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Tag: alt.sex.spanking

fiction

Notes from Assville: Writing Like It’s 1999

Posted on By Mija

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Passante asked a wonderful question in reply to “Once Upon a Time in ASSville.” They began by noting how imaginative the old ASSville/SSS community looked from the outside, then asked how the stories actually got written.1I’m replying here especially meaning stories. The “community posts” that were more collective fiction happened very quickly.

Were most people putting them all together in one sitting, or would they write them elsewhere and transcribe them into digital text?

It’s hard to get a sense for how long things took when you only have posts and timestamps, but surely everyone wasn’t just firing off these novellas over a cup of coffee, were they?

No, though I drank an awful lot of after-hours coffee. Plenty of nights I stayed up all night coaxing an idea out of my head and onto paper or screen before it could get away. The longer answer is that the timestamp lies. Not maliciously, or even with intent. On Usenet, the timestamp tells us when something was posted to the server.2Note: that’s not the same as when it appeared to readers, which could vary depending on where on the network it was injected and when it hit a particular reader’s feed. From the writer’s perspective, the timestamp is the end.

The timestamp leaves out the actual life of the story: the first notes in a journal, words whispered to a lover, drafts sent to a friend, sections added by another writer, endings rewritten three times. It can’t show the scene that had been sitting in the most secret part of the author’s imagination since they were twelve, waiting for people who might understand it.

When I opened the group, I couldn’t see any of that unless the author explained it in the foreword.3Which a lot of us did because we were wordy like that. But other people, Lurking Dragon comes to mind, never posted anything about themselves. A story could look as if it had simply arrived, but the lived rhythm was full of delay, absence, drafting, return, and rediscovery.

Writing Without Connection

1990s hardware and connectivity shaped all of this: newsreaders, dorm-room computers, work machines, shared family computers, floppy disks, Zip disks, printed stories, and the simple fact that people did not carry the internet around with them. That deserves its own post, and I’ll come back to it. For now, the important point is simpler: writing and connection were not the same thing.

In 1997, when I left my dorm room, I left the internet too. Staying in, I’d be online for hours, reading the group, answering email, writing in PINE, drafting in BBEdit, and falling down whatever rabbit holes Usenet opened that day. But when I left for class, dinner, the library, a movie, someone else’s room, or even off-campus, I was gone. Not symbolically gone. Actually gone: no notifications, no texts, no quick checking the thread from a bus stop, no glancing at comments while waiting for coffee.

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  • 1
    I’m replying here especially meaning stories. The “community posts” that were more collective fiction happened very quickly.
  • 2
    Note: that’s not the same as when it appeared to readers, which could vary depending on where on the network it was injected and when it hit a particular reader’s feed.
  • 3
    Which a lot of us did because we were wordy like that. But other people, Lurking Dragon comes to mind, never posted anything about themselves.
amigas

Notes from Assville: Once Upon a Time…

Posted on By Mija

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Once Upon a Time in ASSville

 

Note:

A caveat: Human memory is a notoriously unreliable archive. The ASSville I describe in these posts is necessarily partial, shaped by my own experiences, friendships, conflicts, blind spots, and affections. My “golden years”1The term “golden years” refers to the newbie energy people tend to have when they first came on the group. Whenever it was, it was, in their memories, always the group’s *best* time. on the group were roughly 1996 through 1998. Other residents arrived earlier, came after, occupied different social circles, and likely will remember events differently.

I hope they will tell me about it, here or elsewhere.

One of my goals for this series of posts is not sharing and preserving my memories –that’s what The Treehouse is for– but to begin a conversation about our shared past or pasts. If you were there and remember things differently, if I’ve gotten details wrong, overlooked important people or events, or misunderstood something, please leave a comment. Likwise, share what you remember if it’s similar too. The history of ASSville, like ASSville itself, was collectively made. Perhaps  the remembering it can be collective as well. Of course, if you weren’t there and have questions, please ask them.

Introduction

At a munch in Culver City a couple weekends ago someone was asking if I knew what was going on with Laura’s site [I don’t but did post instructions on how to use Wayback Machine to find it] and we ended up discussing what early internet communities were  like before social media, a conversation that is becoming more and more familiar. Usually they imagine something primitive: anonymous message boards, chaos, trolls, isolated people typing into the void.

These posts under the “Notes from Assville” banner are my attempt to answer this. They’re also an exercise in memory that may connect my academic and kink writing. But mostly it’s because the Usenet spanking community (AKA ASSville) was my first and most profound experience of community on the internet.

Note: The first version of this his was written a few months ago. I’ve posted it today in part because I think it relates well to the discussion in the comments of my July 4, 2026 post: “Notes from ASSville: Introducing a Town Built of Text.”

What was this place?

