Poetry in Motion

(Another summer re-run from the old Yahell blog....)

A very pleasant comment on a very old blog entry set me thinking the other day. The comment was all about struggling as "poetry in motion." How true! And like poetry, struggling comes in its high forms and doggerel, rhymed and free verse versions.

When I look at DiD scenes on TV or clips, it occurs to me that some girls just know how to struggle better than others. It has always been difficult for me to define what makes some struggling "good" and for a long time I just thought there was something ineffable about a damsel who could. Part of the reason was that there were so many different types of heroines, and personality-appropriate struggling meant there were countless variations of sexiness in struggling.

Take Yvonne Craig as Batgirl -- talk about an actress who made that pattern cutter scene work! She isn't even really tied up under those belts - but Yvonne made it utterly believable! And yet her manner of struggling is very different from, say, Jane Seymour in Memories of Midnight -- a mch more traditional damsel in distress. But both struggles are epic, making a potentially ho-hum scene a classic.

Bad struggling can wreck even a great set-up. It's a little like dancing - if you just "learn the steps" by rote, it can be technically good but still look tedious. You have to give something of your personality - you have to commit to it -- to make a great struggle. But, like dancing, it's not a matter of "just go out and do it." There are elements that good and bad struggling have in common.

So here, in a somewhat rude fashion, is my "do and don't list" as a primer on good struggling form. Sorry for making it look like a demand --it's just the easiest way to make my point. I don't even know why I am making it - it's not like I'll be directing a DiD movie any time soon.... But if I were, here would be some of my ideas for a DiD actress:

DO

Do change facial expressions. We want to see a range of emotions from defiance, to frustration, to anxiety to terror.Just presenting one face means you haven't embraced the role of DiD - you're just going through the motions.

Do moan. It shouldn't be too loud or constant, but an occasional whimper of exhaustion as you are defeated by your tight bonds is a nice touch.

Do vary your struggles. Try to wriggle out of the wrist ropes, then try your ankles, then try rocking your body.

Do act with your eyes. Don't be self-consciously "wide eyed" because it will come across as fake. Just think of the set-up peril, look at it, and believe yourself to be in great danger. You'll look convincing.

Do slump in despair from time to time. We have to believe you're trying, and failing, to escape. It should be tiring.

DON'T

Don't move rhythmically. There is no way that anyone really desperate to escape her bonds would twist left and right, move her feet up and down, in anything in a regular pattern for long. Staccato =frustrated and afraid. The only exception of course is a girl who has found a sharp object to slowly cut her wrist bonds. Rhythmic sawing, especially slowly done, can heighten suspense: will the villain return to catch her escape attempt? (Hint: yes.)

Don't self-consciously try to show off your "best attributes." Nothing reeks of lack of credibility than lifting your feet to show off your bound legs - even if they look nice. A damsel first and foremost shold be thinking of her own predicament, not how she looks in fromt of the camera (or spectator). Of course, the obvious exception is a girl who has been captured but not yet placed in peril, trying to persuade the villain to let her go by twisting ever so slightly in her bonds to emphasize her good points. But the exception proves the rule -- what makes this acceptable is that the heroine is thinking of escape.

Don't scream nonstop into your gag. It gets annoying. You can scream as your doom lurches closer, or when you're extra frustrated. But constant yowling into your gag will come across as "something you're supposed to do" as opposed to a genuine reaction. Don't feel the need to cry unless you really feel like it. If you try to fake it, it will look fake.

Again -- JMHO YMMV

Hogties

(not a hogtie of course but since we'll be talking about immersion perils soon...)

Many readers of the old blog know I am not a big fan of hogties. The name repels me: I don't think of damsels in any way as hogs. (I think of them as princesses). I have thought hogties extra degrading for some reason (as if being left in a death trap could not be seen that way!) And since I can abide almost any fate for a heroine, no matter how grisly or bizarre, as long as I do not feel she was being objectified, there the matter stood for some time.

I have thought about it some more. I think there is another, more concrete reason I don't care for hogties, and the reason was revealed when I thought of the exception: having the damsel tied up over a vat of acid/molten lead/bubbling wax/etc.

Now, I can easily go with alternatives -- hanging her by her wrists, tying her up in a net, leaving her on a verrrry rickety wooden platform suspended by feeble, fraying hemp. Anything but upside down, really. But I do like the idea of having a girl hogtied over a bubbling cauldron of good hot liquid death.

