Crystal Knight. An appreciation

The crumpled, photocopied pamphlet I hand out to passers-by on my street-corner is entitled 

"Acting makes the best porn." 

And, yes, I think acting is the word. Porn is a performance. A film of two people fucking is not porn. It's a sex tape. No matter how well filmed or how attractive the people, it is at best a documentary, not a movie. Some people claim this is what they want, but they're lying. Realistic sex is rare in porn because it's  boring and pedestrian, a minority niche market at best. 

Critics who decry porn as being unrealistic are therefore missing the point. Nobody wants to watch real people fucking in realistic ways. It might be exciting for some people to watch real people fucking, but that's different. Dogging and other activities like that aren't porn - the point of them is the illicit thrill of watching or being watched, not the sex itself.

Porn is doing something performative. Pornstars are acting. They are making a show. They don't just fuck. It might be a poor performance, it might be great, but it's a performance in any case. Even if they never speak. Now there's a lot that can elevate a poor performance. All the mechanics of film making. Lighting, sound, set, costume, and on and on. But if the performance is poor, that can only go so far. If the performance is good, then it will shine, even if the quality of the filming is poor. 

And what makes a great performance? Acting talent. There's a reason why you want to see great actors. Helen Mirren can make the shittiest script great. I'd watch her peel potatoes. Porn is exactly the same. Fight me if you think I'm wrong.

And there is no better demonstration of this thesis than on the top tiers of sites like IWantClips, Clips4Sale or MVClips. Here you find the dommes and fetish specialists who, in the last few years have brought single-performer porn to new levels of professionalism and quality. I would contend that the best content from these performers is of a higher quality than most of the best studio produced porn today, even those scenes from the very best performers working with big studio production values. 

If you have a look at the content being put out by the likes of Eva de Vil, Princess Miki or Alika White, the sound, lighting and editing is top notch. Even though these are a single performer videos - often with a fixed camera, the effort that has gone into the production is impressive and the acting is off the chart.

Now, if all you want is to see pretty girls fuck, then this is not for you. This is material where the performer is almost always alone, with a fixed camera, and while they may be doing almost anything physically, the central performance is all in their words, their tone, their attitude. Essentially, their acting. 

And while you can find almost anything on these sites, it skews femdom. There are girlfriend experience videos, or ASMR or furry fetish or a million other kinks available but the bulk of the material and all the top 10 or 20 or fifty are femdom or femdom-adjacent content. Femdom sells, but it just isn't suited to the studio format. They just don't understand it. It's too intimate for them. I think there's another blog post in there, but let's just take that as read for now. Conversely, pretty girls fucking, needs a bit higher production value than this home-made format can manage. Yes, there's exceptions - Kate Kuray, Bryci, many others make top quality boy-girl material, at home and with a single camera setup. They're exceptions.

If you threw a butt-plug into one of the clip sites, the chances are it will bounce off the head of a woman, alone, speaking to camera, telling her viewer he's a worthless loser. Or pretending to be his mother. Or showing him to jerk off, or all of that at the same time. And she's fully dressed. She's probably wearing something revealing but she could still go to Walmart in it and not get arrested.

I can't tell you how gratifying it is that this stuff exists. I love/hate big studio porn. It has it's place, but for the vast majority of performers, it's a grind that will chew them up and spit them out after two to three years to make room for the next batch.  If they're successful, if their content is successful, they never see any additional the money apart from the on-the-day fee they got when they filmed. Porn studios don't want stars. They want an endless conveyor belt of the-next-big-thing, but not actual big things. They're too expensive and demanding.

Since porn went online, the way performers are paid - predominantly one-off shooting fees - is deeply unfair. It used to be that a studio made tapes or DVDs, sold them, and unless they were instant hits, they were remaindered. But for more than a decade, entire back-catalogues are available online, and stars, years after they retired, still feature in the best selling content of all the big studios. That sucks and it's stupid, because it's so short term. It's emblematic of an industry that sees the performers as disposable and interchangeable. 

And for the purchaser, sure yes, you get beautiful women in high-quality sets, costumes and all that, but most attempts at anything beyond the visual are a half-hearted after-thought. Do not expect to engage your brain, much less your emotions. A performer who puts their all into a performance is wasting their time and talent, as it's so difficult to build a career within the studio system. You may as well just phone it in, you'll get paid the same and your career has a built-in destruct timer. 