I start with the idea of “space” and “place” because, for me, alt.sex.spanking/soc.sexuality.spanking (colletively known as “Assville”) was always more than a digital space. It existed (and in my memory still does) as a place. This makes it quite different from Twitter or any other electronic community I’ve ever been part of. It’s special. 2Actually “special” doesn’t even cover it. For me, it’s home in a way no space, vanilla or otherwise, felt before or since. This, even though it called itself “Assville,” something I’ve always found profoundly embarrassing.

“ASSville” as a town3There are early stories out there that refer to it as a university (I think that maybe was rude too), reflecting, no doubt Usenet’s pre and post Eternal September and the over-representation of academic and students in the community. grew out of the Usenet spanking community surrounding alt.sex.spanking / soc.sexuality.spanking in the 1990s. If you weren’t there, that surely sounds ridiculous already, a rude schoolboy joke – like I’m writing about a place called “Bumland.” Inside the community, we would mostly have agreed. Ridiculousness was intrinsic to the group culture. As a community we liked parody, satire, gossip, absurd public performances, elaborate inside jokes, and theatricality. We liked being funny in a groaning kinda way.4Example: I delurked right in the middle of discussions about moving alt.sex.spanking to the soc* hierarchy (a big fucking deal — more on that history later). The long long long discussion threads were under the subject line “Moving Assville.” A few months later that subject line had morphed into “Assville: The Movie.”

But looking back now through my old posts, roleplay threads, stories, websites, and contests,5What I have of those 1997-1999 posts are tiny tiny fragments of what I posted — mostly ones that were saved by being posted to Laura’s and/or The Treehouse, or that I’d sent via email often enough to have saved the document. Beyond that, no. I don’t have the posts or emails from those years. I wish I did. what strikes me most is not the kink itself. Rather it is how completely people inhabited the place. How that felt like belonging, to and from.

ASSville was not merely a discussion group or internet community; it was a town.

Not metaphorically, though yes, of course. But mainly socially.

The community developed neighborhoods, recurring landmarks, public institutions, local celebrities, newspapers, schools, running jokes, scandals, folklore, and, probably most importantly, a shared emotional geography. We had a newspaper called The Town Crier (I did mention the puns, right?). There were boarding houses, castles, flower shops, and a town square. People referred to “their end of town.” Spam was referred to as “trash.” Stories overlapped and referenced one another. Characters wandered between narratives and, sometimes, authors. Police chiefs and coaches, sock-puppets and trolls, muttering madmen. Shared settings accumulated lore.

When I started lurking on alt.sex.spanking in 1996 I genuinely half-believed there might be a physical ASSville somewhere. [I imagined it in Florida… of course. Assville as something like a spanking version of The Villages.]

That sounds so absurd now,6Okay. Not just now. The people I mentioned it to in 1997 also thought it odd. But then again they probably understood how newsgroups worked a lot better than me. but it also reveals something important. That for me and many, many others the place was experientially real enough that my brain modeled it spatially. I knew where people “lived” and who with. I knew where trouble tended to happen. I knew which personalities gathered together. I was part of a little posse of “brats” (women mostly) who wrote community posts when the muse took us. I knew where Pablo Stubbs and my own little corner of town, The Treehouse, was.7I wasn’t unique in this. There’s charming artwork out there. A poster, Z, did some some lovely stuff.

Writing for Readers, Readers for Writing

Because identity online (at the time) was almost entirely textual people became recognizable through their prose. You knew someone by their cadence, favorite genres, disciplinary philosophies, emotional tone, recurring jokes, or literary references. Our identities emerged through our writing.8This, and my not being the only newsgroup reader/writer who read and studied writing for a living, it wasn’t easy for people to hide by posting under another identity.

This was especially true because ASSville was deeply shaped by collaborative storytelling traditions. If someone wrote a particularly memorable school story, like, for example, Pablo Stubbs infamous, Such a Good Girl (which itself  nods toward British boarding school stories of the first to middle twentieth century) another writer would quietly borrow a surname, a fictional school, a headmistress, or a setting as a nod toward the earlier story. Readers who recognized the references experienced a small flash of communal pleasure: not plagiarism, but continuity. A sense of fitting. Seeing and being seen in this virtual world.

That was how the culture worked. Stories conversed with one another. Many were collaboratively written.

