scene prep

Jan

2024

Scene Practicalities from the Bottom: a case study

This is a sort of “case study” of what it looked like to be me and prepare to play, eight years in to a 24/7 TPE. I’m wrote it because I’d never seen the practicalities written about before, and maybe at some point I could have found it useful. Maybe you will now. Maybe not.

This is what it looks like for me. This isn’t the only way or the right way, just my way.

CAVEATS/FACTORS:

Nope, we do not always plan our play at this point, nor do I always get a heads up of or say in what we do.
At the same time, we both have busy lives at this point, and I am disabled—I have a disorder called Ehlers-Danlos where my joints dislocate very often and I get related chronic pain, along with other systemic issues—meaning planning at all means I can do some of what I discuss here and the chance of playing going well increases. We are also both recovering from COVID right now and have less energy than usual.
Yes, this is a bit clinical. This isn’t sexy; it’s meant to be practical. A girl alludes to going to the bathroom. You’ve been warned.
No, I don’t think about things this in-depth as I’m doing them. I am totally on autopilot for these things *at this point* but that doesn’t mean I am not doing things on purpose–so I took a step back and analyzed for this.

THE WEEKEND BEFORE:

I want to play, but it doesn’t end up happening. There are two prongs to why, one much more important than the other:

The less important: we don’t start our nightly hangin’ out until after midnight each night…
The more important: …and that’s because I never mentioned wanting to play. Maybe if I had, we would have planned for things differently. Hard to know.

THURSDAY (one day before):

We plan for something vanilla on Saturday, and I mention maybe some time next week while we are both off, we can play. He says He’d Love to do that, even to do it earlier than next week. I didn’t expect this but am absolutely down, especially knowing I have a fairly “light” day tomorrow. I make sure to get a full night’s sleep.

FRIDAY (day of):

I finish the little bit of work I have at home and make the phone call that determines I don’t, in fact, have to drive today. Driving and physical movement of certain kinds are some of my biggest bad-pain risk factors, so this is mostly good. That said, I’m fairly pain-free today, so…
I decide to take my dog to the park. The amount the driving increases my pain will likely be fairly small, and this will also tire her out enough so she’s not saddened by a lack of attention tonight and the pup’s needs are taken care of.
When I return home, Owner is napping. I join Him. I don’t actually sleep, but the rest is good and lying on my back won’t increase bad-pain possibilities.
We get up. He says casually as we get dressed, “By the way, what kind of pain are you in the mood for tonight? I could go for whips, kicking and punching, wooden paddle–anything really, but those are what stand out.” Those all sound great to me (there’s little that wouldn’t) and I say so, but point out we’ve never been able to do whips at home because of ceiling height issues. I also realize that I don’t have PT again for a few weeks, which sometimes changes where I can be marked, and say so in case it’s relevant. He says it probably won’t be. (LATER UPDATE: it was, so I’m glad I said it.)
I pick up the room we play in a bit and also put on my back brace. I communicate to Him if He sees me in any of my pain-relief type wearables, it’s more preventative than anything else. He says He would have assumed as such since I haven’t mentioned having a bad pain day, but thanks me for telling Him anyway.

(This is important relationship-building improvement on both our ends from earlier this year. There was a stretch when I really wished we had been playing more and was really quiet and in my head about it; when we finally discussed it, we realized that He had thought that wearing heat = bad pain days. It does, but it doesn’t *always*, so I asked Him to just ask me. He said at that point that He’d try but would probably still assume it was bad unless told otherwise. What happened here shows that we both listened to each other’s feedback and fixed this. It’s awesome that I both was clear about this, and that He was already trusting I’d speak up if a change needed to happen.)