But performer-produced content is different. Sure, yes, a lot of it is crap too. Poorly produced and performed by unpracticed and unimaginative performers. But some of it is truly great. Competence, times Hard Work, equals Win, as my Uncle used to say, and boy, does it look like hard work. On a studio set, the performer gets to walk off, clean up and go home once shooting is done. For the performer-producer, they're barely half way. They have to edit, package and upload their content, then somehow, go about marketing and promoting it in marketplace filled with a deafening cacophony of other performers, just like them, hawking their wares. And that's before you consider all the work and expense they had to go to, before even squatting in front of that, enormously expensive HD camera. Hair, makeup, outfit, accessories. All bought, in advance, by you, each choice agonised over. Is it worth buying this basque for just one shoot? How can I make this bedroom shoot look different than the last one? What would suggest Egyptian temple anyway? Does this wig look too scruffy? 

Every now and again you get a glimpse behind the curtains. I once had a bit of back and forth with a performer about building her website. She was doing it all by herself. She'd invested in an online course that turned out to be worthless. She couldn't even write it off as a business expense since her state didn't recognise what she was doing as work. On the internal forums of the major clip sites, there are endless rules and strictures. Say this, and we'll remove your content. Suggest that, and we'll suspend your account. Promote the content you have uploaded somewhere else, and we'll ban your forever. And by the way, we're taking 30% off the top. And if you want us to promote you, we're taking 70%. Fuck you. Try doing this without us, bitch. No wonder those dommes are so angry all the time. Just getting your stuff into the shop is a landmine-strewn uphill struggle against enemy fire.

And I see a disturbing attitude on a lot of forums where porn is shared. "These bitches make plenty of money off us, so of course it's okay to pirate their content." I think of this as the Belle Delphine theory. All she does is smile and look cute and she's a millionaire. What she produces is trash anyway, so why not copy it and share it all over the internet?

I don't know or care if Belle Delphine is a millionaire but I think the disturbing aspect of this view is seeing porn as trash. Yes. Won't somebody think of the porn? Leaving the quality of Miss Delphine's work aside, I don't think all porn is trash. Some of it is trashy. A lot of it is badly made, but it's not trash. A girl, sitting on her sofa in her underwear, masturbating, and talking dirty, in the hope that someone would find it sexy enough to pay ten dollars for it. That's not trash, that's creativity and hope. It's a far cry from a studio machine filming yet another sex scene by yet another pool with yet another porn star. That's trash. And if that girl on the sofa can find ten guys to pay those dollars for her clip, maybe she'll do another clip and another and another and somewhere, along with another bikini set and a new dildo, she may find the niche and the form that unleashes her talent and be on her way to be another Crystal Knight. 

Do we need another Crystal Knight? Maybe not. The one we have already is pretty damn good. But god dammit the world needs more creativity and spark, even porn creativity and spark. Is it art? Who cares? It's entertaining and lovely. 

Crystal Knight is the epitome of my thesis. She's been in business for seven years. Her entire back-catalogue, over two thousand, twenty to thirty minute short films, is available on IWantClips. It's more than a catalogue, it's an archive of her career, all her transitions, all her new skills, her new looks, her new directions, her new boobs over this period. If she'd done mainstream studio porn from the start, she'd have starred in a couple dozen productions and then struggled to find work. She would never have developed and grown as she has, and most importantly, her entire back catalogue would belong to Holding Corporation X and she would never see another cent from that work, no matter how successful she might become later.  As it is, a new fan has a treasure trove of content to peruse and every clip sold pays seventy percent to Crystal. Maybe that ought to be ninety or ninety-five percent, but we'll leave that aside for the moment, and agree it's infinitely better than the zero percent Corporation X would pay. 

Pages one to five of sixty, on IWantCrystal - her earliest work, from around 2015 are about fifty percent softcore stripping and teases and fifty percent Crystal's first forays into femdom, especially findom.  It's clumsy, it's often badly lit. Her eyes flick to the side of the camera, where presumably, she has blu-tacked her script to the camera stand. But enough people must have liked those earlier videos, because by 2016 she's made four hundred more clips, and while the lighting is still occasionally dim, her performance has become more assured, provocative and powerful. She's lighting up the screen. Her eyes flash. She purrs. 

Plus, she's invested in a boob job. She's plowing her profits back into Crystal Inc.  There are still stripping videos but the femdom material has taken over. She has fans. They are sending cash. She's confident enough to do videos where she ignores the viewer for half an hour, saying only 'Loser' as she flicks off the camera at the end. Among these videos are real gems where she smoothly moves between seductive, loving, and cruel and back again. leaving the viewer a confused, beaten puddle, begging for more. She is masterful.

