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Bondage Thoughts and Preferences #3
4 years ago
Back with another one of these! As always, these are just my own personal opinions, and I have no problem with anyone who disagrees with any of them. If you want to read my previous two journals on this topic, I've linked them at the bottom of this one.
Let's not waste any more time and get right to it!
Love for the hogtie.
Since my last BTAP journal, I've come to really love hogties on human and anthro characters. I already enjoyed them fine, and even thought they were the ideal way to bind a few specific characters. But over time, that specific few has grown much broader. While it's not the method that I always prefer over over a non-hogtie, I love it!
A hogtie forces the characters' legs into a bent position, which I think is the most attractive for bound legs. No matter what they do to get more comfortable, that strain is as persistent as the sting of the ropes or the stifling of the gag. It also gives both the legs and arms one more thing they have to fight against, as they pull against the rope hogtying the two sets of limbs together. Watching them strain themselves fighting that hogtie rope with all their might, stretching it and forcing the ropes even deeper into their wrists and ankles, makes for some very appealing struggling! Seeing them roll from side-to-side and crawl along the floor is great too, and they have even less they can do with their inability to stand up at all. Their legs are rendered so useless, yet they still look so good in that hogtie! I think my favorite "length" for a hogtie rope is one that lets their knees bend 90 degrees at most. This gives them a little flexibility to look good struggling, but clearly not enough for it to help them.
I have yet to write a hogtie for a non-feral character, but I've definitely got several in mind! ;)
Why rip the gag off so soon?
How many times have you seen this: we open a scene with our first look at a character bound and gagged. We get a moment to see them struggle and muffle, before the captor shows up ... and almost immediately rips off their gag to talk to them.
Stop that!
As grateful as I am to get any gag time at all, it's still so annoying to constantly see a character lose that gag almost as soon as we see them with it! Those captors just have to talk with their captives the first chance they get, don't they, even though part of the point of a gag is to not let that happen. I get why this happens in some instances, like when a captor needs to do some interrogating and was just using the gag for security until they show up. But a lot of times the conversation is so pointless that there was no need to make it two-sided by removing the gag. Worse, they usually don't even put the gag back on when they're done! Why?! It's the most annoying when the captor says, "If I remove the gag, will you promise to keep quiet?" Um, there's a very easy way to make sure they keep quiet. Dare I say, painfully obvious. Well, rest assured that when I'm writing the story, when a gag goes on a character, it stays on for a good long while!
Gag talk is best when totally incoherent.
Keeping on the topic of gags for a bit, there are many instances, especially in bondage literature, when a gag is effective at stifling speech and lowering its volume, but it's still very clear what the character or characters are saying. I can enjoy this if the words are coherent only every once in a while, but for me, gags are at their best when they completely nullify pretty much any form of verbal communication. My happy medium is when they make varied enough sounds to make it clear they're trying to say something, but the sound is far too garbled to actually understand what they're saying. I use this approach all the time in my stories, to a point of having gag translations in the description for those who want it!
Part of the thrill of gags is that they strip away one of a captive's essential tools, as opposed to when they can still use that essential tool, just with a bit more difficulty. This is especially true if there are other gagged captives that would find it a huge help to be able to talk to each other, or if they urgently need to tell their captor something but are not heard out. Having even the simplest of dialogues be reduced to a bunch of "Mmmph"s and "Mmrrnn"s piles onto the distress and how lovely the sound is. Is it the most realistic? No, but I've already stated my thoughts on "selective realism" in my second BTAP journal, and I also don't think it's too far from reality to be totally implausible.
I hate hypnosis.
Well, to clarify, I hate hypnosis in bondage. And I absolutely hate how often it's used with snake-coil bondage! Obviously this goes back to Kaa from The Jungle Book, and boy does that make me resent that character purely out of pettiness.
Why do I hate hypnosis so much? Well, a substantial part of the enjoyment of bondage is the character's expressions and attempted resistance in the face of complete helplessness. Hypnosis, by its nature, completely takes all of that away. Once a character has fallen under the hypnotist's spell, they make no attempt to struggle, their eyes just have that blank, swirling look, and they usually come to involuntarily enjoy their bondage. Where's the fun in that? How does that do anything other than devalue the entire scenario? You might as well just have some lifeless doll be your captive in that case. I want my captives to be physically restrained, not mentally restrained. I wouldn't be so bitter had such a huge proportion of fan-made snake bondage specifically not been riddled with hypnosis. I've lost count of how many times a wonderful, superb piece of snake coil art, or a perfectly-written story, has been ruined for me by this decision. It was part of my need to write The Princess and the Python, to show that you could have thorough, prolonged snake bondage without destroying the captive's mind.