At first I thought the reason was for her: the damsel is face down, looking at her horrible fate. But I think that's not the only thing. I, the villain get to see her face as she dangles over her doom, since usually she is suspended well above floor level.

And I think that's the reason I don't like a girl hogtied on the floor: she is naturally face down. Sure, she can look up, but I really don't get to see her from the front overall as she struggles.

Funny what my little peculiarities turn out to be....

Miniaturization

(the photo above is of Becca, a sweetheart among damsels: http://www.super-becca.com)

There are quite a few people out there -- both damsels and villains -- who are drawn to the theme of the shrunken or miniaturized heroine facing peril. This has been something I am more than willing to do in a story or RP, and it can certainly be fun. But it hasn't been something I would suggest myself.
I think the reason for this has been the difficult in tying the damsel up if the size difference between the villain and heroine is too great. I go back and forth at the importance of having the heroine tied up -- certainly when I started on the net, it was very important to me. Then it got less important than having her trapped and in peril -- and I think the bondage aspect is starting to rise in relative importance again.
For example, strapping down a tiny heroine with a piece of cellotape/scotch tape is certainly fun even now -- but not as sexy as it might have been, oh, a year ago. Then again, in RPs I am not always looking for raw erotic appeal. Humour has its place as does the sheer satisfacvtion of having pushed someone's buttons, even if they aren't exactly the same buttons as mine (within reason -- there is a sort of elastic limit to my fantasy desires, as I suppose there is for anyone).
But the more I thought of this, the more I recalled my childhood and adolescent fantasies. I can't recall having had any shrunken girl peril fantasies as a child -- after all, at first, my fantasy damsels were the prettiest girls in school, and at age 5/6 (yes, it started that early) you're so small that you hardly need to be shrunken to imagine your sweetheart in the clutches of much bigger villains, ie adults. I can distinctly remember a really cute little blond girl who lived a few blocks away who was (in my daydreams) constantly captured by mad scientists, strapped to a tilted metal table and menaced with lasers or other death rays.
Hey, now that I think of it, she was also a secret superheroine -- I still remember the red sort of teri-cloth body suit (which must have been a modification of an actual article of clothing she had) and little white ballet-like flats as her superheroine costume.) I imagined the villain's lair as an underground complex under the playground in the small park that separated her street from mine. She'd be all triumphant and joyful rather than cocky, just before the villains nabbed her and dragged her through a secret hatch under the sandbox...
As an adolescent, I think I did have the occasional miniaturization peril fantasy. But if I recall right, these were usually multiple damsel affairs -- an ongoing story of (usually) four girls I fancied who were mysteriously abducted by a villain, miniaturized and left to negotiate a shrunken world of model trains, pendulum traps and the like -- one rescuing the others, on a rotating basis.
In this case I think in retrospect the shrunken aspect was just to solve the problem of how to keep four damsels, some of whom are in peril and some not at any given time, from just running away. If I remember right there was nothing epecially intriguing about the aspect of the damsels' being shrunken in itself.
Also, it was not until I started online that I really embraced beign a villain. As a little kid, I was the hero; the villains were never me, but usually the guys I disliked the most in school. This was even true in college. And by the time I was ready to accept my inner villain, I wanted a full sized, captive female for -- well, let's not dwell on that.

Bad RPs -- addendum

Thanks for the comments! They are much appreciated.

The quote of the day, apropos this topic, has to be from Martha Gellhorn (I paraphrase): "The only part of our travels remotely interesting to other people are the disasters."

- Evil TRU: I wish I could say I only had 3 awful RP experiences. These are the only three that are funny. Most of the others were just dreary.

- Vladi: The hypocrisy you point out is very funny!

- Athena: Someone who just does a bait and switch like that really doesn't need an RP partner. Just a mirror.

My Worst RPs Evah! (Er, no, the word is Ever. Ever.)

