BDSM Fundamentals for HypnoKinksters

More-so than other kinks, the kinky hypnosis community stands independent of the general BDSM community. There are historical reasons for this: For years, hypnosis was banned from websites like FetLife due to Visa and Mastercard's adversarial approach to hypnosis content (and it remains a blocked search term). Due to misconceptions, many BDSM spaces treated hypnosis as "inherently non-consensual" and thus, forbidden. Until the advent of resources like Mindplay and LearnHypnoKink.com, the main way to learn hypnosis was from hypnotherapists and stage hypnotists, not from kinksters in BDSM spaces. There are also a few reasons for our independence that persist even with the growing acceptance of hypnosis by the BDSM community: play parties tend to be loud and focused on high-energy play like impact, whereas hypnosis kinksters prefer a more quiet relaxing environment where you can easily hear each other. Most of BDSM is very physical, and playing with the wrong rope-top or impact-top can seriously injure or even kill you. Hypnosis is entirely mental, and the subject is a collaborative participant. This creates a bit of a cultural difference in approaches to things like vetting and safety.

I love the hypnosis kink community, and don't mind that we are an overlapping but distinct community from BDSM rather than contained entirely within it, however as a consequence of our independence, there are many fundamental BDSM skills and cultural concepts that can be easy to miss when learning to be a hypnotist or subject. A class on kinky hypnosis will generally focus on how to do the hypnosis skills, and a hypnotist aspirant will generally see becoming adept at hypnosis as their primary focus.

But hypnosis, like all BDSM, is fundamentally about connection and having a shared experience. Your kinky hypnosis scenes will be improved more by good BDSM fundamentals than advanced hypnosis techniques. You can learn all of this by attending a BDSM 101 class at your local dungeon, but too often those classes are not taught at a high enough frequency to meet the needs of the community, as instructors may find them boring or tedious to teach, and there might not always be a large crowd who attends. Furthermore, due to the remote-capable nature of hypnosis, many hypnokinksters do not have a local dungeon or kink community to turn to.

In this article I will attempt to briefly provide the fundamentals of BDSM, targeted at people in the kinky hypnosis community.

"Play" and "Scene?"

The words "play" and "scene" are so fundamental to the framework of kink that kinksters forget they don't have intrinsic meaning to newcomers and fail to define them in the way that we use them.

Why is it "Play?"

The word "play" is two-fold in meaning. For one, when we engage in kinky activities together, we are playing. Remember play? From when you were so small? You would play make-believe with your friends, or play games with silly rules. Maybe your play looked like lining up objects according to a system of organization. The purpose of play is to have fun together, and to be playful.

Have you ever seen some puppies jumping on each other and rough-housing? But it's okay, someone said to you once, when you were young: They're just playing.

Most of the things we do in kink are unethical and dangerous to do to someone for real. We play with unethical power dynamics, and even commit assault, by the definition of some legal codes. It's okay that we do these things, because we're just playing. We're rough-housing like puppies. It's playful. We're being careful not to cause real lasting harm. What we are doing is fundamentally the same as playing football or tug-of-war. With hypnosis kink, what we are doing is not fundamentally that different from Dungeons and Dragons.

Johan Huizinga coined the term "The Magic Circle" to describe the ways that play is set apart from the real world by a sort of playground. When we enter the Magic Circle, the social rules change. To quote Nyx Goddess Games: When you're not playing soccer, it's okay to use your hands, but not okay to chase people. When you're playing soccer, it's not okay to use your hands, but it is okay to chase people.

All kink, including hypnosis kink, exists inside this magic circle. In our magic circle, it's okay to manipulate someone's emotions and play mind games on them. In our magic circle, it's okay to call someone a dumb slutty bimbo. These things are okay because we negotiated and agreed upon the rules of the game before we started.

