Crystal Knight. Yet More Appreciation

Crystal Knight, yet more appreciation

My usual pornstar obsession waxes and wanes. There's an initial rush of enthusiasm and euphoria. She's amazing! She's perfect! Find everything she's ever done! Then it fades, sometimes down to a confused, "What did I ever see in her?".  At least that's how it goes for me, probably evidence of my low character. 

But with some stars it's different. The obsession waxes, wanes and then waxes the fuck back up again. "OhMiGod, how did I not see that she's this good?" Over and over again. As the amazing Crystal Knight says, "Caught in the endless cycle."

I already wrote a long, rambling appreciation of Crystal back in 2021. Go read it here. In that, I tried to spell out what makes her so different and so good at her craft. 

What was missing from that piece, was a recounting of her evolution over the five years she's been releasing material. The Crystal of 2022 is very different to the Crystal of 2017 and between those dates there have been many other Crystals. Styles, looks, content, formats, tones have been added or altered. In truth, her evolution has been more like the development of a myriad of personas and styles that she adopts, perfects, and then discards as she pleases.

I have nearly 300 of her videos, a little over ten percent of the 2,863 that she currently has on IWantClips. Obviously, I've chosen ones I like, so it's not a perfectly representative sample, but I have enough, and spread over her career to date, to be able to identify the broadly different phases she's gone through. 

There's two aspects to these phases, the physical and the performative. Crystal has changed her appearance many times. Not just her hair and makeup - I think she's had surgery on her face and body more than once. She looks quite different now than when she started, although she's always been stunningly beautiful. At the same time, she's changed how she makes the videos and the content of them. Her manner changes, her vocabulary, her tone of voice. How she moves, how she sits or stands, or the backdrop where she films.

There are distinct styles she has tried out and used for a long or short time. And they don't all remain in her rotation. She prunes them. For instance, there was a particular style she used a lot in 2019, crouching in front of her long red couch, her hair in a soft wave. These are particularly mean. She favoured tight corsets or body suits and the topics include training and slavery, often with a bitchy or very mean element. She dropped the setting in 2020 and her look changed along with it. That's not to say that there are always such strong dividing lines in time. She always mixes up content and setting, outfit and look, but new styles appear in her roster, are prominent for a while and then disappear. Always different, always the same.

So these phases overlap and merge and continue. They're not sudden shifts, but from one year to the next there are styles and looks that are distinctive to that period.

[Edit: Reading back over what follows, I'm slightly uncomfortable at my commenting on her appearance, especially her weight. I'm just trying to describe how her look changes, I'm always in awe of how she looks and her weight doesn't matter. I think she looks just how she wants to look. I wouldn't dream of criticising. Also, I don't know for sure if Crystal has had surgery - apart from some work she had done on her nose in 2021, which she posted pics of. Again, it shouldn't need to be said. Her body, her life. Anyone can do anything to their own body. I'm trying to tread a fine line between describing her look, which I find fascinating, and commenting on it. Again, her body, her life.]

2015-2017 Soft, Thin and Hesitant.

I only have a couple of dozen of scenes from this period. She's clearly developing her style. It's great, but she doesn't have the adamantine confidence of later videos. Also, she's moving around a lot more in front of the camera and she hasn't perfected her outfit or makeup choice. Some videos from this time have no femdom element at all - they're really softcore stripping videos.

She's very thin and very often dark., though there's the occasional blonde period. In fact, in her earlier videos her hair colour changes more frequently than later on.

These early videos aren't so well lit as later on, but the most noticeable difference is the sound. There's always a distinct background purr and a lot of echo. She will take some time to make this better.

Early on. Crystal wears a lot of bikinis and often she's standing up. To be honest, these are not my favorites but there are occasional flashes of the brilliance that she will later hone to a fine edge.

Some time near the end of 2017 I think she has some surgery done, or she just hits a new makeup style, I really can't say, but there's a point where she starts to look different and suddenly her confidence is much higher, and after this point, it's all femdom. 

