My PC is a game day player.

Okay I think it’s quite clear to one and all that I love computers. I mean in the last 11 months how many of my pieces have been about computers, or peripherals, or games? I couldn’t tell you, but a lot of them. Well yesterday (Wednesday 28th) I was actually dumbfounded by my PC. I’d always liked it but…well allow me to spin you a tale.

You see my Partner in Crime has two granddaughters, aged 5 and 8. The 5-year-old is of course the oft mentioned Force of Nature. And like all young children who are cousins when they get together hyperactivity occurs. Well the thing is my PC is in the kitchen, and I have this really comfy office chair, which spins. You can see where this is going right?

So I’m sitting in my bedroom practicing my ukulele, while my PiC entertains her family. Suddenly I hear this unholy crashing sound. Assuming one of them has made complete wreckage of something that belongs to me, and relieved that it can’t be either my mandolin or ukulele because they were on my bed with me, I simply went on playing. After all bad news can wait a while, especially when you’re making good progress with a new piece of music, for once.  A little while later the FoN comes in looking nervous.

“Here it comes.” I thought.

“I’m sorry for breaking your puter.”

Apparently my poor PC met with a high velocity chair back, went flying off of its desk, and landed with the afore-mentioned unholy crash on a tiled floor. Ah fudge monkeys.

So they leave, and I try to reboot my poor abused PC. And blow me but it starts up. Great. Oh buggery, no video, the graphics cards had it. Hardly the end of the world though as I do have a new one waiting to be installed. But me being me, I had to have a go at getting it working again. Apart comes the PC, a quick once over and then back together again. And here I now sit typing out this article on a machine that took a 3 foot header onto a tiled floor less than 24 hours before.

Damn I love this machine, my PC is now officially a tougher nut than its owner, though I am definitely nuttier!

Happy New Year folks.

And here comes the next one.

Last week I wrote an article speaking about what the past year has meant to me. This week I want to do much the same, this time though writing about how I hope the on coming year will play out.

So this year I hope fervently for the following things to become true.

I hope my friendships grow stronger, including somehow my finding a way to go see those I haven’t seen for far too long because they are in other countries.

I hope my romantic relations go from strength to strength. This of course also includes any unrequited ones, just because it’s unrequited doesn’t make it wonderful to feel.

I hope to be a better slavegirl, making my Miss more proud of me. Or you know, proud of me, sometimes being a brat is hard work.

I hope to forge a truly strong loving D/s dynamic of some kind from a dominant side with someone special. I suppose I should write another letter to Satan Claws on this subject.

By my birthday in March I hope to have finished the first draft of my second novel, a science fiction action romance if you’re interested.

And I hope to have performed, and released the first part of what promises to be a very long-term YouTube project.

In the coming year I intend to lay the ground work for a one woman business of my own, which will run parallel to my writing. You can most definitely expect to hear a lot about that in the coming years.

I intend to experiment with some burlesque type fun. Yes, of course there’ll be videos uploaded.

I’ll even walk the dog more, thus making her incredibly peeved off with me for waking her in the wee small hours. Don’t you just love walking along darkened, lonely canals in the arse end of nowhere alone in the middle of the night? No? Just me then.

Even more ukulele skills will be learned. One of these days I’ll master strumming.

And the mandolin will become my other instrument of choice. But I point black refuse to learn “Copperhead Road.” What a cliché.

With a little luck I’ll find myself living in Maynooth, with its shopping, and commuter service to Dublin City. Not to mention all the pretty, bipedal scenery provided by its university.

I will be finding a counsellor, things are moving in my mind, and while I may or may not post about them (while I think some people might find it healing to read about what’s churning in my head right now, it is also an intensely personal and difficult subject for me to even think about right now, much less write about.) I will most definitely need help in truly assimilating my new reality.

I will be playing my ukulele on webcam for my blog. I mean you don’t practice for hours most days just for your own enjoyment. Besides as anyone who knows me can attest, I am something of an exhibitionist.

Beyond this I don’t know, what I hope will come. But I do hope that it will be a better year than the one that is about to end. I hope my nation will claw its way back from the brink. I hope my friends and family will be happy, loved and have no reason to experience pain or fear. I hope the guys who give me hassle keep turning out to have glass jaws, because damn it but I love it when they act big and bad, only to go down like Sonny Liston.