The secondary meaning of play is theatrical. At the end of the day, kinksters are mostly horny theater kids. Many kinks overlap with circus tricks, stage magic, and improv comedy techniques. Playing improv theater games will make you better at BDSM. Hypnosis kink and LARPing share a lot of the same skills. "LARPing" is often a derogatory term on the internet, something ascribed to fake leftists and internet weirdos, but if you've ever been to a LARP, you'll realize it's a big elaborate improvised theater performance that everyone is playing together. It's playing make-believe, like when we were kids. You enter a magic circle and now you are a fairy. The more immersed you become in the game, the more fun it is. You will realize that half the people at the LARP are people you met at the erotic hypnosis convention a few weeks ago.

When we do kink, we're just playing. This is a fundamental difference between hypnotherapy and hypnokink. It doesn't matter if it's "real" or if it achieves a clinically significant outcome. What matters is that we're having fun and getting what we want out of it.

Why is it a "Scene?"

Remember, kinksters are fundamentally horny theater kids. The word scene also comes from the world of theater. This is our instance of playing together. We drew the magic circle around this moment, and in this moment, the rules are different. The scene is generally time-bound.

The structure of a scene should be:

1. Negotiating what the scene will be (discussing the rules of our game)
2. Explicit consent to play the scene we just negotiated, and affirming that we are ready to start.
3. We now enter the magic circle and play our roles in the scene and do all the kinky things we discussed. We are now on stage, performing, improvising, and having fun.
4. At the end, we leave the scene, we leave the magic circle, and return to the real world. To work towards feeling normal, we participate in aftercare.

NCPA. Negotiations, Consent, Play, Aftercare. If you want a mnemonic: "Nana can't play Arkanoid." Need to remember the structure of a scene? Imagine your grandmother being totally incompetent at playing Arkanoid. Is this helpful?

Sometimes, people build up an ongoing dynamic, playing together multiple times, and building on each successive scene. You might think of this as being one long play, or a movie, and the scenes are the individual scenes from that bigger story.

More-so than other kinks, hypnokinksters tend to blur the lines between scene-time and real-time. Hypnosis allows you to modify someone's general behavior, or condition them to respond to certain stimuli. Many fantasize about being compelled to obey a partner at any time. These sorts of dynamics are outside the scope of this article, but the magic circle remains a useful tool for looking at these dynamics.

Even if the play is not time-bound by scenes they're still just playing, and they exist within the rules of the magic circle. Remember The Game? The one that you just lost, because I made you think about it? That is an example of an ongoing game that we all used to play together all the time. Other examples might be road trip games like Piccadilly and Punchbuggy. Whenever you see a car with only one headlight, you race to touch the ceiling of the car first and say "Piccadilly!" These are games that we are "always playing" but they still have rules.

Even in an ongoing dynamic, it is still just a play, and still play. You've created a game that you're always playing together, but you must still recognize it as just playing together, just a silly game, it's not real. You must be able to step outside of the magic circle and discuss what you are doing from a grounded place and ensure you're both having fun.

Consent

Much has been written about consent already. I absolutely adore GleefulAbandon and Sleepingirl's section on consent and negotiations in LearnHypnoKink. Many people at this point, fortunately, see the need for consent as obvious, which I can't say was true fifteen years ago.

However, too many see consent as merely being a box to check-off so they can do the things they want to do without repercussions. A matter of liability, rather than a fundamental building block of having a good scene together.

As Sleepingirl and GleefulAbandon write in LearnHypnoKink: Consent is not just ethically necessary, it is also necessary to achieve true intimacy. A good scene is a shared experience and if it's not consensual, then you are having two extremely disjointed experiences. One of you may be having the best time of your life, while the other experiences the most traumatic moment of their life.

Fundamentally, we should be approaching our kink from a place of caring about our play partners and wanting to enjoy something together. Good consent practice is ultimately about caring about what your play partner wants, caring about the well-being of your play partners, and building something together that you both want.

If someone comes and talks to you about a consent injury, instead of trying to litigate if you did a sufficiently adequate job obtaining consent so as to not be punished, focus your attention on the fact that someone you care about says they feel hurt, and what care you can provide to help them feel safe and heal from the experience. Be present and future oriented. What could we do better in the future?