(The pic has nothing to do with the blog -- I just happen to like it. Check out the rest of the artist's work on http://arnie00.deviantart.com/)

Back on the old blog I often extolled those friends whose sensitivity, descriptive talent, and out and out sexiness have in my mind merited special attention. But todayI have a mind to share some of the most entertainingly godawful online experiences I have had.
Now, what will follow are to me distinct from what I would call ‘failed RPs.’ I have had plenty of RPs which just didn’t click – a simple lack of compatibility, or perhaps I just wasn’t properly tuned in to what the girl wanted. It happens, and I’ll take the blame. Who knows, perhaps I am on someone else Worst Evah! list. But I would not accuse of those people of being bonkers – we just didn’t mesh, for whatever reason, but I still think of them as reasonable people.
No, these are different. The experiences that follow were not abusive, but so weird as to be from an RP Twilight Zone. I have to take extra care in dissembling here, because I really have no desire to wound people. I doubt any of the people I will recount here (in disguised form of course) will be reading. But you never know – one person’s dreck is another’s gold. Anyway, I will change enough details to make it very hard to discern the exact person I am talking about in each of these examples.

Bad RP #1:
This person wanted to be a superheroine with a secret identity. OK, no problem. Then it turned out “she” (well, I have my doubts about this part too) wanted to be captured in her secret identity so she could not turn into the superheroine. Also, OK – a standard melodrama trope, and kinda fun if handled right.
Then the RP began. I lured her into a warehouse, and captured her. Tied her to a chair. Started an interrogation. I thought she might like that, given the need to protect her true identity. I asked her questions. Response? “You fiend!” Not just once, but every time.
Ohhhh-kay. Maybe that was a hint? I should threaten her? I tried that. “Talk or else (insert fate worse than death). Response? “You fiend.”
No matter what I did, the response was “You fiend.” At first I thought I was just not hitting the right button, not giving “her” her thing. But no matter what I tried, I got the same reply, and no guidance as to what the next step ought to be.
Now, I mention this because an absolutely fantastic RPer – and a close friend – also resorts to calling me “Fiend!” when I trap her. But in this other case, it’s perfect. It’s just one reaction amidst so many others. In this other case, because I am getting so much information about what’s going on in her mind, when she says “you fiend!” it just sends me.

Bad RP #2:
This person was less obviously a man, but I still ended up thinking she too was a faker. She wanted a standard kidnapping for ransom. OK, no problem. She was rather specific about setting, and that should have been my first warning. I had to arrange a rather elaborate kidnapping given the setting – but that was OK, as I like the challenge.
Then things started to go all pear-shaped. I was going to take her to somewhere isolated to be held captive until the ransom demands were made. No, she wanted to be sold into white slavery. Ohhh-kay, I thought it was for ransom, but OK, I was willing to adapt midstream.
Every step of the way, whatever choice I made, it was wrong. Something extremely specific and not divinable beforehand had to be inserted as a correction pretty much with every line I sent her way. I was taking her in a van. No good. Must be a plane. OK, the van takes you to an airstrip. Then she had to be loaded into a crate. Etc, etc.
It was so specific that I felt I was just there to provide specific text for her amusement. It was ridiculous, and I just dropped it. Nevertheless, like bad RP #1, she kept coming back for more every time I showed online. That, by the way, was why I had severe suspicions about the sex of both these RPers – their relentless hitting on me any time I was online was an indicating sign of maleness. They were always on, they never gave it a rest – yep, they were guys.

Bad RP #3:
This was so loopy it was amusing after a while. I shouldn’t even call it a bad RP as we never got that far.
This one had me raising an eyebrow early. She volunteered she was 18, shy, and (this part was likely true) not a native English speaker – yet she had found my profile and asked me to RP with her. Right.
Anyway, she wanted to play a particular well-known character. Not a problem. Then she wanted me to play not just the villain but also the romantic male lead who also is captured alongside her. Again, in principal not a problem, but the way she seemed to stress this before we even got started was….odd.
I tried to start an RP – and I couldn’t get three words out before I was asked about back story. OK, we spent – I do not exaggerate – 3 sessions, about an hour each, working out a detailed back story. Every time I tried to pin a decision – any decision – on her, there were all sorts of complications. Finally we agreed. I tried to begin the RP again, and at the third line I got another query why the characters were behaving this way – wouldn’t it make more sense to do it another way? Another way completely different from what we had spent three hours working out? Forget it. I just started laughing at this end, glad that only three online hours of mine had been wasted on this bizarre set up.