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  • 1
    The term “golden years” refers to the newbie energy people tend to have when they first came on the group. Whenever it was, it was, in their memories, always the group’s *best* time.
  • 2
    Actually “special” doesn’t even cover it. For me, it’s home in a way no space, vanilla or otherwise, felt before or since. This, even though it called itself “Assville,” something I’ve always found profoundly embarrassing.
  • 3
    There are early stories out there that refer to it as a university (I think that maybe was rude too), reflecting, no doubt Usenet’s pre and post Eternal September and the over-representation of academic and students in the community.
  • 4
    Example: I delurked right in the middle of discussions about moving alt.sex.spanking to the soc* hierarchy (a big fucking deal — more on that history later). The long long long discussion threads were under the subject line “Moving Assville.” A few months later that subject line had morphed into “Assville: The Movie.”
  • 5
    What I have of those 1997-1999 posts are tiny tiny fragments of what I posted — mostly ones that were saved by being posted to Laura’s and/or The Treehouse, or that I’d sent via email often enough to have saved the document. Beyond that, no. I don’t have the posts or emails from those years. I wish I did.
  • 6
    Okay. Not just now. The people I mentioned it to in 1997 also thought it odd. But then again they probably understood how newsgroups worked a lot better than me.
  • 7
    I wasn’t unique in this. There’s charming artwork out there. A poster, Z, did some some lovely stuff.
  • 8
    This, and my not being the only newsgroup reader/writer who read and studied writing for a living, it wasn’t easy for people to hide by posting under another identity.
history

Notes from ASSville: Time Traveling Via Wayback Machine – How to Find Laura’s Spanking Corner and Other 1990s–Early 2000s Story Sites

Posted on By Mija

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How to Find Laura’s Spanking Corner and Other 1990s–Early 2000s Story Sites

One of the pleasures, and frustrations, of writing about early online spanking communities is that so many of the places we remember aren’t on the live web anymore. Whether it’s Laura’s Spanking Corner. Castle Handyman. Darla and Ming’s House. Old personal story pages there are still traces. These sites / archives once felt permanent because they were always there when we typed in the address, but too many of them are gone now.

…. Or are they?

Maybe they’re gone from the ordinary web but some can still be found (sometimes in pieces) through the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.1IMO the Internet Archive and its support of The Wayback Machine is among the most fantastic and ambitious archival projects ever attempted.

This post is a simple guide for readers who want to visit old story sites and read what can still be read. A later post will talk more about archival practice, citations, privacy, and preservation. For now, this is just the basic time-travel kit.

Let’s start with Laura’s. It was up a long time, has only been gone for a few months, (and may soon be back), Steps begin below.

 

1. Go to the Wayback Machine

Open:

https://web.archive.org

See the search box? This is where you enter the old web address of the site you’re trying to find.

The Wayback Machine works best if you already have a URL. Searching for the name of a site is sometimes possible, but old web pages are much easier to find by address.

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  • 1
    IMO the Internet Archive and its support of The Wayback Machine is among the most fantastic and ambitious archival projects ever attempted.
history An image of the front page of Assville's newspaper called "The Town Crier"

Notes from ASSville: Introducing a Town Built of Text

Posted on By Mija

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Hello. Is this on? Can you hear me in the back?

Okay.  Well. Let’s do this. 

Most of my adult life I’ve kept my scholarly self and my kink/schoolgirl self in separate binders, carefully labeled, alphabetized, each with dividers organized by topic. Recently I’ve tentatively slipped into the same ring mechanism, as seen in my ever-so-long November 2025 post, The Music of Discipline: Notes Toward a Sonic Saint Clare.

This post, is an attempt to think seriously, historically, and affectionately about the early online spanking community that shaped so much of my intellectual and emotional life in the late 1990s. It is also the beginning of a larger project about Usenet, digital culture, communal governance, archives, and the textual world many of us once called “ASSville.”

An image of the front page of Assville's newspaper called "The Town Crier"
Image – AI Generated

Note:

A caveat: Human memory is a notoriously unreliable archive. The ASSville I describe in these essays is necessarily partial, shaped by my own experiences, friendships, conflicts, blind spots, and affections. My “golden years”1The term “golden years” refers to the newbie energy people tend to have when they first came on the group. Whenever it was, it was, in their memories, always the group’s *best* time. on the group were roughly 1996 through 1998. Other residents arrived earlier, came after, occupied different social circles, and likely will remember events differently.

I hope they will tell me about it, here or elsewhere.

One of my goals for this series of posts is not sharing and preserving my memories –that’s what The Treehouse is for– but to begin a conversation about our shared past or pasts. If you were there and remember things differently, if I’ve gotten details wrong, overlooked important people or events, or misunderstood something, please leave a comment. Likwise, share what you remember if it’s similar too. The history of ASSville, like ASSville itself, was collectively made. Perhaps  the remembering it can be collective as well. Of course, if you weren’t there and have questions, please ask them. 

Another note: 

Memory presents other complications as well. Example? Between May and the end of August 1997, I had no internet access whatsoever. No Usenet. No email. Nothing.