I start cooking. I’m making Moroccan Beef Stew for a few reasons. It’s the right nutrition for how we play; I am able to play hardest when I’ve had red meat first. (This is something I learned over time; I had been vegetarian for a decade when we met and was for the first year or two of our relationship.) It’s also a favorite thing I love to eat and know I can cook with my eyes closed, so low chance for disaster. Most importantly, however, it’s a stew, so it simmers for two hours. This means that if the repetitive motions involved in cooking increase my pain, I have time to recover and check in with my body. They don’t, really, but…
I do have a small wine bottle fiasco. This is one of those small aggravating things that could be a mood-ruiner but I consciously do not let it be.
Simultaneously: I make Liquid IV (an electrolyte hydration drink) and end up downing it way faster than usual, meaning I make more Liquid IV.
Simultaneously: I do a quick service thing by checking my fridge to see if we have the beer He likes to have when we play, just so I know in advance. We do. I may or may not have run out to get some if we didn’t. (LATER UPDATE: He did end up grabbing it while we played… BUT there was a short delay as He couldn’t find where I’d put the bottle-opener, so I’ll leave that out next time too.)
Before finishing in the kitchen, I put some dishes away. This doesn’t need to be done tonight, but if it’s going to be, better it be now for aforementioned why-I’m-cooking-early reasons. In some ways, this is pre-aftercare-prep for me. I know I may not want to tomorrow because of drop, so–now it is. (LATER UPDATE: there’s no way I would have wanted to do this the next day.)
I go to the bathroom. My disorder has some related gastrointestinal and pelvic organ symptom possibilities that I don’t deal with all the time, but I do some. My body tells me I’m going to want to do this again after dinner to be sure. I also take a Pepto.
I do a bit of range-of-motion work. I believe that any motion made in a scene should not be the first time that motion is made that day, and if we are going to be doing any kind of rough body play, there may be less predictability to my movements, so I want to bring myself through range-of-motion for pretty much my entire body. Doing this slowly also allows me to check in with myself about any problem spots. I pull something almost immediately, but it isn’t a muscle that’s going to impact what we’re doing *unless* we go into cunt kicking. This didn’t seem particularly likely, so I’ll bring it up then if needed.
I write the starts of this writing in the down-time, which is a relatively low-energy/effort activity unlikely to stress me out.

THE SCENE:

We end up doing all three of the kinds of play He brought up earlier, since I had no objections. The whip *is* throwable in the space, turns out, but is a bit under-conditioned so we do have to stop that before long because of some related issues in how precisely He can aim in how it’s throwing. However, because of what I said about PT, we are able to do whips on my back for a bit (less can go wrong with an aim issue than if we were doing it on my front). All-in-all, we play pretty hard for about an hour, until He begins to overheat from wailing on me, lol. There wasn’t much to be done about this: our air conditioning doesn’t work right now, and our landlord is slacking on this as it’s December and most people don’t need air conditioning. Womp womp.

AFTERCARE:

General: Degrading fucking. An episode of Brooklyn 99. He says I should eat something, and I choose three chocolate chip cookies. More degrading fucking–I’m quite tired by this time so He gives me an out before we start, which I do not take. Reader, I regret nothing.

Emotional: The scene went into my I-literally-don’t-feel-pain zone quickly. I had a little bit of post-scene “oh shit, i feel bad because You’re a sadist” that I brought up post-fucking#1. He reassured me that whether or not *I* always want my brain to switch over into that zone, it’s His favorite, because it means He gets to really go all out on me. I’m glad I brought this up immediately because He effectively got rid of that negative reflection before it could spiral.

Physical: I probably should have sat on some ice to decrease swelling, but because of the way I process pain (not as pain) I need to be really conscious about this because my body won’t automatically cue me to do it. I did clean off abrasions.

THE DAY AFTER:

The one problem with not needing to drive yesterday means I do today, and it’s to something that stresses me out and that I’d really usually rather not do on a potential drop day. I drop worse two days after a scene than the next day, but still prefer to be with Owner all of the next day just in case. This timing was not ideal. But if I’d waited for the timing to be ideal, we never would play again.

The day is mostly pretty good. I had planned for low-effort cooking, which was smart. By the evening, I recognize my going into some of my droppier habits of retreating in times of stress, but didn’t/don’t feel the need at the moment to consciously not do that. I didn’t remind Him of the vanilla thing we’d planned to do in the evening, and it didn’t end up happening. This wasn’t on me, but I also knew that He would likely not be thinking of it since two-activity weekends aren’t common here. But I also didn’t care all that much, so it was fine.

THE NEXT NEXT DAY:

So my “i drop worse two days after a scene” is proving true. I had initially planned to get my COVID booster shot today and decided yesterday to put that off, and I’m glad for it. I’m kind of achey, more to do with the rain than anything else. Owner and I will both get our boosters tomorrow. While I went on our dog walk yesterday, I may not today, depending on how my legs feel—we’ll see. It might be a good idea for me to go either way; I’ll test range-of-motion first. I’m moody but am dealing with it by painting my nails, finishing this writing, and hanging out with my plants.

