Fabulous! And no rush at all – I just suspect that the insight into what subs value in tops will help a lot of Doms too :)

That would be GREAT. I’ll send you a draft of my wishlist once I have it. It might be a while. And this division between natural traits and mental how-to is really interesting. Looking forward to it.

Do you know, I’d never really considered it, but you’ve given me some serious food for thought. There are so many how-to’s on the physical aspects of D/s, but relatively little on the mental discipline required of an excellent dom/domme or top. We ask *a lot* of the people who submit to us, and they trust us with a great deal. It’s vital that we cultivate a sort of converse discipline, so that everyone on both sides of the power dynamic is fundamentally safe.

So.. I’m going to see what I come up with. You mentioned a wishlist of traits – I’d be curious as to what it is. I’ve talked about similar wishlists with other dommes and subs, so I suspect it’s different for everyone, but, if you’re comfortable telling me, it would be interesting to see how a submissive’s wishlist reconciles with a dominant’s natural traits. If you’re comfortable sharing, I can email you if you’d prefer. Either way, thanks for the suggestion!

Restraint, self-discipline and mental clarity – YES. When you said this is something to consider, you meant you might consider writing this, right? Pretty please?

Because goodness knows I’m not qualified. I can write a wishlist (a certain moral arrogance would be on it), but not a how-to. I guess what I mean is that you have homed in on skills that people can work on improving. Whereas from outside, all I see are character traits, and because they sound innate there is the danger that they would encourage faking or giving up.

I agree with you about more sources being needed on how to be a *good* sadist. Unfortunately, there aren’t many that emphasize the need for restraint, self-discipline and mental clarity. I wish there were.. maybe something to consider somewhere down the line :) And for what it’s worth, I thought your presentation of the sub / bottom’s perspective was beautiful – the cat / mouse analogy really got me.

Thank you! Your comment means a lot to me. The dom’s point of view was all book learning for me, and it was a last-minute addition, so I’m really glad it rings true for you.

And thank you for being honest about the fear. I hope someone younger and struggling finds this post and your comment. I wish my sources (Raven Kaldera and Guy Baldwin) were available online – right now it seems like the people who will find their books are the ones who have already confronted their demons.

We still need a sadist to write about how to restrain oneself, though …

Thank you! That is exactly the same sentence that two sadist friends of mine have picked out. Which is interesting to me because although it is the central thesis, my own favourite line is “we live in each other’s minds.”

And I completely agree with what you say about people too often depicting actions/violence instead of feelings! I am reminded of Guy Baldwin saying that we are still lacking in fiction depicting the top’s point of view (which makes complete sense because after all, it’s the sub’s feelings which are the contested territory). I have a funny feeling that when dom authors try to depict the sub’s point of view and aren’t very good at it, that’s when they end up describing thud thud whack instead.

Oh good. And please feel free to email me if you’d like to bash at a tech problem together!

I love everything you said. I’m realizing I’m more of a masochist than I originally thought.
Word press has been difficult for me to figure out. Lol

Thank you! I hope it’s okay that I removed the duplicated comment? I’m still figuring out this WordPress thing.

Your comment is especially welcome because I had been worrying after one of my friends said my post triggered her. I thought maybe it was a bad decision to leave all the reasons why sadism doesn’t have to be abuse to a cat joke at the end.

By the way, I like your icon!