Yeah, I doubt that anyone is really surprised, but no post today.

So it’s Boxing Day, and I woke up with a viciously sore throat, and the general feeling that death would be an improvement. So, no post tomorrow, which is today when you read this. But with a little luck I’ll feel better tomorrow, which is today, and be able to get something special put together for New Years Eve.

Getting through Christmas as a Pagan.

Like, I’m sure many Pagans, I find Christmas a very conflicting time of year. On one hand it means essentially nothing to me as a religious holiday, I personally hold with the idea that either all places, objects, acts, and days are sacred, or none are. On the other hand I live in Ireland, and so am surrounded by people for whom this is the most important time of year. (We won’t get into the Easter is more important discussion here. Aside from anything else, Pagan so I don’t really give a damn.) This leaves me in an unpleasant position where I can go one of two clear-cut ways, or pick a somewhat uncomfortable middle ground.

Route 1: Ignore Christmas totally, and just enjoy a few days of the year where there are decent movies on television. I did this one year, but it made everyone else in my life feel rotten, so I never repeated it.

Route 2: Fake it, acting as if it’s the most wonderful time of the…yeah I can’t even finish that sentence, and still respect myself.

Route 3: Acknowledge and honour its importance to those I care about, while hoping they return that by not shoving the religious side of things in my face.

Needless to say I tend to go with route 3. And so far it works pretty well. I use this time of year as a chance to buy/make people nice things, and not be given out to for doing so. I of course being a slightly mercenary individual welcome the chance to be given presents, and this year I can’t wait to get my hands on my new mandolin! But that’s really all it is to me. Just a day with gifts, and lots of food I can’t eat, though quite frankly in the case of bloody brussel sprouts the world is welcome to them.

But for all the welcome compromises this route contains it still leaves me feeling odd though. Not bad exactly, but I guess somewhat disconnected from things. At Christmas I always feel like I’m looking in on something that I don’t fully understand, through frosted glass. Involved as an observer, but not really a part of it all. And it makes me wonder how I should feel about all of this. Worse though it makes me wonder how it would feel to be a part of a similar event, but one that encompasses my beliefs (not bloody likely mind you, I’ve never met anyone who shares what I believe, not even amongst other Pagans.). To have a space of shared belief, or even shared ideological kinship.

The closest thing I have to this in my life is the BDSM world. But in truth, in no small part because of my views on BDSM, even there I feel like the outsider. The one looking in at the revellers within, invited but not welcome.

Maybe in the years to come this will change. Maybe someday I’ll find something like this to feel a part of, regardless of whether it’s a Pagan, BDSM, Vanilla, political thing. For a human being, a member of a species who live to build communities, belonging to something you can believe in is vitally important. Hopefully eventually something will change, and I’ll find or make an Amanda shaped hole somewhere in the world to slot into. But in the mean time I’ll just have to keep squashing myself into those spaces that do exist, even if they aren’t quite right, and dream of the celebratory space that is.

Happy what ever you believe in folks,
From square peg Amanda.

Another Year Gone

Over today, and this day week I intend to post two related posts. One about the year I’ve just lived through, one about my hopes and dreams for the year to come. Today we start with the year that’s past.

This year has been one of the hardest I’ve ever lived through. It’s also, perhaps been one of the best. My health was horrific for all of it. My emotions all over the place from permanent exhaustion. I don’t remember a time where I felt more like my body was at war with me.

And yet this year I achieved a life long dream when I completed the final polish on my first novel. I even received some very positive feedback from a literary agent about it, even if she did advise me to sit on it a while until the publishing industry recovers from the recession.

I also realised that being a writer simply isn’t enough for me. I love writing, I love that side of being creative, but I need more, I need to feel fulfilled. So after a great deal of thought I have come to an understanding of what I want to be. Though more about that next week.

My relationships seem to have mostly strengthened. And I’ve welcomed new people into my life. Some far more special than others, but all precious to me none the less.

I reconnected with an ex of mine, and have high hopes of regaining my friendship with her.

My dog Winter finally stopped growing, thankfully before she became so large that there was no space left for me in the apartment. Although she now does seem to produce her own bodyweight in poop each day.

