BookNerd

The safeword issue is interesting, partly because it so often gets completely misunderstood by people on both sides of the debate. To stay with, “no safewords” usually gets conflated with “no limits no safewords”, when in reality real “no safeword” play typically has more limits. I’d also suggest that in kink play there really is no such thing as “no safeword play”. Sure you can negotiate to not have one, but do you really think your top won’t stop if you say “I’m going to puke, I feel faint”? There’s a separate corporal punishment and disciplinarian scene where safewords are quite uncommon. I suspect this is because they restrict themselves to quite narrow activities that don’t really carry long term risks (I.e. caning or paddling) Forfeit play where there’s a word that stops the immediate torment in exchange for 6 hard cane strokes sounds quite fun actually.

I’ve played privately and also had a few sessions with professional mistresses. Both have their own advantages, and I have to say that when I’ve played within the context of a relationship the sessions have usually been more intense compared to professional sessions. The reason for this is that I’m bad at asking for what I want at the start of a session, and I effectively just “chicken out” and ask for a much milder version of what I’d really like. The reason, I think, is that I actually hate it at the time (I enjoy it afterwards) but all my most memorable experiences are from private play where the domme has gone almost too far. I’m curious if this is something people on here are familiar with. I read a lot of reviews from the Fortress that sound like incredible, intense sessions and it makes me wonder if I can modify my own pre-scene negotiation to something a notch harder.