A Dragoon's Life

(This is part two of my behind-the-scenes report on Lupus Pictures. You can read the first part here.)


Ladies and gentlemen, my esteemed readers. May I kindly invite you to "A Garden Party", the behind-the-scenes story. Two weeks ago, I wrote at length about the prehistory of the shoot, and if you laboured through that one, you'll appreciate what follows now all the more. I've decided to expand my Lupus report to a trilogy - I thought I could do it all in one more massive 3,000 word post, but even so, I would have to leave out too much cool stuff. Therefore, I'm splitting it up and there will be two more posts. I've already written it all down, so I can promise you that there will be no more delays. You'll definitely read the end of the trilogy on Friday.

On to the story of the shoot itself, then. I should start by saying that, in the meantime, I've watched the finished movie for the first time - and I'm very pleased with it. My fellow guest star and blogger Adele Haze summed it up nicely in her own mini-critique: "A cute little film – not ground-breaking by any extent, but nicely put together, and prettily shot." I'd call it a delightful little outdoor oddity. In terms of general look and feel, it reminds me a bit of The Fairy Tale and other "small gems" by Lupus. Obviously, this piece of comedy was never designed to become one of their "big" epic titles, but I think it stands up very well against the "small" ones. It has a palpable flair and charm of its own, the setting is certainly memorable for a spanking video, the typical Lupus humour is well in evidence, and the visuals are indeed gorgeous.

Hell, I can even live with my own contribution (barely). Adele was nice enough to describe my uniform-clad look as "splendid" and "dashing", and I agree that it is pretty much okay. Predictably, there is much room for improvement in the acting, the delivery of the lines... But it's not as horrible as I feared, I can halfway tolerate everything, and really, the look was the single most important aspect of this character, anyway. If I had to give out school marks, I'd give myself a C overall, and a B to the movie itself. Ack, just see it for yourself! Rating one's own work is always difficult, and it's not really my job, it's yours.

One thing is for sure, it's a stark contrast to my first spanking movie with Mood Pictures. You can see that right away by looking at the trailers. Whereas the Inmates "prison documentary" was claustrophobic, gritty and oppressive, A Garden Party is lush, sunny and basically a light-hearted feel-good romp. A romp with some serious canings in it - the final scene with Adele, in particular, is quite emotional and intense. But fairly light-hearted overall! Like the films themselves, the experiences of shooting them were also very different. Both great in their way, but not remotely alike.

Into the Wolves' Lair

It starts with the travelling itself. I'd been alone on my trip to Budapest, and emotionally I had approached it like a Jonathan Harker-esque journey into darkness. That's pretty much what it turned out to be, too. Also, the whole thing was incredibly quick: check into the hotel, sleep a bit, go straight to the shoot the next morning, work for 24 hours non-stop, go back to the hotel at 5 AM, then go home. By the end, I was so exhausted and over-excited at the same time, I was shuffling around like a zombie on acid.

Prague was the total opposite. I went there with my girlfriend Kaelah and we were together literally the whole time. We arrived well before the shoot for a few days holiday, so I actually saw something of the city this time - we went to Prague Castle, Dalibor's Tower, various museums, nice Czech restaurants... When the time came to do the movie, Adele and Mr. Haze were there, whom I had both met before. And we met with the Lupus guys in advance, so I got to know them a bit as well before the filming started. It felt much more like a "group thing" than my first shoot. The pace was less frantic and the vibe more familiar. The excitement was just as big, but it was a different kind - the "uncharted territory" exploration at Mood versus the strange, immensely satisfying sense of "homecoming" I felt at Lupus.

(The werewolves at work.)

Another difference was that I had a script to study in the days leading up to the shoot, because I was going to do some acting this time. I only uttered two immortal words in the entire Mood film ("Fuck you!" in Hungarian). My character in "A Garden Party" didn't have Shakespearean amounts of lines, either - but at least he had some dialogue worth the name.

The story was about a small-town family in the Bohemian countryside, sometime in the late 19th century. Two young ladies of good standing, Anna and Julie. Their despotic grandmother, Hermina Postolka. And her husband Ferdinand, a jovial man who likes to "jolly around" with other women. Especially with their Ukrainian housemaid Olena! You can probably guess who played the maid... As for me, I played Hans the dragoon, a member of the local military garrison, Anna's suitor and almost a family member. Finally, you had a local druggist and his pretty wife.

The grandmother sets up a formal garden party with everyone attending (she wants some new ointments from the druggist). And it all goes from there. I won't spoil the delightfully silly plot for you, but as you can imagine, the two Czech girls get thrashed for something or another before the movie is over, and the Ukrainian maid gets it, too. There would be one birching-followed-by-a-caning scene with the girls, featuring the grandmother and Hans as the tops. Later on, the grandmother forces her husband to punish the maid (for jollying around once too often). Adele would get her gift from Lupus, and I would get to increase my spanking victim count to eight.

I liked how the script made fun of every single character and their various weaknesses - without being condescending towards them. They were caricatures and likeable at the same time, typical of Lupus. I imagined that, with the right people in these roles, it could be a lot of fun. Who would they be? The dragoon and the maid were obvious. I had no idea about the others - Lupus never mentioned anything in our correspondence, and I never asked. I suppose I found it more enjoyable to just speculate. Whoever Anna would turn out to be, I knew that I was most nervous about the opening scene of the movie with her and Hans. Not only did it contain most of my lines, it was also supposed to be a love scene - and a comedic one at that. Well, at least I only had to seduce one of the girls, not both, as they originally told me...

(Lars Moebius teaching me "bad Czech".
He was a big help in learning the lines.)

Kaelah and I first hooked up with the Lupus team on Thursday. Producer Thomas Marco came out to meet us, accompanied by Jan Zacek. Basically, we had a drink with Sigmund Freud from The Last Case of Dr. Freud and with his younger version from Crima and Punishment. I had exchanged many mails with both of them and it was great to finally meet.

They quickly filled me in about the movie. Anna was going to be played by Ester Slaba, one of their most experienced "professional victims". She must have done a dozen films by now. I had first seen her in "From the Headmaster's Study: The Nightmare" back in 2003 and had lusted after her ever since, so the news that I was going to work with her (and cane her) were welcome indeed. Vera Vranova was the other girl. She was newer, but had also done a few videos already.

I was also pleased to find out that the druggist and his wife were going to be played by real-life couple Maximilian Schubert and Katerina Schubertova (formerly Tetova). Katerina had been one of the company's biggest stars in the old days, in films like the classic Stalin trilogy. Even though she was retired from "active duty" now, I thought that her presence added a certain extra gravitas to the film. But really, I was most happy about having Ester Slaba in the cast. I later told Kaelah that I thought it was a really nice surprise. "I noticed...!" she replied sarcastically.

After this first chat, we went to the Lupus Pictures studio for a quick costume trial. The trip over there turned out to be memorable in its own right. Thomas describes his vehicle as "a toy, not a car", and he drives it accordingly. We were in dense city traffic most of the time, so in absolute terms, we weren't going very fast. But we certainly accelerated and decelerated more than any other car on the road! As the g-loads mounted, I noticed how Kaelah was growing paler all the time and clawing deeper and deeper into the rear seat cushion next to me. My father had been a real madman at driving, so I was used to rides like this since childhood and just grinned. But truth be told, I was a bit pale myself by the time Thomas stopped at our destination (brakes glowing).