In our “Always On” world this is almost unimaginable.2See my account of the uncanny experience of being offline for only a few weeks last summer (2025) In 1997 it was inconvenient and not unusual. Still, for nearly four months I disappeared entirely from ASSville. I could neither read nor post, send nor receive email, lurk nor participate. The only news I received about the group came second-hand through (almost) nightly3These calls required me to find a phone where he could call me. At times, that meant sitting in front of a pay phone at midnight. No, it wasn’t snowing. telephone conversations with Paul.

There are, therefore, entire stretches of ASSville history that I experienced only through retelling, summary, gossip, and memory. Even at the time, my understanding of events was partial and mediated. I barely understood how the technology worked. Magic, as it happened. 

This is worth remembering because no one person, however active, ever experienced the whole of ASSville. We each inhabited particular neighborhoods, friendships, arguments, and moments. The town we remember is and was therefore always both real and incomplete.

Los Angeles, late Fall 1996, the top floor of a small four-plex on Mariposa Avenue.

I was in the first semester of my PhD program, learning how to live alone for the first time and trying to find my place in a city that was home but also new. On my desk sat a beige Mac Performa, the sort that purred more than it processed. Through PINE (a UNIX email platform) I dialed into my university to check my email one line at a time, black text against a soft brown-grey screen. Late one evening, almost by accident, I wandered beyond my inbox and into something called Usenet.

Screenshot of PINE Usenet reader from U8UNTU. Used under Creative Common’s license.

At the time, I understood almost nothing about internet architecture. I only knew that suddenly there were lists upon lists of discussion groups, arranged into sprawling categories that seemed to contain all human thought, or at least all human obsession. Some were political. Some technical. Some scholarly. Some were devoted entirely to television shows, recipes, obscure bands, or cats. Others seemed to exist solely because somewhere, sometime, two people wanted to keep talking to each other. Many were abandoned or even jokes.

(more…)

  • 1
    The term “golden years” refers to the newbie energy people tend to have when they first came on the group. Whenever it was, it was, in their memories, always the group’s *best* time.
  • 2
    See my account of the uncanny experience of being offline for only a few weeks last summer (2025)
  • 3
    These calls required me to find a phone where he could call me. At times, that meant sitting in front of a pay phone at midnight. No, it wasn’t snowing.

The 1997 Brat Survival Kit (with 2025 Footnotes)

Posted on By Mija

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Back in the late 1990s, alt.sex.spanking and soc.sexuality.spanking loved making “Back to School ” posts. What follows is my 1997 Brat Kit — faithfully preserved, complete with bubblegum, stickers, and chaos. Only now it comes with a 2025 brat (and professor) scribbling in the margins and leaving footnotes, teasing and blushing about what’s soooo dated and what’s (maybe) still bratting gold.

Update: click here for the 2025 Professor/Academic Kits !

It’s getting to be that time of year again <boo!!! hiss!!!> — thoughts are turning to school and uniforms and teachers and classes <pout/sulk>. Summer is just too darn short (no, not Summer Nicole, I mean the season between spring and fall — like duh!!) and the autumn back-to-school sales are showing up (Pablo recently just happened to notice that everyone is out buying new school uniforms). =:-O

As they get our uniforms in order, sharpen pencils, buy new notebooks and worse yet <gasp! horrors!!> new and improved math books, I feel all constrained and stifled (like my collar is too starchy and tight!!! Help help I’m being oppressed!!!). And so, I think what I need for the start of school is a brand spanking new brat survival kit or two. And maybe you need one too. The basic one should be carried on or near your cute little brat bod at all times. The deluxe one is meant for the well-appointed brat locker.

This list is not exhaustive and could be thought of as the start of a thread BB4B (by brats for brats). I’m sure you all have good ideas of what should go in here. I wanna hear ’em now!!! Hurry, hurry, before school starts!!! Also, I’ve kinda taken the squirt gun/silly string/water balloon stuff as a constant given. <giggling> Let’s try and be original here!

Basic Kit

Beeper. Should go off randomly, especially in study hall and on exam days (a theatrical or musical performance would be another good place for this). This will work best if you’re trying to annoy (not that I would of course) Pablo. Beeping alarm watches set at 15 minute intervals are a good substitute here. Do NOT answer or stop the beeper. The trick is to look around like you’re wondering whose it is too. Advanced brats will want to hide it in the room itself (Heating vents? Ceiling tiles?? The teacher’s briefcase???) <neg>.12025 brat-self: Grandma, what is a beeper? You mean those plastic pagers from ER reruns? Did you carry one in your fanny pack, too?

Gum. Sugary, hot pink (Bazooka is always good or Hubba-Bubba) — the sticky pink stuff is great because it is a kewl color, smells good, tastes sweet and has awesome irritating noise potential (bubble popping, cracking, or just chewing all noisy-like).22025 brat-self: Endorsed. Loud gum still works. Upgrade: neon chewing gum TikTok challenge.

