So Far and Yet So Close

I work with computers day-to-day and I'm a child of the 90's, so it's probably surprising to noone that I'm a big fan of the internet. I use it for work, I use it to play games, and I use it to socialize - I actually met my fiancé on OkCupid. More relevantly, though, the internet has been an amazing tool for people who want to get involved in Kink - a veritable goldmine of resources.

I'm going to dodge the really obvious thing here - I doubt anyone would be reading this if they weren't already aware of the internet's resources for education, advice, social interaction, shopping, safety, and other things. I'm going to focus on the fact that people can now meet and stay in touch with partners far more easily... And yet I'm often astounded by how naive people are about the options for BDSM relationships online. I certainly won't claim that relationships are easier when based offline - or perhaps more likely to succeed, having more common experience to base it on - but modern technology gives many options for staying close. Here are my favourite ideas and bits of advice.

The most obvious one is video chat. Google (via Hangouts), Microsoft (via Skype), and Apple (via FaceTime) are the most common, but not the only options. Video chat, though, gives you amazing flexibility around spending time together. In particular, getting a submissive on video is an excellent way to have play sessions. Obviously you can't touch them, but it's easy to find ways to play. Have your sub spank herself on video - or point the camera at the wall and hold a quarter in place with her nose for as long as you need her to. Anything that doesn't actually require a second person is just as possible on video as it is in person; plus of course, video gives you far better options than phones ever did for fooling around and having remote sex.

One small addendum here - never forget the safety aspect. There are many things you can have a person do that are reasonably all right in person (where you would be able to help them if something went wrong) but are incredibly risky remotely (where they'd be at serious risk if a mistake or bad luck happened). Use common sense.

As another option, voice systems like Skype give you another option - you can simply leave a voice channel open on your computer essentially all the time. Especially overnight, this can be a pleasant way to be more connected.

A fun extension of this idea is to set up something like HabitRPG for them; I am acquainted with one D/s couple who does exactly this, and it's such an adorable idea I really want to try it out some day.

Use social media. Have them set up a twitter account or blog, and make it as private or public as you'd like. I've frequently had subs set up blogs to post daily reports and "homework"; Tumblrs are excellent for just kindof off-the-cuff things and photo feeds.

Anyway - this is in some ways just the tip of the iceberg. Use your imagination; distance is far less of a limiting factor than it's ever been before. Take advantage of the technologies available to you to stay closer to your partners... Even in the kinky corners of the relationship world.

Stay in touch moment-to-moment with messaging. Whether it be texting, Google Hangouts, iMessaging, Facebook Messenger, Snapchat, or one of many others, computers and smartphones make it trivially easy to stay in touch all the time real life doesn't otherwise interfere. Take advantage of it; it's the next best thing after being together for keeping up with your partner... Or keeping tabs on them. Having them let you know whenever they're leaving or arriving somewhere, what they're doing, when they've completed tasks... Messaging is an excellent way to keep tabs on your submissive.

Talk. I know that phones are incredibly out of date, but actually hearing someone's voice conveys emotion and feeling and levels of communications that text simply can't provide. More to the point, while it has little to recommend it over video these days, the one thing plain voice does offer is convenience - you can just call up your partner  while driving or other times when a video simply isn't an option.

Schedule date-nights, another idea that works just as well for any relationship, not just kinky ones. There are lots of options, from playing games together to watching movies to using video or chat to read books or eat a meal with each other. Exactly what you do is less important than how you do it.

Utilize technology to keep track of their chores and tasks. Apple Reminders, Google Tasks, Wunderlist and many others give you options for setting up lists of rules and jobs, complete with (or without!) reminders, due dates, repeating tasks, integration to calendars or schedulers or other applications and technologies... There are so many options here you can find something that'll work exactly the way you want,  no matter what it is you're looking for.

My last thought, and one of the newest categories of things you can do, is remotely controlled devices. There've been things like pagers linked to vibrators for years but the field has grown far more refined in recent times. There are directly computer- and phone-controlled sex toys of all sorts; large complex ones for the bedroom (or home office, I suppose) all the way down to small, discreet ones like Vibease which you can wear all day and can delegate control to someone else using your smartphone.

The Limits of Your Limits

I originally had a totally different idea for this entry, but I realized last night there was something I was much more invested in right now. When I started working through that, though, I realized there was really a prequel entry I wanted to do. I thought it through, and whether I could do them the other way around (I wanted to do one on a Tuesday and the other on a Friday), but it started getting complicated... And eventually I decided to just take it by the horns and do both.