Conclusions from Clinical Trials

So, what have we learned? Well, we have not learned that I attract psychos. Not at all. Some of my best online friends are ones that came to me, not vice versa.
I have learned, however, that if something strikes me as odd at the outset, that person usually turns into a nutjob. Also, one of the usual attributes of male fakers is – not so much annoying persistence, but monomania combined with fricken ubiquity. God, don’t you people have jobs? Hobbies? Trips to the convenience store?
There are exceptions – someone who was posing as a girl and turned out to be a man (and someone whose friendship I still esteem very highly) had mercifully none of the more obvious male giveaways in his female persona. He most definitely has a job, and most definitely is not online all the time, and – most importantly – does not treat me as if I were put on this earth for his amusement. He is a friend. He was not faking that part. These three others above – well, they were just fakes about more things – and more important things -- than their sex.

A peculiarity of mine

Right. Like the whole DiD thing didn't make me peculiar already. I came across this photo (on Deviant Art: http://dazzle-63.deviantart.com/) and it made me think why I found the damsel in this photo so appealing when the thought of actually going to a Hooter's "restaurant" fills me with acid reflux.

For those of you outside of the reach of US cultural imperialism, Hooter's is a restaurant and bar chain whose wait staff consist of nubile blondes attired like Dazzle in the photo. To give you an idea of the mental level of the clientele, I will point out that the decor includes yellow diamond shaped traffic warning signs such as "Danger - blonde thinking". Lotsa laffs. Oh yes -- the food, from someone who has actualy been to one, is crap. Not that that matters.

Anyway, I don't have anything against a girl making a few extra bucks by letting some neanderthal alternatively drool over/patronize her. Nor do I assume anything about the wait staff. All I will say is that I don't find the idea terribly enticing.

But there is somethign about the girl next door - someone who obviously is not working at Hooter's - who allows herself to get dressed up in a slightly silly outfit like this. Dazzle also happens to be quite pretty (IMHO) on her own, non-blonde-party-girl terms. Maybe it's the message that this isn't just work for her - that she is willing to dress like this as a departure from the everyday. Maybe she even likes it. That (to me) is quite a turn on.

I think that appeal can be extended. I am not sure I am terribly excited by real ballerinas in a ballet. But a girl with nice legs who would dress up lke that (and, ideally, fall into peril)? Magic.

That "off duty" willingness to engage in a little fantasy might be so appealing because it strips away part of my "character" facade as well. I love, for example, RPs with women playing superheroines. In the little world we create online, she is a superheroine and I am a villain. Thinking about a woman who is obviously not a superheroine makes it easier for me to imagine a real life peril for her. I'm not talking about stalking someone - believe me, I just don't think that way. I am suggesting that it makes it easier for me to imagine the fantasy of simulating the fantasy in real time, in the flesh. The photo above makes it easier for me to imagine her really tied up in front of me, enjoying the role but revealing her real feeligns toward the DiD fantasy.

Peril fantasy du jour

(The photo has only the vaguest conection to the peril below, but, hey, I like it...)