I started a blog, this blog in fact, thanks to the seemingly constant prodding from an adopted lil sister to do so, and seem to have made something of a success out of it. It certainly has helped me in improving my writing abilities.

I started three “second” novels, before finally settling on one. Expect to hear a lot about that in the New Year.

I started to learn to play a musical instrument. Found I actually have a bit of a talent for it. I’m sure you noticed, I’ve blogged a lot about it.

I lost my remaining grandfather to a grave, my remaining grandmother to a stroke.

I gave up on a lot of dreams which I can never physically achieve.

I found new dreams to replace them.

I looked inside, and found once more the need to be a Domina to and owner of someone special. Time will tell with that whether I will ever get to look down into loving, adoring, worshipping eyes again.

I found new strength to be a better slavegirl. Only time will tell if I’m going to end up permanently marked with cane stripes for being cheeky.

2011 was a good year for me. There was heartache, and pain. But over all it was filled with happiness, even if that happiness was occasionally tinged with stress, and stained with tears. I hope yours was as good, or better.

Next week my hopes, dreams, plans, and schemes for the coming year.

One of these things is not like the others…

As you gather experience in cooking for yourself you’ll come across new foodstuffs, and other new substances. Some of these will look cosmetically similar, but trust me when I say that they truly are not. So here we have five sets of somewhat easily confused foods (if you happen to be a brain damaged puppy, or a drunken student), and other items, as a basic beginners guide to what works, and what really doesn’t.

1: Cabbage and lettuce.

Yes these are somewhat easy to confuse. Both are leafy, both are green, both are sort of ball-shaped. However if you boil lettuce it quickly becomes slimy, and tasteless. Where as cabbage becomes…well as far as I’m concerned it also becomes slimy and tasteless, but hey that’s my opinion.

Lettuce, cut it up, check for bugs, eat it.

Cabbage, cut it up, check for bugs, boil it, and throw in the tra…eat it.

2: Butter and cheese.

Now while butter and cheese do look superficial similar, yellow and block shaped, they are in fact rather different. For one thing if you eat butter the same way you eat cheese, your heart will end up exploding. Mind you if you eat cheese the same way you breathe air much the same thing will eventually happen, so appropriate relative moderation is probably the key here.

Butter, is smoother looking, and greasy to the touch. Scrap it off and scrap it thinly onto bread…eat it.

Cheese, carry it in your handbag, slice it up, eat it anywhere, anytime.

3: Popcorn and Styrofoam.

This is an easy mistake to make. They do look rather similar, and have much the same texture, as well as  flavor. But while one will just bung you up, the other will bung you up before tearing you a brand new arsehole on the way out. Guess which one is which.

Popcorn, cook it, salt it, eat it. Remember that butter on it is evil, and that you’re going to have a sore backside shortly.

Styrofoam, use it for insulation. Seriously don’t eat this no matter how drunk you are, or how good an idea it seems right now.

4: Brussel sprouts and green plasticine.

You’re on your own with this one. Seriously either way just, ewww.

5: Real beer and American beer.

I felt I should round this one up with a beverage every student will recognise. With one of these the barman tops up the barrel by tapping straight into the mens room. With the other you have liquid bread, which I understand can be good for you. However which is which is a very simple exercise in deductive reasoning. The recycled form starts with the letter “A”, the good one doesn’t.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsI4327l87w%5D

American beer, don’t, just don’t. If you really want to drink piss go and hire a good professional dominatrix willing to supply. At least it’ll be sterile when fresh.

Real Beer, guzzle it. Especially if it’s liberally flavoured with ginger.

A transgirls letters to Satan Claws. 2011.

There came a night when Amanda Harper finally suffered that personality split which had been so long threatened by her rather odd psyche. But rather than all three personalities fighting for control, or walking out onto the street to orchestrate a revolution, leading to her inevitable advancement to the title of Empress of Mankind. They instead decided to each write a letter to Satan Claws. These are the transcripts of those letters, which have been preserved as a terrible warning to the future.