The FRIES Model of Consent

Lately, I have been seeing a fun acronym to break down the components of good consent. Unfortunately, nobody ever cites where it came form, and I can't seem to find an original source. I'll use this random non-profit's article on it as a source. Cite your sources people!

FRIES stands for:

• Freely given
• Reversible
• Informed
• Enthusiastic
• Specific

Freely given means that consent was not obtained via coercion. The consenting party could say no without facing repercussions. In a kink setting, this often means we need to be careful with existing social power dynamics, and ensure nobody feels like consenting to a scene with someone is necessary for full inclusion in the community. Other things to consider are if someone can freely and safely leave the room or take space from someone after saying no, and if they feel safe saying no in general. In a kink setting, this also means we should be negotiating from a place of being equals, and holding off on any dominant undertones or hypnotic language until after the scene begins.

Reversible means consent can be revoked at any time. Consent to trance me now does not mean consent to trance me any time again in the future. Even when we negotiate "standing consent" where someone states you do not need to ask every time to do something, that standing arrangement can always be revoked.

Informed means you have to know what you are consenting to. In a kinky hypnosis setting, this means that your hypnotic subject must know what suggestions you intend to give before they can consent to receiving them. It also means being informed of any risks. A newbie to rope bondage cannot truly consent to being tied up if nobody has ever informed them of the risk of nerve damage. Some consensual non-consent dynamics might allow for "surprises" but that is outside the scope of this article.

Enthusiastic is a sometimes debated one, but essentially, "YES" means "YES!" and "maybe..." does not mean yes. If you're hearing "sure...." in an unsteady tone, maybe double-check if your play partner is really up to kinking right now. Be aware of the potential for receiving a "Soft No" from people you are propositioning for play. A "soft no" often sounds like "Maybe" followed by absolutely no effort from the other person towards actually finding time to make the scene happen. Instead over-thinking if something is a soft no, or continuously chasing people who don't seem to be enthusiastically interested in you the way you are in them, focus on the people who are excited to get to know you and play with you. Party with the kids who want to party with you.

Specific means nothing should be left implied. Consent to kink is not necessarily consent to sex. Consent to be put into a hypnotic trance is not necessarily consent to be given hypnotic suggestions. Discuss everything you want to do together before you enter the magic circle and begin exchanging power.

On "Negotiating Up"

The best practice is to always get consent for everything you want to do before any play occurs. If you ask mid-scene to do something that was not previously consented to, we call this "negotiating up" and it's frowned upon.

In the heterosexual vanilla world, it can be seen as creepy to ask someone if they want to have sex right at the beginning, instead of "warming someone up" by starting with kissing, then foreplay, and gradually working towards asking for sex once they're all turned on and wanting it. This does not work for BDSM.

Think about it, if someone is already tied up in rope, then they can't freely give consent. You're standing over them, they're completely dependent on you to get free from the rope, and you might even be holding a weapon. Is that freely given enthusiastic consent?

In a hypnosis context, we should remember that hypnotized subjects are suggestible, or in other words, agreeable. They're already in an altered state and likely to say yes to anything. This is coercive and not freely given consent.

With both non-hypnotic BDSM and hypnosis kink, it is likely the submissive will enter "sub-space:" a very submissive altered state of mind. Again, this person is no longer able to freely give consent from a neutral place as equals. They may feel used or manipulated after the scene is over.

Now, all that said, I'm not going to be the sex police. If two people who are established play partners talk about the consent practices they prefer and agree ahead of time that they are OK with negotiating up mid-scene, then I'm not going to intervene and tell you what is and is not okay in someone else's relationship.

This also does not mean the whole scene must be scripted. You can plan a dynamic scene where you discuss what is on the table and off the table, without a plan for which things specifically will happen or in what order. Very established play partners with a lot of rapport might intuitively understand what the other person likes and dislikes, and the more structured practices that we use with new play partners or encourage in new kinksters might not always be present.

Best practices reduce the risk of consent injury, and not using them increases that risk. If the risk is undertaken together in a consensual manner, then it's not unethical to take a risk.