Jan

2024

The Risk Profile: an alternative measure for safety and comfort in play

I recently got to collaborate with the Bound-Together blog to share a version of this writing off-site. You can check it out here!

I first heard the term “risk profile” a few months back, and never really was given a solid definition of it. “That’s not in my risk profile” was something I took to just mean “I’ve deemed that too risky for me”, which I think most would probably say is fair. But the more I’ve thought about the way I approach my comfort level in play, the more I’ve found that the term fits, and it fills in the blanks my lack of explicit limits or safewords leave for people. So in discussions with some other bottoms who are like me recently, we started to operationalize it a bit more.

Safewords are easy ways to help play stay inside your comfort zone, but there are many extremely valid reasons that people might not want to use them. Maybe you’re like me, and the sort of power exchange you need in your play must preclude you having any of that decision-making power. Maybe you’re unlikely to actually use your safeword, or you know you’d use it too soon and be disappointed in yourself afterwards (not that there’s *any* reason to be), or you don’t think you’d know what constitutes enough of an emergency to stop the scene. Hard limits are adjacent to what I’m about to discuss, but they aren’t perfect either: most folks use them to list kinks and implements they aren’t okay with, but there always might be things you haven’t thought of. Not all people use the same implements in the same ways, so what is a hard limit with one could be a yes please with another. And, as I once read somewhere here, hard limit lists frequently become check lists; keeping one for me became “I’m afraid of this,” which isn’t the same as “I don’t want to do this,” and these traditional lists eventually were too, well, limiting.

Enter the Risk Profile: a method of determining what one does not want to happen in play that I believe is simultaneously more comprehensive and more permissive of experimentation in scene.

What

I will define the Risk Profile broadly as a set of parameters encompassing the things in one’s life that, if lost, would cost more than the opportunity that play provides. What you are not willing to risk. As I go more into this, that will make more sense. These parameters will, of course, be wide for some and narrow for others. They’ll look different and how they come out in people’s play will vary. **They focus on end result, not in-play experience.** They may include such items as ability to engage in one’s work, interact with family, or maintain mental health, among others. Someone who works as a professional model would have a different risk profile from someone who works in a call center, and so forth. Since I write, I’ll be using that as my example in this post.

They are *not* a list of kinks or tools that are off limits, though they might include them. They are not a list of “things I don’t like”. I am speaking to a particular subset of person with this, who may *want* to be put in experiences they don’t like or that even make them feel like they’re unsafe, even if they aren’t–though there’s no reason someone couldn’t have a hard limits list in addition for more coverage, if that isn’t their style. They are not necessarily a substitute for a safeword—a safeword can be used with them, or not. They aren’t as broad as “I would not be okay with paralysis or losing cognitive ability” and I’d recommend you just not play with people who you think wouldn’t already know something like that.

Why

Defining particular categories or health elements one is not willing to put in jeopardy does a few things over the other failsafes.

The risk profile allows for inclusion of limits one might not have thought of. “Being able to write” as part of my risk profile gives my top more information than “no bending fingers back”. From that, they can also determine that needles under my fingernails would be an issue, even if I hadn’t thought to say that. At the same time, it means I don’t have to approve everything that will be done to me, which would make a scene not enjoyable for me personally.

The risk profile allows for the bottom to better vet a top’s knowledge and skills. We often see somebody do one thing at a high skill level and assume they are well-versed in others. With my writing example, I could toss out potentially (not necessarily) irrelevant knowledge such as how long somebody has been in the scene, and narrow it down to “can you tell me which nerves connect to the wrist?”

The risk profile allows for prioritizing of first aid. It is impossible to plan for every emergency or to know how to fix every problem. It simply is. But, having determined my risk profile, I can educate myself as to tests to make sure nerves are not being damaged, as well as create (as much as possible) a plan of action as to treatment if things do go wrong.

The risk profile helps both top and bottom determine when a scene has to end. For those of us who don’t like to or can’t use safewords, this clarifies what an actual emergency would be. I don’t actually want a scene to stop immediately, even if I say otherwise in the moment, because I feel like I might vomit–but I do want it to stop if I can’t move my fingers. Additionally, having focused medical knowledge about such things has allowed us in a real-life example to address just the portion of a scene affecting my hands without slowing down the rest of it, as opposed to stopping everything in order to figure out the cause.

