Role playing (1)
 

Role-Playing

Role-playing, or playing “scenes”, is a game that many couples enjoy. Vanilla couples play sexually loaded scenes. In BDSM, scenes are usually more theatrical, and involve some kind of power exchange. Of course, we will write about these, “our kind” of scenes.

Even when it is what probably most outsiders see as BDSM, not everybody in the game enjoys role-playing. Some couples enjoy just a spanking or an occasional punishment, or even try to have a full time D/s relationship. Some say that role-playing is “make believe” and that they prefer the “real thing”. But for others role-playing is the thing, and it is their way for feeling dominant or submissive.

Scenes do not have to involve pain. The power exchange could be enough, and the punishments just symbolic. Of course, you can have both the power exchange and the pain, and we, as a spanking site, will add some pain in most of them.

Same for sex. IN BDSM scenes sex is not mandatory, and if they will include sex or not should be negotiated beforehand, as all other scene details. You can play a scene just for enjoying the fantasy as much as using it as foreplay for sex.

It is in scenes or in 24/7 relationships (which are just long-term scenes) that the words dominant and submissive begin to get their real meaning, because somebody will play the dominant character, and the other will have to submit. There is a power exchange going on.

Even if we are thinking on time-limited games, and some of these scenarios are only fit for that, some could be converted to full-time lifestyles.
 

Why playing roles?

Why fantasizing? Why daydreaming? Real life is not always exciting. You have limits, responsibilities, dull chores, all kind of duties required for earning money and keeping your things going. Even for the richest and more powerful, most of life is just routine. A pinch of fantasy enhances your living, and most human beings fantasize a little or a lot in their daily lives.

Role-playing is just acting your fantasies in real life, or at least in a secluded corner of your real life. For some time, you can be what you want to be, or perhaps just what you want to be in fantasy and for a short time. Most people wouldn't like to be a pirate in real life, they just want to fantasize how it could feel being a pirate (or being in a pirate’s hands) for a couple of hours.

Real life duties and rules are imposed to you by the external world. It feels good being you who makes the rules. In a scene, no maters whether you will play a dominant or a submissive, you and your partner are the only ones to decide which the world’s rules are, what is allowed and what is forbidden.

You are always yourself, and you are always with yourself. It can be refreshing and stimulating being someone else for some time. And having, for once, total control of who you are, even if it means that you are a slave with no control at all on the proceedings. You chose losing control, nobody imposed it to you.

Living as you choose, being what you choose, being able to create your personal world is what you get from role-playing. And who doesn’t want all that power, even if just in fantasy and for a short time?

Of course, this applies to everybody’s fantasies. We, the people in BDSM, get something extra: if you like dominating, where else you could get away with having a slave or slapping your whore? Or being a whore, and receiving a beating from a client, of from your pimp, if you are a sub?

 

Pain

Not always a scene has to involve pain. Just having to submit can be enough. Or you can go just for the humiliation.

For “masochistic” bottoms (like me), or “sadistic” tops (also like me), pain is required, but even if the bottom doesn’t enjoy pain, sometimes some is needed just to help her enter the role. I, for a case, cannot feel I’m dominated unless I’m forced to submit by the pain. Receiving some unwanted pain underlines that you are submitting to another’s power, but it is your (and especially your bottom’s) choice.

If there are floggings, its harshness, from some slapping to a full strength bruising flogging, will also depend on your preferences.

 

Sex

As we said, sexual intercourse is not necessarily part of the BDSM scenes.

The scene could be played just for the thrill of playing it, for the pleasure of dominating the other or of being dominated, for humiliating or being humiliated, for giving or receiving punishment.

If sex will be part of the game, it could happen in many ways.

The scene could be played as foreplay, and after it, sex will be as you normally enjoy it.

Or you can include sex as part of the scene. It could be difficult to include sex in a parent-child scene, as it would not normally happen ¿and if they are cousins?  But in many, it could naturally be included.

 

In others, sex is almost mandatory, in most rough sex, “rape” like. It is difficult to believe that a Barbarian or an Amazon will not use his/her slaves for his/her sexual satisfaction.

Also who will enjoy it is also a matter of negotiation. If the scene is foreplay, both will enjoy sex as usual at the end. But there are other possibilities.

 

BDSM dominants enjoy arousing their subs, denying the final release, and punishing it if it happens. Many scenes could be played that way, by caressing the sub, or his/her erogenous parts, during the scene, and stopping before s/he can finish.

 

If sex will be just for the dom's satisfaction, oral sex is a possibility.  A slave kneeling between the dom's legs servicing him/her with his/her mouth is a BDSM cliché.

 

And it could be used for the subs humiliation, for instance forcing him/her to masturbate in front of the dom.

 

If a soldier has a captive, ¿would he care about his captive sexual satisfaction? Or he would “rape” her for his own enjoyment?

As you see, there are many possibilities, but, as always, and as it should be when enjoying your fantasies, is your decision.

Negotiation

Discuss your fantasy with your partner (may be at sex time, when people is more receptive to this kind of talk). If you find difficult to talk it, write it, make a small script, and send it to him or her by e-mail.

Before beginning a scene, both parties should make perfectly clear the extent and duration of the performance, the “do”s and especially the “don´t”s. Discuss and agree on the limits, consensual or hard (hard limits are the ones that reality imposes, for instance for medical reasons, which are not subject to negotiation).

 

Discuss if there will be pain and how much, discuss if the scene will include or finish with sex, and if both will enjoy it, or just the dominant.

 

Discuss if there is to be a safeword for stopping the game, and agree on it.

I, personally, prefer negotiating in advance, not immediately before the scene. We negotiate all details, and agree on a date and time. When the moment arrives, with no talk or further discussion, the scene begins. I “am” the “child” or the “slave”, the “teacher” or the” sheik”, from the very first moment. But, of course, it depends on the circumstances, or on the participants’ preferences.

 

 

Published: 12/14/05