The famous Lupus Pictures studio. I had heard so much about it from friends like Niki Flynn and Adele, I sometimes felt like I had been there myself. But of course, the real place still looked totally different from my imagination. Since "A Garden Party" would be shot at another location, this was my only chance to see it. I took everything in: the main stage where they did most of the filming, the equipment, the stored props and costumes... I tried on three soldier's uniforms and we selected the one you see me wearing in the film. We also chose the cane which I'd be using on the girls - as usual, I had obsessed about the details a lot, the type of wood, the exact measurements and whatnot. So that was one of my main questions to Thomas. On the side, he showed us some still photographs from "Wild Party 3", which they had just filmed.

(A garden party, a physical examination, and the rubbing in of ointments.
Hans is snooping.)

We all met again the next day for a pre-shoot dinner. Adele and Mr. Haze had arrived in Prague by now, and Zbysek Podhajsky, the director, was there as well. Zbysek eagerly shook my hand and said how much he was looking forward to the movie. Then he said: "I think the beard should go!" Much to the amusement of Kaelah and Adele in particular. I played coy for a moment, but I was okay with the plan, really - if the Lupus girls were going to be beaten black and blue for the amusement of the audience, the least I could do on my part was shave off the damn beard. I agreed that Hans needed a more authentic 19th century-style look, with a longer (fake) moustache.

The one thing everyone was most worried about was the weather. The movie was almost entirely set outdoors and the forecast for Saturday was "mixed", which made it all a bit of a lottery. Do we have an alternative plan, I asked, an indoor location ready to go? "No, nothing!" laughed Thomas. So, not to be pessimistic, but what happens if it does rain? "Fuck it!" he declared defiantly. "Then we'll just have a garden party in the rain!"

Getting to work

The movie was shot at a country house location which fans will recognise from "Fairy Tale: The Magic Purse". First thing in the morning, I sat down with an assistant to get my hair done - and the beard shaved. I was almost looking forward to the result. I'd had the beard for ten years and I had no idea how I was going to look without it. My fellow international travellers watched the procedure with rapt fascination. Well? Adele said I looked "different". Kaelah said I looked "like Wesley Crusher" (which, from her, is supposed to be a compliment). Mr. Haze grinned and said I looked "like fifteen". But he was only jealous because he wasn't in the film, you see.

Zbysek came over and informed me that, from now on, he was only going to call me "Hans". Using our character names was his way of getting himself into directing mode! Fine, I said, whatever makes you happy. I later noticed that he didn't do it consistently, though. He called me "Hans", he called the Czech actors by their real names, and with Adele, it was fifty-fifty - half of the time, Zbysek called her "Olena" and the other half "Adella". But he sure did a fine job directing, so whatever it is he did with the names, it seems to have worked for him.

The first scene to be filmed was the love scene with Ester and me (as a matter of fact, almost the whole movie was filmed chronologically, with only a few exceptions). Well, I thought, at least we're getting the most awkward one out of the way first! In the scene, Hans the dragoon persuades Anna to a round of "horse style" sex against the manor wall. We had a few lines back and forth, "and then you lift her skirt and you have sex", explained Zbysek. He held up a finger in mock warning: "But not for real!" Ester giggled and nodded vigorously. I was in complete agreement - I'm a purist and I don't even like too much simulated sex in my CP movies.

Ester and I nailed it (if you'll pardon the pun) after three or four takes. Instead of playing the brash, impetuous military man Zbysek envisioned, I went for something more suave, what Kaelah describes as my "tomcat wants milk" routine. It came more naturally to me and I thought it would fit the character equally well. However, when I watch the finished scene today, it comes across as rather flat instead of suave. I guess wild over-acting would have been the better choice after all.

("All dress must down!" for Ester Slaba, left, and Vera Vranova.
Adele Haze is still in her maid's uniform.)

When I walked back to the others after the final take, Kaelah was teasing me: "You look a lot more enthusiastic when we do the horse style...!" I grinned back at her: "I thought you'd be glad about that!"

Humour, plus a lot of honesty, openness and trust, was our way of dealing with the situation we found ourselves in. Kaelah and I had only recently become a couple. Hell, the first time we met in person had only been half a year ago! Now we were at a video shoot with one of the biggest producers in the business. A Lupus set can be intimidating for even the most blasé kinky veteran. For Kaelah, it was only the latest stop on a very fast, very crammed journey: first time exploring one's kink, first time surfing the net for spanking erotica, first contact with like-minded people, first real-life meeting, first spanking experience, first "vanilla" sex, first relationship... Most people go through these "firsts" in a matter of several years. Kaelah did them all in less than one. Now, this would be the first time where she would see other people playing "live" - at a professional video shoot, of all places! And not just random people, but her boyfriend as well.

Add to this the fact that Kaelah isn't as much of a movie buff as me, and that she isn't keen on Lupus-style severity, either. You can imagine that she felt queasy about the trip. It came much sooner in our relationship than either of us would have liked. But the shoot had been scheduled before we met and Kaelah was adamant that she didn't want me to cancel it. Me going alone would have been even worse. So, really, the only option we had was for her to just come along. As I expected, she did it with her usual courage and determination. If she felt nervous, she didn't show much of it. Once we were on the set together, she even started enjoying the experience. Movie buff or not, she found it highly interesting to see the work process and how everything is done.

Kaelah's teasing told me that she was okay. As well as that, I had my most difficult scene out of the way, so I felt considerably more relaxed. The next, long part of the shoot was taken up by the garden party itself, and by an "examination" of the Czech girls by the druggist, behind a changing screen (also outdoors). I had little to do except sitting around, munching my cake and pretending that I was following the Czech conversation (of course, I knew what was basically going on from the script). Somewhere in the middle, I had one more line.

(Maximilian Schubert, with wife Katerina,
being his usual somber and serious self.)

In the email exchanges with Lupus, I had never been able to ascertain whether my lines would be mostly Czech or mostly German. The Czech lands were part of the Austrian Empire at the time and German was used as a lingua franca throughout much of Eastern Europe. At the same time, it made sense that a German about to marry into a Czech family would know some Czech as well (even if he was a silly bugger like Hans). We could have used either language in my interaction with the others, or a mix. Lupus left it open until the evening before the shoot, when we talked it through and decided that I should just try it all in Czech.

It wasn't a lot of dialogue, but when you are memorising everything phonetically because you don't know the language at all, simple sentences feel like paragraphs. And with many of the words, I had no idea how to pronounce them in the first place. Lars Moebius, the veteran Lupus actor who played the grandfather, was a huge help. He sat with me on the set, read the lines to me and even wrote them down in phonetic spelling - "bad Czech", as he called it. Thomas Marco said he loved my Czech. He thought it was laugh-out-loud funny: "That's exactly what we wanted, a really heavy German accent!" Well, I can't say that the heaviness was part of the act - it came rather naturally!

Lars was awesome, anyway, as was the actress who played the grandmother, Tereza Tomaskova. The two of them make for a hilarious couple and carry most of the film in my view. Maximilian and Katerina were great, too, as the druggist and his wife. There was a palpable sweetness about them. Max was also a total goofball off-camera, just like Niki had described him. At one point, he stood behind the old-fashioned changing screen, grimacing and moaning ecstatically, pretending to masturbate. That cracked me up like nothing else on that day.