I had a conversation with one of my friends... Hmmm. Let's call her Janet. I had a conversation with Janet about one of her friends who was just discovering the entire "BDSM" thing. Long story short, I ended up reading through "Submissive Training" by Elizabeth Cramer.

This book was well-written, easy to read, and - to me - nothing I'd never heard before. Since I've been involved in BDSM for creeping up on 20 years now, its not being new isn't immensely surprising to me. What did surprise me was how narrowly this book was focused. Essentially, this book is an excellent reference for a very narrow class of people - female total power exchange submissives beginning their roles as slaves.

Recently, I have encountered a number of people who are just first really exposing themselves to the wider world of BDSM. Bettina is the obvious example, who'd never actually encountered it before me. We've had a number of conversations around kink, her interests, what scares her, what she thinks about it... I've tried hard not to just teach her my own views - it wouldn't really be too hard to present my own views as gospel, given her relative isolation from the larger Scene - and rather am trying to encourage her to think about her own instincts and beliefs in the area. It's not just my own views I have to try and protect her from - she also has far more preconceptions and prejudices than I would have imagined before we really got into these topics. She finds herself trying to decide if she fits into some preconceived notion of "slave" or "sub" or "pet" or "little" or whatever else.

More than just Bettina, a number of posts have shown up on Fetlife recently as well... Which isn't unusual. There's inevitably a steady stream of people who are just discovering the entire world of kink, and it's not hard to encounter them if you want to do so. Similar to Bettina, though, most people ask the wrong question up front. One of the most frequent things you'll see is "Am I a X?" or "Do I fit in with group Y?" People almost always start off by taking an idea or a term or a phrase or a role and trying to ram themselves into it - frequently a square peg in a round hole... Or at least a rectangular one.

A couple of weeks ago, after To The Ends of Comfort and Beyond, Ash asked me a question - my advice to "know your limits" is great, but how do you figure them out? If you never step past your limits, how do you ever know what they are?

These are all symptoms of the same problem, unfortunately; kink is a huge world, kids. There's a lot out there to know. There are countless kinks, terms, adjectives, verbs, toys, bits of history, norms, bits of etiquette... It'll take anyone a lifetime to figure it all out. Coming into it from ground zero is imposing - and most people lose sight of the real goal in light of that barrier.

So, how do you figure out where you belong? How do you figure out if you're an "X" or a "Y" or a "Z" - a sub or a Dom/me or a little or a daddy/mommy or whatever else? How do you know what your limits are? There are a lot of possible glib answers. "Carefully," in particular, comes to mind. Really, though, the more important question has always been "what are you comfortable with?"

Names are very important to me - I wrote a whole entry on how much so. Names can cut both ways, though; they can describe who you are or they can constrain who you are, depening on how you use them. beginners to kink often take a name, a description, a role, and then try to mold themselves to fit it as carefully as they can. More often than not, though, they miss the crucial understanding that those molds are what they create for themselves, not what they have to make themselves to fit in.

So be brave; try a few things out. Carefully, of course; it's better to be cautious and drag it out than to rush in and panic. Don't do anything you're uncomfortable with; but if you are comfortable with it or aren't sure, try it! Safely, as carefully as you need to... But find out. If possible, find a mentor - someone who knows more of the pitfalls and possibilities than you and can help you fill out your identity.

How do you know your limits? Through conversation; through question and answer; through experimentation; through research; through careful consideration of the vast world now open to you. It seems scary at first, but some day you'll look back and laugh at how much worse it was just because it was all unknown. Never compromise your own self for someone else's definition; figure out your definition and own it. Most of all, be true to yourself and have fun.

Mistress Sonata asked this of my Sir Conundrum post:

I wonder if you could maintain the subspace but have the sub say "Master/Mistress, may I request a sidebar" which is like a safeword and will always be granted, like a "light Red" where you can discuss something in scene. Say you ask your sub to do something you haven't discussed prior and your sub wants to get it across to you that while they're still in obeisance to you and don't want to stop the scene, they don't want to do whatever it is you're asking of them. Then you acknowledge and go back to the scene and do something else (rather than stop the scene entirely). Thoughts?

And of course I am more than happy to respond! The short version of my feeling is, though, "not really".
The problem is that subspace - any fixed or fixated mental state, really -  is going to be past the point of rational decision-making about the situation they're in. A lot of subs, when they're floating in sub-space, will have serious problems trying to do so. Some won't be able to form words at all; some won't be able to remember the safeword. Even if that isn't true... Someone in subspace, as a rule, won't want to "break character" - they're strongly disinclined, by the nature of what they're doing, from saying "No, I can't do that" and displeasing their top. Or, hell, maybe they're gagged.