By 2018 there's no more stripping. The variety and range of the femdom videos has intensified. She's moved house and uses every room to it's best advantage. She films in the hall, bathroom, bedroom and out be her new pool.  New outfits and accessories feature in every video and she's honed her findom skills to a razor edge. Every second video is a custom, each of which cost it's patron somewhere between 350 and a thousand dollars. Somewhere between 2018 and 2019 she gets extensive facial surgery. Her face is softer, broader and her nose is different. She always looked amazing. Now she looks like Lucifer's smarter sister. The boob job has been improved and she's in yet another new house which looks palatial. She never appears with another performer. The camera never moves. She lives in a world containing only her and the viewer, his only worth is as a subject of her beauty. For me, this is peak Crystal. Not that she'll drop off later, but in this period she is working relentlessly, sometimes producing two or more videos a day. Her twitter feed and onlyfans from the time, mention needing to work through an editing backlog. I long to know if it is even possible that she's doing all this by herself? Who buys a mansion and then works a twelve hour day rather than hire an editor? If anyone does, it's Crystal. She's the very epitome of the American self-made dream. She found her purpose and she's mining it relentlessly. Between filming, she just has the time to shop for her bewildering array of costumes and wigs and shoes and boots. It must be an exhausting whirl. There's something incredibly attractive about a girl who so single-mindedly pursues her career as Crystal does. 

But it's the content that makes it all work. One video that sums it up is entitled "Being Normal is Boring" Here's a quote - 

" I've known since day one I wasn't going to be normal, nor did I want to be; and once I started dominating boys I fell in love with fetish forever." 

I think this is her truth. She enjoys this. It's work, but she loves it. An audio domme I exchanged emails with once, said she'd never want to meet her fans because she would fall in love with them. How could she not? She shared such intimacy with them. You can't tell someone they're a worm beneath your stilettos over and over without feeling something for them. Maybe not love. But something.

And I think she does. Regularly, in her clips she slides easily into a reverie about how much she enjoys her work. How much she enjoys knowing how her clips make her viewers feel. Obviously, it's stil work, and no doubt there are times when she groans at having to put on her Crystal face, but five years in she's still going. As she counts them down to another orgasm, she often says "You're so very fucking welcome." Something about the way she says it is so intimate, so personal. Every video has been produced with pride. 

And then she cut her hair and I stopped loving her. No I didn't, but 2019 did see her with a different hairstyle and a new, less punishing release schedule - just 342 videos in the year, and as we moved into 2020 she redid some of the facial surgery and thinned her face a little, looking maybe just a bit more bimbo than before. I have no idea why, she'd looked perfect every time before, but her face and her chest is her life's work and her business. Literally.

Right now, she's still pumping it out. Her onlyfans is expensive, but high quality and and high volume. She cams most weeks. She still accepts custom requests and she pushes more and more and more new videos onto IWantClips every week. The world is a better place for having her in it. She's brought countless hours of pleasure to probably tens of thousands of men. She has perfected a certain, soft but cutting style of femdom and she embodies the ideal of hard work and commitment. The performance she gives and the contract she has with her fans is rock solid. Pay me the price of this video and I will rock your world for fifteen minutes. In a cynical world, she is the epitome of honesty.

That may seem like a crazy notion when you see just how many of her videos are findom. Which is essentially 'Watch me. Get obsessed by me. Send me money. By the way. I am  already super rich.' It's essentially sexy begging, but from the top down. I have no idea why anyone would respond this. If you want to send her money, why not just buy a clip, right? There are thousands. But it must work on some of her fans, or else why keep making the videos? She does them because they're popular and it works. She's earned the right to be showered with money from her adoring fans and who can gainsay the straightforward commercial logic of it. She is selling the feeling of humiliation of having given her money in return for nothing more than the fact of having paid her. And if you don't like those videos, then just keep scrolling because there's hundreds more sissy, cuckold, chastity, verbal humiliation and mesmerisation videos just beyond, and more and more and more. 

So, back to my crumpled pamphlet, pressed into unwilling hands from my soapbox. Porn is a performance. And performance is work. Worthy of respect. There are some routes to building an audience and getting paid for your work without being exploited. That's not to excuse those who exploit performers on all the other routes but at least some routes do exist. And if a performer wants to plough that route, perfecting their craft of seduction is the way to success. Of course, being drop dead gorgeous is a huge help and there's no doubt Crystal has a head start there. But while fans may come for the looks, they stay for the attitude.

