*cracks knuckles*

Ok, Saucie, playing without a safeword is like walking a tight rope without a safety net. Just not safe. It's there for extreme circumstances, a Dom/me can't know what you're physically or mentally feeling. Obviously the face slapping (at least momentarily) put you in a bad place mentally. Draco and i don't have one safeword, but a variety, we use the standard Red, Yellow, Green but added Orange to it for things like medical things, i got this idea from a sub i knew who was asthmatic. She said she had to instate it for situations where she would go into an asthma attack. Orange is also the "Oh shit, i have to pee NOW" call. Scat isn't part of our play, so if i've got to go, can't stop nature. Red obviously being STOP NOW, in which case, an activity stops and we talk about what didn't work. This has worked in situations where we were having anal play and she tried something that hurt TOO much, which can happen when trying to stretch the sphincter. Yellow being "ok, i like what we're doing, this is ok, but can you just slow down a little bit." We had to use that in our last scene, i'm still recovering from a back injury and can't take as much pain as i normally would. Safewords don't mean you're taking control away from your Dominant, it means you're communicating with them and letting them know where you're at. If you abuse them in a "i don't wanna play, so i'm going to throw my safeword out" then yes, you're taking control away, but using them how they were intended to be used makes sure that no severe damage is done or that mentally you're not left in a harmful place.