Hershey Kiss. (See larger kit below, under chocolate.)32025 brat-self: Hershey’s still exists, but are you sure you don’t want Trader Joe’s dark chocolate peanut butter cups?

Liquid Paper Bottle. You have to make this. Take a bottle (full, empty, whatever), empty it, then rinse it clean with nail polish remover. You now have an approved-of school supply that can be used to transport a very small item to a knowing fellow brat. I use them to pass notes that are all rolled up around the brush. Almost undetectable!!42025 brat-self: Liquid Paper?! Honey, we just text now. Or send memes. Still, props for spycraft.

Pens. No, I haven’t gone over to the dark (read: top) side here. I mean special pens.

  • Fat fluorescent highlighters for one (great because you could even say you were going to study with them <g>). I like to highlight any spanking-related words myself (note to moderators: Now I’m on topic, right?) <ng>.52025 brat-self: Timeless. Brats highlight “spank” in PDFs now.

  • Permanent markers. Not that I’d use them to draw on a paddle or cane or anything, let alone to write ‘Grow your own dope; plant a top!’ on the bathroom walls (that was Randi, I swear!!) <eg>. But you could!! And you could write on yourself with them too. Almost like a tattoo, the marks take days and days to get off <g>. Marks-A-Lot now makes a ‘brights’ pack that includes a hot pink, bright green, orange and black.62025 brat-self: Writing on bathroom walls replaced by digital graffiti = memes + Slack emojis.

  • Fluorescent roller ball pens. For homework, notes to friends, writing lines, doodling, whatever (these are so kewl!!!!). OK, they aren’t easy to find, but man are they worth it (they are called ‘Gelly Rolls’ by Sakura — I found them at a Carlton Cards). They come in bunches of colors (all obnoxious as heck, but I like the hot pink and fluorescent green best). Pablo has yet to express a preference — he must like them all!! 😛 There is a very bright yellow (Summer?) but it’s even harder to read than the others <grin grin grin>. They are so smooth and easy to write with (I’m thinking about some brat with mucho lines here — surely not me) and stand out beautifully against white. A must have!!!! (IMHO).72025 brat-self: Still rule. Pastel ink supremacy never dies.

Stickers. Whatever kind. Smiley faces (putting a smiley next to a ‘D’ may confuse a dumb top into thinking it’s a ‘B’ — try OVER a ‘D’, get the signature and then peel the sticker back off), frowny faces, whatever (see Tasha or Mija for the limited edition neon orange ‘Power to the Brats’ ones).82025 brat-self: Stickers never die, they just became emojis. Still waiting on a neon orange “Power to the Brats” emoji pack.

Deluxe Locker Kit

Chocolate. In any and all forms. For emergency snacks (remember, there’s no such thing as too much sugar :-P) or quickie bribes (just so the other brats don’t squeal on ya <glancing over at ‘lissa>).92025 brat-self: Upgrade to fair-trade, salted caramel, or THC-infused. Choices matter.

Carbon Paper. If I hafta explain this one you is no brat.102025 brat-self: Please explain anyway, Nana. Was this before or after the dinosaurs?

Dictionary. Yeah right — NOT. (Addition: it was pointed out to me that some work with a penknife would make a dictionary a great place to hide brat objects. I’m not taking a position on this ’cause cutting up any book would put me in the OTK one. Let’s just say that this came as a suggestion from a high office holder in this town. Without naming names it was Jdg Ptrch**.)112025 brat-self: Cute. Now we hide files in the “Taxes 2014” folder on Google Drive. Same vibe.

Musical Card. You know, the ones that play ‘Happy Birthday’ or ‘Jingle Bells’. These would be a mildly bratty thing to send someone; they are rather annoying even the first time through. But an advanced brat will take the button-sized device out of the card, use a piece of tape to permanently secure it on ‘play’ and hide it in the (math) classroom (inside a light fixture or wall socket is a good place!!!). At first no one will hear it, but then there will be a quiet moment. And like a loudly ticking clock, once you hear the tinny music you cannot not hear it. Trust me, your teacher will go NUTS looking for it (practice your innocent and annoyed look NOW). The best thing is, these little musical devices have been known to play for as long as a week. <giggling madly> Oh, and extra kudos to the first brat to find one that plays ‘I’m Too Sexy’ for Petruchio’s class.122025 brat-self: Still genius. Modern equivalent: looped TikTok audio on a Bluetooth speaker hidden in the ceiling.

Nail Polish. I don’t care if you are a het male brat!! <giggle> You don’t just need this stuff, you need this stuff!! The purple, green and chartreuse polishes (let alone the neon yellow called ‘sinful’ I bought Saturday) are another way to make yourself stand out from the crowd and express your individuality. Most schools don’t yet have a policy on nail color. Imagine what good thoughts the headmaster will have of you if you have the school’s orange and green colors expressed on your nails!!! He’s bound to want to personally congratulate you on your individuality.132025 brat-self: Neon nail polish? Timeless. Also: now gender-free. Everyone’s nails get bratty.