The risk profile gives the parameters in case of surprise CNC scenes and similar. For those open to scenes that they don’t negotiate everything into, the risk profile allows a top to easier think about what they’re going to do without asking leading questions that might give their evil/creative (and therefore not on a typical limits list) plans away.

How

This is fairly simple, in theory. There are only three steps.

1) Determine the things in life that, if lost, would cost more than the opportunity play provides.

Consider emotional and physical health risks that are particular to your body, jobs, hobbies, values and beliefs, family and romantic relationships, among others.

2) Determine what specifically you need in order to maintain those things.

In terms of writing, I need to be able to type, I need to meet deadlines, and I need to be able to think and create. That’s fairly straightforward. If I can’t go out for a week because I have a black eye, that isn’t outside of my risk profile. A singer, for example, may need to avoid screaming in the week before performances so as to not damage vocal cords. Someone who puts raising their children in their risk profile may need to include more, such as the ability to drive them to day care, lift them into their high chairs, not have marks visible to them, and not be in such a state of drop that they couldn’t avoid letting on that something was off. Depending on mental health, this might include taking a pill at a certain time, not having restrictions on food, sleeping comfortably. This is all highly individual.

Again, pretty similar to a hard limits list in many ways, except that it focuses specifically on end result.

3) Codify it, if that’s helpful to you, and talk about it.

Just as you would any other negotiation. I’ve never had this discussion explicitly, but I live with my partner and He knows what’s important to me. I had to say at some point “hey, when x happened, I wasn’t able to write because of the pain” and I feel fairly confident He isn’t going to do x again in the same way or with the same force. You could also, of course, discuss it in certain terms. You could write it down, particularly if you have non-obvious skill requirements, and have that list to share. You could just use it for your own information, to help you focus your own knowledge acquisition as a bottom.

And I should say that tops can have this for their bottoms, as well—my Owner generally won’t risk anything that is known to put my bad shoulder out of commission for a day, even though I’d be okay with it in a lot of cases.

And there you go. That’s the risk profile. My framework of it, at least.
This isn’t something you sit down and do in a few minutes. I run a two-hour workshop on it (insert “sign up for my substack to get notified if i’m giving one!” here) and that’s just the getting started part. This is a process that you spend time on, over many many days and weeks and months, and that you revise as time goes on. And then you do research about the possible risks of the kind of play you like, the medical information you need in order to protect those things that you can’t risk, and so on and so forth…

I am not even slightly pretending this is a perfect system. It isn’t comprehensive, just a way to be *more* comprehensive. You might have this as well as a hard limits list of things you just don’t like, and you might also use a safeword to mark any stop at all; this just allows coverage of what you haven’t thought of. Making it clear you want to avoid anything that would produce x result doesn’t necessarily mean x result won’t happen in a worst case scenario, but it does mean you can prioritize that over other results (in the case of two non-life-threatening injuries, that is. Of course you should always prioritize things such as long-term unconsciousness and drops on heads first.) It doesn’t account for all that could go wrong, but it will tell you what emergencies you want the top to have a more than basic knowledge of. And it won’t stop consent violators—but your limits list and safeword weren’t going to do that, either.

And for those of us who do want to play not knowing what our tops are going to do to us, without any way out, maybe this helps give them more information so that we can both be successful. Maybe it helps us to up our own medical and play knowledge, or to narrow down what criteria we use to figure out who we can and can’t play with. Maybe it helps us determine what’s an important no, and what’s just an “I’m scared.” Maybe it helps us, even a little bit, mitigate our risk.

Join the conversation on this post in the comments on Fetlife

Jan

2024

Questions and Considerations for Bottoming to Degradation Play

Over time, emotional play has become one of my core kinks. Very few of our scenes don’t have at least some element of degradation, and casual degradation and humiliation is a part of my day-to-day life. It certainly has caused its issues at times, but I wouldn’t want to remove it from our dynamic for the world. It makes me feel Loved. Most of my erotica involves it. *All* of my fantasies do. Often times, I can’t get off without it. Suffice to say, I think about this sort of thing a lot.