If you like hypnosis, nothing against you at all. I just personally want it out of my bondage.
When bondage is fan service by accident.
Obviously my bondage work, and the bondage work of almost everyone I follow on DeviantArt and FurAffinity, is intended to appeal to bondage fans who get a kick out of this stuff. It's a wonderful, wonderful thing to see, and I get excited whenever I see such work that caters to my tastes. But strangely enough, I've come to realize that I get even more excited by bondage scenes in work that was never meant to cater or pander to us. I'm talking about all the cartoons and movies we grew up with as kids that feature bondage with as seemingly innocent intent as possible. The Aladdin drowning scene, Supergirl wrapped up in Unity's tentacles, the countless scenes of classic damsels like Daphne or Penny Gadget. Hell, a while ago, I was shown pages from a few Thea Stilton books that feature characters bound and gagged, complete with certain words like "muffled" and "struggled" being highlighted with big, colorful font, and I was just as thrilled to see them as I usually am to see a bondage fic that was wholly meant to have the bondage "appeal" to me!
I think this happens because I developed my love of bondage by seeing it through this kind of media throughout childhood. It's what I know it best from and how my tastes for it developed, so it's where I have the most appreciation for it. To a point where even if there's a fanfic or fan art of a character bound and gagged made by someone whose intention wasn't to make that the point of their work, it's exciting to accidentally stumble across. Of course, the more emphasis and detail is put into these scenes, the better. There's a beauty in a writer just happening to bring the story to such a point solely because it made sense to them, as well as the animators creating a scene that's iconic to bondage fans not because it was supposed to be, but because it was just a really well-done scene that happened to feature prominent bondage.
Of course, sometimes there's debate as to whether a scene's bondage appeal was actually unintentional, or whether it was some bondage fans in the writers' room sneaking their fetish in. Totally Spies, I'm looking at you. Many have speculated that there are too many instances of bondage for it to be a coincidence. But even that can be great because it's still disguised enough for those not looking for it to not think too hard about it. But come on, does anyone think that Thea Stilton of all things was trying to sneak something like that in? It definitely depends on the material, but in general, thoroughly-detailed bondage is excellent to see in work that's supposed to make bondage fans happy, but it's even better in work that's not.
https://www.deviantart.com/thetopti.....es-1-808881989
https://www.deviantart.com/thetopti.....es-2-830554614
Let's not waste any more time and get right to it!
Love for the hogtie.
Since my last BTAP journal, I've come to really love hogties on human and anthro characters. I already enjoyed them fine, and even thought they were the ideal way to bind a few specific characters. But over time, that specific few has grown much broader. While it's not the method that I always prefer over over a non-hogtie, I love it!
A hogtie forces the characters' legs into a bent position, which I think is the most attractive for bound legs. No matter what they do to get more comfortable, that strain is as persistent as the sting of the ropes or the stifling of the gag. It also gives both the legs and arms one more thing they have to fight against, as they pull against the rope hogtying the two sets of limbs together. Watching them strain themselves fighting that hogtie rope with all their might, stretching it and forcing the ropes even deeper into their wrists and ankles, makes for some very appealing struggling! Seeing them roll from side-to-side and crawl along the floor is great too, and they have even less they can do with their inability to stand up at all. Their legs are rendered so useless, yet they still look so good in that hogtie! I think my favorite "length" for a hogtie rope is one that lets their knees bend 90 degrees at most. This gives them a little flexibility to look good struggling, but clearly not enough for it to help them.
I have yet to write a hogtie for a non-feral character, but I've definitely got several in mind! ;)
Why rip the gag off so soon?
How many times have you seen this: we open a scene with our first look at a character bound and gagged. We get a moment to see them struggle and muffle, before the captor shows up ... and almost immediately rips off their gag to talk to them.
Stop that!
As grateful as I am to get any gag time at all, it's still so annoying to constantly see a character lose that gag almost as soon as we see them with it! Those captors just have to talk with their captives the first chance they get, don't they, even though part of the point of a gag is to not let that happen. I get why this happens in some instances, like when a captor needs to do some interrogating and was just using the gag for security until they show up. But a lot of times the conversation is so pointless that there was no need to make it two-sided by removing the gag. Worse, they usually don't even put the gag back on when they're done! Why?! It's the most annoying when the captor says, "If I remove the gag, will you promise to keep quiet?" Um, there's a very easy way to make sure they keep quiet. Dare I say, painfully obvious. Well, rest assured that when I'm writing the story, when a gag goes on a character, it stays on for a good long while!
Gag talk is best when totally incoherent.