2018 Dark, Thick and Adventurous.

Who wouldn't want to be good for her?

Until October 2018, Crystal's hair is dark and she begins a series of much stronger worded videos. She's not telling you to jerk for her, she's graciously allowing you to do so. Most of her videos are shot from a  kneeling or crouching position, or she's standing, looking down at a much lower camera and she stays there. I think her body is a little heavier than most of the earlier years, though obviously she's still utterly perfect, and she begins to vary her themes and key styles more. 

Here's a good standing example from this period. 'Be a Good Cuckold For Me.' Flawless outfit - it appears in many videos. The hairstyle is also one she favours in the period as well as the foot of her four-poster bed. Also, the gravity-defying thong bikini which she wears in a bunch of other clips.

More typical is this one, 'Sports Bra Jerk Off Encouragement'. Kneeling, no background and dark makeup. This has the perfect matter of fact line. "You need to jerk, harder. And you're going to." 

That's a rare case where Crystal films in front of some sort of plain background. Most of the time she films in a recognisable room - a sitting room or a hall. You feel you're very intimately invited into her home. 

You need to jerk. Harder.

I think 2018 is the period I have most videos for, and definitely the most favorites, like the amazing 'My words can make you do anything.' For this post, I watched almost all of them again, and I think it was during this year that she moved from performing her scripts - amazingly well - to really believing them. In 'My Words ..." She says "You need this feeling. And you're going to crave it." The whole video is shot in close-up - she barely moves. Her eyes are locked on the viewer's. She speaks slowly, with authority and real tenderness. She's not merely performing, she's creating the role and inhabiting it. She is Crystal and she is literally irresistible.

My Words Can Make You Do Anything. 

2019 : Honey Tresses of Pure Evil

Mid 2019, Crystal goes through around six months of a consistent hairstyle. At times the blonde highlights are more prominent, but in the main, she seems to have found a style she likes for quite a while. Also, some time in 2019, her face changes again. I think she has something done to her cheekbones,  or again, maybe it's just a more consistent makeup style. All I know is she looks different again.  

This is the red couch period, many of the clips from this time are filmed in front of a long red couch with the lips painting in the background. On the settee, she can sit, kneel or crouch in front of it, or even lie down. My own directory from this period is a deep red from all the red couch videos, one after another. 

Peak 'Red Couch' Period. How can you say no to this face?

It's a very prolific period, where she's posting multiple clips per week and many of them are custom videos. In style, she's now favouring much harsher content. But for Crystal, most often, that means a softer tone, an even gentler voice to deliver her excruciating lines. 'In Your Head' is a great example, or the devastating 'Once a Loser, Always a Loser.'

In Your Head. And your Soul.

A personal favourite here near the tail end of 2019 is 'Extremely Hot Home Wrecking.' Not a theme I usually go for, but her performance in this one is outstanding. When she says "Make Mommy Proud" she is just perfection. Confidence and authority just emanates from her. It feels like she will melt the camera with her raw power.

Do anything to make Mommy proud.

2020 The Dark Doorway to Slavery

I think Crystal moves into a new house near the end of 2019. Some settings seem to disappear around then, or get gradually faded out. Her favourite setting is before dark curtains in front of an archway. And she's changed appearance again, back to a much slimmer figure, either through surgery or dieting I don't know, but the look change coincides with a sudden expansion in topics covered. 

Mesmerisation has never been so hypnotic.

It's around this time that she begins to do her mesmerisation, mind-fuck videos. They aren't as well developed in style as they will later become, but this is where they begin. Also, more videos are much closer to the camera. Leaning in and licking or kissing the lens in extreme close up becomes much more common and the distance between Crystal and her viewer shrinks to almost nothing. 

Fuck You.

Findom had been a common theme in all Crystal's videos to this point but during this time it becomes an element of almost every video and she begins to produce ever more explicit findom clips. Her 'If you buy this' series, which she'd started in 2019, really takes off in this time. She's now made 60 of these which are composed entirely of clips of Crystal flipping the bird and saying "fuck you" in a variety of outfits.

