kink_bingo help please!

[sophinisba]

Hey guys, what songs do you think of when you think of bound wrists?

baranduin wants to fill the "bondage (wrist/ankle restraints)" square on her kink_bingo with her first fanvid and is looking for music ideas. The subject would be Evgeni Plushenko, possibly paired with Johnny Weir, so I'd guess references to ice or cold or Russia would also be good, but the main thing is bondage. Please comment with your ideas!

Also, Merlin fans, please help me decide what to do with my "confined/caged" square! Poll on Dreamwidth only because crossposting them is too difficult. (Poll mentions noncon situations but only in a vague way.)

Poll #3315 caged!

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 19

View Respondents

How should I write confined/caged?

View Answers

Merlin/Aredian, straight-up noncon
5 (26.3%)

Merlin/Freya, canon era AU with consent and angst
9 (47.4%)

Merlin/Freya, modern AU creepy noncon (Merlin locks Freya in his basement so they can get to know each other better!)
5 (26.3%)

Arthur/Merlin futurefic, consensual with Merlin overcoming his fears following the Witchfinder episode
10 (52.6%)

FRODO IN JAIL YOU TRAITOR
1 (5.3%)

This other awesome idea I'll tell you about in comments!
3 (15.8%)

Thank you!

Comments

[swatkat]

Queen Gwen locking up whoever in the dungeons and having her way with them?

Stop looking at me that way, you asked.

[sophinisba]

The dungeon really is the most logical choice (not to mention one of the reasons I first fell for the show)! I think I just got so fixated on those second season cages I forgot about it.

Futurefic, Gwen is queen and Morgana comes back?

[veleda_k]

Well, I did say that I wanted someone to write that. However, I chose consensual Merlin/Freya, because I like that pairing and it gets so little attention.

[sophinisba]

I feel the same way about Merlin/Freya. I've been meaning to write them for a while and this prompt seems to fit so well. I was thinking consensual but angsty in that he rescues her from the bounty hunter but still ends up putting her in a cage at night. But then how to make that erotic and not just sad, like maybe he purposely has sex with her inside the cage so she has some positive associations to go with it along with the trauma and fear??

[veleda_k]

Maybe she reaches out to him? She wants to make the space theirs? It's rather like yours, just with the initiating partner switched.

[sophinisba]

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, especially if he's been sharing his fears about how it could have been him in the bounty hunter's cage in the first place.

[miarrow]

They are totally made of squish. Their episode is replaying on Syfy this weekend and I got so excited.

[sophinisba]

It's funny that I've only watched the episode once. When it first aired I definitely thought "This is the episode I'll watch on rainy days."

[swatkat]

Futurefic, Gwen is queen and Morgana comes back?

Or is captured, whatever. The power dynamics should be very, very interesting. And well, not like I'll ever say no to Gwen/Morgana. *g*

[sophinisba]

Arthur or even Uther could be the one to put her in the dungeon and then Gwen could go and have her way with her in secret.

[swatkat]

As long as there is fun in the dungeons. Morgana in chains!

[glim]

Hm. What if Freya puts Merlin in the cage? Or... some sort of AU where he'd been the one captured and she had to free him? Or futurefic when she's already the Lady of the Lake and there's, um, underwater confinement? They're magic! Oh, the possibilities... :)

[sophinisba]

Ooh, I like that second idea a lot! (But I think I have my heart set on the creepy modern AU - I've been hanging on to that bunny for a while.

[minoanmiss]

Songs that make me think of Bondage and other kinkiness:

Possession by Sarah McLatchlan
Nailed, Hedwig and the Angry Inch
Cry Little Sister (I forget the artist, Lost Boys soundtrack)
Wicked Game, any cover
Ty Jonathan Down, Videodrome
Father Figure, George Michael

[sophinisba]

Yay, thank you!

[baranduin]

Thank you! I'll check these out!

[nextian]

Fake Palindromes, Andrew Bird. "Some lonely night we can get together/and I'm gonna tie your wrists with leather."

[sophinisba]

Yay, thank you!

[yue_ix]

The Freya/Merlin and Gwen/Morgana ideas already said are lovely, even when dark.