Paddle Protectors. Another home-made item. Made from cutting bound magazines in circle shapes. Judge your own size ;). Insert in underwear or knickers prior to visiting the headmaster/mistress’s office. (Important Safety Note: obviously you need to make sure that like the ones in Knax’s stories this is going to be an over the skirt/pants paddling. Otherwise you’ll only get yourself in deeper. And don’t even think I’d be responsible! Mija is never responsible.)142025 brat-self: Sweetie, we have gel inserts now. Or claim “ergonomic accommodation.”

Police Line Tape. You know, that yellow ‘Do Not Cross’ stuff. Steal it from real crime scenes (or maybe your dad is a police officer (???)) and then squirrel it away. If you play your cards right you could close the whole school for a day or two (this might require a chalked outline of a three legged man too)!!!152025 brat-self: In 2025, this prank gets you arrested. Substitute: “Do Not Disturb — Zoom in Progress” tape.

Powerbook. Well, my Mac is bratty, and PC and UNIX people seem to think all Mac owners are brats (though that’s just ’cause we’ve never had to read the dumb manuals :-P). ‘Sides, I waaaaaaannnnnt a Powerbook all my own!!! <stamping foot for emphasis> Um, the one with the active matrix screen and DVD player. Oh, and while I’m dreaming, can I have a pony?162025 brat-self: LOL. “DVD player.” That’s vintage now. Macs still brat-coded, though.

Rayban Wayfarer Sunglasses. For the days you’re just too cool for school.172025 brat-self: Endorsed. No notes. Ray-Bans forever.

Safety Pins. In case you get tired of rolling your skirt. If you use one pin per pleat they are real hard to detect. And if you get sent to the office for the skirt being too short (it will look like it was altered by sewing) you just stop at the restroom and take the pins back out. You can now innocently claim that the teacher is picking on you. 😉182025 brat-self: Still clever. Only now the dress code violation is leggings-as-pants.

Shoe Laces. In neon green, pink or yellow (all three for that ever-so-special day!!). School dress codes rarely specify the color of shoe laces, so this is a legal (at least at present) way to individualize your uniform. A little neon near your toes is bound to lift your mood, lighten your feet, make you dance out of line. It may have the bonus of distracting your classmates and even your teacher!!!!192025 brat-self: Still works. Swap in LED laces and watch your shoes light up faculty meetings.

Closing Note

The 1997 brat kit is a time capsule: beepers, carbon paper, and Powerbooks with DVD drives <g>. Reading it now is a reminder that brat culture has always been about invention, cheek, and refusing to play “TREW SUB” by anyone’s rules.

2025 brat-self to 1997 brat-self: You’re adorable, but carbon paper? Really? Still, the bones of the brat kit hold up — it’s just the tech that changes.

So here’s the invitation: if you were building a brat kit for a period roleplay set in the 1980s or 1990s, what would you pack? Cassette tapes for “accidentally” unspooling in the Walkman? Scratch-and-sniff stickers? Trapper Keeper with a secret stash? A dial-up modem sound effect timed for maximum disruption?

As it says in the original post: This list is not exhaustive and could, no should, be thought of as the start of a thread BB4B (by brats for brats). So add your own artifacts — because brat kits are never finished, and every era deserves its own mischief.

And hey, catch me if you can.

  • 1
    2025 brat-self: Grandma, what is a beeper? You mean those plastic pagers from ER reruns? Did you carry one in your fanny pack, too?
  • 2
    2025 brat-self: Endorsed. Loud gum still works. Upgrade: neon chewing gum TikTok challenge.
  • 3
    2025 brat-self: Hershey’s still exists, but are you sure you don’t want Trader Joe’s dark chocolate peanut butter cups?
  • 4
    2025 brat-self: Liquid Paper?! Honey, we just text now. Or send memes. Still, props for spycraft.
  • 5
    2025 brat-self: Timeless. Brats highlight “spank” in PDFs now.
  • 6
    2025 brat-self: Writing on bathroom walls replaced by digital graffiti = memes + Slack emojis.
  • 7
    2025 brat-self: Still rule. Pastel ink supremacy never dies.
  • 8
    2025 brat-self: Stickers never die, they just became emojis. Still waiting on a neon orange “Power to the Brats” emoji pack.
  • 9
    2025 brat-self: Upgrade to fair-trade, salted caramel, or THC-infused. Choices matter.
  • 10
    2025 brat-self: Please explain anyway, Nana. Was this before or after the dinosaurs?
  • 11
    2025 brat-self: Cute. Now we hide files in the “Taxes 2014” folder on Google Drive. Same vibe.
  • 12
    2025 brat-self: Still genius. Modern equivalent: looped TikTok audio on a Bluetooth speaker hidden in the ceiling.
  • 13
    2025 brat-self: Neon nail polish? Timeless. Also: now gender-free. Everyone’s nails get bratty.
  • 14
    2025 brat-self: Sweetie, we have gel inserts now. Or claim “ergonomic accommodation.”
  • 15
    2025 brat-self: In 2025, this prank gets you arrested. Substitute: “Do Not Disturb — Zoom in Progress” tape.
  • 16
    2025 brat-self: LOL. “DVD player.” That’s vintage now. Macs still brat-coded, though.
  • 17
    2025 brat-self: Endorsed. No notes. Ray-Bans forever.
  • 18
    2025 brat-self: Still clever. Only now the dress code violation is leggings-as-pants.
  • 19
    2025 brat-self: Still works. Swap in LED laces and watch your shoes light up faculty meetings.

