Why “drone”?

Why “drone”?

A number of kinky friends, online acquaintances, and strangers on Twitter and Recon have recently been interested, curious, and/or confused about my new screen name rubberdrone, and what I mean when I identify as a “drone”. I thought I’d write a bit about it, perhaps for myself as much as everyone else.

So what does it mean to me then?

One aspect of being a drone is that the notions of control and obedience are slightly abstracted, separated from the individuals. A drone does not necessarily derive satisfaction from serving the whims of any one master, especially if the demands are arbitrary or self-serving. Instead, it is most motivated to serve a greater goal or purpose—in short, a drone must have a mission. I feel like this is the biggest insight into why I bristle at doms who demand personal service. Such demands feel aimless and serve only to diminish.

Being diminished is not prima facie bad, however—it depends on the aim. The man is necessarily diminished, but in order to make him into something greater, more powerful, and more purposeful: the drone.

This is, for me, the other important marker of my D/s identity: being a drone is not about being made powerless, it is about being made powerful. To have human weakness and frailty stripped away, buried by the gear and machines to become something driven, ruthless, and unstoppable. In this mental space, the purpose of bondage is not to render a helpless pitiable object, it is to restrain the drone for the safety of others. A drone is dangerous, almost weapon-like, and must be closely controlled both mentally and mechanically.

Controlling a drone, then, is about controlling the gear. The gear directs its will and presses it into service to the mission. A drone must be forcibly subdued and bound, completely sheathed and armored; every breath, fluid, and sensation controlled. Its fetishistic addictions are manipulated and finessed to harness and reprogram it until no trace of humanity is left to reason with.

A drone is not a heedless automaton or slave—it seeks the command of those who will exploit its strength, reprogramming and reshaping it. I particularly enjoy the idea of a drone programmed to dominate as a powerful adversary, sent to subdue and convert and spread its infectious programming, or to capture, restrain, and wipe other malfunctioning drones.

This identity continues to unfold, and I am finding this journey quite captivating.

Background

I’ve had a fairly unconventional relationship with the domination/submission aspect of kink for a very long time. I’ve had some difficulty through the years articulating and understanding what I do and don’t like when introducing power dynamics into my play. It was complicated enough to explain that I would often just tell potential playmates that I didn’t like D/s; that I was a pure fetishist. I frequently wondered if that was actually true, since I was and still am frequently turned off or even annoyed by guys who attempted a standard approach to eliciting my submission or enticing me to dominate them. Yet, I still occasionally enjoyed scenes with a D/s flavor.

Recently I’ve been zeroing in on what parts of those great D/s scenes turned me on, and conversely how I feel and respond when it falls flat. I thought a lot about where my head goes when I’m in gear, or in the flow of a dominant or submissive streak. I reflected on my personal style and why I like this gear and not that. And I explored my fantasies in long conversations with some really creative and wonderful kinksters.

I finally, recently, adopted the label “drone” as the best handle on the concept. I like this identifier because it’s derived from a fantasy that speaks to me very strongly. It also has the nice advantage of being relatively unfixed as a piece of kinky jargon at the moment. At the very least, it is not terribly overloaded or laden with tradition. I hope to use it to carve a niche for myself (and perhaps others) in the kink world.