(Satan Claws, for those without a true understand of how our world works, is a six-foot tall anthropomorphic vixen. She took over responsibility from Santa Claus for rewarding the transgirls, futagirls, and kinky people of the world for being very, very naughty about 20 years ago. Frankly Santa needed the help, after the centuries of trying to make sense of what the less vanilla parts of society considered naughty or nice in the end caused him to have a minor nervous breakdown.)

———————————————————

Letter 1: Slavegirl Amanda.

Dear Satan Claws,

I’ve been a very good girl this year. I did all my chores with a minimum of grumbling, and I only told my Mistress that she “hits like a girl!” a few dozen times. I’ve made sure to dress in lots of short skirts, tight tops, and lots of very heavy, skanky eye make-up, just to make my Mistress happy, of course. I’ve done my best to be obedient, polite, charming, and appropriately slutty. And I like to think I’ve made my Mistress proud of me. Apart maybe from when I dressed up in that onesy, and insisted on calling her “Mommy.” But I think the spanking I got from her more than wipes out any naughtiness from that situation.

In short I’ve been a really good slavegirl, and I think I deserve a reward.

So for XXX-Mas I’d like a shiny new steel slave collar, because Vanilla Amanda may have eaten too much chocolate this year, and she’s made my old one just a little snug.  I’d like a pretty new corset to wear for my Mistress, to make her smile. I’d also like a new tattoo somewhere on my body. And if you could have a word with the kinky-stork I’d like my Mistress Carnelian to find a pretty, submissive, obedient, and not completely sex obsessed  slaveboy to make her happier. Though admittedly the last one might be a bit of a stretch in Ireland, even for you.

Thank you in advance,

Slavegirl Amanda.

P.S. I’ll make sure to leave out a snort of that latex flavoured vodka you liked so much last year, and the customary extra strong condoms for you to use with the ponyboys, and ponygirls who pull your sleigh when you’ve finished work.

Letter 2: Miss Amanda.

With respects to, and for the attention of Satan Claws,

Right, I know that snivelling wretch Slavegirl Amanda already sent you a letter, and that since we inhabit the same body we’re only getting one present. So you can just ignore her. Come on we’re both dominas here. We both know how the world works. We get the goodies, and the pets get to play with them if we’re ever done.

Now I’ve been a very naughty lesbian domina this year. I spent the Summer making lots of men walk face first into lampposts by wearing low-cut tops, and the good type of slutty make-up. I purposely replied to only the first message, and then completely ignored hundreds of return online messages from men on dating websites, thus adding immeasurably to the average level of male frustration in the world. I wrote some pretty good extreme BDSM erotica (see attached file). I didn’t pine over every single  submissive woman I met on the street, I only pined after the one of those this year. I made sure I was ravishing, and worshipable whenever I left the house. And most importantly I was a viciously protective force of nature for any and all submissives who needed me to be.

So let’s be clear on this, I was the good type of naughty. I deserve that my demands met. So make sure they are, or it’ll be your furry arse over my knee, and I won’t use any of the gentle stuff on it.

1: I want you to stop Vanilla Amanda from eating all the chocolate on Earth. Seriously, just stop her, I want to have a definable a waistline again.

2: I want a thrice goddess damned little one of my own to possess, and lovingly abuse. This BDSM drought better damn well stop, or there’s gonna be trouble.

3: Leather. Lots, of, leather!

4: A futagirl of my own. That bastard Dimitrys has filled my mind with his characters Peach and Meryl for years now, and now I want one of my own. Come on fair’s fair. I could easily point one out to you. if you need a hint of what I like…

5: I demand that Slavegirl Amanda be moved to a more appropriate body, ie any other body. Her whining worry about Mistress Carnelian is really getting on my tits.

6: Oh, failing that could you just give her Mistress Carnelian that slaveboy. It’d make her smile, and Slavegirl Amanda considerably less annoying.

Thank you in advance,

Miss Amanda.

P.S. I hope you found a good use for the Deep Heat coated cactus I left out for you last year. But of course if you don’t bring me what I want this year, well, I’m sure that you know where you can shove it.

Letter 3: Vanilla Amanda.