When the time drew nearer for the CP scenes, I dared a joke of my own. Zbysek explained that the girls would be mostly naked, so I stole Max's legendary line from The Exchange Student and yelled: "All dress must down!" Max broke into roaring laughter and joined in: "All! Dress! Must down!" When I later walked by Kaelah, grinning, she just smiled forgivingly and shook her head: "You couldn't resist, could you?"

During the whole shoot, it only rained one single time, which forced a 20 minute break (save the cameras! save the cakes!). Apart from that, we made rapid progress. Thomas and Zbysek were in their element. The crew carried out their tasks like clockwork - calm and without hurrying, but fast. It was without a doubt the most focused, most professional shoot I've attended so far. By mid-afternoon, we only had the action scenes left to do.

The formerly clouded sky had cleared entirely and the garden was bathed in sunlight, as if to set the stage for the things to come. Near the manor wall where I had done the love scene with Ester a few hours ago, the Lupus team were now setting up a wooden bench, ropes, a birch and a cane...

To be continued in the third and final part of my behind-the-scenes report, on Friday.

("Girl, cake, cane". A still life.)

Movie Review: Illegal Download

Producer:
Pain4Fem (released in 2004)

Entire Story In Fewer Words Than Are In This Sentence:
An object lesson for pirates. Yarrr!

Victim Appeal:
The spring of 2004 was an interesting time for CP movie enthusiasts, with two new producers appearing on the scene who quickly attracted attention: Mood Pictures from Hungary and Pain4Fem from Slovakia. Both were from places that hadn't really been "on the map" before as far as spanking videos are concerned, both featured plenty of model "eye candy" in combination with some proper beatings, and both, predictably, became immensely commercially successful. I already reviewed the first movie by Mood, Ancient Regime. Today I'm reviewing Pain4Fem's debut, "Illegal Download".

Two blonde girls get thrashed in this one, Nicol and Kelly. I don't know anything about Nicol, except that she later did one more film with P4F, "The Thieves". The voluptuous Kelly (Norton) aka Katerina, of course, became a company mainstay and one their most well-known "faces" (or bottoms, if you prefer).

Gratuitous Sadism:
The two of them play schoolgirls who have downloaded illegally shared music files from the internet, using the school's computer. They are found out and the headmistress informs them that this is not only against school rules, but also an offense (actually, in the real world, downloading such files isn't usually treated as an offense, although uploading is). She has no choice but to inform the police and expel them from the school. The girls plead for mercy, but they are sent to their room.

A teacher argues that "destroying the girls' whole lives" because of such a download would be too harsh (hey, I concur!). The headmistress says that, in the old days, it was easier - the girls would simply have been caned, and that would have been the end of the matter. But today, corporal punishment is forbidden. The teacher responds that, in all probability, the girls would prefer such a punishment over being expelled from the school. Well, you can see where this is going...

A deal is made that, if the pupils voluntarily accept a dose of corporal punishment, there will be no further consequences. Since this is a fantasy movie, they agree! Not only that, it also turns out that what the headmistress has in mind is a full multi-implement "session", including an OTK beginning, a strapping (she refers to the instrument as a "whip", but it's a strap, really), and a caning. Where can I apply for a teaching post at this school? I could do history and German.

Anyway, the whole thing takes place up in the school's attic, because that is where they stored all the CP-related stuff after it was outlawed, you see. The headmistress bends the girls over her knee for a hand spanking, first on the panties, then on the bare, before they take turns tied to a wooden bench while the strap and the cane make an impact. By the end, they have lost their school uniforms (the skirts were ridiculously short, anyway) and are both stark naked. The action is somewhere between light and medium-level and leaves some visible stripes. There are some repetitions from different camera angles, but my estimate is that Nicol and Kelly get around 25 individual cane strokes each, give or take a few.

Two footnotes: one, the female teacher (who just stands around during the second half of the video, witnessing the punishment and looking pretty) is played by Nicoleta aka Nicole, another Czech porn girl. She gets caned in Pain4Fem's second film, "Lazy Maids". Secondly, one of the schoolgirls (Nicol, not to be confused with Nicoleta!) pees all over herself while she is lying on the bench, right before the caning starts. I'm not into that myself, but there are all kinds of fetishes out there, so maybe you are...

Best Reactions:
The action is considerably lighter than in some of Pain4Fem's later efforts, but both (vanilla) models react in a rather vocal and, I believe, genuine way. I liked Kelly's shrieks and sobs better among the two.

Best Line:
When the headmistress confronts the pupils about the music downloads, they start to defend themselves: "But a thousand others also do this...!" She cuts them off: "What others do is not of interest to me."

Good point against a lame excuse, isn't it?

Nice Psychological Touch:
Well, I enjoyed the whole "semi-consensual" scenario, "you can choose CP or we expel you from the school". You know I have a fondness for that. Also, it was kind of amusing that Pain4Fem would choose illegal filesharing as the subject for their first release. Especially because they became one of the most active and successful spanking video producers in fighting piracy. Oh, and I liked how the headmistress and the teacher take a trip to the attic to "check if everything is still there" (caning bench, et cetera!) before the action starts. Silly, but a nice buildup nonetheless.

How Good Is It Really?
The summary is simple on this one. If you are not a P4F fan, there really is no reason to see it, because it is a first attempt and not even one of their more polished films. If you are a fan, however, then you will definitely want to see it. For nostalgic reasons, and because many of the company's trademarks are already there: a picturesque little outdoor intro, melodramatic music, long (sometimes overlong) preparation and buildup scenes, Kelly Norton...

What You Learned:
When I watched "Illegal Download" again for the review, I noticed that Peter Schober, the Bratislava-based Austrian who runs Pain4Fem, is not in it - not even in a cameo role. I had remembered it differently, probably because the guy is omnipresent in pretty much everything else they do! "Interesting", I thought, and looked through their entire catalogue (just the previews on their site, not my video collection). Indeed, from what I can tell on a quick survey, there are only two movies among their 30 plus so far in which Peter doesn't appear - this one and "Pocket Money". So if you are a total F/F purist for some reason, that might be another incentive to check it out.

The Company of Wolves

The movie I shot with Lupus Pictures, "A Garden Party", just came out today. Time for me to post my behind-the-scenes report. My fellow international guest star Adele Haze already gave her account of our exploits in The annotated Lupus tweets, Remembering the Pain and Lupus marks in development. I recorded some first impressions (partly building on Adele's) right after coming back from Prague, in The Doubly Annotated Lupus Tweets. The full treatment I'm doing now comes in two parts: this one deals with the prehistory up to the shoot, the next one (which I'll publish next Wednesday) with the shoot itself. [Edit: Actually, I ended up writing three parts in total! This one here, and two more which deal with the shoot itself.]

("A Garden Party", featuring Adele Haze and me in the wolves den)

So, folks, this is all I'm going to write about today - prehistory. I'm sincerely sorry to tantalise you like this again, with another long-winded hors d'oeuvre before the meat and potatoes of the main course. Bear with me, I'll try not to be too boring. And it really has to be this way - if ever a project required delving into the background, it's this one. I mean, where to start? I've been a die-hard Lupus fan for almost ten years now. They still remain my favourite CP movie producer today. And even though I never met them in person until a couple of months ago, I have more personal history and more memories associated with them than with any of their rivals.

