner of kink is well-advised to seek educational rather than fictional resources for learning how to do it. Kinky fanworks helped me reach for why to do it, and to explore emotions and personal narratives beyond what I would consider working through in a real-life sexual or BDSM situation, and the rest has been a matter of research and personal development. I guess this post is a major thank-you to all the fans who have created kink_bingo, those who have participated in it, and those various people who have explored kink through frank discussions of fanworks and porn with me on chat, on twitter and dreamwidth, and in person.
I'd love some recs for kinky fanworks in comments! It doesn't have to come from kink_bingo, though it'd be cool if it does. If you feel like describing what about the fanwork appeals to you in terms of its depiction of kink, that'd be great but isn't necessary, either. A future Kinky November post will be fanwork recs, and I'd love to be able to collate recs from more sources than just myself :)
Also, anon commenting is now available on this blog, though there is a text captcha so I can avoid spam. This means you don't need a Dreamwidth account to comment.
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My experiences are similar to yours in some respects, particularly the coming-to-kink-via-fandom bit, and kink-bingo has basically been foundational in how I think about kink and interact with it (i.e., I never "learned" to think of some kinks as better than others, and I've been spoiled by their shaming-free discussion policies).
As far as recs go, I have this one, which is one of the very few fics I've read on the strength of the author, involving kinks that I'd thought were a non-starter for me - and yet, I couldn't put it down, and find myself reccing it at nearly every opportunity:
monster (6288 words) by thingswithwings
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Avengers (2012)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Bruce Banner/Tony Stark, a tiny bit of background Tony/Pepper sorry sabine don't get your hopes up
Characters: Bruce Banner, Tony Stark, Pepper Potts, Nick Fury, Maria Hill, James "Rhodey" Rhodes, Clint Barton, Natasha Romanov
Additional Tags: Sadism, Dominance, sadist's pov, dominant's pov, Torture, Interrogation, Stockholm Syndrome, Rape Roleplay, Consensual Kink, Knifeplay, Temperature Play, Caning, Blood, Bloodplay, Bondage, self-actualization, Consensual Non-Consent
Summary:
Basically a dissertation on Bruce's sadism. But a naked dissertation. With orgasms. And sharp implements.
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I am generally an avid reader of
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Take Deep Breaths (27972 words) by romanticalgirl
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Bandom, The Academy Is..., Fall Out Boy, Cobra Starship, Midtown, Gym Class Heroes
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Author Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: William/Pete, William/Travie, William/Gabe, William/OFC
Characters: William Beckett, Pete Wentz, Gabe Saporta, Travis McCoy, Mike Carden, Tom Conrad
Additional Tags: Breathplay
Summary:
You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you might find you get what you need
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Stark, A.E., and Banner, R. Bruce. (2013). "Biodosimetric Tools for Measuring Induced Isomeric Transition in Inverted Paired States." International Journal of Radiation Biology 89.9, 43-85. by thingswithwings. Avengers, Bruce/Tony
Since someone already recced "monster," which is probably my favorite fic of theirs. This is a much more lighthearted, joyful story about size kink and "we have to do it because SCIENCE" which is a trope I love.
Take Clothes Off As Directed by Helen. Stargate Atlantis, Sheppard/McKay.
I was on a panel about BDSM at a small con, and since I had no idea what I was doing, I spent a lot of my social time before the panel talking to other attendees about it. The night before the panel, someone asked me if I'd read this story. I hadn't, so I looked it up when I got home at 2am. As far as I know, this is the first story out there that used D/s AU to talk about gender. I think this is a foundational story for discussing how fandom specifically handles kinks and the way fandoms create and spread their own kinks and kink tropes that don't exist anywhere else. It's the ancestor of all the dystopian D/s AUs that came after, and the spiritual predecessor of more recent omegaverse stories that are dystopian. And it's a perfect example of how to create a world that's critical of entrenched power dynamics but uses those same dynamics as erotic and/or romantic fuel.
The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized by the_ragnarok. Inception, Arthur/Eames, different enough AU to be easily read by people outside that fandom.
This is one of those spiritual successors I was talking about. An A/B/O story in which a lot of the conflict is powered by the protagonist struggling against designationism (aka sexism), but the author also eroticizes the animalistic aspects of heat and power exchange during sex. One of the things that comes out of these AU tropes are stories that kink on gendered power dynamics but at enough of a remove from reality that people who are uncomfortable with enjoying gendered play in real life can still enjoy it.
In Perfect Trust by mijan. Star Trek AOS, Kirk/McCoy.
A wonderful example of characters doing good BDSM in fic. The author specifically set out to write something realistic, in which the characters end up doing well-negotiated play, and it shows. The main activities in this story are sounding and needle play and I made it through the whole thing even though I'm profoundly squicked by needles, and was even more so years ago when I first read this (I've been doing some accidental exposure therapy and I can now watch people do needle play without feeling faint).
Reprimand by severinne, Star Trek AOS, Pike/McCoy.
Punishment roleplay and dirty talk. This fic stuck with me because when I read it I was just figuring out that I liked dirty talk.
Flesh Beneath by Isagel. Avengers, Natasha/Steve.
It's hard to pick just one Isagel story but if there's only one, this would be it. This fic really *gets it* with Natasha's POV as a dom, the care she takes and the worries of causing harm and what she gets out of it. Mainly knife play.
Nasty by ewinfic. RPF, Chris Pine/Zachary Quinto.
This story got me to understand the appeal of enemas as a kink.
Sickness and Shame by recrudescence. Inception, Arthur/Eames.
The story that made me realize that I love humiliation kink even though I always thought I'd hate it because I can't stand embarrassment.
Life of Crime by neveralarch. Hawkeye comics, Clint/Natasha, Clint/Bucky, Clint/Carol.
Supervillain AU with quite a bit of plot and also Clint being unapologetically a masochist and bloodplay.
the understood boundaries of self by strgyza. Inception, Arthur/Eames.
Having to fake a D/s relationship for an undercover job or con is one of my favorite tropes ever and I can't deny it.