My dearest Satan Claws,

I’m not going to try and pretend that I’ve been good or bad naughty this year. I know that there’s no damn use trying to convince you, not with that system of surveillance satellites you have in orbit. Or with the way you have every futagirl’s phone tapped, email hacked, and snail-mail preread. Or for that matter when I know for a fact that you’ve had GPS tracking devices secretly installed somewhere in all of our bodies. No I’ll just say that this year I was me, but good and hard.

I’m not going to ask for physical gifts. I have everything I want. But what I would like to ask for is to not be known as Vanilla Amanda anymore. I’m not frikkin’ vanilla. For frik sake, I’m a male-to-hermaphrodite dominant, who chooses to submit. How goddess damned vanilla could I actually be? Even the most vanilla parts of my personality demand to be clothed in designer leather, and latex.  So could you please, please tell those other two pains that share my mind to stop calling me Vanilla? After all chocolate is far more my flavour.

So that’s all I want, although if you were to…insist on giving a reward to me I’d love that tattoo Slavegirl Amanda mentioned. The futagirl Miss Amanda mentioned would be welcomed with open leg…well anyway, and seriously our Mistress Carnelian could really use an actually good slaveboy.

Your servant,

Amanda, not Vanilla Amanda, just plain ole Amanda.

P.S. I’d watch out for that vodka the Slavegirl’s planning to leave out for you. She has lustful, calculating look on her face the whole time. So I’m pretty sure she’s been slipping roofies into it.

———————————————————

Satan Claws looked up from the trio of letters on her desk and rolled her eyes. “Every damned year!” standing up off of the slaveboy who had been providing the service of being her seat, she grabbed her leather great-coat, and headed for the door. “Oi Claus you fat, bearded bastard. Letters on my desk, you can deal with them this year you git. I’ve had enough of that weirdo, I’m going for a drink.”

Digging up those diamonds – Minecraft.

In the past I’ve written a two-part review of the pre-full release Minecraft, here and here. I’ve also written a post which dealt with how to escape a few of the silly situations that beginners, and occasionally overenthusiastic experienced players, can get themselves into. Well today for a change of pace I’m going to provide a personal insight into the acquiring of those most sought after of Minecrafting materials, diamonds.

This will mainly be aimed at the beginner player, but it’s possible that an experienced player might just pick up something new. So please keep reading if you’re interested. If not come back on Saturday when we have an extra special post where your humble narrator writes not just one, but three very personal letters to Satan Claws.

So let’s start by speaking a little about why you want diamonds. First of all, just like in reality, in Minecraft diamonds are a girls best friend. They’re pretty, sparkly, and they make the best tools in the game. A pick made with diamond for example will mine over 1,500 blocks before it’s destroyed. This compared to a mere 250ish uses for diamonds nearest rival, the iron pick.  So it uses much less space. It lasts longer. And guess what? I actually mines faster as well. Here we’ll use the nastiest substance in the entire game for our example, obsidian. Obsidian is a stone cold pain in the patoote to mine. Even with an iron pick it takes almost a minute to mine just one block. However with a diamond pick you can chop through them in ten seconds. Oh and let’s not forget that diamond tools also just look cool. Not an inconsiderable selling point if you play on a multiplayer server.

Now with the why out-of-the-way, let’s move on to the how.

Diamond only occurs below level 18. By that I mean up to 17 levels above the bedrock region. So our first challenge is reaching that depth without getting a molten lava facial, or having a heart to heart with a creeper. Obviously if you play on Peaceful mode you can scratch out the creeper. My method for this is as follows.

Pick a location a reasonable distance from my build site, I do this because I tend to build from bedrock upwards, I know I’m nuts. Put way-markers between your dig site and build site, a couple of blocks with torches all around the top of them being a good way. Right now a hundred readers screamed as one “Just carry a compass.” Yes that’s a solution, but here’s the thing, that’s a backpack slot you won’t have to carry tools, or loot.

Now build a covered doorway, nothing fancy just a tube three high and maybe five or six long. Close off one end, put a nice thick door on it, and surround it with torches. This will mean that you don’t have to worry about covering your back from those sneaky creepers quite as much. After this step you’re ready to mine.