In other words, working with them was a long, long held dream come true. Now that I've done it, I feel a sense of "arrival", of a gap having been filled, even more than after my first movie. To really convey it all, I have to go back quite a bit.

Rigid East and I

The first time I saw a film by the wolves was in 2001. Back then, of course, they still called themselves Rigid East, and I had no idea that I would ever write a blog or become a part-time S&M pornstar. As a matter of fact, I was a complete spanko virgin, with no practical experiences whatsoever and no real contacts to like-minded people. All I had were my fantasies, the stuff I occasionally read or watched on the internet, and a fledgling video collection. Which was alright, I didn't desire anything more at the time. But I was always a major film buff, and it frustrated me to no end that most of the spanking videos out there were such a waste of time, that I couldn't find anything closer to the visions in my mind. There seemed to be nothing that even remotely resembled a decent film, or even decent porn.

Most of what I'd seen came from a glossy paysite called Hardchannels, which has long since ceased to exist. They had a couple thousand video clips you could browse through, most of it regular fucking, but a bit of spanking and CP as well. Of course, what passed for "spanking and CP" in those days, when a 5 MB clip was considered a big download, was usually rather pathetic. Contrived pseudo-BDSM play featuring fake-breasted bimbos in tacky whips n' chains-type dungeons. Lame, pointless crap by producers like Bizarre Video or London Enterprises. That's how awful it was! If you found one moderately attractive girl somewhere and she got four, five strokes with a cheesy little flogger amidst tons and tons of uninspired lesbian fondling, you could consider yourself lucky.

The best videos I had managed to locate so far were from California Star. They had some actual, "serious" punishment scenarios - schoolgirls, juvenile delinquents, secretaries. And they actually spanked the girls, sometimes even leaving visible marks. Whoa! That was the creme de la creme for me at the time. Still very far from perfect, but halfway watchable at least and containing the odd scene that was genuinely exciting. I had resigned myself to the fact that, in all probability, this was as good as it would ever get.

("Wild Party", an early Rigid East classic, 2000)

So that was the context when I discovered Rigid East, and you can imagine how that discovery blew me away. I still remember the exact time, January 2001, second week. Though not the exact details - I think someone dropped the name on a kinky Yahoo group I was reading, with the remark that those guys were making some pretty good stuff. Anyway, I followed the lead, wherever it was, and golly gee, it certainly changed my idea of what was possible in a spanking video. "Pretty good stuff", yeah... "Frighteningly perfect" was more like it!

It wasn't just that they had the most beautiful female victims and the hardest, most vicious CP action I had ever seen - beatings that made you wince in your seat, with welts, screams, blood and tears. It was the combination of all that with the stories they told and the effort at real filmmaking. The historical drama, the biting humour, the fairy tales... To find both of these realms united, one that pleased the sadist in me and one that pleased the movie buff, was almost too good to be true. It was a holy grail uncovered. Movies like that really existed! Which also meant that other people like that, like me, really existed - they had to be, if they made films like this. Quite a revelation for someone at this closeted stage.

Adding yet another facet to the appeal, you had the whole "Eastern European" thing and the fact that nobody knew anything about this strange Rigid East company at the time. I never bought into the urban legends claiming that they were criminals who abduct poor, starving Czech girls - even before first-hand accounts by people like Niki Flynn became available, you only had to use your eyes and a little common sense to figure out that this wasn't a very credible scenario. But the legends and the heated debates on forums like British Spanking did create a certain mystique, an aura of dread, which I thought was way cool. I love it when the self-important "moral outrage" idiots in our community get all huffy and hysterical about something, and I was thankful to Rigid East (whoever they may be!) for providing me with lots of entertainment on that front, too.

So, I became an avid admirer, I watched the company's development from "Rigid East" to "Lupus Pictures", and I kept following every title they put out. Wild Party and its sequel, Stalin, the Headmaster's Study series... Not all of them were timeless masterpieces - like everyone else, RGE / Lupus have put out their share of lesser videos and outright mediocrities over the years. But in their inspired moments, they are still the best in the business as far as I'm concerned. Rivals like Mood Pictures or Pain4Fem may have appeared, who also do severe, "tough" videos with gorgeous girls and slick production values - at times, even harder than their predecessors. But the Czechs remain the only producer who combines that kind of action with that level of "true" filmmaking ambition. This is what sets them apart.

(Niki Flynn in "The Exchange Student", 2004)

In 2004, La Grande Flynn burst onto the spanking video scene with The Exchange Student. The first Western model to work with the infamous werewolves from the East. The rest, as they say, is history. Here, my relationship with Lupus changes from simply being a fan to something that is more personal and had a much more profound impact on my life. In time, Niki and I got in contact over the internet, we became dear friends, and more than anyone else, she inspired me to explore my kink and my fantasies. By that time, I was no longer a spanko virgin, I had already met some people and played a couple of times. But it was Niki who really got the ball rolling. In Super Tuesday Serenade, I wrote that, without her, this blog would not exist - and that's the plain truth. By extension, it is equally true to say that, without Lupus, neither she nor "Ludwig" would exist.

When I say that I have more history with the wolves than with any other producer, long before I ever got to know them personally, this is what I mean. You have to keep it in mind to better understand what doing a video with them was like for me - hence the lengthy introduction. Even though I'd never been there, it almost felt like a sort of homecoming.

Developmental history of a picnic

The video itself - what ended up becoming Lupus title LP-068, "A Garden Party" - had a long and storied gestation period in its own right. It goes back to the middle of last year. I had recently started the blog, and even more recently done a few video clips with Niki. The latter was very much an experiment for me, an "extracurricular" thing - my main ambition as Ludwig was (and still is) to be a writer, a commentator, an observer. But since I was such a movie buff and a regular movie critic, it made sense for me to do one myself sometime. I wanted to get my own feet wet, at least once. So we shot the clips, which was a lot of fun, and we were planning to shoot a proper, full-length film sometime in the summer, directed by Lucy McLean of Northern Spanking.

For one reason or another, that never worked out, but in the meantime, I had started talking to Lupus on the side. I figured that if I was going to do one spanking film, I might as well do two! The wolves were the other dream I had, the other inevitable partners in crime - as with Niki, I felt that I simply had to do a movie with them. That it was meant to happen.

I was already exchanging emails with them on a semi-regular basis, about my blog, links, movie reviews, pirated files... One day, I ambushed them with my suggestion, disguised as a joke: "You know, now that I've shown you this newest trick on how to find hidden pirate links, I think you should give me a role in one of your videos as a thank you!" They replied in the same jesting spirit: "Would you like any role in any Lupus movie? That would be interesting!" I wrote back: seriously, you know I love your work, and if you like, I'll come to one of your shoots. I'll do a couple of interviews and a behind-the-scenes report for the blog, and who knows, maybe we can even collaborate on a movie later on. How about it?

(Katerina Tetova, Maximilian Schubert and Ester Slaba in "The Noise", 2004. They all star in "A Garden Party" as well. )

That was my plan at the time - just to go there and say hi, get to know everybody, and then hopefully do a shoot on a second visit. It seemed less daunting that way, and I thought that Lupus would also be more receptive about the idea if I gave them a chance to see me in person first (so they wouldn't have to buy the "cat in the bag"). But to my considerable surprise, they went straight for the full deal. I got a mail which I'm quoting verbatim here, to retain the "werewolf feel":

"To your question about movie: we think it would be possible together. Let us know if you would like to small role or bigger one, if you have any preferred scenario, ideas etc. We would prepare movie script for you in same way as for Adele or Niki. We would ask you for some your civil photo."

