Pushing Hard Limits

[gagged_Louise]

I'd imagine the pushing of a "semi-hard" limit (a point the submissive didn't think she'd want to cross, something that would have felt like a hard no-no, but then it becomes plausible) is a bit like the interplay of director and actor/s. Great movie or stage directors have this intuitive ability to make the actors feel safe, but not too safe. At some moment, the hand of the director will guide or conjure the actor to take a step into the unknown, to shape something they hadn't known they were able to do, or knew only as a dream. Look, it works - you didn't fall into the abyss - and then another step, and further out. This skill in setting things in motion is one of the secrets of great theatre, and it's really like it happens on a plane beyond words. It's also (both in directors and Doms) about catching their partner off guard.

Of course it's not a single-direction thing, the actor can contribute a great deal to getting it along too, just like sometimes it's the submissive who aims to teach the Dominant to overcome inhibitions (cases in point:Tessa and Jeanne)

In some "generation movies" like Easy Rider or Jules and Jim it seems plain, if you closely watch the lead actors, that during filming they're trying out something they had never consciously thought they'd be able to do, they're spurred on by the script and the director to try one more step and one more, shape something that was about to happen in years to come, a dream of a new life, and - at the end of both those films - the tragic collapse, later on, of those dreams (that's not to say the attempt was futile). And both films had and have this magic power to evoke those images and to get new meaning as years move on.