Interview with Red of Reds-Realm

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Interview with Red of Red's-Realm
by Rob of Rope_Dreams

What is Red's Realm?

When Harmony was still publishing their magazine, Bondage Life, the Realm was called the Bondage Life of the internet by some people. I've always preferred to think of it as the Ed Sullivan Show of internet bondage. Ed didn't sing, dance, juggle, do magic tricks or tell jokes himself, but he provided a showcase for the best of those who did. I don't take bondage pictures, make bondage movies, write bondage stories or draw bondage art but if someone else on the internet does any of those things well, I want to find them and provide them with a wider audience.

What motivated you to create The Realm, and how has it evolved since you first launched the website?

When I first started Reds-Realm, the only bondage on the internet was a small handful of free sites set up by other fans like me featuring scans of their favorite magazine pictures with their comments on them. I started doing that too. Soon, other sites started to pop up offering memberships to access their material. Many were just rip-off porn sites, but some featured quality original bondage material, so I started linking to them and posting reviews of their sites with samples of their material to help fans like myself find the good stuff. Soon, the Realm became so popular that I had to limit access to some of the samples to paying members just to pay the enormous bandwidth costs it was running up.

What was the bondage industry like when you first became interested in bondage?

I wouldn't know, since I was a child when I first became interested in bondage, but when I became old enough to discover such an industry actually existed, it was dominated by magazines from publishers like Harmony and House of Milan.

How have you seen the bondage industry change since you first became involved with the industry?

In the 1970s consumers had a choice between the very light, softcore, "love bondage" of Harmony's magazines or the harder, more BDSM-oriented House of Milan. The internet has allowed an enormous amount of diverse and specialized material to find audiences and flourish.

How, if at all, do you think society's attitude towards bondage has changed since you first became involved in the industry?

I like to think it's actually improved and become more accepting. Forty years ago (yes, I'm old), the mainstream media portrayed bondage as only appealing to serial killers and perverts so sick as to be the butt of bad jokes. Today, humorous references to normal, healthy, happy lovers tying each other up for fun have become common. Even more significantly, the point of those jokes has shifted from "Ha-ha, you do sick or silly things" to "Ha-ha, everybody just found out you do it too!" It's been several years since I've gotten hate mail from people "on a mission from God" to shoot me for "encouraging violence against women."

What do you consider to be the most special feature of The Realm, and why?

That's a tough one, because I'm proud of several things about The Realm. I get about an equal number of complaints from people saying it's too softcore and too hardcore, which tells me we're succeeding in providing a wide range of material with something for everybody with an interest in bondage. I'm also glad that I can continue to provide a free survey of bondage related sites on the internet with samples that can be enjoyed by everyone, including those who can't afford to spend money for good bondage material. I'm also proud to say that despite the large amount of free material available on The Realm, we don't make nudity available to every minor child with access to the internet.

Please tell us the most embarrassing or funniest bondage-related story you have since you launched Red's Realm.

Well, there was the minister's teenage daughter who assumed that "Red's Realm of Romantic Restraint" would have a lot of good advice for young people who wanted to keep their virginity and discovered a different interpretation of "romantic restraint"...

Sadly, I have some funny ones, but no way to tell them without embarrassing people I don't want to embarrass. I was embarrassed myself once when a nurse kept asking me about what I did for a living while waiting for a doctor. Telling her I ran a web site from home wasn't enough for her, and adding it was an adult site, just made her ask, "What kind?" I told her it wasn't vanilla, and she laughed and said she wasn't either. Finally I told her the name of the site, and to my complete shock, she started gushing about how she and her boyfriend both just LOVED my site!

How much work went into creating Red's Realm? And what does maintaining it entail?

Learning HTML code wasn't hard, since I was already a programmer on mainframe computers, and doing updates on the weekends at first was just fun. It was so much fun, I started doing them more often. If I'd known how much work it was going to become to keep doing daily updates...well, let's just say I'm very grateful for all the help I get from friends and family, not to mention all the great producers who continue to provide me with outstanding material to post.

What has been your most memorable bondage-related experience since you began Red's Realm?

I can think of two. The first time Ashley Renee called me on the phone. I spent the next hour trying to think of someone I knew in real life who I could call and say, "Dude! You'll never guess who just called me on the phone!"

And being asked to be interviewed, as if I was someone anybody had heard of.

Reprinted courtesy of the Rope Dreams Yahoo Group http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Rope_Dreams/

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