Wow.

That had been so ridiculously easy, I thought they were probably still kidding around. I didn't believe they were serious until Michal "Altair" Valasek wrote on the Lupus blog that one of the upcoming movies they had planned would feature a new guest star, an as yet undisclosed "spanking blogosphere celebrity". Fittingly enough, it was Niki who alerted me to the post: "Hey, man, you really are in trouble now!" Even then, a part of me kept insisting that they must be talking about somebody else. Blogosphere celebrity? Can't be me.

But of course, they were serious, so I had to think about answers. Small role or bigger one? Bigger! If I was going to make a fool out of myself trying to be an actor, I might as well do it thoroughly. Ideas for scenarios? Definitely the 19th century, the Austrian Empire, Bohemia under the Habsburgs. It was a time and place I loved as a historian. Also as a Lupus fan, because the Headmaster series was set there. With me on board, we could really explore the German-Czech history of the time. How about something set during the Prague uprising of 1848? That would be awesome. The girlfriends of Czech rebel leaders, interrogated by the Austrian secret police (which was almost as ruthless as their colleagues from Czarist Russia). Vicious canings, some political commentary about imperialism and oppression... In summary, loads of fun.

I sent them the proposal (together with a "civil photo"). They said okay, good idea. "We will film in October. Let us know which dates are suitable for you."

That was easy, too.

Then, a couple of weeks later, the October date fell through. I was bitterly disappointed, but Thomas Marco, the producer, wrote me a very nice email, saying that he was sorry, explaining in detail why he couldn't do any shoots in the autumn, how some things had come up which had to be taken care of first. He told me not to worry - our movie was postponed, but not cancelled. We would simply do it next year and he was very much looking forward to it.

Cancelled shoots are a part of the spanking video industry, you have to live with them. I told myself, well, I wanted the whole filmmaking experience, now I'm getting it! First Niki and Northern Spanking, now this one... Honestly, it was depressing. Adele had it even worse, though - she had three consecutive shoots that fell through. One of them was her own movie with Lupus, postponed for the same reason as mine. I could sympathise with how bummed out she felt.

Enter 2009, and I'm finally doing my first full-length video - with Mood Pictures in Hungary. It was the third project I attempted, and ironically, the first one that became reality. With hindsight, it was the perfect debut for me. No, it didn't have the same nostalgic attachment as Lupus. And it wasn't as sophisticated, either, not on the same level as a movie. But the beauty of it was that it was all uncharted territory. No one had been there before, I wasn't following in anyone's footsteps. So the story surrounding it was awe-inspiring. I felt that my four-part chronicle of the adventure was the best piece of writing I had ever done for the blog, hands down. I usually hate my scribblings within 24 hours of posting them, but this one was good.

At the same time, I still hadn't made a proper film yet. So I was glad to hear from the wolves again, only a few weeks later: "Hello Ludwig, we got this idea. There will be shooting with Adele Haze at June. Would you like to take role of officer who seduce two daughters, and then he has to punish them in front of their grandmother? We enclose former version of script. If you would agree, we would add your role to it."

(Adele Haze, with Niki, in her first movie with Lupus, "The Red Reformatory: Old Friends", 2007)

It was a totally different idea than the one we had been talking about previously (oh well, no 1848 revolution). But I liked it. I suppose that, after getting that elusive first video under my belt with Mood, I was a bit more relaxed and open-minded about these things - about what I wanted to do, what I didn't want to do, what the exact setting had to be. There is a certain freedom of thought that comes to you when you've got your debut out of the way. You feel that, now, you can basically try everything, take a chance. You become less set in your ways.

The thought of doing a comedy, of "seducing two daughters", of coming aboard Adele's film... None of it had occurred to me before. Six months earlier, I would probably have been reluctant. Now, I took right to it. It sounded like a fun little scenario, and I liked the prospect of doing a film with Adele. I was a fan of her blog and her work, and had in fact briefly met her once before, in the UK. The role of an officer was okay for me, too. It was probably a leftover from my "Prague uprising" idea. Also, it seems to be a natural casting choice for producers when they see me: "Young guy, early thirties, quite thin... Let's put him in a uniform!"

So I had a good feeling about it all. Of course, the thought of me doing a comedy was absurd. It's the hardest thing you can possibly try, and it makes for the most pathetic results when you fail. I should never have attempted it at this stage. I should have honed my craft with ten historical epics first, before daring to be funny. Doing a comedy as a second video was pretentious.

Needless to say, I liked it. I like pretentious.

Looking ahead

The filming was scheduled for late June. In the weeks before, there were the usual preparations - learning the script, trying the lines at home, caning practice with a pillow, arranging the trip, booking the hotel. To be honest, I was pretty distracted during most of it. I had just met my girlfriend Kaelah, we had just become a couple, and even werewolves have to stand back when Klingons enter the stage. Kaelah and I decided early on that she was coming to Prague with me (Lupus said she was very welcome, no problem). It was a pretty weird situation - we were together for a short time only, it wasn't long since she had received her very first spanking, and here we were, about to go to a shoot together. "That's what you get for picking such a strange boyfriend", I said.

The positive side effect was, I was so busy worrying about Kaelah and about whether or not she was going to be okay, I had no time left to worry about the film itself. So I approached that and my own performance in a state of utter serenity: "Ah well, it'll be fine!" I did some caning practice, but not for hours and hours until I had blisters on my hand, like before the Mood shoot. I had concerns about some of the acting scenes in the script, the dialogue, the funny bits, wondering if I'd be able to pull them off. But I didn't worry myself sick about it. I just prepared as well as I could, and the rest was going to happen one way or another.

Most of all, I was just happy that the movie with Lupus (the werewolves from the East, the big dream!) was finally about to become reality. I should have been totally intimidated by it, but strangely enough, I wasn't. I just felt satisfied and calm. There was definitely a lot of excitement, adrenaline, a determination to do a good job - but it was all positive, no self-destructive doubts.

So much for my frame of mind on the eve of travelling to Prague, and so much for the whole story so far. Again, I'm sorry to keep you waiting for the good stuff - you'll read about the shoot itself in a week. But in my view, the events leading up to it can be just as interesting in their way - the formative phase, how you get in touch with people, how ideas evolve and take shape, how you start out to do one thing and end up doing another. I hope that I was able to convey a little bit of that here.

(The trailer for "A Garden Party", which you can also download here)

Now, I'm going to watch the finished movie for the first time, which I actually haven't done yet. Then I'm going to have a major tantrum about how much I suck (the glimpses of me in the trailer look bad enough). Then I'll claw my way out of the depression somehow, and I'll sit my ass down to write the rest of the behind-the-scenes report for you. In the meantime, of course, you are all supposed to order the "A Garden Party" DVD. No matter how good or atrocious my contribution may turn out to be, I'm still proud to have done it!

Final remark before I leave you for today: did you notice how the movie is coming out, almost to the day, 70 years after the start of World War II? That's a bit weird! And I have no idea whether it is intentional on Lupus' part - probably not. But when you come to think of it, there is a wonderfully uplifting message here: seventy years after this terrible period in history (during which my country played the most abominable role), you have a team of Czechs, a German, and a woman from a former Soviet Republic, who now lives in the UK, making a kinky porn film together. Better times indeed.