Even if the sub is tracking straight enough and wants to stop and say "No please, Master, I don't want to stop but I'm not okay doing that..." (a difficult enough thing at the best of times, let alone when in an altered state!), what if the Dom/me is in their own head space and doesn't respond? Subs and slaves aren't the only ones who can get deeply into the scene. A top can get "in the zone" and miss it - or not recognize it - or just forget.

If all that works - the sub can remember it well enough and get the question out, the top can respond correctly - subspace can be fragile. The more you interrupt it - by essentially interjecting an entire conversation into the situation - the less likely it is for subspace to survive.

So... Can it work? Yes. But... Only if the scene itself is already essentially outside of subspace - if it's a person playing at subspace, rather than someone actually totally in the mindset.

A better alternative is just the old standby of having multiple words. The example I've always heard as most common is red/yellow/green: red for "Oh my god no we need to stop RIGHT FUCKING NOW"; yellow for essentially the situation you describe above, a "this is pushing me out of my happy place, we need to get back on track"; and green for "Yup, all systems go." It could also be "bronze/silver/gold" or just about anything - "asparagus/rutabaga/mushroom". Something you can remember and that won't otherwise come up in your conversation.

I will also say, in the way you have it phrased there, I think there's a serious failing going on - on the side of the Dom/me. Why, when you're deep into a serious scene or situation, would you pull out something potentially threatening or dangerous that you haven't already spoken about? To me, that's a serious breach of trust on the part of the Dom/me. That's a failing in putting them in the situation in the first place... And there's really no good way for the sub to respond. Either they're broken out of subspace enough to respond rationally, or their trust is being abused in a way which is totally unfair to them.

And of course the continuation of the thought is that, in an ideal world, safewords shouldn't be necessary. Not that they aren't necessary; not that they can't be useful and important; not that they aren't an exceptionally good tool for people still feeling their way through their relationship... But it's a top's responsibility to know their sub's state - to take care of them, to keep them safe. It's the top's responsibility to not throw their sub into that type of situation.

The moral? Don't spring surprises on them when they aren't prepared to handle it. It will only really work well in a tiny minority of relationships.

An apology...

I'm on vacation! It was my original intent to post some posts ahead, but work plus business trip plus family made that turn out to be impossible, so you'll just have to accept my apology for leaving you in the lurch this week. I will return to my regularly scheduled posts next Tuesday, unless I end up with a lot more sudden free time than I really expect in the next three days!

To the Ends of Comfort and Beyond...

I've had a number of conversations with Bettina recently on the subject of variations on Dom/sub relationships. It's nothing she's ever done before - in fact, before becoming friends with me, I don't believe she's ever actually thought about it. We've had discussions all over the spectrum, from deep full-ownership Master/slave relationships to incredibly light part-time playing around, and it's been quite fascinating to me. I've done a lot of educating people over the years - I've never thought of it that way before, but that's pretty much how it is - and yet I've never actually gone through the process with someone who had started without any real preconceptions. She's coming at it knowing that she doesn't even know what she doesn't know... And she doesn't know what she's comfortable with. More than once we've hit subjects where her initial reactions were negative - fear- or socially-based prejudice, mostly - but she realized eventually she was comfortable with them. Similarly, more than once she's realized over time that a concept she thought she was comfortable with was a lot scarier than initially thought.

On the other hand, Sunshine and I met originally in the context of her looking for a Master, and our relationship - from day one - was framed that way. She had had several long-term D/s relationships before we ever started talking, and was reasonably well established. She knew up front essentially everything she needed to know about her interests, the lifestyle, the risks and benefits... Everything except my own little quirks. And more importantly she knew, for the most part, exactly what she was - and wasn't - interested in and willing to do.

Everyone has limits, generally in every context, but in kink those limits are usually far more explicit than they might otherwise be. Limits are integral to BDSM relationships, and are usually one of the most important pieces of any negotiation leading into a formalized agreement. Some people will discuss them briefly, informally, and then simply rely on their partners' discretion; while others will write out extensive contracts detailing lists of "do's" and "don'ts". Some very common limits include things like "no knives", "no public play", "no urine/scat", "no animals", "no blindfolds/gags" and even "no sex".