Orange Socks and Spanking

Posted on By Mija

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“Oh no! Daddy heard I was wearing orange socks and told me to wait for him in my room….”

What’s the connection between wearing orange socks and spanking? Did you even know there was one?

“Naughty Santa put orange socks in my stocking again this year! I swear the jolly old elf is trying to get me in trouble”

I posted the above picture (me wearing orange knee socks) and told this little bit of spanking history on BlueSky and Twitter today:

A million years ago… no wait, in the late 20th century (that is the 1990s) on the Usenet group alt.sex.spanking, there was a discussion of how to ask for a spanking and/or “punishment” scene1This was long before the term “funishment” came into usage. without actually asking. Someone posted how in their house there was an absolute rule against wearing orange socks. Any wearing of orange socks merited punishments of varying severity.

“What on earth?!? I cannot believe you’re wearing those orange socks again. I thought we dealt with this seriously enough last time but clearly you need another lesson.”

“Orange socks” struck some sort of chord, maybe because it was both simple and silly (who doesn’t like that?) and it quickly became an inside joke and shorthand on the newsgroup. “Orange socks” as a punishment/spanking trigger was especially popular with several posters who were married/partnered with former vanillas as a way to playfully nudge or “ask for it.” For a while there was an”Orange Sock Award,” people would report orange socks sightings, and share places they’d found to buy them.2This was so long ago Amazon only sold books.

“I’m hoping it’s an orange socks kind of night.”

“Orange socks” as an inside spanko joke migrated with the group from alt.sex.spanking to soc.sexuality.spanking and came to mean a punishment that wasn’t about anything important but might still be severe. It was used periodically on the newsgroup until we put the lights out in 2012.

“Wait! That’s not fair! The rule is about wearing orange socks. As in a pair.  I’m only wearing one orange sock. Singular!!”

Now you know. The reason I’ll always give anyone in orange socks a second look.

  • 1
    This was long before the term “funishment” came into usage.
  • 2
    This was so long ago Amazon only sold books.

Readers, Welcome – Also, What Is This Place?

Posted on By Mija

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Hello…hello…Can you hear me?

<tap, tap>

….Is this thing on?

AI-generated art that looks pretty like me… on a good day.

Welcome. 🙂 In honor of Mija’s Room receiving its first, and so far only, comment (thank you, Natty!), here is my welcome to my room. In my imagination, this is my corner of The Treehouse, the virtual real estate in the town of alt.sex.spanking/soc.sexuality.spanking where Pablo and Mija once lived.

I’m not sure if many people are reading here yet — if you are, please leave a comment if you can — this blog and site are still taking shape. For a new site it’s trying to do a   – but is mostly going to be a place where I post about my flavors of the kink, musing about ToGI, and all things that, for me, connect to spanking.

One reason it’s trying to do a lot is I have a lot of writing from 1997-2015 that’s not on the ‘net at present. Before it was taken down, it was in three places:

Part of the front page of Pablo and Mija’s Treehouse before it was taken down.
  • Pablo and Mija’s Treehouse – started in 1999 as a Christmas gift from Paul to me. It housed both Paul’s writings, my writings, and a few that we wrote jointly.  They were mostly written for the newsgroups alt.sex.spanking and soc.sexuality.spanking.
  • el tercer ojo – my first blog, started on TypePad in the early 2000s. It originally was going to be a space where I wrote about kink, politics, education, and all the other areas of interest. It soon became clear that it was mostly going to focus on kink. This blog is a kinda extension of that one, I think.
  • The Punishment Book – started in 2004. It was a blog I started with a group of friends. We wrote (sporadically) about how discipline and punishment fit into our lives and relationships, with a lot of real-life accounts. Other than the newsgroup, it’s been my favorite writing community ever — there was a great group of readers and a lot of fun discussions.  I wrote more about it here and would like to find the time to write even more.