Kaelah's Corner (Aug 2009): A Very Warm Welcome

Ah, hello! It’s nice to see you all here. As the more perceptive of you probably realised by now this is the forecourt to hell, called Rohrstockpalast. And I’m the King’s mate*, good evening! But you can call me Kaelah, if you like. A very warm welcome to my little corner of the Rohrstockpalast. I hope you’re going to enjoy yourselves! (* Yes, this is a modern monarchy!)

For everyone still wondering what the hell is going on: This is of course still Ludwig’s Rohrstockpalast. Since I love writing almost as much as Ludwig does, I was quite sad that due to my vanilla duties I haven’t got enough time to run my own blog. So Ludwig kindly gave me the permission to write a little guest column from time to time. More precisely, you’ll hear from me once every month.

As those of you who have read Ludwig’s K-Day post already know, I’m German like him. Unfortunately my writing style in English might not be as fluent and eloquent as Ludwig’s. I just hope it doesn’t sound too strange for the native speakers among you.

Since this is my first post I guess one important question is: What could be interesting for you to know about me? Well, if you have realised from whom I lent the title and the first sentences of this post, then we obviously share the same kind of humour. In case you don’t have a clue what the title is all about you should have a look. I think it’s a hilarious little piece of comedy. Especially because of my connection to the church and religion. And it is something I shared with Ludwig in one of my early mails – so there’s also a little bit of nostalgia involved for me… Besides of this little excursion I decided not to bore you with a long self-introduction, though. You’re going to find out more about me in my future posts.

But what will be the subjects of these posts? When Ludwig and I came up with the idea for Kaelah’s Corner, I didn’t have a concrete plan what I’m going to write about. Which is quite unusual for me. Normally I always have a plan. Well, honestly, most of the time it’s not just A PLAN. It’s more like PLAN A, alternate PLAN B, C and so on. Or, as Ludwig once remarked: “You don’t even go to the bathroom without a plan.” Well, I’ve already thought a little bit about it by now (the blog posts, not the comment about the bathroom!), and I have developed some ideas.

First and foremost: The post titles! Yes, as all marketing people know, the name is the most important task when inventing a new product. I decided that I’m going to use song (or comedy sketch, movie, poem…) titles for my blog entries. Among these things, music plays an especially important role in my life – listening to music helps me to both arrange my ideas and set free my emotions. I got the inspiration from one of my favourite bloggers, writers and actors, Wil Wheaton, who some years ago named his blog posts after song titles he heard on the radio. By the way, of course Wil Wheaton is only my second favourite blogger, writer and actor, but I guess this is beyond question.

You don’t know who Wil Wheaton is? He’s best known for his portrayals of Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation. You haven’t seen STTNG either? Congratulations: unlike me, you’re obviously not a complete geek and maybe even still living in the 21st Century. Oh, and for everyone reading this blog who belongs to the “Kill Wesley” faction – I’m totally convinced you’re just jealous because you would love to save the ship at least once in your life, too. At least this is one of my core fantasies… Um, where was I? Ah, yes, ideas for my blog posts.

So, what are the posts going to be about? Since I’m very new to practically exploring my kink as well as living in a relationship, these are going to be the main subjects. There are a lot of thoughts and questions on my mind concerning all the new experiences I’m recently making, and more general themes as well. That’s what I would like to write about. So my posts are going to be very personal. And of course I would love to hear about your ideas and experiences, too! So I hope you’re going to share your thoughts and we’re going to have a lot of insightful discussions in the comment section!

And here is my first question to you right away: Is there anything you would like me to write about? Any subjects you are particularly interested in? Please tell me by either leaving a comment or sending a mail to kaelah ~at~ gmx ~dot~ de. I'm looking forward to hearing from you!

Qapla’ and take care!

Movie Review: Amelia-Jane Rutherford Vol. 2

Producer:
Strictly English (released in 2006)

Entire Story In Fewer Words Than Are In This Sentence:
Amelia-Jane gets interviewed, caned

Victim Appeal:

Naughty Amelia-Jane is not only one of the most majestically beautiful models in the spanking video industry (some people would say the most majestically beautiful), but also one of the loveliest in terms of presence and demeanour. In my review of Vol. 1 of this series, I wrote: "Men want her, women want to be her, and some women both want her and want to be her." Can't really put it any better than that. Here, her adventures with Strictly English continue. We get more interview and audition scene material, and the conclusion of the "Amelia-Jane & The Tutor" movie with the magnificent Professor Templeton. Also, we get to see Miss Rutherford caned this time. Yay! Volume 2 really is a continuation rather than a sequel, and the two movies are best watched back-to-back.

Gratuitous Sadism:

The video opens with another short interview, or to be more precise, the continuation of the interview we saw in Vol. 1. After the first part of her audition / screen test, Amelia-Jane is changing clothes, combing her hair etc. before the second little spanking scene. They are talking about how the first session went and what her thoughts about the upcoming one are. It's another great little segment to watch, both enlightening and funny. In regards to the second screen test, Ameila-Jane quips "Bring it on, really!", but she's a bit more nervous about this one in terms of acting, because now, she has to be asking for the spanking, basically - being a naughty girl and seducing the top until he bends her over. It's the kind of character Amelia-Jane enjoys, but also more of a challenge.

So, next up, there is Amelia-Jane in sexy dress, flaunting herself on the sofa, sipping on a glass of wine and bantering cheekily with the male top (father figure, husband figure, not sure what he is supposed to be here, exactly...), while he is sitting in his chair with the Business News and pretending not to be interested ("I'm trying to read the newspaper!"). Needless to say, though, he's had enough after a short while ("Alright, that's it!") and a series of hand spankings over Amelia-Jane's red panties ensues. First over the knee, then while she is bending over the sofa, and finally in a rather unorthodox position - the top sitting in his chair, Amelia-Jane with her hands on the floor and kneeling on his lap. Interesting, I'll have to try that one sometime. After he spanks her into being a good girl again, she goes back to the sofa puppy-dog eyed and contentedly whimpers: "Thank you very much...!" It's a nice little scene, a little over ten minutes, with the spankings a tad harder than during the first audition. It closes with a few behind-the-scenes shots, with the participants having a good time and talking about how it went.

The larger part of Vol. 2 (around 45 minutes) is taken up by the second half of the "Amelia-Jane & The Tutor" spanking movie. In a nutshell, she plays a sociology student who wants to improve her grades with the help of a well-respected, but shall we say, somewhat eccentric professor (he has some pretty "traditional" ideas about discipline, you see). Carrying over from Vol. 1, they continue to read an essay she has written. In the words of Professor Templeton, it is "a ridiculous piece of work, close to taking the mickey, no effort made whatsoever", and you can imagine the methods he regards as best-suited to improve her work ethic for the future...

While Vol. 1 and the first half of "The Tutor" contained only hand spankings, Miss Rutherford and Strictly English kick the action up a notch or two in this one. As her lesson with Professor Templeton continues, she also encounters the slipper, the strap (he refers to it as a "paddle", but it really looks like a strap to me), a Scottish tawse, and for the grand finale, the cane. She gets around 25 strokes with the last implement - hard to determine the exact number, as there are frequent miscounts, extra strokes, instances of starting over two strokes before, et cetera, in the interaction between the tutor and his student. Also, he uses the occasional preparatory "tap" that might qualify as a stroke in its own right... Let's call it 25 in total, thereabouts.