Generally, people will separate them into two groups - "soft" and "hard" limits. A hard limit is something that is flat-out forbidden under any circumstances, while a soft limit is something allowed only with explicit consent. Exactly what falls into either category varies widely (some would say "wildly") based on the people involved. To me, neither of them is particularly more important than the other; however, most people seem to emphasize hard limits far more. The problem with that attitude is that soft limits can be the far trickier minefield to navigate. With hard limits, it's always clear where everyone stands; while with soft limits there's always shades of gray. Some people will always interpret a refusal to absolutely refuse as tacit acceptance. Soft limits can lead to guilt and being coerced into things you may not otherwise be comfortable with.

In a sense, negotiation of a formalized relationship can be seen as reducing all soft limits to either allowed activities or hard limits - after all, once a contract (written, verbal or whatever) is drawn up, it's uncommon to allow for stopping to gain specific consent from the sub at random intervals.This can be a good source of understanding of your partner before really diving into things - especially if your relationship is new rather than the evolution of an older one.

The biggest mistakes people make around limits usually fall into two extremes of the same problem - not taking them seriously and so never setting any when they should, or not taking them seriously and violating them after they're agreed upon. The first is simply naive. Not that it's a mistake to intentionally set no limits; I'd say, rather, it's a mistake to set no limits because you dismiss their importance rather than because of a carefully considered agreement that it's where you want the relationship to go. On the other hand, ignoring limits because of dismissing their importance is far worse - it's a severe breach of trust. That way lies unhappiness, anger, abuse, and sometimes crime. Beware of people who fit into this category - no good can come of it.

The advice here should be obvious; know your limits. If you don't know them, you'll never be able to communicate them to your partners; and if your partners don't know what they are, the likelihood of them being broken goes up sharply. Understand that not everyone has the same limits, and something perfectly okay or perfectly terrifying to you may be the opposite to a new partner. And never be ashamed to set your limits and stand by them; without them, you'll never feel safe and develop your relationships to the point they eventually may reach.

Demi wha?

The lovely Persephone Bell put up a post on her blog - http://mileagedoesvary.blogspot.com/ -  about her own relationship with relationships, so to speak. She self-identifies as a demi-sexual, and - in her normal, very intellectual and detailed manner - described it and analyzed it... Rooted somewhere in the frustration of having to describe it repeatedly to people.

I self-identify as demi-sexual as well. I'll admit I don't know how long Persephone has identified that way - consciously, at least - but for me it's been a relatively recent thing. I wasn't incredibly conscious of the entire asexual spectrum until some time last year;  well after I was living with Ash. I did quite a bit of research into it, following up on this suggestion she'd made that might help explain part of me. Persephone did an excellent job of a lot of the details around it, many of which apply directly to me... So instead of duplicating her work I'll simply steal it and take my post in another direction - or at least reflect more directly my own experience and beliefs.

Most people seem to differentiate between "friends" and "relationships"... And the shortest version to describe my relationships is that I don't. Everyone - to me - is some shade of "friend"; a positive friend or a negative friend, maybe, but always on the same scale. It's not a matter of type, but rather a matter of scale or magnitude.

Think of it this way; since I'm all mathey by nature, think of it as a coordinate plane - as a graph. On your X axis, you have "mental comfort"; on your Y axis, "physical comfort". The two are essentially independent. Many things can affect them, and they can sortof interact a little, but mostly they operate separately. My mental comfort's biggest component is always trust: if I trust someone totally (fairly rare) my comfort with them tends to be extremely high, while if I don't actually trust them much at all my comfort with them has a very definite upper limit.

Physical comfort is a bit more... Nebulous. It's not just a matter of attractiveness; it's a matter of body language, perceived safety, hygiene, and any number of other things. I can be very sensitive to crowds; I can be very sensitive to personal space and proximity; I can be very sensitive to some types of mannerisms and habits... And all of it together just sometimes means I'm perfectly okay hugging and cuddling and casually, no matter how little I'm attracted to them or how little I trust them, while at the same time I've had one person in the past where I trusted them implicitly, talked to them constantly and told them everything, but wasn't even comfortable being in the same room very often.

Combine that with the fact that my sex drive just isn't particularly high; the desire to get off simply isn't a driving force for me. Do I enjoy it? Yes, very much - at least sometimes. It can be relaxing, it can be extremely pleasant, and it's frequently a good way to help me go to sleep in the evening... But it's not a goal in life the way it seems to be for most people. If I get off... Sometimes good, sometimes meh; and generally incidental to the situation at hand.