And that attitude? It's so hard to pin down. Every performance is laced with contradictions. For example. there's this recent masterpiece. "Fall Into Trance." 

Crystal has many voices. She's bitchy, contemptuous, confiding, naughty, distant, angry or any of dozens more. For this one, she's warm and tender. Her voice is soft, slow, dreamy and hypnotic. Literally, entrancing. Crystal is never ironic. There is never any hint of self-knowing humour here. Not a whiff. She is utterly serious at all times. If she's laughing, then she is laughing at you. Always. 

For this clip, she's wearing a form-fitting violet sheer nylon body. The only accessory is an elaborate dark necklace affair. He hair hangs down in soft waves, blonde highlights to the fore. Her eyes are smoky with a dark sparkle. Her lips, are plump scarlet petals revealing her porcelain, perfect teeth. Her breasts defy gravity. With no support from the bodytop they're just gently pushed together. Somehow she seems to be able to keep her long tresses covering her nipples for most of the time. Tease is always on the menu.

But 90% of the erotic impact of her performance is her delivery. She is gentle and enticing. 

"Stroke a little harder. Give in to your urges."

Being addicted feels so good. You never want this to end. And fortunately for you, it never will. I will be your source for pleasure ... until the day you die."

All the while she's delivering these lines, she's slowly writhing, gently stroking herself through the nylon, leaning her head, and gently turning. It's so languid, unhurried. She knows she has her viewer in the palm of her hand. She can take her time to crush him.

"I am your world. I am your sex Life. And I always will be."

"Say Thank You Goddess. Tell me you love me. Tell me that you surrender to me."

'Tell me you Love me' is very Crystal Knight. She wants your love. She appreciates it. It makes her feel good. If this doesn't sound crazy, given that I'm extolling her performance, this feels so genuine because it is. I don't think her acting could be this good if it wasn't coming from a place of real emotional truth. Actors train to reach down inside themselves and connect the emotion of the part they are playing with a truth from their own lives. I think Crystal does this too. Whether she's contemptuously scorning your pathetic boner or gently encouraging you to masturbate yourself raw for her, it never feels false or fake. She's putting herself into the clip heart and soul. You're so very fucking welcome. She means it.

Which is why it's so surprising that we see or know almost nothing of her life. Well, not nothing, but nothing important. I think I've seen every room in every house she's lived in since 2017, from bedroom to bathroom to kitchen. Even that weird atrium hallway she likes so much. I know she has a dog who adores her.  After that, zero.  Does she have a partner?  If so, there's never a hint of their existence. She's never at a porn show. She doesn't do appearances. She doesn't veer into gaming or cooking or any of that nonsense. When she goes on holiday she just cues up some clips and says she'll be back in two weeks. Her instagram is just posed cheesecake shots. It's just her, her fans and the one-way camera and microphone tunnel that connects raw Crystal deep into their brains. 

I fantasise about what her life must be like. I imagine she must have someone. Someone supportive and loving. Because somehow, I think that being so close, so intimate with so many men without ever breaking character,  must feel like teetering on the vertiginous edge of terrible loneliness. I'm reminded of the minor character in the movie, The Prestige, who spends his entire life pretending to be an ancient, feeble Chinese man, just to make his illusionist show work. Crystal never lets her immaculate makeup crack. Never treats herself to an ironic smile. It's Crystal all the way down. There would be no way to do that, record that, every day and then roam around an empty mansion in the middle of the desert. There has to be someone.

I mean, apart from the dog.

I don't normally want to ask celebrities questions. I don't care about their lives, or what they do. But I'd love to know more about her. I wonder about paying for a cam session and just begging her to give even a hint what her life is like off camera. Not only is that crazy, get-yourself-on-a-watch-list bonkers, but I think really, it's just that I want to know she's okay. That she doesn't cry herself to sleep every night on a bed made of money but with nobody to cling to.  But of course, that's just me projecting. Maybe she lies down on that bed of cash and laughs herself to sleep while the dog listens uncomfortably. Maybe she's just as iron clad as her on-screen persona. But I don't think so. "You're so very fucking welcome." means something. It has to. If she could, she'd reach through the camera and give us all a hug, right? That's as valid an expectation as any other, given the lack of any evidence to the contrary.

Since I wrote this screed, I finally took the plunge and asked Crystal to do a custom clip for me. She did the whole thing so professionally, I almost enjoyed commissioning it more than watching it. But it is wonderful. I'll treasure it. As I'd hoped and expected she was charming and thorough and businesslike and the final result is amazing. Her performance is perfect porn.