I recently read someone’s guide to emotional sadism. In the comment section, many bottoms expressed regret over emotional S&M gone wrong in the past, whether because their partners did not engage in it from a healthy place, boundaries weren’t clearly considered or communicated, or other reasons. My aim here is to create a resource for bottoms to help them think through potential pitfalls before they encounter them.

This is a non-comprehensive list of possible questions you might ask yourself or discuss with your partner when considering delving into emotional play. Sometimes I’ve added examples or other commentary, but it’s mostly just the questions. It’s by no means exhaustive. It also is not at *all* meant to qualify if you personally should or shouldn’t engage in this sort of play—if your answer to a question is something negative, that doesn’t mean “don’t do it”; it means follow the question up with “and am I okay with that?”

What feeling do I wish to come out of this with?
options might include: shame, loneliness, fear, worthlessness, failure, abandonment, guilt
Do I want this to be role-play (my partner says things we both definitively know to be untrue) or do I want this to touch on real insecurities and beliefs?
What categories of degradation are too far, desired, or won’t have an effect?
options might include: attractiveness (physical? personality? smell?), intelligence, worth as a partner, worth in general, capability (of being a good submissive, at your job, to achieve your dreams, etc), aspects of identity (race, religion, sexuality, gender), promiscuity, sexual ability/worth, core values
Am I okay with real-life events being mentioned?
If we are role-playing but my partner says something I believe is true about myself, will I be able to trust that they *don’t* think that? If no, will that undermine my concept of true and false for things they say in the future?
Have there been any recent hurdles with this partner that might affect my ability to see something as play?
If I am feeling ashamed, unimportant, or otherwise lesser in the scene or dynamic, will that affect my ability to communicate if I need things to stop?
Are there reactions that should signal a stop or pause to my partner beyond explicit communication
examples: shutting down, crying, inability to make eye contact, heavy breathing
In some physical scenes, a safeword stops the thing causing the pain. When emotions are involved, the escalation can stop but the pain might not (ever). If I have the ability to stop this in our scene/dynamic, am I able to do that *before* it gets to a point I won’t be able to handle?
How long do I want to sit with the bad feeling(s)? Do I want it made better after (being “built back up”)?
If I need my top to make me feel better after, do I want them to negate what they said/did in scene and tell me it was all a lie, or build me up about other things?
(Personally, if my Owner were to say He didn’t believe the things He told me, I’d start thinking that He didn’t really enjoy degrading me and that would make me feel worse. YMMV.)
What else do I need after? Are there behaviors of mine that might need to be monitored (eating properly, fulfilling goals, communicating, etc) based on what we do? For how long? Will this partner be in my life for that long? Are there other people that can look after these things if they aren’t?
If this scene involves certain activities, props, or locations, they may trigger these feelings in the future. Am I okay with that?
If I do this in public or write about this and people think/know my top really thinks these things about me, will the way they perceive us be bothersome to either of us?
Is my top prepared to handle the emotional labor that may come with my feeling they think x about me? Will they feel guilty if I become afraid of them or their presence makes me feel negatively? Are they aware of that possibility? Will they be patient if it is hard to overcome, or even if it doesn’t ever go away?
Are other relationships prepared to handle the emotional labor that may come with my believing x about myself? If I need extra reassurance or am suddenly insecure in our relationship, will that make them feel negatively about themselves?
Do I have events in the near future that will be affected by my confidence in myself changing? (important presentations, job interviews, performances, first dates)
Am I comfortable being vulnerable in front of my partner? Will I be after this happens? Do I have a support system I can speak to honestly about this experience without fear of judgment?
How might this affect any emotional issues I already deal with?
If this partnership dissolves in the future, will this experience make that harder to handle?
If I begin associating affection or sex with these negative feelings, how will that affect my perception of reality, and how will that affect how I evaluate this and other relationships down the line?
What traits, connections, perceptions ground me to the reality of whatever this relationship is? How will I be reminded/remind myself of them if/when I need to?

Obviously, everyone experiences things differently. Though I hope it goes without saying, emotional S&M can be very hard on a person and on a relationship, whatever that relationship is, and should be carefully thought through—but with the right partner, I think it’s one of the most incredible, intimate, and even empowering experiences to be had. These questions are meant as thought/conversation-starters, not a comprehensive checklist.

Come over to the comments section of this writing on Fetlife to tell us what you’d add!