Hi! Just a couple of rambling notes or observations, in no particular order.

First and foremost, thanks for the site! It's a breath of fresh air, and I appreciate the labor of love that it must be for you guys. There's a bewildering array of sites and sights out there, and it helps to have a guidebook. I'm grateful that we'rre well past the days when a grainy B&W 8 mm strip of some unattractive hooker in a film by people not "into" the scene was all that was around for "spankophiles." And I'm grateful that more and more women have become involved in production, not just on camera, but in concept and design, leading to better storylines, acting which occasionally borders on real talent, and exposition without simply taking up time before and between spanks.

The down side, of course, is that there is more and better to choose from, and time (and money!) are limited, so your site is a great help. As competition heats up (no pun intended), the bar is raised for vendors to capture our consumer interest and dollars. For example, I no longer bother with ads or sites that don't at least carry stills of the on camera talent, since the visual is such a personal, idiosyncratic, and essential part of the appeal. A girl just "looks right" to me, tho not to someone else, etc. And, more and more, if it doesn't carry a video teaser sample, so I can get a sense of the sound, the voice, etc., I usually don't bother (RHV is an example...tempting, but without your recommendation I probably wouldn't have bought the 4-5 I have, and still hesitate to buy when I can't get a video sample.)

Your web site guide has been very helpful: there is so much junk and recycled old stuff out there, objective descriptions are welcome. It was either thru you, or else in a newsgroup, that I picked up un teenjessica ---I think I was one of the first subscribers ---and realspankings. They raised the industry standards a quantum leap. BTW, the new German site Girls Boarding School has picked up on the Realspanking advances and is now perhaps even surpassing them.(I've confess I've liked the male characters in the jessica-brandi-realspank trio:, they are distracting, unbelievable as characters, and wooden at best).

Which brings me to a point of personal, and perhaps widespread, preference. It seems to me that the one common denominator in the "best" stuff is not the action, but the reaction. People have different visual tastes: plump or skinny, blond or brunette, etc. They have different genre tastes: schoolgirl or mature wife, erotic or strict discipline, etc. etc. But the single thread that unites many of us, I suspect, is the girl's (I suppose it's the same for the other side of the audience) reaction to the spanking is the most exciting part. For example, a very mild spanking of a girl whose reaction is both sincere and "big" is much more riveting that the most shapely behind being spanked by a girl who fails to react, at least externally. Note the tall blond girl in 2 of the early Rigid East films: her spankings were actually some of the mildest I've ever seen, but her reactions were so real and nuanced, they were intoxicating. By the way of contrast, the petite blond in their Neighbor and Reform School has one of the best, if not the best "juvenile school girl" look I've ever seen, the spankings and caning are famously brutal in their severity, but her reaction is so muted, they lose effectiveness. I, at least, don't want to see how hard a spanking a girl can "take" without a wimper: I want her to react as if the spanking, and the setting, and the emotional conetnt of the scene, makes her cry because she must. A girl who is not my "type" can be more entrancing by her reactions than one who looks more the part. I recently noticed on Jessica's site that (in order to expand her subscriber base and reclaim some market, I suppose) she is getting the word out she can "take" a harder punishment now. I think she's missing the point. She already set the standard for high production values, for beautifully done scenes, and she is a remarkably pretty, elfin-looking "real" girl. As a matter of personal taste, since I am drawn to that waifish look, I found her more to my visual tastes than her colleage Brandi. But Brandi learned something somewhat recently: she began letting herself respond to spankings with unrestrained movement and crying and all that sort of thing, and the final result is much more powerful than seeing how many smacks Jessica can take with some new and exotic implement. In fact, that, I think, is the major hurdle the RS producers need to focus on: too many of their girls, amateur as they are, and pretty as they often are, seem focused on reacting as little as possible, and so they search ever farther for newer and more exotic implements and positions. Repressed sniffles and an occasional "uh" are brave, but they don't move the scene well. It's that heartfelt in-the-moment reaction, rather than anything else, which is at the core of the appeal of the "amateur" movement, from Raven Hills beach girl-roadshow-corporal justice stuff to Amateur Spankings product.

That seems to be part of the "secret" of the eastern European's blitzkrieg into the market. It is not just that their actresses are young and pretty: many US and British producers have been doing that for a while, (thankful, not since the old Kurt Stevens days have we seen the overripe porn starlet with heavy makeup, fishnets and heels and dagger length nails pretending to be a high school girl), nor is it the high production values, lighting, set design, and attention to scene detail: tho they all play a role, the Czechs didn't invent them. Nor is it the severity of the scene: Brits have been doing that for a long time: not everyone did Shadow Lane's heavy on erotica/soft on spanking sort of stuff. No, I think it is the absolute "in the moment" realism of the spankee's reactions which is the key to their distinctive appeal. (I just wish they were more American with a focus on OTK and hairbrushes and paddles than the Brit tradition of bend over and count the cane strokes!) You made a similar point in discussing the RHV films: it is the unrestrained reaction of the girls which is key to the success of the camera. In fact, normally, I would be turned off by the violent cussing and sort of grubby scenario of the RHV (OK, I'm into the sort of domestic discipline, schoolgirl-and-daddy sort of scene, where we would hear "spank your naughty bottom" rather than the brutal "beat your ass, motherfucker" s/m-stripper setting), but the girls' reactions make it work for me.

Well, that's my two cents worth. I guess this came about because I wanted to ask you something: which films would you cite for best real crying? As an example of a brief but splendid scene in my experience, I'd go to the blond girl in pigtales who gets the handspanking in RE's Old Janitor Tales. That was close to perfection for me: any others you would steer me toward?

And BTW: a survey of your readers on which, if any, "spanking personals" web site are actually worth a tinker's damn would be welcome. Since 90 plus % of the people who sign up are males, and the few females are often either put in there by disgruntled ex-boyfriends or are spamming for a porn web-site, it would be good to hear what your membership's combined experience and recommendations are.

Thanks for bearing with me.