Worship is a euphoric release. 

But as well as all this, there's a very telling video from 2020 - 'Training your positive femdom addiction.' 

But first, an aside. I think there's  three kinds of scripts that Crystal works from. First, are the customs. Here, she has some phrases and bullet-points she's working in. Maybe a full script from a subscriber. You can tell these apart from the others, as Crystal's eyes will flick to the script every now and again. It's subtle, but when you're staring at her face, you notice. Also, there will be hints in her monologue, more laboured points, maybe a little hesitancy. And within the video there may be noticeable edit points where she's had to stop and restart. 

Then, there's the more common clips where she's written something herself. She clearly has a theme, some phrases she's going to use, and maybe even some specifics, possibly an outline script. There's less hesitancy, it all flows better, and she's way more comfortable with her performance. 

Then there's the ones where she has started filming with some idea, and she just extemporises around the theme. These are rare, but much more noticeable. No eye-flicks and no hesitation. She just lets it all fall out of her. I think, if I'm right, that these show a lot about how Crystal feels about her work. 'Training your positive femdom' is one of these. It's worthwhile quoting one passage at length.

"You're so tired of hearing “Fuck you. Pay me.” as every girl's answer, to any question you send. There's such a difference when you're with me. It's such a euphoric feeling. So much pleasure. No degrading at all, because I know that I can get in your head. And I can own, control and dominate you without having to be a bitch. 

You need to learn something subby. So many of you do. Being nice does not make you submissive. Being kind and sensual does not make me submissive in the slightest. Do you see one thing on my body that’s submissive? Do you hear one thing I say that’s submissive? No, because I'm not. I just know the secret that nobody else tells you. You don't have to be a bitch to be dominant.

In fact, being a bitch means you're trying to prove something. It means that you are trying to show the world how strong you are by saying stupid things. I don't have to do that. Now, don't get me wrong. Some of my boys love humiliation, and being degraded all day, every day. But the reason I'm so successful and the reason I do so well is because I'm not that way.

I can appeal to that fetish. I can appeal to the desire for humiliation. But 99% of Crystal’s army, prefer me, the exact same way that you do. You just didn't realize how sensual I really am until you watch these Positive Femdom videos. Then you learned it's not about calling you a loser. It’s about telling you I want you to be a good boy for me."

She says all this without a single eye-flick or hesitation. She's just spelling it all out. I've said elsewhere that I think Crystal feels different to other performers. I think this is why. She loves dominating her boys, but she shifted from being just good to being outstanding, when she began to let her own feelings show in her videos. These positive femdom videos and her most luxurious mesmerising videos feel most true to her. She looks like she's enjoying recording them. She talks about 'Her Boys' so warmly that listening feels like the warmest, softest embrace. 

Of course, maybe I'm imagining all this and Crystal is just a great performer. But I can't shake the idea that after nearly three thousand videos, she must feel something about her work and her fans. I think, in the above passage there's a hint that this is the real Crystal. 

Crystal just wants you to feel good.

2021 Her Voice Consumes Your Soul

I think, some time in 2021 Crystal gets a better recording and editing setup. Her voice is clearer and softer and the audio level is more consistent. The dark doorway is still there, and the red couch features every now and again but she's rarely standing up.

This is the period when her tone becomes even more alluring and insidious.  Breathy, slow and intimate, she leans into the camera, exuding power and confidence. "Tell me you love me." She suggests in 'Fall into Trance' and you find that it's become impossible to resist her, even if you wanted to.

It's all so slow and unhurried. The viewer finds themselves drawn into the warm, enclosing space she has created for her subjects. Her suggestions, her commands, are so compelling and arousing that you truly find yourself willing to do anything she asks. Jerk for her for hours? Beg for her strap-on? Leave your wife? Leave your job? Pay her all your money? Eat your own cum? You would be crazy not to. It truly begins to feel like a privilege to obey her.