Don't get me wrong, I still look at folks sometimes and think "wow, she's hot!" The difference, as far as I can tell, is that I never really progress that thought as far as the "...and I'd really like to fuck her!" which many people have implied in there. Someone can be hot without really engendering any form of desire in me... And someone not being particularly physically attractive is not necessarily a limitation on my desire to spend the rest of my time with them.

When it comes to my interest in fooling around with someone? It's mostly just a natural extension of some people that I'm particularly comfortable with. Hugging isn't very distant from cuddling isn't very distant from petting isn't very distant from kissing isn't very distant from... Well, who knows. My interest and willingness frequently top out below "sex", but with good friends my natural level of "okay" my natural level of physical intimacy is above average; since it's usually a matter of comfort and not typically desire, it seems natural to be intimate (to some limit) because the "friend" vs. "lover" differentiation just isn't mentally there.

The worst part of this was not realizing this for so long. I can see, looking back, how this has been true for better than a decade, including the entire time of my marriage and a number of girlfriends before and after. It took until just the last two years - since I started living with Ash and we discussed it pretty bluntly. Puts a lot of things into perspective.

I guess my conclusion here is, don't assume everyone sees relationships in general or your own relationship specifically the same way you do. Some of us are different enough that what seems so perfectly natural - even is normal, in society as a whole - just doesn't compute.

The complement, of course, to how to refer to one's Dom, is how that Dom refers to you. A lot of the same things apply - as a sub, your name says a lot about you. Much more than with a Dom, however, a submissive's name can also say a lot about the situation they're in.

Part of the problem here is that "submissive" is such a broad term. For the sake of this, I need to differentiate someone who acts submissive and someone who is a submissive. Someone who plays submissive games, gets handcuffed or spanked in the bedroom, is a totally different place - a totally different mindset - from someone who submits as part of their lifestyle to a dominant or master. Someone who lives it as a lifestyle is invested in the idea of being a submissive; someone plays that way only in the bedroom is far more likely to be insulted by it in most contexts than appreciate it or look forwards to it.

Submissives frequently end up with a large number of names related to exactly what's going on at the moment. First and foremost, a sub will most often have their own, original name - the name they were born with. Very rarely will a sub be so deeply integrated into their relationship that they don't express their normal personalities; most subs live their day-to-day lives, work, hang out with friends, visit their families, do the shopping, etcetera. Often, though, they'll have a new name as well - a name given to them as, essentially, their slave persona. The name reflects their ownership, their new life, and is typically used only when they're actually actively submitting... Or when their dominant chooses to remind them of it.

Beyond those, though, it's incredibly common for a Dom and sub to use a laundry list of other names along the way. As an example, when working with a slave I use a few specific terms. "Little one" or "pet" indicate pleasure, and are used to refer to them when I'm pleased and content with them. "Girl," as a rule, indicates I'm not entirely happy with them - it's usually used to reinforce an order to clarify something or correct a problem. "Slave", when used as a term, indicates I'm upset with them over something, and want them to know it.

Obviously, every relationship is different. Some dominants may use gentle pet names; some may lean heavily towards "slut", "bitch", and equivalent. A daddy will lean towards something like "baby" or "princess" - after all, his little needs a cute name! While the master of a slave who is primarily for objectification or service or abuse may very pointedly never refer to them directly at all.

That shaping, that mental space, is the most important piece of this. You hear a lot about "subspace" (or at least I do), and keeping your submissive in an appropriate frame of mind is one of a dom's primary responsibilities in taking care of them. Without their correct frame of mind, at best your sub will be uncomfortable or at worst they'll be miserable - and the mental framing offered by a name is critical to it.

Names are powerful, in all aspects of any relationship - and moreso than ever in a kinky relationship. They can direct moods, shape mental state, and offer the context and communications critical in this type of relationship. Nowhere is that more true than with a submissive, where that name - or which name is used - can mean everything. As a submissive, be sensitive to how you are being addressed and let it guide you to where your dominant wants you to be; and as a dominant remember  your responsibility to care for your sub... And use those names carefully.

Bonus Transcripts: The best insect sex advice this side of Indonesia!