I had been thinking of how best to tie a girl to a chair (we villains have to think of these things you know) and I was about to write about arms behind versus arms in front, and how the least preferable way to tie her for me was to tie each wrist to a separate arm of a chair. (Too loose, plus half the fun is watching a damsel twist her wrists prettily...) Well, instantly I thought of an exception to that preference, and that led to a write up of the following little vignette. Hope you enjoy it.
The first thing Callista became aware of was the pounding inside her head.
The secret agent girl had confronted her prey – the global criminal mastermind known only as “The Engineer” – after having tracked him down to his hidden lair deep in forgotten, abandoned air raid shelters directly under the busiest streets of the city. She had him cornered….and then the billowing white fog surrounded her. Knockout gas, she realized too late. Agent Callista tried to evade the soporific fumes, but her knees buckled almost instantly, her head started to swim, her gun dropped out of her hand, and….
…and the second thing Callista became aware of was that she was seated in a chair – and tied up in it. Her wrists, still covered by her long black silk gloves, were tightly tied with white nylon straps to the wide arms of the massive stainless steel chair, and her ankles, sheathed in sleek black leather knee boots, were bound snugly to each other and to a rod that connected the two front legs of the chair. She twisted in her bonds, testing them for weaknesses, her skin tight black catsuit squeaking slightly as she wriggled and flexed her lithe, trained muscles. But to no avail: the straps dug into her wrists, and pinned her ankles, and as she struggled Callista noticed yet more straps lashing her to the chair about her waist.
She was not yet able to truly focus her eyes; the knockout gas was wearing off slowly. She was in some large room; a basement, windowless. “Typical villain hideout,” Callista muttered, determined to escape. She pulled at her restraints some more, the effort forcing little gasps from her as she strained her muscles with greater effort but no more effectiveness.
“Ah, our guest has awoken!”
Callista snapped her head angrily toward the voice. A tall ashen faced man in a white lab smock was approaching her. Several hideously sharo and curved metal implements poked out from the breast pocket of his smock. Callista recoiled momentarily, then tugged ferociously at her bonds and addressed her captor angrily.
“You’d better let me go if you know what’s good for you!”
The villain smiled as he came up to her. “Oh, I think you should develop some manners very soon if you know what’s good for you!”
Callista twisted helplessly in the white nylon straps, trying to pull out one wrist, then the other, grinding her catsuit-clad hips into the chair as she tussled with her bonds. “You don’t scare me, Mr Engineer!” she vowed
The villain laughed with diabolical amusement. “You know my name? Well, just my nom de guerre, of course. You are no closer to discovering my secrets than any other fool in your pathetic little counter-espionage agency. I, on the other hand, know all about you, Agent Callista Barnes…” The fiend pulled out a PDA, punched a button, and began to read. “Echelon 1 secret agent, ooh, well done, top rank! Hmmm, martial arts trained, black belt aikido and judo, infiltration expert – oops, that didn’t work out so well today hah hah….various commendations, letters of thanks from world leaders, yadda yadda, oh, here’s an interesting thing: always works alone – tsk tsk, I guess no one will be coming to rescue our pretty little spy girl today!”
Callista fumed and tossed her long blond hair over her shoulder with a shrug in order to focus her blue eyes straight at the smug villain before her. “If you kept reading, Mr Engineer, you’ll see I have never needed rescue – 100% mission completion rate.”
“That’s Dr Engineer, PhD to you my fetching little captive.”
“That’s redundant, douchebag –“
“Not when you have 2 PhD’s, crumpet.”
.”—and your language is starting to really annoy me!” Callista spat out in fury.
“Don’t split your infinitives, cupcake – as long as we Strunk & Whiting it.”
“OK, I’ll just split various parts of your anatomy when I get free of – uhnnn! these restraints.”
The Engineer let out a low, menacing chuckle. “Oh, but you won’t get free my dear. Go ahead, struggle all you want, you can’t escape. At least, not in time. You see, I know all about your secret agent bag of tricks, the little tools you have – or rather, had hah hah hah….”
Callista looked down at her pinned wrists and fussed pointlessly in her bonds, growling in frustration.
The villain giggled and drank in the sight of his prisoner, her entire body wriggling in futile efforts to free herself, from her blond flowing hair, down her high-collared catsuit all the way to her sleek high heeled boots. “How deliciously sexy you are when you struggle, Callista, all tied up and in my clutches!”
Callista let out a savage “oooh” of frustrastion as the straps defeated her again. She glared at the Engineer. “Well, what are you going to do with me? Bore me to death?”
“Oh no. I have gone to great lengths to set up an intricate demise for you.” The villain flicked a light switch and the entire darkened area before the captive spy girl was suddenly illuminated. Callista gasped as she saw a huge model train set all laid out in front of her, complete with little model landscape, buildings, streams, trees and hills. The tracks were set up like a crazy spaghetti pattern, criss-crossing and switching with bewildering frequency. The whole set up covered several square yards, and filled up a significant proportion of what was revealed as a huge underground warehouse-sized bunker.
“Aren’t you a little old for toys, Doctor?” Callista said mockingly.