The RACK Model

There are many acronyms out there meant to tell you "how to play ethically." When I started out, the go-to was "SSC" which stood for Safe, Sane, Consensual. You might still hear this one going around here or there, but it has mostly fallen out of favor. We can never truly guarantee that a scene will be "safe" and to put the onus of safety entirely onto the top is unfair. What does "sane" even really mean, and given how many of us are neurodivergent, is it respectful?

In the years since, another acronym has emerged that has become by-far the most popular, at least among circles I can be found in. RACK: Risk-Aware Consensual Kink.

We've already addressed consensual and I hope your kink is kinky. So, let's talk about Risk-Awareness.

You are all adults, and if you want to go sky-diving, then I will not stop you or call you a bad person for going sky-diving. What's important is that you know that sky-diving is very risky, and are willing to accept that risk. You evaluated the risks, all of the things that can happen, how likely they are, and considered what you could do to mitigate those risks. Then, you decided that you are willing to make this gamble, that the potential reward outweighs the risks, and that you can accept the consequences of your choice if it goes wrong.

When playing under the RACK model, the goal is not to do kink that is totally and completely safe, but to be seriously considerate of the risks that are present, and make active decisions about if those risks are worth it to you. RACK is sometimes associated with "edgeplayers" or people who do more extreme types of kinky play. People who suspend themselves from hooks, for instance. Educators who follow the RACK model see it as their responsibility to inform you of risks in a non-judgmental manner, and allow you to decide how to proceed. I won't tell you to never mix psychedelics and hypnosis, because I have done that myself. I will tell you that mixing psychedelics and hypnosis is incredibly risky and if the outcome is lasting psychological damage, then you have to accept that as a consequence of your own decision to proceed.

Some people mistakenly use RACK as an excuse to not discuss risks, or to hand-wave them away. They'll say "I'm aware it's risky, so don't talk to me about the risks or safety." This is sort-of missing the point of RACK. The key-phrase is risk-aware. It is your responsibility to seriously consider the risks and truly imagine living with those consequences and if you'd be OK with that if it happens. In order to be risk-aware, we must discuss the risks, their likelihood, if we can mitigate them, and then ask ourselves "is this reward worth the risk?"

With something like rope, this often means asking if the pleasure of rope is worth the risk of nerve damage. Can we mitigate that risk? Yes, by modifying our ties, regularly checking in on our bodies, and communicating what we are feeling. It does not eliminate the risk, but the risk is reduced enough that I personally feel comfortable taking it.

With something like hypnosis, we are usually thinking about psychological and relational injuries. The risk of doing this scene with someone is that we might not feel the same about each other afterwards, or that someone might have a panic attack and that wouldn't be very fun. Codependency is sometimes a risk. Can we mitigate these? To an extent. Personally, I feel comfortable taking these risks.

One's "risk profile" is the band of risks someone is personally willing to take. Nerve damage from rope is "within my risk profile" meaning I have considered that risk, and decided I am willing to take it. Potentially having negative emotions during a hypnosis scene is within my risk profile. When it comes to suspension bondage, where someone is suspended mid-air, that is "outside my risk profile" meaning I have considered the risks and decided that they are not worth it to me.

Negotiations & Scene Development

When we hear the word "negotiations" our minds likely associate it with "contract." It is easy to fall into your scene negotiations being an interview, checking off boxes for liability. While sufficient to cover consent bases, this won't result in the most enjoyable scenes. I prefer to think of the negotiations stage as collaboratively imagining and building the scene you want to do together. Once you have a shared idea of what you want to do together, with boundaries in place around what feels safe to do and what you don't want to do, then you can both consent to it and begin.

Once again I will highlight the wonderful section on Negotiations at the bottom of Chapter 5 of LearnHypnoKink.

Newer kinksters, especially tops, often suffer from blank page syndrome. You have a willing subject or submissive eager to do the hypnosis or the rope or what-have-you but laid out before you is a vast field with no guide-rails on what direction to take things. New hypnotists often find themselves asking: "Well... I hypnotized them... now what?"

Good news! A kink scene is something you are doing together with your scene partner, and together you can plan and tackle that blank page. Negotiations should be a two-way conversation, not a one-way interview where the top investigates what they're allowed to do to the bottom.

