Thursday, September 24, 2009

Farewell to the Final Girl

You were caught on the crossfire of childhood and stardom,
blown on the steel breeze.

Come on you target for faraway laughter,

come on you stranger, you legend, you martyr, and shine!


- PINK FLOYD, Shine On You Crazy Diamond


When Niki Flynn informed me earlier this year that she was planning to retire soon, what was my reaction? Well, a great many things went through my head that day. Sadness, nostalgia, a sense of loss, also a sense of relief and optimism for her... Another thought I had pretty instantaneously was: "Oh, crap, that'll be another huge post I'll have to write!"

On second thoughts, I'm not going to do that, though. I'm not going to write a 4,000 word monstrosity (only a 1,500 word monstrosity). Because really, there isn't that much to add to what I've already said about Niki. The story of how we first met back in 2006 is recorded in Super Tuesday Serenade, one of my first blog posts. We made half a dozen video clips together, like The German Lesson and Who Has the Best Football Team?. We worked on German pet girl shoots in Life is a Circus and rampaged across the English countryside in The Wolfenstein Experiments.

So, if you've been reading my archives at all, you already know that Niki and I had a very special, deep friendship. If you've seen any of the clips, you know that we had a special creative and emotional chemistry. As I've said many times, she was my main inspiration for exploring my kink in earnest, for starting this blog and making spanking films myself - so in more ways than one, you wouldn't be reading these lines without her. Niki Flynn was a muse in the full sense of the word, to me and so many others. I once wrote: "How lucky we are that she exists. No mad scientist, no matter how big and complex his laboratory, could come up with a creature like this one." I still can't put it any better than that.

The only thing that now remains for me to say is: thank you, Nikita! Thank you for everything. It was a pleasure and an inspiration to see your work, and a privilege to get to know you as a friend. Of all the professional victims in the world, well, you were definitely one of them! And seriously... You changed my life. Niki Flynn will always haunt a special little corner in my heart - full of shadows, cobwebs, and whispers of Things Man Is Not Meant to Know.

Like everyone else who is both in the "friend" and in the "fan" camp, I have mixed feelings. As a friend, I'm truly happy. There is no doubt in my mind that Niki did the right thing, at the right time. I knew she had been feeling more and more burnt out, so when I got her mail, it wasn't actually a huge surprise. As well as that, nothing that really matters has changed - I'm still good friends with TAFKAN (The Antichrist Formerly Known As Niki), we still write each other and I'm sure we will meet again someday.

But of course, it's still the end of an era. There will be no more "Niki Flynn". As a fan and fellow blogger, I will miss her dearly. There won't be any more episodes of the "Niki and Ludwig Show", either. I'll never get to experience that particular creative buzz again, and neither will the viewers. Those days are over!

(On that note, a quick remark to the people who are already emailing me about how TAFKAN is and what she is doing: stop that, please. What TAFKAN really wants now is privacy. We should all respect that. Both Niki and Fiona are formally retired, and as sad as that may be, this is it. No comebacks, no more films, no more books, no not-blog entries, no email correspondence. And you're not getting any info from me, either. None, ever, full stop. So don't ask.)

The one thing I really regret is that Niki and I never made a "proper", i.e. full-length film together. Despite our long friendship and all the "public history" between the two of us, we never worked together professionally (unless you count my cameo at SM-Circus last year, where we shared about 20 seconds of screen time). Needless to say, we were always planning to make that big, awesome, epic CP movie. The culmination of the "Niki and Ludwig Show"! Our towering triumph! We had a finished script, a team of partners in crime, we even had the shooting date set once or twice... But it never happened. It wasn't anyone's fault, just unfortunate circumstances. For one stupid reason or another, we never got it together.

I'm still grumpy about that, and I suppose I always will be. But more importantly, I'm happy about what we did manage to create. It was just a series of little amateur clips, but as such, they were pretty neat. I'm proud of two in particular, Ludwig's Comeuppance and Shock Tactics Revisited. One is Niki's only F/M video ever, the other is just cute, laid-back banter and fun in a hotel room after a shoot. Neither is groundbreaking in technical or "CP action" terms, but both show sides of Niki which you didn't really see anywhere else. A very small, yet unique contribution to the Flynn oeuvre.