All three had to be taken down, literally overnight. The reasons are complicated and have to do with a vanilla friend who, several years ago, unexpectedly became the focus of some of the nastiest parts of the alt.right. They was doxxed on a right-wing website; their connections were combed over as well. Because we’d shared hotel rooms at conferences and we were known to be close friends, I feared my kink might get added to the already terrible attacks they were already experiencing. I couldn’t think of anything to do other than take everything down and erase as much of Mija from the web as I could — not an easy task since the sort of massive data analysis possible now was science fiction in 1997 when I started writing. It felt like Mija died — that we’d had to kill her off, though in truth, I wasn’t actively writing.

That band has thankfully moved on.  As I’ve come back into the scene, I’ve been surprised to hear from a number of people that The Treehouse was a significant site for them and that they miss it. I find that deeply moving because I miss it too, more than I realized. The Treehouse was the first place “Pablo and Mija” lived together. The domain “thetreehouse.net”  was our first “home.” Plus, I like having control over my stories, knowing that there weren’t ever going to be ads or the like.

So, the structure. Obviously, there are dated posts (this is one of them). Posts are new unless I mention somewhere in the subject line or first paragraph that it was posted earlier somewhere else.

At the top, under the header, or in the hamburger at the far right, you can find the pages that are not posts.

Home: This will take you back to the blog’s first page.

About: Basic facts about me as well as art credit  — this banner is an adaptation of a drawing by KayQy’s “Solitude Lineart” – shared under a Creative Commons license.

Glossary: I sooo like a good glossary. This is where I’m going to try to EXPLAIN IT ALL by describing or defining things I write about that may not be obvious to all readers. It will, of course, be chaotic and inconsistent.

Links: This page has links to sites of friends, sites where I read, and eventually, sites where I’ve bought things. Basically, anything kink-related I enjoy and recommend.

Stories: These are my stories, both fiction and real-life accounts, mostly from Pablo & Mija’s Treehouse and The Punishment Book. Most of my writings have been somewhere in the discipline/punishment genre, with a fair dose of school uniform stuff. Hopefully, these will eventually end up on The Treehouse 2.0.

I’m tempted to commit to some sort of posting frequency, but let’s be honest, that would be a piecrust promise. We’ll need to see how this goes.

Meantime, leave a comment if you can.

Goodbye Tony

Posted on By Mija

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https://shadowlanestore.com/blogs/news/a-message-from-eve-howard-june-2020

One terrible day in March 2020 as I drove home from the hospital where my mom was being treated for late-stage pancreatic cancer, my phone rang with the horrible news that the wonderful, irreplaceable Tony Elka was ill, dying, likely very soon. The friend who told me said it was the final days, that from what she’d heard he was really already gone. We talked, mostly about Eve, both heartsick for her, making sure she had what comfort and support there was to be had in the face of such sadness, thinking about how the pandemic made even a funeral impossible. I don’t remember the rest of our call, nor how I managed to navigate home.

Paul was as shocked as me. Individually, both of us had known Tony (and Shadow Lane) for years — for me since 19971Actually, it was earlier. Telling our origin stories, Tony and I had figured out our paths had nearly crossed a number of times, including in the 1980s when I was an undergraduate at UCLA and didn’t *quite* make it to any of the spanking gatherings at the Sportsman’s Lodge. when I first delurked on alt.sex.spanking. Finding out I was in Southern California, he’d gently urged me to come to a Shadow Lane party, over and over. He became a friend, someone who seemingly could always make any situation easier or better, whose unexpected humor I grew to expect.

Sitting on the sofa, not knowing what to do, I wanted so much to see him somehow, to say “goodbye,” for him to know how much, by touching it, he’d changed and shaped my life. Even in this, Tony managed to grant me a moment of what I can only call grace. After talking with Paul and not knowing what else to do, I sent Tony a text, figuring even if he never saw it, I could a least say a kind of “goodbye” there. The grace was two days of text exchanges where I got to say how much Paul and I loved him and read him saying how much he valued our friendship, that he loved us too. That he had the support of his family, and they didn’t need anything.

That was all. A few weeks later we heard that he was, finally, gone. It’s been over four years, and it’s still hard to imagine the world without Tony in it.

Rest in love and power, my friend.

https://shadowlanestore.com/blogs/news/a-message-from-eve-howard-june-2020

 

  • 1
    Actually, it was earlier. Telling our origin stories, Tony and I had figured out our paths had nearly crossed a number of times, including in the 1980s when I was an undergraduate at UCLA and didn’t *quite* make it to any of the spanking gatherings at the Sportsman’s Lodge.
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