Here are some questions you can ask yourselves and each other during negotiations:

• What about playing with this particular person excites you? Who are they to you besides just a willing body? Is there a particular talent of theirs that excites you? A certain personality trait?
• What kinky fantasies do you have in common? Where do themes and elements overlap? If the fantasy is impractical, are there elements that could be evoked or pulled out for a scene?
• Is there a story or narrative element to this scene?
• How do you want to feel during the scene? What emotions would be fun and hot for you to experience? How can we encourage those feelings? Get specific.
• Where do you want to be touched? How do you want to be touched there? (Gently? Firmly? Rough?), Where do you not want to be touched?
• Do you have certain expectations of the scene, that you would be disappointed if they didn't happen? How about moments or elements that you would be welcome to experiencing, but not disappointed if they don't happen?
• What kinks are on the table, and what is absolutely off the table?
• Do you want this scene to potentially lead to or involve sexual elements? You cannot assume that your scene partner is consenting to sex just because they want to scene with you. People often want to have scenes with no sexual acts what-so-ever. Remember, you shouldn't be asking mid-scene if they want to fuck if you didn't talk about it as a possibility during negotiations. If you want sex to be on the table, you need to ask about it during negotiations.
• Do you have certain bodily or emotional quirks or needs that you need to be mindful of? A bad knee? Hypermobile shoulders? A phobia? A trauma trigger?
• How will you communicate your state of well-being? Safewords? Check-ins? Feedback?
• What risks might come with our scene, and are there ways to mitigate them?
• What aftercare will you need after the scene is over? (Both tops and bottoms require aftercare!)

Remember, a successful negotiation means you came to a mutually shared understanding of what this scene would entail. It does not necessarily need to lead to the scene actually happening or happening right away. If a negotiation ends with deciding you don't want to play together, that was a successful negotiation. If the negotiation ends with deciding to come back to this idea later, that was a successful negotiation.

When you're playing with a new play partner, it's best to be very specific in what will happen in the scene, and assume nothing is consented to that was not explicitly discussed during negotiations. As you build rapport, you can discuss the possibility of more dynamic scenes, where negotiations are about building the walls of a sandbox, and then playing around within that space without a specific plan. For instance, a scene where any hypnotic suggestion is permitted, as long as it is temporary and does not involve X, Y, or Z. This type of negotiation is best with someone you know very well, where you have built some intuitive sense of what they would enjoy. I find both dynamic sandbox-y scenes and highly imaginative scripted scenes to be very fun in their own ways.

Safewords & Check-Ins

It's best practice to have specific safewords with pre-negotiated meanings. A safeword is something you can say or do during a scene to indicate that something is wrong and the scene needs to pause or stop. By default, assume "No" and "Stop" are safewords, unless you negotiate otherwise (but consensual non-consent is outside the scope of this article.)

The most popular safeword system is The Stoplight System. Everyone does it a little differently, so it's best to discuss what these colors mean to you during negotiations. The way I use the Stoplight System looks like this:

Green: Everything is good! I like this! Keep going!

Yellow: Something is off, please pause and check-in with me, then we can resume the scene.

Red: The scene needs to end now.

These are great because they're easy to remember and shout out even when in a very altered headspace like subspace or trance. The top can easily check in mid-scene by saying "Stoplight?" or "Give me a color" and it's not too disruptive. It can also be really hot to hear your play partners shouting "Green! Green! Green! Greengreengreen!!!"

With some play partners, I have negotiated adding more colors to the system with different meanings, such as:

Blue: I'm done. Nothing is wrong. I just am satiated and would like to bring the scene to a close. Maybe I had an orgasm and I'm not horny anymore. Maybe I'm just getting tired.

Beige: I'm bored. Go harder. Make it more intense.

Orange: I need a break to use the restroom, drink water, or rest, more substantially than a brief check-in.

It's really about whatever system works for you and your scene partner.