Unless I'm mistaken, confined/caged can also refer to things past physical restraints - Merlin could want/love having his magic restrained in certain situations, for example to reverse or further certain power dynamics. Or someone could get a kick out of being captured, knowing someone may save them or that they can save themselves.

[slightlytookish]

I was hoping that you'd have Uther/Merlin as a choice!

I really like both of the ones that I chose in the poll. I think both have great potential to start out really angsty but turn into something sweet for both pairings. But maybe you want to go for something more intense overall?

[claudia603]

I agree about the Uther/Merlin non-con!!! Let me add another vote for that!

[sophinisba]

There are plenty of other squares I could use for Merlin/Uther, but the cage definitely made me think of Aredian and Freya.

[sophinisba]

Hee, maybe I can do U/M for one of the other squares. The cage just made me think of those two episodes. I've got no problem with sweetness, just am not really sure how to go through with any of these.

[vensre]

For bondagey songs~ Tunng - Hustle springs to mind. (http://www.tunng.co.uk/lyrics.html) It's a fun, lively song, too.

And I can't help thinking of that line in Teeth by Lady Gaga, "I'm gonna love you with my hands tied..." It's quite dark and kinky all over, really.

[sophinisba]

Ooh, I think I've heard that Lady Gaga song, and Lora likes her too, so that might be really good.

[meri]

I'm no good at songs, but I'll try thinking of one.

Also, I like the Merlin/Freya cage thing. For more consent, you could make it a modern AU where one of them likes being in a cage. It could be about them cage shopping together or the first night the person sleeps in the cage or what not. Which could be as cute as they are and still cagey and kinky.

[zahrawithaz.livejournal.com]

Love this poll.

I have to say the first thing that came to my mind was Morgana/imprisoned Alvarr--I don't even like Alvarr, but I like the thought of him with dom!Morgana (maybe especially if she's evening the odds after the way he played her).

But I am a total sucker for consensual Merlin/Freya, and I love your & veleda_k & glim's thoughts on it above. I think it could be very erotic, especially if they're both working through some of their darker feelings about what it means to be confined. I really like the Arthur/Merlin idea too, but I do feel like that's likely to get written by someone else, and these other ideas aren't.

My personal favorite bondage song (very NSFW) is the Stephen Sondheim one, "I Never Do Anything Twice," especially the version by Betty, though the bondage is mixed in with more explicit references to roleplay, painplay, bestiality and the life.

[sophinisba]

I'm having fun with the poll too, though I have to say it hasn't helped me narrow down what I should do at all. :D

I really like the Arthur/Merlin idea too, but I do feel like that's likely to get written by someone else, and these other ideas aren't.

That is my thought too. The Arthur/Merlin scenario is winning the poll even though I never write that pairing, and I can't tell how much is because people just like A/M, or that people like consent or characters overcoming their fears/reclaiming their kink, or how much it's that the Merlin/Freya vote is split between those other two scenarios.

Here is the thing...Okay, here are several things:

1. I like reading noncon fic but I've only written it once (and that was very short), and since it's a minority taste that I have I feel like sticking with it even though it loses in polls.

2. On the other hand I worry doing a lot of noncon is not really in the spirit of kink_bingo, and it would be better to do something on the lines of someone having issues and working through them with help from a partner and so getting to have fun and get off and all.

3. But then again I've been holding on to this Merlin/Freya AU since just after the episode aired. I loved the episode and totally shipped them but then I read significantowl's post about it where she was like, "No, Merlin, keeping an injured girl in your basement is NOT OKAY" and ever since then I've thought that
-bringing out that creepiness could be a fun way of critiquing the way the romance was handled in the episode, and
-that would be really hot (for me).

So that's where I'm at now, but I'll keep thinking about it! I think I'm going to record a tentacles podfic first and then remix a prostitution fic and then try to write a bodily secretions fic and then figure out what to do with the cage.

Thank you for listening! And thank you for the song rec!

P.S. There is also that cage at Hengist's castle! Maybe I could use it for my public humiliation square (with Lancelot)!