Underrated Dom Archetype: The Gamemaker

A dom role model for me is Alex Horne from Taskmaster. For real.

He doesn’t resemble anything you’d see on the cover of a BDSM paperback, either in form or manner: he seems completely unassuming, and often affects that he’s just there to help. But he is in fact the orchestrator of the labyrinth the contestants find themselves in - he is the one whose plan directs their furious activity, and he enjoys that. They often try to tease him, but when it comes to the rules of the games, the mild mannered englishman suddenly becomes a steel wall: “All the instructions are on the card”.

So this is very different than the dominant who commands obedience by sheer force of will and presence, and also from the “daddy dom” whose vibe is more nurturing. I was tempted to call what I’m talking about the “puppetmaster”, “mastermind” or “manipulator”. But these are not quite right, because they imply deception and coercion, which isn’t what I’m going for. The gamemaker offers an experience that you volunteered for - and then feel a slight (exciting) pit in your stomach wondering if you’re really up for this.

Again, that dom might not seem that dominating on the surface. They might act like the scientist at the control panel, pretending not to be getting aroused but just insisting that you go to the next test unit. They might be faux sympathetic: oh I’m sorry, I know it’s hard, but you can do this! They might just be whistling in the corner as their grand design plays out and it becomes your entire world for a little while.

When I say game, it doesn’t have to be a complicated, Mousetrap-esque plan that takes weeks to plan (though those can be fun!). Another big role model is Sean from Hot Ones, who pretends to be just a buddy, as the inexorable structure of his show compels the famous person to answer questions through higher and higher levels of pain. That’s a game. (on a very similar note: hysterical literature]

Sometimes I do make an elaborate plan, but most of my favourite games in the hypnokink realm are equally simple. For example: you start out defiant but your arousal keeps growing until you inevitably beg to be allowed to come. You desperately want to touch yourself but a hypnotic suggestion has paralyzed you. We’re having a wrestling match but you’re drugged, and keep getting sleepier and weaker. It’s all in your mind, but for as long as you consent, those game conditions are real.

But there are many wonderful equivalents by my colleagues in other kinks, e.g. predicament bondage. Anything that involves artificial restrictions, challenges, puzzles, impossible choices. In every case, though it’s a simple mechanism, we’ve wound it up, and it’s delicious to watch it go, and you go through it, exactly like we planned. (though some of the best games were co-designed with the bottom!)

Other examples of this archetype that come to mind, in no particular order of (pretend) wickedness: Sam Reich, Johnny Knoxville, GlaDOs, Jigsaw, Jareth the Goblin King, Roberta Williams who invented King’s Quest, Q from Star Trek. If any of those have turned you on, you might enjoy playing with a gamemaker.

What is the making of a gamemaker? Well you probably loved stories, probably had at least a shortlived fascination with stage magic, probably have at least tried DMing (in the D&D sense). (You might have had a period, hopefully long ago, of being an insufferable "debate me" atheist) There might be a fascination with technology, making the bytes or the gears dance the way you want. The common thread is mental domination. Your mind is controlling the situation, and this might mean commanding someone’s attention and taking over their reality - but without the element of bullying, or winning in a struggle.

All that said, gamemaker is not all of who I am as a dom: sometimes I just want to pounce, or order someone around. But I would say at least half the time I have sex with my spouse there is some kind of hypnotic game involved - either an old favourite, or one I just came up with that day, sometimes while daydreaming during a boring meeting. Some people crochet; a hobby for me is weaving webs that I hope you will be happy to be trapped in.

 

 

Managing Your Disappointment Is a Consent Skill

Anytime you proposition someone, whether it's a long shot or a "sure thing", disappointment is a possibility. You shouldn't stop propositioning people for fear of disappointment, but at the same time that possibility has to be in your mind, and you have to be prepared to manage it. If you can't, if you make it the other person's problem, then that's a consent issue.

You have to practice the polite, friendly, "ok, no worries!" and then peace out. In an ideal world, you're super philosophical about it, you don't even feel disappointed. But in the real world - it usually means hiding it.

After that you manage yourself: maybe this looks like texting a friend to hang out, maybe it looks like cueing up a show or videogame you're excited about, maybe listening to country music - the music of pain - maybe doing something creative, maybe taking yourself out to dinner. But it's so important to learn to like your own company for such times - you must never put your hope in someone to save you from time with yourself.

I have to admit, when I see or read about men not holding it together in the face of rejection, eg many accounts of male behaviour on fetlife, I get a bit smugly judgmental. A part of me is like, "bro: man up!" But it is a tough thing to learn, and I do think men don't get as much support around managing their feelings around that - I feel like women are at least offered more advice about that.

And on the flip side, I know unregulated men are often at least a whiny, passive aggressive pain in the ass when disappointed, and not infrequently scary. There's even a micro trend of "incel horror movies" about men trying to take away women's ability to reject them, eg Obsession or Companion.

Interestingly, the non monogamous, slutty, granular-consent world of kink offers the chance for many new types of disappointment. Maybe someone only wants to do one limited thing with you, when you would like to do more. Maybe someone is fucking half the people at an orgy, and you're not in that half. Maybe they wanted to have sex with you for a while, and now they only want to hang out as friends. Maybe they only want to play with you once in a while, when they're in a certain mood. You have to be so real with yourself, and the other person, of whether that works for you - or if you need to take a step back, and switch into getting-over-that-person mode. But ultimately it's a beautiful thing, that, even when one side is thirsting for more, these customized-consent hookups can bloom. It's so good when you can look into your heart and find true appreciation for your time together, whatever form it took.

Besides just managing your own emotions, which therapy and other kinds of self help can improve, I know two things that make this better.

The first is a feeling of abundance, that there are lots of possibilities around, multiple people in the getting-to-know-them pipeline. That means hustling: getting out there and meeting people, even when you don't feel like it. Sometimes that means finding the right community, even when it takes significant travel time. And then proactively seeing if there's more there with the people you meet.

On this point, something the often-toxic PUA world gets right is that fixating on one person, what they call "one-itis", like it has to happen with my cute coworker or neighbour or rope instructor, is a recipe for disaster: both for having flatlining love and sex life, and also for putting pressure on someone to not let you down. (I hate moves and TV shows that buy into this trope, like to me How I Met Your Mother is a horror movie) Leave that person alone and think about how to make abundant possibilities.

The second is, this just gets easier with time and experience. I've had a lot of sexual and romantic disappointments, some of them super embarrassing. And I survived.

But I've also had lots of things work out. I've had people I thought were way out of my league be into me, I've had things just happen out of the blue with no effort. I've thought that something was definitely not happening, only to discover that the person was just busy or distracted and pinged me back much later (and being super chill with the initial silence or "no" vastly increases the chances of that happening). And I've been the one to disappoint other people - and being on the other side of it has given me a lot of compassion for when people have to let me down.

I will say, if you're in some kind of woe is me spiral of, "it never works", I'm doomed to always be the one who's disappointed, there's bigger problems going on, and those are not the fault of any individual person rejecting you - it's a signal that it's time to work on yourself.

Don't let fear of disappointment stop you hitting on people, in fact if you're a conscientious, consent aware person you probably could be doing it more. As long as you're doing it in appropriate ways and times, it's all good practice in surfing that extremely human and unavoidable feeling - disappointment.

PS Sex blogger and podcaster Kate Sloan has a lovely piece about appreciating one-sided, aching crushes for their own sake, as fuel for self-improvement and creativity, well worth a read. 

  

What Freedom Feels Like: Oglaf, Rebel Dykes and Uncensored Exultation

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