There are many reasons why, during a scene, someone might lose the ability to speak verbally, or perhaps they don't always or never speak verbally anyway. Non-verbal safewords are a very good idea to establish as well. Here's a lesson from a mistake I once made: Don't simultaneously take away someone's ability to speak and use their hands at the same time. Oops!

Some non-verbal safewords could include:

• Signing "yellow" in American Sign Language: Shaking a 🤙 hand.
• Flashing "blinkers" with your index and middle fingers, this is also the ASL sign for the letter "R" for Red: 🤞 (note that the actual ASL sign for "Red" is impractical as a safeword. What I use as non-verbal red during scenes is actually the ASL sign for "Ready" which is easier to do mid-scene and still feels "Red-y" enough for me)
• Holding a small ball or other object in your hand, and dropping it if something is wrong. If it squeaks or makes noise when it hits the ground, even better.
• "Tapping out" by hitting the bed, top's body, or floor with your hand repeatably.

Even with good safewords established, it's best practice to regularly check in during an intense scene, as someone who gets very into subspace might forget to safeword or be failing to check in with their own body.

If your play partner safewords: Don't Panic. Calmly check-in, or begin winding down the scene. Start undoing the ties, or assisting with allowing the hypnotic suggestion to fade away. Transition into aftercare. If you have an extreme reaction to your play partner safewording, it will make it more difficult for them to use their safewords in the future. I once had a top start crying and profusely apologizing after I used a safeword. I never felt safe or comfortable playing with that top again, because I realized they had, however unintentionally, made me feel guilty for using my safeword, and that fear of hurting their feelings would cause me to hesitate in moments where I need to use a safeword.

Soft Limits & Hard Limits

As you experiment more with kink, you will come to learn about the things you like, and also the things you do not like. When we draw lines around our scene, the boundaries of acceptability are what we call Limits. Limits are personal, and not a judgement on anyone else who participates in those activities. The kink community is all about "your kink is not my kink, and that's okay."

Soft Limits are activities you generally do not feel comfortable doing in most scenes, but might be willing to do with someone you trust.

For instance, kissing is a soft limit for me. I won't kiss someone I just met for pick-up play at a convention, but I might kiss an established partner. Sex is a common soft limit. In the hypnosis community, many people have memoryplay as a soft limit. They require an extra level of trust and rapport to feel comfortable with it.

Hard Limits are strictly off-limits all the time for everyone always. Of course, you can always decide to change your mind, it's your boundaries, but if you absolutely know you will never want to do something, then drawing that hard line can be useful.

For instance, I have a hard limit that I will never participate in any scene eroticizing or making light of cults. I have personal experience with real-life cults and I won't be able to enjoy a scene eroticizing this particular part of my own trauma. There are other things I have trauma around that I do enjoy eroticizing, but not this one.

For some people, all sexual contact is a hard limit. A common hard limit is water sports. Nothing against the piss-lovers, but if you don't want to do that kink, it can be helpful to mention it as a hard limit.

Headspaces, Drop, & Aftercare

Any intense experience can result in an altered state of consciousness. Many kink activities can release a lot of endorphins and hormones in the brain, which can induce feelings of elation.

The Science of BDSM Research Team has published studies demonstrating strong evidence for the facilitation of altered states of consciousness through consensual kink.

Subspace is the altered state some submissives or bottoms may enter where they feel floaty, euphoric, and very complacent. The existence of subspace is a major reason we discourage negotiating-up mid-scene. Someone in subspace will likely just say yes.

Topspace or Domspace is the altered state some dominants or tops may enter where they feel hyper-focused, euphoric, and powerful.

We also, as hypnokinksters, play with hypnotic trance, which can have a lot in common with subspace if you framed being a subject as being submissive in your scene. The rope community also speaks of Ropespace which is also similar to subspace, and also similar to trance.

Any spike in endorphins can be followed by a drop in endorphins. It is common to experience subdrop and topdrop after a kink scene. This may feel like melancholy, an abstract badness in your body, loneliness, or shame. Tops sometimes describe feeling guilty and uncertain of if they did something bad or hurt their bottom. Bottoms sometimes describe feeling disconnected, dissociated, or abandoned.