Her real gift, I think, is that she grants the viewer - her boy - the permission to jerk off to her. She truly encourages you to sink deeper into adoring bliss for her. There's a trust, a compact. You both agree that she is magnificent, her viewer, worthless. And thus in agreement, everything is possible. You can both revel in her utter beauty and her boy's desperate longing.

It's all so languid and unhurried. Crystal has learned to use her voice, her manner and her movements to create an atmosphere and a mood that is utterly compelling. It's subtle and effortless. She's still labelling some videos 'mesmerisation' but really, it's all mesmerising. Even something as mean as 'Jerk with your tears' is delivered in a soft tone. Brutal. Cutting. But so gently delivered. When she says "Nobody wants you. Nobody wants to fuck you. You're never the bully. You're the one that gets bullied." the whiplash between the words and her whispered delivery is torture. 

But it was after I saw her 'Being normal is boring' clip that I realised just how special Crystal is. She's like a cuckoo chick planted in your mind. She's so powerful, so greedy, that you can't help but fall in love with her even as she murders everything else that you care about, just to make more room for her, her, everything for her. "Being normal sucks." She says. "Why would you want to be normal, when you could be my sub?"

Being her sub feels like such a wonderful privilege. Really, it's everyone who has yet to discover her who is deserving of pity.

This theme, that a life jerking to Crystal is patently better than any vanilla relationship, is a constant presence. In 'Stay Single For Me' she really lays it out. "I want you to get five clips which you can spend the rest of your night with. Five clips that you can date all night long." This relationship is perfect.

2022 She Towers Over Your Prostrate Form.

Since I make PMVs, how the performer fits in the lens is very important to me. Crystal's clips fall into two broad categories here, standing and non-standing. Non-standing might include crouching, kneeling, lying or anything where Crystal is not on her feet, and very often she will shift position from one position to another, especially if she's performing with a couch or a seat. 

Standing though, is standing, often with a camera lower than waist-level and while she may move forward and back, she doesn't move from standing to any other position. She's always done these standing scenes, but in 2022 she noticeably increased the number of standing clips. At the same time, her variety and range of outfits seems to have shot up, and I think these developments are related, since when she buys a new outfit, standing position may well show it off best. 

And the new year seemed to show a great many new outfits. New lingerie, new bikinis. Dresses! Velvet bodysuits and leather bustiers! Romper suits and sheer baby-dolls. Crystal has never been shy about investing in clothes but the variety and range seemed to have moved up a couple of notches.

Right now, it's harder to see the edges of her latest development, but it is so good to follow her career as she hones her abilities and her range even further. 

I follow other femdom stars who produce similar content. I'm often surprised that they get more attention and more views than Crystal's content on IWantClips or OnlyFans. I can't help but think that this is intentional. She doesn't seem to attend shows, do interviews, or put herself out there just to gain attention. Her army is a secret army. She concentrates her time on filming and producing. I've commented before that the preparation for each clip must take a lot of effort. Hair, outfit and makeup alone probably takes half a day and that's without the setup and editing and producing it onto her different platforms. 

Conclusion.

I know almost nothing about Crystal Knight, the person, and trying to get inside the head of a performer only through their performance is an exercise in folly. Doubly so, when their entire performance is based around getting inside your head. 

What I do know of her, is all good. She is hardworking, conscientious and honest. The few fellow-fans I've talked to unanimously report how professional, kind and understanding she is. 

On the few occasions I've interacted with her, I've experienced the same. She is warm and considerate. She takes infinite care over what she's delivering and does so with a smile. In short, she makes you feel like a good boy.

The way she has developed her style and her content over seven years leads me to conclude that she must enjoy doing what she does. To have produced so much and so well, makes me believe that she feels affection and respect for her boys, her Crystal army. How could she be this good at it if she didn't feel something for her fans. She understands them, perfectly. She wants to make them feel good. She wants them to be good boys for her. 

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.