Ropes and Such ^.^

Consent

Consent is obviously really fucking important, not just in rope stuff but in anything. It's what a huge portion of kink-culture is founded on.

Consent is freely given and at any point the person is allowed to change their mind. This is one of the main reasons we establish things like safewords, which can be gradually escalating things like "red, yellow, and green light" so you know when you're right on the edge of what someone is comfortable with and can walk it back. This is also a huge reason that it's important to communicate with your partner. Obviously the more on each other's wavelengths you are the easier it is to communicate, but that just means you have to be a little more explicit and literal with someone you don't necessarily know that well yet.

Nerves

This one is a little bit scary, and it's why I prefer to learn in an in-person class (where possible) at least when you're first starting out.

When you're tying someone up, you usally make it kind of tight, depending on what they ask for. You ahve to be a little careful though with where the ropes fall, because if they're too tight on a nerve, that's not good.

This is why communication is important with your bottom, if their arms go numb that's generally someting that you want to hear about, so you can either loosen things or adjust things, or in really extreme cases you might need to cut them out of the ropes with rope shears.

This doens't happen often, I've never seen, but it's worth mentioning that this game can be a little dangerous.

Needs

So an individual session is generally called a Scene. When you're tying wiht a partner, it's important to determine between you and your bottom what you want to get out of this scene today. Does the bottom want to feel contricted? squished? trapped? Do they want to feel pretty and like they've been ornately tied up? These are all very important questions. How tight do they want the rope? Are you even tying someone else today or is to just you and you want to self-tie?

Another important thing with this is to make sure that you and your partner are "synced up" and in the same headspace. If one of you wants this to be a super intense experience and the other one is just going to chat the day away, it's not really going to be as fun. Make sure you're on the same page emotionally, like maybe cuddle and sync up your breath, or something similar.

That's not to say that you can't tie with someone you know nothing about adn don't feel synced up to at all though, it might be a little awlward to tie with a stranger, but it can still be really fun, especially if you lean into the nervousness. This person doens't know you, and if they do they might not know this part of you.

That can be part of the excitement though.

Ropes

There's a lot of ropes in the world and a lot of them aren't as good for this as they seem. I know it's easy to look at ropes and be like "if it ropes, it ropes" but actually some industrial ropes have chemicals in them that you don't want pressed into your body for extended periods of time. The ropes most people I've met seem to tie with are either jute or hemp. Jute ropes tend to shed, and they're a little more rough, the hemp ones are pretty soft.

I bought a cheap set on Amazon and regretted it, they were basically giant shoelaces and they even have aglets, which are falling off now. On an unrealted note, when I first bought them someone stole the package off my step, but the next day it was back, though torn open. It had come with a ball gag and the packaging made it pretty clear what the ropes were for, so I think they got weirded out and put it back, which is hilarious.

In my expereince the longer ropes are way better, you can get crazy intricate with things and make way cooler patterns, but I've heard that people like them at all sorts of lengths. I've heard from the instructor at my local dungeon that some tops have the ropes cut perfectly to match their bottoms. I have no idea what that means. One partner I had in ropes class though had brought her own ropes, and they were 30 feet long, and that was amazing. I felt like I could tie anything on her and I'd only need one hank. It does leave a lot of extra after you're done with thetie though, and that can be cumbersome.

Tutorials

So how to get into actual tying? The part where you wrap a rope around someone and then suddenly it's a harness?

There's websites and youtube vids linked below, the Dutchy is the popular one at my dungeon, and the guy who does that one had a youTube channel with some pretty good free samples too.