The number isn't all that important, anyway. This isn't Mood Pictures stuff, it's a video where the story, the characters and the chemistry between the players are the focus of attention. That said, the action is hard enough this time around to be exciting from a sadistic point of view, too. The cane and the other implements leave some nice, moderate marks, and Amelia-Jane is crying and sobbing quite a bit at the end. The video then concludes with a couple of bloopers and outtakes from "The Tutor".

Best Reactions:

The more vocal reactions during the caning, the flinching and howling, are fun to watch, but I really like Amelia-Jane best when she is acting in her petulant "Nooo, you can't do this to me!" princess mode. Few models do it as well as she does, and she does it a lot here!

Best Line:

There are plenty of gems in the banter between Amelia-Jane and Professor Templeton again. Take this one, when he first shows her the slipper and she blurts out: "Are you going to hit me with that?" He, with perfectly dry British wit: "It's a rather crude way of putting it, but yes, it sums up the situation."

However, the line I really liked the best comes from the top during the screen test, when he admonishes Amelia-Jane: "Do not flaunt your naked flesh!" I just love the way he says that.

Nice Psychological Touch:

The chemistry in the tutor and student scenario is superb from start to finish. Watch Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 back-to-back and observe how, after the abounding light-hearted humour in number one, as the two of them meet and the first scenes follow, such exchanges get a little less frequent here and things get a little more "serious", both in character and in the attitude of the players. Professor Templeton, while fully retaining his dry humour, becomes stricter and more intimidating while his student becomes more obedient and progressively less likely to come back with cheeky remarks. The development is well-acted and it's great to follow the mounting tension all the way from the start to the climax / the final caning.

How Good Is It Really?

Like Vol. 1, very good indeed. Amelia-Jane and Strictly English did many more videos together (they are at volume eight now, as far as I know), and I don't think I will review every one of those - I have enough other movies to cover, and you get a good idea of what the whole collaboration looks like from the two reviews so far. Hardcore fans will want to own it all, anyway. As for Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 of the series, though, they really are a must-see not just for viewers who like Miss Rutherford or Strictly English in particular, but for anyone with an interest in spanking videos.

What You Learned:
After "Amelia-Jane & The Tutor" and An American Brat in London, Professor Ernest Templeton is really becoming one of my favourite tops. The man has wit, authority, class... The only nitpicking complaint I can find is the fact that he may be a brilliant sociologist, but he isn't much of a mathematician - there are a couple of miscounts of strokes from his side. Like during the slippering: "We have now reached the interesting number of nine strokes." Err, no, Mr. Ries, I definitely only counted eight! But hey, we all sometimes have our problems with keeping track...

Dalibor's Tower

As a blogger, one of the things I enjoy the most is the interaction with the readers in its various forms. Not just through comments and emails, but in more unusual, interesting ways as well - votes, competitions, blogiversary spankings, football bets, that sort of thing.

It's great to have something "special" like that once in a while, not just because reader interaction in all its forms is one of the things that make blogging worthwhile in the first place (otherwise, we could all just write a diary for our own eyes only), but because I find all this fabulously interesting from a human perspective. Especially when it concerns kink and the kinky mindset, which thrives on interaction, anyway: between top and bottom, between more than two people in a scene perhaps, between spanking models and video viewers...

The more complex the interpersonal dynamics in a situation are, the more I tend to find myself intrigued by it. Put a "live" audience within a spanking video scene, for instance. You have the video audience watching the live audience, so you have the video audience watching themselves, in a way, and of course you have the top watching the bottom, and vice versa, as always, and you have them watching and interacting with the live audience, which is a representative of the video audience, and so on and so forth. That's the kind of stuff my inner anthropological observer loves.

Another thing I love is having the readers theorise about something, challenging people's creativity and imagination. We recently had a lot of it with the Fiona Locke Affair, or to use another example, we had the K-Day Compeition on this blog, where I asked you readers to interpret a strange poem, picture and post of mine (actually, the poem was written by Kaelah).

As usual, it was hard to decide on a winner. Two comments really stood out for me, one by PallidBust and one by Arjuna. The former because it was so remarkably (and intentionally) outlandish, the latter because it was so remarkably accurate. PallidBust interpreted "K-Day" and my post as "a tragic car wreck of Heinlein and Lovecraft", and you really have to read his mini-essay for yourself, because I can't even begin to sum up its wacky brilliance here. Arjuna, on the other hand, had figured out the truth behind K-Day and what I was about to announce, right down to the last detail, and wrote it down with Sherlock Holmes-like precision. So you had a case of great fiction-writing versus great fact-finding, two totally different contributions, each impressive in its own way.

Fact-finding won the day, I declared Arjuna the winner. I was sorry not to be able to reward PallidBust as well, especially because he had so nicely picked up on the Lovecraft-esque touch of the poem (which was of course intentional, "do you dare open it?", that sort of pseudo-antiquated language). But in the end, after much deliberation, I just had to give the nod to Arjuna's perceptiveness.

Now, one could argue that being perceptive is less difficult than being inventive and creative - as Sherlock Holmes himself used to say in his wonderful fake modesty, "there is nothing remarkable about using one's eyes". And normally, I would probably be inclined to agree. But Arjuna's detective work really was remarkable to me. It's one thing to figure out the truth, other readers who follow the blog with some regularity probably could have done it, too (some probably did, in silence!). But it is quite another thing to figure out the truth in so much tiny detail and near-perfect accuracy, as Arjuna did. He pieced together quite a few different things, even relatively small clues which I had sort of dropped "on the side", from quite a few different previous posts. Which means that not only did he read the blog regularly, he also read it very thoroughly. And how could I possibly withstand such flattery?

For instance, Arjuna not only figure out what was on the photo in the "K-Day is coming!" post (the shadows of Kaelah and me), he even ventured a guess as to where it was taken: "Part of a Lupus set or Ludwig’s basement." And the first half of that guess turned out to be near-correct: while the picture is not actually from a Lupus set, it was indeed taken in Prague, during the time when I was there for the Garden Party shoot (which reminds me, the movie is coming out on September 1st, the wolf pack tells me, so watch out for that and my full behind-the-scenes report soon).

Kaelah and I made the picture when we visited Dalibor's Tower, an old prison tower in Prague Castle, during our trip. The most famous prisoner there during its long history was one Dalibor of Kozojedy, a Czech knight who lead a peasant uprising in 1496. After being captured and sentenced, he spent the rest of his life in the tower which now bears his name, and legend has it that he played his violin a lot while in captivity. Legend also has it that the ghost of Dalibor still haunts Prague Castle today, and that one can sometimes hear the sounds of the violin emanating from the tower at night. On a sidenote, for the classical music lovers among you, Bedrich Smetana wrote an opera about the story of Dalibor. Oh, and there's a pretty interesting Smetana museum in Prague, too, which Kaelah and I went to as well.

So, that is where the picture is from. Just like the following one, which I'm also going to share with you for the fun, as a K-Day epilogue:

It shows a hangman's axe. Notice how the shadow of the axe goes through the throat of our shadows? Almost through Kaelah's, right through mine? That wasn't intentional when we took the picture, we just noticed it afterwards. Hopefully it's not a sign of things to come, like the photographs in The Omen. Then again, neither of us is named Keith Jennings! And if I found out that the Antichrist was really walking among us, I for one would try to conduct an interview, not block his path. Hey, I'm a historian, I'm supposed to simply record things and talk to the important personalities of our time! (Kaelah is a practising Christian, so she may have other ideas...)