Topspace, subspace, trance, ropespace, topdrop, subdrop, etc. are all what we term as Headspaces. When someone is "in headspace" they are not their normal baseline self, and as a community we try to be mindful of how someone might be more tender or vulnerable while in headspace.

Because we know that drop is a risk of kink, we plan ahead to mitigate it. That's why we do Aftercare!

Aftercare

Aftercare is the care you give to each other after a scene to attend to bodily needs, mitigate drop, affirm positive feelings towards one another, and transition back to a baseline normal reality and dynamic. It's common at the end of a scene to realize that you are thirsty, hungry, and need to pee all at once.

Aftercare is a negotiated part of your scene. You should remember to discuss it during negotiations, and if someone does not want to provide the aftercare that you know you need, then you should probably not agree to play with that person. The saying goes that "aftercare is not optional."

It may take time when you're new to learn what kind of aftercare helps you most after a scene, so it's good to experiment. Fortunately, when your play partner asks for their own aftercare needs, it's a great opportunity to try that for yourself as well.

Personally, I always find that after a scene, I feel really connected to my play partner, and if I lose that connection too quickly, that is when I experience subdrop. One of my own aftercare needs is simply to not rush the aftercare, to hold onto that connection just a little longer, so that I do not feel used or discarded.

Some people like to slowly transition back to an equal power balance, holding the submissive in sub space just a little longer to allow for a gradual transition back to being an equal. Others like to immediately return to speaking to each other normally, to reinforce that the scene is over and we are back in reality.

Some Popular Aftercare Activities:

• Cuddling
• Kissing
• Holding hands, or other ways of maintaining a small amount of physical contact.
• Drinking water (it's common to ask in negotiations for the top to bring the sub water, as a subby spacey bottom might forget they need water or feel unable to get up on their own right away)
• Eating a snack, or sugary candy (I like jolly ranchers for this)
• Stretching together
• Debriefing: discussing your experiences of the scene, providing feedback, gushing about your favorite parts, and bringing up what could be improved for next time.
• Grounding exercises, such as naming things in the room in alphabetical order.
• Verbal affirmations such as "you did such a good job;" "I enjoyed every part of that;" "I wanted everything you did to me;" "that was so hot;" or "I had so much fun"
• Reinforcement of the normal relationship, e.g. "you are my husband, I do not actually see you as a worthless toy, and I love you very much;" "you are a dear friend to me and I would appreciate our friendship even if you didn't let me pour hot wax on your back sometimes;" or "I really enjoyed meeting you today, and I hope we stay in touch."
• An agreement to message each other a few days later to check-in.
• Attending to bruises, scrapes, or other small injuries.
• Brushing someone's hair.
• Cleaning up bodily fluids, dried wax bits, etc.
• Watching television together

Many people in the kink community will also come to learn of more unusual or eccentric aftercare practices that, as odd as they may seem, are very helpful and enjoyable to them. It's good to embrace these needs and desires without judgement.

Less Common Aftercare Activities:

• Scouring your play partner's body for pimples to pop.
• Asking your play partners to lay on top of you with their full body weight.
• Asking your play partners to squeeze you with as much force as possible.
• Being left alone in the dark with no physical contact at all for a full hour.
• Listening to very loud aggressive music such as harsh metal.
• Brushing your play partner's teeth
• Interviewing your play partner with one hundred questions about the scene.

These are all real aftercare activities I have either done myself (in fact, my own preferences are mixed in here), or have heard of someone doing. I think it's wonderful that people can be so unique and different from each other. I have sometimes recognized that someone's aftercare needs are incompatible with my own, such as people who do not want to be touched during aftercare, and have decided not to play with them because of that.

Ultimately, the guiding star of aftercare is helping your play partner feel cared about, whether you were the top or the bottom.

Navigating the Kink Community

Dungeon etiquette and privacy practices could be an entire two additional articles, and maybe I will write those someday. But before I finish out, I wanted to touch on a few more cultural norms in kink spaces.

