The response I received basically did not answer my questions about Brutal Violence, but mentioned that SubSpaceLand was receiving regular updates. Well, okay, in for a penny, in for a pound. I joined SubSpaceLand as well. (Hereinafter referred to as SSL.)

During my one-month membership in SSL, there were only two weekly updates. It is my considered opinion, based on my personal experiences with both Brutal Violence and SSL, that Class Media, the umbrella company for both of these web sites (and several more), places little emphasis on delivering weekly updates on a regular basis. Since weekly updates are what I expect from a membership, I would have a hard time recommending to anyone paying 34.95EUR (48.38USD right now) for this web site.

There are 16 pages of updates, with five updates per page. Each update features a downloadable video and an image gallery. The downloadable video is broken into two, three, or four parts. The images are large and high quality. The photography and videography both demonstrate high production values. The videos are WMV and/or RM files.

The style is, umm, unique. The SSL features are best described as "artsy." The dom is "Marcellino," who has a slight build and a weak chin and an artistic approach to BDSM that involves music, mood lighting, and long lingering video views of inactivity. When there is action, it is exaggerated and ostentatious. He likes to kiss his models a lot. Basically, there is very little fire in most of his features. If you like watching pretty girls in consensual bondage to the accompaniment of New Age music and with mood lighting, this is your web site. There is very brief sex, generally explicit, and usually Marcellino ejaculates in the model's mouth. (I notice he never kisses them after that.)

This is obviously the character of the SSL web site, and I expect future updates will conform to this style. The tag lines advertise "Sensual BDSM" and "BDSM As It Should Be." In the first instance, I'm not sure "sensual" is the sensation I am looking for in BDSM, although admittedly it does describe the style fairly accurately. In the second instance, I flatly disagree. Completely tame and consensual BDSM with an artsy-fartsy trim. I would characterize SSL as "Pretentious, Ostentatious, and Affected BDSM-like Stuff."

None of the SSL updates really stood out for me, so I'll review the last of the only two updates during my one-month membership, entitled Deeply Touched.

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Deeply Touched (SubSpaceLand video feature)

We begin, as most of the SubSpaceLand features do, in a darkened room, with moody New Age music wafting through the initially black-and-white scene. The title shows up and, in a nice touch, the names of the players (in this case Aliz and Marcellino) are also displayed. Color oozes into the picture. Aliz is hanging upside down with her ankles fastened apart using a spreader bar and her wrists bound behind her back. She is fully clothed, in a short-sleeved silvery blouse and dark slacks. No shoes. No gag. There are candles burning in floor-standing candelabras and the predominant moody color for this feature is blue. The scene is dark. Too fucking dark, to my way of thinking.

Now see, this is what I am talking about. Our camera view of upside-down Aliz is from the wrong side of a candelabra, which makes for an artsy image but is annoying as hell. And another thing. They turn the camera sideways, so that Aliz is hanging, you know, horizontally. I guess this is supposed to be clever or inventive or creative as well. Fail.

So Marcellino saunters into the scene while it is sideways and gives Aliz a little spin one way, then watches as she unwinds in the other direction. Then he kneels down and puts his face right in her face and as the music swells he... kisses her. When this guy kisses he acts like he is sacrificing a virgin. I mean, it is a Big Deal to him. And he kisses A LOT. He must have a kissing fetish or something. If you watch one of these you will know what I mean. It is not exciting in the least.

Then he runs his hand down (or up, since she is upside down) her into her blouse and squeezes her incredibly full and round breast. Then he stands up and CSI-like the action speeds up as he whips her around 30 degrees or so. Ooh how cool. The video editor must be so proud.

Marcellino opens her blouse with one hand and takes so long I am almost to the point of screaming at the screen for him to USE BOTH FUCKING HANDS, but he finally gets it done. The model, meanwhile, also looked up, no doubt wondering what was taking so long. We are a minute and a half into the first 10-minute segment, and Marcellino has already gotten on my nerves, but I will dial back the snarkiness now. (Well, as much as I can.)

Marcellino caresses her breasts and then squeezes them and then kneads them roughly. More CSI-like fast motion whooshes as he spins her around to grope her from other angles. (There's a whooshing sound effect as well.) He spanks her slacks-clad butt. The lights briefly flare enough that we can actually SEE what is going on, but dim immediately. Marcellino kneels down and goes in for another kiss (but lingers in a threatening way with his thin, bloodless lips less than an inch from hers instead) and all I am really seeing is that his male pattern baldness is getting serious. He should consider wearing a watch cap like other male porn actors with receding and/or evaporating hairlines.

More spanking her (clothed) legs and butt. More lifting her up and, yes, this time actually kissing her after a needless and ineffectively dramatic pause.

This model, by the way, is gorgeous. She has an absolutely incredible body, and looks stunning hanging upside down with her bare breasts exposed and her long, shapely (and sadly, still clothed) legs spread apart. Even in the dark, I can tell she's a total babe.

Suddenly the scene shifts and Aliz is now bound on the floor with her arms pulled apart down at her sides at a 45-degree angle, then her legs pulled over her head and her ankles fastened to the floor with her ass in the air. She is absolutely, gloriously, stark naked. She definitely has a to-die-for body. The scene is pregnant with promise until the camera starts with the jerky motions and we go into fuzzy black and white special video effects for a close-up of her pussy.

Marcellino is standing over her, flogger in hand, and whips her pussy and ass. She jumps and struggles as he punishes her, and the cameraman slips up and gives us a few clear shots of her face as she grimaces as well. I was waiting for the special effect I just knew was coming and sure enough, we get about three slo-mo whip impacts on her pussy and the slo-mo sound she makes as a result.