Start digging down on a diagonal line. After ten drops plant a torch, turn 90 degrees, and repeat. You’ll do this until you either hit bedrock, which is our initial goal, or lava. Lava is the reason for the diagonal movement, nothing ruins your day like a swim in the hot red-stuff, but by being sure that the block you’re standing on is safe you can avoiding losing your life, and all your resources. If you do hit lava, and the pool is small enough just fill it in with gravel, then keep digging. If it’s too large to do this, then go back up one flight of your mine stairs, and turn the other way, this should get you around the obstruction. Once you hit bedrock you can start the next stage.

For the record bedrock is easy to identify, no other block in the game looks like it, and it won’t break. Seriously it won’t, so don’t even try.

From bedrock go back up 9 or 10 steps, and cut a 3 block high shaft at 90 degrees. Cut it as far as you feel appropriate, but I would keep it limited to about 100 blocks. Next pick a side, left or right it doesn’t really matter. Now cut into that side four deep, and plant a torch on the side furthest from your shaft entrance. (Yes folks we’re going to make a branch mine, my personal favourite type in fact.) Now every 20 blocks dig a similar short shaft, putting a torch where you won’t be digging again, until you’re back at the entrance to your branch mine. Then excavate between them. That’s it. you’ve done the first segment of your branch mine. Have probably found several iron ores, perhaps even your first diamonds. But that’s not the end of the story.

After you’ve gone back segment by segment maybe ten times you return to your original shaft, and now you cut in,  leaving a solid two block space between every shaft. This means you will not miss any diamonds or iron that might be available. but still minimising the amount of material you have to mine.

I use this system for a few reasons, but the two main ones are these;

1. If you hit lava it’s no big deal, you just drop a block in front of yourself straight away, and either fill the pool, or ignore it and work around it.
2. At that depth you’re very likely to hit a large cave system, as well as dungeons. Mining this way means that you have a higher chance of hitting them, and when you do it’s a piece of cake to explore them, thus usually finding a lot of easy to mine resources.

The only real catch with this method is that in order to keep yourself safe from the nasties that dwell below, you’re going to need lots of torches, and sharp ears. But trust me it works. A single hour of this method usually leaves me with enough diamonds to outfit myself for the following week of play.

Anyway I hope this is of help to someone out there. And I’ll see you again on Saturday for a very special Christmas edition.

Some people love a parade, I love a broken Dell PC.

I’m tech support for my partner in crimes family. I’ve spent countless hours maintaining, rebuilding, and even on occasion resurrecting their much abused computers. Now while I do moan about it, frequently and loudly, I actually get a great deal of enjoyment from working on a poorly PC. Even more when I manage to bring a truly dead one, back to the land of the living, from the other side of the digital River Styx.

So it was with delight that Saturday morning I received from my Apprentice the gift of a broken Dell PC. I love Dell PCs. They’re well thought out. Well laid out internally. The cases are often works of organisational genius. Usually if something dies in them 90% of the time it’s the motherboard, the other 10% it’s the power supply. They’re predictable in how they go wrong. And when it comes to repairing PC’s, predictability is something to be treasured.

The great thing about this repair job though, is that it’s potentially a great opportunity to ge rid of at least some of my collection of spare parts. I have these drawers in my bedroom you see. They’re drawers filled with wonders. Wonders like spare 10-year-old power supply units, spare 5-year-old motherboards, dozens of cables of different types, sticks of ram, hell I’m pretty sure there’s even a spare PC cooling system in there somewhere. It’s also just possible that hidden in the back of one of them is a clay tablet inscribed with the true name of Glod (If you don’t get the reference, then you to read more Terry Pratchett). But they’re all rather outdated, and none of my own machines are of such a rare old vintage anymore. But this Dell is, well just about anyway.

So in the coming days I see much fiddling with wires, and components. The reinstallation of that pinnacle of Windows operating systems, XP, after someone tried and failed at a dirty installation, tut tut. I see much frustration as many fixes fail to take. But then I also foresee that one glowing, shining moment when everything goes “HUM!”, and it rises from the dead. In that moment Frankenputer will rise again.

And I Amanda Harper, mad tech support will be heard to cackle and cry out “IT’S ALIVE!”

So ye have that to look forward to in the next week or two at least.

BDSM how it could/should be – The language barrier.

