One Size Fits All

It’s interesting to watch play styles especially when you see the same Dom/Top play with different subs/bottoms. Sometime you notice a pattern.

A good Top tries to cater their play style to the person they are playing with unless the person they are playing with is giving up complete control to them as part of the scene. Catering to a need requires a certain amount of communication, of course. When I play, I like to know a little bit about what the person I’m playing with likes or perhaps wants during that particular session. It might be role play or discipline or “just because” but I need to know even a tiny nugget so that I have some idea what I need to mentally prepare to do (or what implements, if any, are needed).

Every so often, I see a Top or Dom playing that I’ve seen play before and I notice something – they seem to always do the same thing in the same way. They start with one thing, move on to Number Two and so on as if that is the only way they are willing to do it seemingly whether the bottom wants it that way or not. I almost feel that they are saying, “This is the way I do it and if you play with me this is the way you’re getting it”. To be quite honest, I’d be bored if I did the same thing, the same way over and over but to each his own.

I’ve also seen people do things that obviously are not working for the bottom. For example (Disclaimer: This is off the top of my head and not meant to reflect anything I’ve seen from any particular person…phew): Let’s say part of a persons repertory is to use that spiky wheel thingy – Wartenburg or Fahrvergnügen or whatever. I can see those things as either a sensation you like or hate – I don’t see a middle ground here. Personally, I would find it really annoying because I tend to hate a prickly or pointy feeling on my skin so I can’t really see just whipping one of those things out and using it during a scene without knowing whether it is something a person might enjoy. For all I know, they’ve felt it before and absolutely hate it.

I think it’s just a tiny bit presumptuous to think that because Persons One through Nine enjoyed a particular thing that the next one will as well. For all you know, Persons Ten through Forty-Six will just give you that WTF look.