Vetting is a common practice in the kink community. What this commonly looks like is talking about people in the community while they are not around, and asking people what they think of them, if anyone has played with them or seen them play in a dungeon, are they trustworthy, etc. Given how dangerous it can be to allow someone irresponsible to do certain kinks to you, it's important to be able to ask around and know who is trusted in the community. In the kink community, your reputation is incredibly important.

I have often heard the refrain "gossip is important for keeping people safe." I don't even like to label these conversations as gossip. I don't want to trivialize them. Vetting conversations are not idle gossiping, they're an essential part of scoping out who in the community is safe to play with and who might be a missing stair that event organizers are just waiting to kick out when someone finally comes forward about a specific experience.

Play parties are not about the exhibitionism of playing in front of others (though that can also be a part of it for some people.) Doing scenes in a dungeon ensures that there are witnesses, which can make people feel much safer engaging in kink with a new person. It also allows people to observe how others play, and if their play style is appealing, or appears sufficiently responsible for their own risk profile.

Munches are events where kinky people go to meet and casually socialize with other kinky people in a non-kink setting. Making friends with other kinksters allows for the development of chains of trust that can be used for vetting, or to have someone to talk to about a negative experience with someone. It's also much easier to get a vibe check on someone at a munch than in the middle of a play party. Most people who play at parties are playing with people who they already met at a munch.

Scene Names are pseudonyms that people take on in the kink community to protect their true identity (or "vanilla identity.") This protects professional and family lives from the stigma attached to BDSM, protects against stalkers one might acquire in the kink community, and also serves to help people keep track of others in the community. Having a unique name like Mutt makes it easy for people to remember who you are and remember if you're cool enough to invite to private parties. If you go by "John" then you're more difficult to keep track of without just using your full legal name everywhere.

FetLife is a cesspool, but remains the easiest way to find kink events in your area and keep up with friends you make in the kink community. The way I use it is mostly just for finding events, and seeing if people I met at other events and enjoyed might be attending an event I'm interested in. FetLife is not a dating app or a place to find people to cold-message about playing together. It's more like old fashioned Facebook.

Instagram is an increasingly popular way for people to keep up with kink events, but you should know that it is public information who follows an Instagram account. If you choose to use Instagram to keep up with kink events, you should be aware of the risk of being outed as kinky if your Instagram account is recognizably you. One time, I looked at the profile of a kink organization from my vanilla Instagram, and was immediately alerted by Instagram that my coworker was following that account under her legal name. Whoops! Less of a cesspool than FetLife, but use at your own peril.

Discord is another increasingly popular way for the kink community to keep up with each other. I do most of my socializing with kinksters, especially hypnokinksters, via Discord servers. It's more difficult to get invited to these servers, but that also can add an extra level of vetting that keeps the vibes good. Keep in mind that you can see on someone's profile every Discord server they have in common with you. So if you're in a discord server for your nascent workplace union, and that same account is in your city's local Kinky TNG discord server, you might be alerted to your coworkers being kinky when you look at their profiles (and vice versa).

TNG or "The Next Generation" refers to events targeted at people younger than age 35 (and in practice, usually more under-30s).

Be here to make friends and community first. When someone gives the vibe of just being on the hunt to find anyone willing to play with them, it's off-putting and taken as a red flag. You'll be more successful if you're here to exist in community and make friends first and foremost, and allow it to be a pleasant happenstance if you end up meeting someone with a mutually shared interest in playing with you.

Lastly, succeeding in the kink community is all about learning what you want, and being brave enough to state what you want openly and without shame. Everyone in this community is a nerdy weirdo, and nobody is going to see you as the uniquely weird one for having a fetish for clowns in lederhosen. Nobody is going to see you as the uniquely socially awkward one. Almost everyone in this community is nerdy, neurodivergent, queer, and/or socially awkward. So embrace your full unmasked weird and unique self, approach and talk to strangers, and make new friends.

Hopefully with these BDSM fundamentals, you'll be better equipped to become an evil master hypnotist who brainwashes the United Nations Security Council (or rather, does a hot scene where you roleplay brainwashing the Canadian Ambassador to Croatia.)