In my life, like virtually all BDSM folk, I spend most of my time in the vanilla world, and only some in the BDSM one. Flickering back and forth between being Amanda, to being Lady Harper with relative ease. However over the years I’ve come to realise that one of the barriers which stand in the way of the vanilla world truly understanding the nature of our relationships, is language.

I’m not speaking here of the in-house terminology we use to describe specific acts, flogging, caning, clamping, cupping etc. There are plenty of vanilla world subcultures who have their own languages, just listen to the average rock climber speak about their sporting life some day. Rather I am referring to the words we use in affection between each other, in what are for us nothing more than loving day-to-day relationships.

Just think about it. We speak with affection, respect, and often enough both love and awe about our slaves. However the vanilla world associates that word most readily with humanities history of forced enslavement. With human beings bought, sold, and worked to death. The same word. A vastly different meaning, and leading to a profound miscommunication. After all how to explain that our slaves are our most treasured companions, lovers, and possessions? How to explain that they choose to be ours, and that, despite what the title may imply in a historical context, they retain amongst other things the right to walk away. How to explain any of that when the same word has two such radically different meanings for the two cultures?

But  I believe these miscommunications occur most frequently when we dominants use our own personal pet names for our submissive equals. While the vanilla world has all sorts of acceptable terms of endearment which transfer freely between the communities like sweetheart, hunny, and darling, vanilla people often tend to be very unaccepting of the other words we often use. Words which are perfectly normal expressions of love in our life, but which come with an extra-large heap of baggage in the vanilla world. For example, when I witness a loving dominant call their slave “My little whore.”, what I coming from the same lifestyle hear is, “my loving partner.” A vanilla person with little, or no BDSM knowledge however is far more likely to hear in this nothing more than verbal abuse. A term of loving endearment in one world, a potentially grave insult in the other.

In my own life I have had a slavegirl who I often called “My pretty little slut.” In the vanilla world I would have likely been looked at with disgust for calling her this. But to me I was telling her I loved her, I respected her, I adored her, and was thanking her for choosing to be mine. I was telling her that to me she was beautiful. I was referring to her ability to make herself seem small whenever she felt the need to, this despite being well over six feet tall. I was thanking her for the knots she would, willingly, and enthusiastically put herself into to please me. And yet, to the world I spend most of my time walking through, I was being verbally abusive to a woman I loved deeply.

Miscommunication, tarnishes our way of living in love to the rest of the world around us. Paints those of us who live proudly as dominants as heartless, unloving, abusive, or all too often at best cold. Paints those of us who are submissive as doormats, damaged, abused, broken, or takes the literal vanilla world meaning of slut, or whore, and then simply applies it directly.

It’s easy to see why this happens. When you come right down to it words quite simply are powerful tools. The right word in the right ear at the right moment, and the world is saved. Disaster is averted.

But the thing is, words don’t belong to just one group. They don’t belong only to the majority. They belong to everyone, and they do evolve with time. They can be taken from one group who use a word for hatred, and turned by the takers into an expression of purest love.

This of course does not exist only between the BDSM/vanilla worlds. Anyone who lives what is perceived to be an “alternative” lifestyle will often run into this. Some poly people, myself included, speak proudly of being in love with multiple partners, slutty if you will. It’s just a word. It fits pretty well in the discussion. It can be said with pride, but when said with the wrong inflection it can be a damning commentary on another human beings chosen way to live their life. The same can be true of those who work in the adult entertainment industries, those who write some of the more, shall we say interesting commercially successful erotica. Are you seeing a pattern?

Those who exist in a vanilla world often do not understand those who simply can’t share that life. Those who in another age would have probably been considered of loose sexual character. Sometimes this lack of understanding has its source in fear, sometimes it comes from pure unreasoned bigotry. But in most cases I believe it’s down to the lack of a truly shared language.

Most, if not all of the alternative communities share a common trait, they’re seen by the outside world purely in a sexual context. Not for the loving environments that they can be, and often are. After all surely the world is a better place, that there are people in it who melt when their lover cups their chin, and before kissing them speak softly into their ear the words, “I love my little whore.”

Now if only we could get the word out to the vanilla world that sometimes their most unpleasant terms, can be turned into the sweetest most romantic words that can ever be uttered. That like the beauty in a piece of music, the words of love are ultimately interpreted by the heart of the listener.