Next, Marcellino takes a small plunger and inserts it into her pussy and squirts something into her. The camera does a CSI-like jerking whoosh again, which looks suspiciously like the cameraman stumbled and they just sped it all up to make it look like they did it on purpose. Marcellino leaves the plunger sticking out of her, and the camera focuses expectantly on it for long enough that I am wondering if she's supposed to squirt it back out and up into the air or something.

But no, Marcellino returns with a really wicked-looking device that I would like to get hold of and try out on someone. It looks like a bulb plug, but it can be screwed open like the nose of that SPECTRE spacecraft that swallowed the US space capsule at the beginning of You Only Live Twice. It is pretty cool. He demonstrates that it can be closed for insertion, then opened inside any orifice into which it is inserted. In this case, Aliz's pussy. So I guess the plunger was full of lubricant.

So he pushes it in--and sadly the penetration isn't painful enough to elicit a response from Aliz--then Marcellino screws it open. As he screws it open, we do get some gasps and moans from the deliciously naked and vulnerable Aliz. The scenes where Aliz is fastened to the floor and used and abused are the high points of the entire video, by the way. They are nice. Marcellino screws it open even wider, and Aliz continues to moan and grunt (in a feminine manner).

After a briefly annoying fuzzy black and white transition, we get back to Marcellino using a pink "Hello Kitty" vibrator on Aliz, still in the same position, still with that device expanded inside her. She is moaning and groaning and obviously being well-stimulated by the vibrator. Personally, I would have liked to see her brought to a screaming forced orgasm here, but this is SubSpaceLand, so instead we get a half-fade dissolve effect where her face and her pussy are both kind of superimposed over each other and a slo-mo echo-chamber "oh-oh-oh-ohhhhhhhhhh" for a bit, then back to real-time as she moans and quivers some more, and just as she looks to be achieving orgasm we slow to a stop and fade to black and white fuzzy again.

Totally unsatisfying.

Marcellino unties her ankles and pulls her legs back down and ties them to the floor so that she is flat on her back. The expanded device is still inside her and she arches her body deliciously as the scene fades to black and white and it is the end of Part One. Whew.

Part Two begins with the beautiful and hot-bodied Aliz still fastened to the floor on her back as Marcellino pulls on the expanding-pussy device enough to get her to gasp and cry out. Then he gets up and leans down in her face and just kind of hovers there dramatically and then, yes, he kisses her. Again.

He squeezes her breasts roughly, slaps her pussy, squeezes her breasts some more, slaps her pussy some more. Transition to fuzzy black and white and a close-up of Aliz's left nostril. I have to say, if I was going to zoom in on some part of the lovely Aliz's body, the left nostril would have been pretty far down on my list. More "Sensual BDSM," I suppose.

Back to full color. Aliz is still shackled to the floor, naked and spread, and Marcellino whips her body. She arches and gasps and cries out nicely during this whipping. He whips her pussy over and over again. Marcellino stands over Aliz and continues to flog her crotch. She writhes in pain and gasps and cries out, and she looks and sounds sensational doing it. Marcellino whips her tits. He whips her legs and thighs. He pulls on the pussy thing again and we fade into the next scene.

Aliz is bound standing, AOH (and apart) with legs spread. Her luscious body is on full display. Oh my god this gal is hot.

Marcellino whips her backside. He walks around in front and hovers his face in hers again but doesn't kiss her. He reaches down and we see the pussy device is still in place. He screws it some more, and pulls on it. More slo-mo. More backside whipping.

Sudden CSI-like fast-forward jerky motion transition and Aliz is bound with her back against a horizontal bar with one leg extended out to the side and her arms bound behind her as Marcellino, who is standing behind her, squeezes and gropes her tits. He walks around front and we see that the pussy device is gone. I would have liked to watch that extraction, but it is apparent to me that what I like and what Marcellino likes are diametrically opposed.

Marcellino attaches clothes pins to Aliz's nipples and pussy lips. Then (*sigh*) he gets in her face and kisses her again. He flogs her. He pulls her hair. He slaps her body with his open hand. He removes the clothes pins.

Fade to Aliz on her knees, viewed in an artsy-fartsy fashion through the lit candles of a candelabra. Next, she's sucking on Marcellino's cock. He may or may not have come in her mouth. (It is dark and it looked suspiciously like a pool of saliva on her tongue to me.) Fade out.

So, what was good, in a nutshell: The model was hot, with a body that would not quit. Half of the positions in which she was bound were excellent. The punishment (whipping, slapping, clothespins) was pretty good. That pussy-expanding device looked cosmic. I wonder where I can get one of those? Probably easier to acquire than to persuade someone to let me try it out. Oh well. The model's reactions were good. This could have been incredible.

What was bad: The entire scene was way too dark. Whether that was an "artistic choice" or whether the cameraman fucked up is indeterminate. (They are not always this dark, although by and large I do think they are purposely dark to "enhance" the "mood.") Too many unnecessary and ridiculous special effects. The CSI-like fast-forwards, NYPD Blue-like jerky motions and black-and-white grainy fades were ludicrous. And finally, there was the moody New Age soundtrack. I was almost expected an Enya song.

And the Number One Bad Thing: Marcellino. His ideas of dramatic posturing look like outtakes from a Madonna Vogue music video, with the operative descriptive being a to-the-death battle between "pretentious" and "ostentatious." The guy just does not look threatening, with his male pattern balding and weak chin and thin lips. He looks... petulant. Petulant doms don't do it for me.

In summary, Deeply Touched gets a C, all on the strength of a fantastically hot model, her nice moans and groans, and that neat pussy expanding device.