Keeping on the topic of gags for a bit, there are many instances, especially in bondage literature, when a gag is effective at stifling speech and lowering its volume, but it's still very clear what the character or characters are saying. I can enjoy this if the words are coherent only every once in a while, but for me, gags are at their best when they completely nullify pretty much any form of verbal communication. My happy medium is when they make varied enough sounds to make it clear they're trying to say something, but the sound is far too garbled to actually understand what they're saying. I use this approach all the time in my stories, to a point of having gag translations in the description for those who want it!
Part of the thrill of gags is that they strip away one of a captive's essential tools, as opposed to when they can still use that essential tool, just with a bit more difficulty. This is especially true if there are other gagged captives that would find it a huge help to be able to talk to each other, or if they urgently need to tell their captor something but are not heard out. Having even the simplest of dialogues be reduced to a bunch of "Mmmph"s and "Mmrrnn"s piles onto the distress and how lovely the sound is. Is it the most realistic? No, but I've already stated my thoughts on "selective realism" in my second BTAP journal, and I also don't think it's too far from reality to be totally implausible.
I hate hypnosis.
Well, to clarify, I hate hypnosis in bondage. And I absolutely hate how often it's used with snake-coil bondage! Obviously this goes back to Kaa from The Jungle Book, and boy does that make me resent that character purely out of pettiness.
Why do I hate hypnosis so much? Well, a substantial part of the enjoyment of bondage is the character's expressions and attempted resistance in the face of complete helplessness. Hypnosis, by its nature, completely takes all of that away. Once a character has fallen under the hypnotist's spell, they make no attempt to struggle, their eyes just have that blank, swirling look, and they usually come to involuntarily enjoy their bondage. Where's the fun in that? How does that do anything other than devalue the entire scenario? You might as well just have some lifeless doll be your captive in that case. I want my captives to be physically restrained, not mentally restrained. I wouldn't be so bitter had such a huge proportion of fan-made snake bondage specifically not been riddled with hypnosis. I've lost count of how many times a wonderful, superb piece of snake coil art, or a perfectly-written story, has been ruined for me by this decision. It was part of my need to write The Princess and the Python, to show that you could have thorough, prolonged snake bondage without destroying the captive's mind.
If you like hypnosis, nothing against you at all. I just personally want it out of my bondage.
When bondage is fan service by accident.
Obviously my bondage work, and the bondage work of almost everyone I follow on DeviantArt and FurAffinity, is intended to appeal to bondage fans who get a kick out of this stuff. It's a wonderful, wonderful thing to see, and I get excited whenever I see such work that caters to my tastes. But strangely enough, I've come to realize that I get even more excited by bondage scenes in work that was never meant to cater or pander to us. I'm talking about all the cartoons and movies we grew up with as kids that feature bondage with as seemingly innocent intent as possible. The Aladdin drowning scene, Supergirl wrapped up in Unity's tentacles, the countless scenes of classic damsels like Daphne or Penny Gadget. Hell, a while ago, I was shown pages from a few Thea Stilton books that feature characters bound and gagged, complete with certain words like "muffled" and "struggled" being highlighted with big, colorful font, and I was just as thrilled to see them as I usually am to see a bondage fic that was wholly meant to have the bondage "appeal" to me!
I think this happens because I developed my love of bondage by seeing it through this kind of media throughout childhood. It's what I know it best from and how my tastes for it developed, so it's where I have the most appreciation for it. To a point where even if there's a fanfic or fan art of a character bound and gagged made by someone whose intention wasn't to make that the point of their work, it's exciting to accidentally stumble across. Of course, the more emphasis and detail is put into these scenes, the better. There's a beauty in a writer just happening to bring the story to such a point solely because it made sense to them, as well as the animators creating a scene that's iconic to bondage fans not because it was supposed to be, but because it was just a really well-done scene that happened to feature prominent bondage.
Of course, sometimes there's debate as to whether a scene's bondage appeal was actually unintentional, or whether it was some bondage fans in the writers' room sneaking their fetish in. Totally Spies, I'm looking at you. Many have speculated that there are too many instances of bondage for it to be a coincidence. But even that can be great because it's still disguised enough for those not looking for it to not think too hard about it. But come on, does anyone think that Thea Stilton of all things was trying to sneak something like that in? It definitely depends on the material, but in general, thoroughly-detailed bondage is excellent to see in work that's supposed to make bondage fans happy, but it's even better in work that's not.
https://www.deviantart.com/thetopti.....es-1-808881989
https://www.deviantart.com/thetopti.....es-2-830554614
campion1
~campion1
Ohhh my god I agree with those first 3 points so much. One of my biggest annoyances with bondage in shows and stuff, the hero is basically tied up for maybe 3 seconds before being conveniently rescued immediately.
It sucks that it's relatively hard to find prolonged bondage scenes that really give you plenty of material. They're often so short that you might as well just make it a gif or something, lol!