Some of you know, I'm in the process of listening to the Savage Lovecast back episodes. Earlier this week I listened to episode 209, and the last call he played included this gem:

Hi Dan. I'm a science graduate student, and for reasons beyond my control I had to spend my entire day today watching fruit flies try to get it on in little lab chambers. I've been here in the lab for the past 13 hours, watched and scored 156 pairs of fruit flies have - or attempt to have - sex, and listened to 21 Savage Love podcasts. Taking in all that advice you dispensed from episodes 1-21 of the podcast in my fruit-fly-courtship-induced delirium, I started to think of sex advice for fruit flies! Here it is for the benefit of your underserved fruit fly listenership; and who knows, maybe some people might find it helpful also.
Okay.
1) If you make a copulation attempt on a girl without following her around for a while first, your ass is going to get rejected.
2) You can sing to a lady all day, but it's going to get you nowhere unless you have the balls to get in there and do a little tapping and licking.
3) And finally, if you find yourself in a little glass-topped ceramic well with a virgin female, you might as well get it on because you've only got 10 more minutes to live.
Hope that's helpful, and Dan, thanks again for bringing a bunch more sex - be it gay, straight, bi, or dolphin - into this long day I've spent in the lab.

The Sir Conundrum

It hasn't been very long since I had someone calling me "Sir".

I mean, there are actually two girls who call me that on most of our interactions. One is my most recent submissive, Sunshine - when I released her, we've stayed friends and she continues to refer to me that way out of respect. It's more than a little bit, however, because our entire relationship was framed around that dynamic - we weren't friends first. The other is Pearl; she's not formally mine, and in fact she has submissives of her own, but that discussion has happened extensively. She prefers the comfort of considering me that way, and while I don't take responsibility for her we interact most often with a D/s dynamic.

It's been several weeks - a month or two? I would have to go back and look - since Sunshine was actually formally mine, however. She is no longer obligated to refer to me that way... But any of my subs or slaves are. So why do they?

To me, it's a matter of mindset. Most of the time, subs are people with whom I was already friends, and we have established patterns of interaction. They may refer to me by my name, they may refer to me by a nickname, or they may simply never really directly reference me in conversation.

As an experiment, pay attention to how you refer to people when you're talking. Really listen to yourself in three situations - when you're talking to them; when you're talking about them while they're there; and when you're talking about them while they're not there. It can be illuminating.

My point, though, is that I find it's useful to enforce a method of address for creating a differentiation in their head. It's frequently easier to have a submissive with whom you had a pre-existing friendship - it gives you a solid basis to work from. Unfortunately, many of those habits are counter-productive in a lot of D/s relationships... But those habits and that basis is something you want to modify and build from, not destroy. Using names to define that relationship clearly is one of the most effective ways to do so.

When I have a submissive or slave (and yes, I do differentiate; that distinction is for another day, however) they are required - when "on duty" - to refer to me as "Sir" or "Master". The former is considered polite and respectful; the latter is considered formal and is only required under specific circumstances (negotiations; formal requests; or any time they want to be especially respectful and butter me up, I suppose). It's convenient in that regard. I know that if they're referring to me as "sir", they're responding as a submissive and not just as my friend; if necessary I can use that to adjust the situation as required, and either reassure them that they can relax or point out that they aren't being as respectful as they possibly should be.

That particular policy is entirely my own, however, and while I've never heard anyone (except Bettina) object to it, I've never actually found anyone who had independently come up with the same - which is fine, since every relationship is different, too. The really important thing is to either use the name to define the context, or use the context to choose the name.

One Tumblr I've been following recently is one maintained by a Little - by a woman in a "Daddy/Little Girl" relationship. It's not a type of D/s that I have ever been involved in, but I have been involved in a number of variations on "pet"-style submission rather than "servant"-style, which is probably the closest I've gotten... But I can certainly appreciate the appeal of the dynamic. You see a lot of this there - they almost never use "master" or "sir" or "slave" or equivalent; it's a lot of "Papa" or "Daddy" or "Papa Bear" on the one side, and "Princess" or "Darling" or "Little One" or "Little Girl" on the other. It's sweet, and gentle, and very clearly frames to both of them when they're in Little space vs. when they're not.

And in that regard, a name can almost be like a safeword. If I tell my slave to do something and she very grumpily responds "But sir, that would blah blah blah" and tries to convince me otherwise, I may listen to her or I may shut her down, but we're in the same space - our D/s space. If she instead turns to me and says "Mike, I don't want to do that..." I know something is wrong - I know that the order or her mood or the situation snapped her far enough out of sub space that I need to figure out what happened and make sure she's okay.

You can call your top almost anything - Dom(me), Sir/Ma'am, Master/Mistress, Empress, Daddy, Lord, or whatever else. I used to know a couple where formal address was "Bastard" or "Dick" or some other similar insulting address. The important thing is understanding why the name is there; being conscious of the situation it brings; and being comfortable with them. Whatever you call them, it should be something you look forwards to - not something that makes you nervous or snaps you out.