Anyway, you can see that axe in Dalibor's Tower, alongside some exhibits with quite a bit of potential kink value, like torture racks or a "leading fork" - you know, a pole with a metal ring which you put around a person's neck, "for the guidance of prisoners", as the illustrating text cheerfully described it. Have a look if you happen to be in Prague one day, take your girlfriend or boyfriend along, you might find yourselves getting inspired.

So, I hope you like the picture and today's post. Oh, and PallidBust, don't gripe too much. You win some, you lose some, it was an excellent contribution in any case and I loved it. You can stop skulking, get out of your cave, disband your coalition of evil and let Christmas live. (And if you do insist on taking your revenge, I should warn you, I'm ready for you, punk!)

Fiona's Riddle Unlocked

The truth is out: Niki Flynn is Fiona Locke. After years of speculation about the identity of this celebrated spanking fiction writer (a kinky model from the UK scene? a man in disguise? J.K. Rowling in disguise?), Niki decided to lift the veil and officially fessed up some ten day ago. Well, there goes another of the great mysteries in our kinky community, unravelled by the werewolf girl - and this time, it is a mystery she had created in the first place.

Like most of her friends, I had been in on the secret, and I did in fact participate eagerly when Niki asked us to stir the rumour mill about "Fiona" one last time prior to her coming out. I'm sure you noticed the flurry of posts which started popping up about the subject in July, written by bloggers like Emma Jane, Pandora Blake, me... Now you know what was behind them. Never in our wildest dreams, though, did we expect that it would create such a massive response. Suddenly, there was this huge, inter-blog discussion with dozens of comments, each one of them seemingly containing three new theories about Fiona Locke. I pointed the finger at Pandora Blake, claiming that she was Fiona. Pandora pointed the finger at Haron of The Spanking Writers. Prefectd aka Spanked Hortic decided to get in on the fun and pointed the finger at me:

"Ludwig has denied being Fiona Locke, which of course makes him a prime suspect. I get the impression that he would revel in the idea of having the whole of the spanking internet world running around like headless chickens wondering who Fiona Locke is. He would do this just for the twisted fun of it."

You got me there, mate - I do enjoy twisted fun! Which doesn't, however, change the fact that, in this case at least, the whole twisted fun was all Niki's idea. I'm a virtuous gentleman (in addition to being a pathological sadist), and I don't shy away from accepting blame when it is justified. But in this case, I have to agree with Lucy McLean, who recently wrote: "Given that Niki asked us to do it, I think she should be punished!" So, if you're going to bay for anyone's blood after our collective game of smoke and mirrors, you should bay for Niki's. Mind you, of course everybody and his brother is already doing that now!

But I am getting ahead of myself. So, anyway, Prefectd said that I'm probably Fiona, amidst half a dozen other theories that Fiona was Pandora Blake, one of Pandora's doms, Abel and / or Haron of The Spanking Writers, Caroline Grey, Caroline's dom, or perhaps Pandora Blake's cat, Fatface (of course, this isn't really a picture of Fatface, but it sure is a cute lolcat picture). I liked the cat theory in particular. Oh, and somewhere along the way, my Klingon girlfriend Kaelah put forward the idea that, maybe, "Fiona" was really a collective of authors. You know, similar to what the so-called "anti-Stratfordians" are saying about Shakespeare.

Yeah, it can get a tad confusing to keep track. But that was precisely the point, you see. Wile we were spreading all this merry and deliberate confusion, a few helpful souls who weren't in on the deal started pointing out that, quite obviously, Niki was Fiona. Needless to say, they had all the good, incontestable arguments on their side, too! Niki had written a book of her own, her "spanking memoirs" Dances With Werewolves. Conspicuously, it was under the same publisher as Fiona's work. And didn't the faceless woman on Fiona's book covers, the one with the shapely bottom and the long legs, look exactly like Niki?

We ignored these annoyingly perceptive individuals as well as we could! Fortunately, there was this other (anonymous) guy commenting on Pandora's blog, who earnestly asserted that: "Sorry to be obsessive but no, Fiona Locke is not Niki Flynn. Photographs of her were published on British Spanking at the time of the 2004 Night of the Cane and they are not remotely alike. And Niki was known by then, anyway. Both have posted on that site and their written styles are different."

As I always say, God bless all the spanking forum experts out there, who hear the grass grow and know everything about everyone in the scene. Without them, people like Niki and me wouldn't know what is going on with ourselves!

So, by this point, the really interesting question had become who among the many contributors to the "anti-Flynnean" camp really believed in what they were saying, and who didn't. As my friend Indy wrote in an email to me: "The only mystery behind the Fiona posts now is which commentators are pretending to be dense and which really are... I did write Graham to tell her she was right and that Niki was just having a bit of fun before revealing herself."

Speaking of emails, I received just as many mails about the whole Fiona thing as comments to my blog post. And the post got 23 comments, more than any other since I had done my first professional CP film several months ago. I was almost sorry to see it all end when Niki finally did her own paranoid pre-coming out post, followed by her proper coming out post two weeks later, on August 10th.

As a friend and as a fan, I'm glad that Niki is now able to publicly take the credit for her work as a spanking fiction writer in addition to the many plaudits she has already received for her filming and modelling. She really is a multi-talent, and "Fiona's" stuff is just as good in its own right as "Niki's". Another nice thing, now that the mystery is lifted, is the fact that people who have so far only been aware of either "incarnation" will now probably look at the other one, too. They will find new and interesting things to read or watch, and new facets of the auteur behind it all.

At the same time, it saddens me a bit to think that we're not going to hear any more delightful banter about Pandora's cat. Or about J.K. Rowling's cat. Does it really have to be the end, now that the truth about Fiona is out? Can't anybody think of interesting theories about what other mischief the cats might be up to?

As for me, I'm a historian, not a zoologist. My job is to chronicle things. So, on that note, as the spanking blogosphere's resident chronicler, let me end this post by collecting and archiving all the contributions to the Fiona Locke Affair, by all the authors. I don't think anyone else has made a proper list yet. Here is the definitive blog link history of five weeks when chaos reigned (and if you know something I've missed, please give me a nudge):

July 7th: I am not Fiona Locke by Emma Jane
July 9th: Fiona Locke: Enquiring minds want to know by Zille Defeu
July 11th: Who in the World is Fione Locke? by Ludwig
July 13th: I'm Fiona Locke, and so's my wife! by Pandora Blake
July 16th: Fiona Locke? New photographic evidence by Spanked Hortic
July 16th: Who is Fiona Locke by Leia-Ann Woods
July 19th: Fiona Locke by The Mystery Minx
July 21st: Will The Real Fiona Locke Please Stand Up? by Pixie Wells
July 25th: The Locke Identity by Niki Flynn
July 28th: More on the Fiona Locke Mystery by Zille Defeu
August 9th: That Fiona Chick by Mija
August 10th: Chaos Reigns! by Niki Flynn

Thanks to Niki aka Fiona for inviting us fellow bloggers to be part of her revelation. And you're welcome, it was fun to create so much chaos on your behalf.