Apocalypse Kink
There’s a beautiful prose poem that’s currently going explosively viral on Tumblr. It started with a question about why kinky people start wearing their bondage gear in post-apocalypse media, and that triggered this wonderful riff on why you would want to be friendly with people who value consent deep in their guts and bones. I am one hundred percent behind what this writer has to say:
What I wanna know is why the spiky kink warriors are always the bad evil marauders. They might be into some weird shit and unafraid to show it but that doesn’t mean they want to go around killing dudes. They’re a tight-knit bunch. A lot of them are queer. They understand the importance of community.
If the government collapses and all laws come to an end, the people rampaging around killing and looting are gonna be like, frat boys and 4chan rejects. You can mistrust the bondage raiders all you like but they’re definitely the ones you’re going to run to for help when the neoliberal blood cultists and Nazi meme demons lay siege to your survivor enclave. There’s gonna be gayboy berserkers busting up slaver gangs and burning down warboy frat houses. The assless-chaps leather daddies and weird petplay people are gonna be the accidental peacekeepers of the post-apocalyptic world just because they’re the only motherfuckers who understand the importance of consent anymore.
Listen. Don’t come to me asking how to get the secret cadre of bisexual death commandoes to protect your wretched tent village if you’re scared that we might call in the kinksters for backup. I don’t give a shit if they dress up like dogs and spend all day writing poems about butt plugs. There’s assholes out there acting like Vlad the Impaler on a meth bender and you’re afraid of seeing a nipple. Fuck you. If you really want to get rid of the MRA death gangs you’re going to have to accept that a lesbian chainsaw dominatrix or two might be involved. It’s the fucking post-apocalypse my guy we gotta weigh our priorities here
Shorter URL for sharing: http://www.erosblog.com/?p=18222
This is in aria territory. I’d bet the young Verdi could have done something with this…
Yes, it really does seem to require a soundtrack, does it not? If not opera, something metal…
Thanks, Bacchus! I had to immediately re-post this on the Apocalypse World “Barf Forth Apocalyptica” forums.
http://apocalyp....com/
(Apocalypse World is a wonderful pen & paper role-playing game by D. Vincent Baker which is responsible for getting me interested in post-apocalypse SF like, at all, and that sort of started a trend of acknowledging queer identities in indie RPGs… plus, it’s got a fetish-y gas mask right there on the cover and little kinky bits spread all around.)
Better the devil who insists on consent before flogging you, than the demon who just doesn’t care.
Awesome, Rafu. Love the straight-man answer that immediately got posted there, as well.
“Outlaw biker” style for post-apocalyptic outfits goes way but, but the move from that to outight kink gear started with “The Road Warrior”, as best as I can tell. After that, it became rare to see a movie of that genre that *doesn’t* have people dress in leather, chains, and spikes.
Somewhere back there, the kink look evolved from the biker look via the club scene… I don’t know if it was fully evolved by the time Road Warrior picked it up, or if they influenced each other.
Back in the 60s underground cartoonist Spain Rodriquez pioneered the post-apocalypse /BDSM aesthetic in venues like Zap Comix.
http://bernalbe...guez/