“Look a little closer, dearie.”
Callista did as she was told. Soon enough she understood what the Engineer was talking about. Near her, across the tracks, lay a little figurine of a girl in an incongruous black catsuit, just like the one Callista wore. The figurine, the real spy girl could tell, was tied to the tracks with what appeared to be pipecleaner.
“You have one weird hobby,” she said.
The Engineer was unfazed. “That little figuring represents, you, my dear. The figurine is made of metal, and is attached to wires that go all the way the the city’s electrical mains – more voltage than third rail of the city subway lines. Now, I will place two train engines on the track….”
The villain stepped over and placed one train on one side of the display, then placed the other one on the other side of the track array. He continued his explanation. “If either of these trains runs over the little damsel-in-distress figurine of you, the circuit will be completed, run right up the steel chair to which you are so exquisitely tied, and incinerate you to a cinder.”
“You….you fiend!” was all Callista could say, to the Engineer’s great amusement.
“Oh, now, I’ll give you a sporting chance. You see how many switches there are on this track? Confusing, isn’t it?” The Engineer pushed another wall button. Callista gasped as two panels slid back on the top of her steel chair arms right under the palms of her hands. Up from the interior of the wide chair arms came two groups of small red buttons, each arranged in rows within reach of the spy girl’s fingers, despite the nylon strips restraining her wrists.
“How do I know which button controls which switch?” Callista asked.
“Hah hah hah, that’s the great part – you don’t!” the villain roared with laughter. “But I tell you what – hee hee hee…” the Engineer tried to contain his glee, “if you manage to make the two engines ram each other and derail, the mechanism is so that the springs holding your nylon straps in place will release. You’ll be free, if your pretty little head can figure it out in time.”
“No…don’t you dare!” Callista growled as the Engineer threw another switch. The model train display’s lights flickered, then shone true as the engines started to move slowly.
“The trains will pick up speed the longer this game goes on, Callista my pet, hah hah hah…”
“You…you bastard! You’ll – uhnnn! – you’ll never get away with this!” Callista said angrily as she began more furious tugging on the straps.
“OK, I think I’ve heard enough out of you!” the Engineer walked back toward his captive and pulled a thick silk handkerchief out of his pocket.
“No! Please don’t ga—mmmmpphhhfff!” The secret agent girl’s plea was truncated as her captor pushed the silk wad into her mouth, then swiftly took out another long handkerchief, wedged it between her teeth, and pulled the cleave gag tight, knotting it in the back and making sure her long blond hair flowed freely over her constricting gag.
Callista looked nervously at the villain, her blue eyes open with silent pleading, her bravery all but eroded by the hopelessness of her predicament.
“I’d pay attention to the melodrama unfolding before you, pretty Callista,” the Engineer said. “I think your prefect mission completion record is going to suffer a little blemish….”
“Mmppphhfff!” Callista could only release a muffled cry, then turned anxiously to the toy train display below. The track set up was crazy, toy tracks went this way and that, from the far wall of the huge underground lair practically to her bound, booted feet.
Callista started pushing buttons to see what would happen, but if it was easy to figure out which button activated which switch, it was far more difficult to determine the effect of a switch in all that crazy, loopy track layout. Did a switch put a train on the path toward the bound figurine before her? Or did it take her out of harm’s way? It was almost impossible to tell until the trains had run a few circuits – but Callista couldn’t let that happen. And watching two trains made the task even harder!
“Farewell, Miss Barnes.” The Engineer drank in the sight of his beautiful, bound captive, turned, and walked away, shutting the door behind him. Callista was now alone, facing her own electrocution!
She cringed as one train rounded a bend and suddenly seemed on course to run over the miniature version of her! But no – that was an optical illusion given by the parallel tiny tracks at such a distance.
Callista moaned into her gag as she flezed her wrists and tested out the buttons. She could soon identify what each did but – what was the use? The trains were now picking up speed, and Callista writhed instinctively against her bonds – all to no avail!
As one of the trains rounded a corner to her right, Callista realized it would pass on the tracks closest to her feet in a few seconds. A desperate plan came to her. If she could just….kick the train off the track!
She would have just one chance at this. “Come on, Callie, come on…” she found herself thinking as the toy train approached. It was fifteen feet away, then ten…. The tied-up spy girl prepared herself as the train came closest to her. Five feet away….two feet – now!
Callista kicked with all her might, pushing her bound ankles to the limit the straps would allow, hoping the pointy toes of her boots would connect with the train as it passed by. But the straps were too tight! She missed, and the train continued on its way.
Now the other train seemed to be heading for the figurine damsel in distress. Callista had neglected it as she focussed on her useless effort to derail the other train. She mewed with terror and started to push the small red buttons on the arm rests frantically as the train seemed on a collision course with the miniature spy girl in the display!
Was this the end for our sexy spy girl? How could Callista ever escape?