(On the subject of F/M videos, another footnote. This one for the sadistic pricks who have been pestering me about the football bet. Yes, I know that Niki still owes me a thrashing. No, we never got around to filming that, either. Trust me, no one would be happier than me if we had, because in that case, we would also have done the full-length (M/F) film! But TAFKAN's head just isn't in that world anymore, neither as a top nor as a bottom. I'll probably still do the clip someday, because betting debts are debts of honour. I'll find someone to take Niki's place. But I don't know who yet, or when, or where. Obviously, it would be most fitting if she was English. I'll keep you updated, but it will take a while for sure.)

I'm also glad that we managed to do the interview this month, the last ever interview with Garbo. I mean, Flynn. It turned out great and serves as another reminder of what we will all be missing now that she's retired to East 52nd Street. And while I'm tying up loose ends, let me throw this at you as well: with blessings from the Antichrist, a package of three short, previously unreleased video clips.


Farewell to the Final Girl clips:
Uploaded.net link

(Click on "Free Download", wait for the counter to count down, then solve the captcha and download the file. The video uses the Xvid codec and Lame MP3 for audio.)

Inside, you will find two more Dances with Werewolves promos we did last year, including the best one which I was saving up for last (after we shot all the supposedly Youtube-friendly stuff, which Youtube later pulled down, anyway, I wanted to film one "adult" promo at least!). The third clip is just a compilation of us goofing around outdoors. Again, the clips aren't groundbreaking, but who knows, they might be the last Niki Flynn videos that will ever be released. Unless the nitwits from the BBFC allow China Hamilton and Michael Stamp to release Enemy of the State, which I very much hope they do. In any case, these may very well be the last spanking video clips of Niki. And they are free.

The legacy of Niki Flynn is unique, and so was the woman herself. As a professional victim, a writer, a partner in crime, she really was one of a kind. When I first got to know her three years ago, I was struck by what we had in common. We both liked Lupus Pictures (obviously!), we both liked horror films, we both had an interest in history... We had (or seemed to have) similar feelings about spanking and CP. But looking back now, I am struck by the differences we found over time, and they are what made things interesting, I think. At the end of the day, we were two very different individuals, with a very different psychosexual makeup.

What I ended up doing as a blogger is very different as well (for one thing, Niki wrote shorter and less convoluted posts!). There were some people whose writing I tried to imitate, most of them outside the realm of kink. But I never did that with Niki. She always had such an individual style, even if you had tried to copy it, you could never have done it. Instead, she really was a muse - someone who inspired me to find my own voice. And that, in my mind, is the best kind of inspiration you can get.

Lebwohl, Niki. Und danke für alles.


9 comments:

Anonymous said...

"The time is gone,
The song is over,"

- PINK FLOYD, Dark Side of the Moon

You are a lucky fellow to have known and played with Niki Flynn "in real life". Thank you for sharing your feelings and "A Hovercraft Full of Eels". Has anyone ever mentioned how much you and she resemble one another? Not in stature, or temperament, of course. But you could easily be mistaken for brother and sister.

JamesM

SPANKEDHORTIC said...

"But you could easily be mistaken for brother and sister." Well except for the accents, of coarse :)

I've said a lot about Niki's departure and don't want to say much more but thanks for writing that tribute Ludwig and the clips. It was a nice parting gesture.

Prefectdt

Ursus Lewis said...

Thank you Ludwig for this farwell post to Niki. We all know she realy deserved that and her newly gained privacy as well!

Adrian Hardhand said...

Niki achieved something very rare: She acted out her fantasies so completely that they dropped of their own accord.

Yrs in pervery, Adrian

Ludwig said...

A belated reply @ JamesM: This is the first time anyone has told me that Niki and I resemble each other like brother and sister. But if you say so... Maybe there is a "separated at birth" story here! *laughs*

No, wait a minute. I already examined her DNA a long time ago, during my mad scientist experiments.

Bada Bing said...

Definitely wish 'Niki' the best of luck. She always looked like a boy anyway, and doesn't belong in anything involving females.

From the haircut, to the weird sneer she exhibited when she was being spanked, it was apparent that she needs to be in a different line of work.

Bada Bing!

Ludwig said...

I guess I'm bisexual after all, then! *wink*

Don't feed the troll.

Anonymous said...

Hullo. I hate to come with my hat in my hand, but I've gone and mistakenly deleted these. And now when I've gone to reclaim it, Rapidshare has removed the link. If possible, could I trouble you to reupload it?

Ludwig said...

@ Anonymous: I have no idea why the clips disappeared from Rapidshare - all my other files are still there and working fine. I have re-uploaded the three Farewell to the Final Girl clips now.

Sorry for taking so long to react, but you caught me at a suboptimal time. I took a few weeks break from blogging in November and am still catching up.