My subs have those barcode tattoos, but it’s not some kind of slavery play like it often is…
See we’re got a complicated poly free-use situation going on with lots of extended polycule members who may drop in and want to borrow a sub or three for a scene or a month.
So we designed our system around the non-kinky institution that most closely resembles our situation, where we’ve got a bunch of individual “resources” that need to be loaned out to verified patrons and tracked so we can tell where our items are, when they are supposed to be back, if they’re late to be returned, and put holds on them.
So we’re using a library management program.
You just go to the circulation desk, scan your polycule card, then the subs you want to check out. It’s a simple and efficient solution!
We’re still having some teething problems with late returns, though. And it’s trickier than we expected to fill out the item description pages. How exactly do you categorize a bisexual transmasc painslut with a thing for puppy play into the Dewey decimal system? Still, the work continues.
sorry but. doesnt that just make it some kind of slavery play in the end…?
also HOITT
Nah cause for slavery play you gotta, you know, do slavery play. Roleplaying that you own a sub, purchasing a sub, that kind of thing.
We’re not doing that (in general, at least. I imagine at least one dom/switch has done some slavery play with a sub they were loaned). We’re doing a free use thing where any sub can be used by any dom in the group (with safewords and preestablished limits, of course. We’re playing, not running some weird human trafficking ring). The barcodes are just to help keep track of who is where and with who, because this got way too complicated for just a shared Google sheets page.
And you may think it’s hot but that’s probably only because you’re not having to maintain all this library infrastructure! This software is from the 80s and I’m running it on NT4, and the damn barcode readers keep failing to scan. They’re just not designed to read the lines off human flesh, especially single they kinda assume that the target surface is perfectly flat, which humans rarely are.
I did suggest we used contactless RFID implants instead of barcodes, but half the polycule wasn’t into the idea of getting an RFID chip injected into them, and the other half was way too into it. (the puppysub half, natch).
So I’m having to research alternate barcode readers, which is going terribly. Do you know what happens when you call up Zebra and ask them which of their scanners work best on human skin? If you’re LUCKY, they hang up on you! And explaining “no, it’s for a sex thing” does NOT HELP.
So I’m stuck here at the circulation desk looking at datasheets and trying to compare how good they are at low contrast reads and non-flat surfaces.
I thought I’d found a handheld scanner that’d work, but it turns out that if your skin is any darker than your average Irish vampire, it fails to work. And frankly this whole situation is weird enough without accidentally implementing a racist tech stack.
I really got to get my resource allocation bar code soon…
I could give you one but with the current state of my system there’s like a 20%-25% chance you’ll end up in 386 Inland waterway and ferry transportation
okay, this is amazing. but why can’t each sub just carry a library card of their own, like a “resource card” that they can wear on a collar/cuff/piercing/whatever? and that you could actually lay flat to scan? like, I see the appeal of the tattoo bar code, but for practical purposes of the functioning system, wouldn’t attaching a bar code to the sub on a piece of laminated card make more sense?
Cards are a great idea, and we did do that early on, but the subs losing them was always the problem! When a dom comes by and grabs a sub and then goes off to a room to do Weird Things with them for an hour or two, nine times out of ten they’d come back with no card, and I’d have to manually look them up in the database. It took forever, especially on busy days like weekends.
Piercings would be better but they fell into the same camp as the RFID implants: most of the polycule was bleh on the idea, and one small group was WAY too into it.
And frankly those people give me enough trouble as it is. The hucow punks are always asking me to fix their equipment, and frankly, no! I may have grown up on a farm and studied electrical engineering, but that doesn’t mean I have the slightest idea how to repair or maintain a milking machine! This kind of vacuum hydraulics is a mechanical engineering problem first and foremost, and that’s just not my forte.
Sigh. Being the asexual IT person in a big kinky polycule is difficult sometimes.
I have done some research into collars and I think they’d be a good option. Last time I surveyed the ‘cule, all the subs were fine with collars (half of them were wearing them at least part-time already anyway), it’s just a matter of figuring out some good options for sourcing custom barcoded/RFID’d collars.
That also means getting feedback from the doms about what features they want, too. The last thing we need is for doms to be taking them off all the time because they’re doing a scene that needs a collar with D-rings or something. So we’re gonna have to make sure we choose something reasonably functional.
A few doms want to go all electronic fancy pants collars but I don’t think we really have the budget for that, plus I don’t want to have to support that.
And the obvious choice of finding a local leatherworker to make us a bunch of collars won’t work because we’ve got some subs who are vegans or have leather allergies! I’ve been looking at a place on Etsy that has some good canvas options, and maybe they can do us a bulk discount of some sort, maybe with RFID chips sewn directly inside, like they already do with an airtag.
(which is something a few doms have put on the features wishlist anyway, so they can easily locate lost subs. Apparently it’s not all that uncommon for a sub to be, uhh, “played” to the point where they’re in a haze and can barely remember their name, and then the dom goes off to get them something to drink and a pillow or whatever, but the sub ended up wandering off once they extricated themselves from the scene, and God only knows where they are now. Maybe they’re off in someone else’s scene? Maybe they’re playing ps1 games down in the lounge? Doms are always asking me “where’s $SUB?” and all I can tell them is if they’re checked out or not, not where they are.)
Have you ever considered facial recognition software?
Far less hot then barcodes but possibly more practical
We have, but… Masks.
And not just the covid masks you’re still supposed to wear in the common areas! I know y'all take them off during the scenes, and that’s fine; you can take individual risks but I’m trying to keep this nigh-orgy from turning into a nigh-super-spreader event!
But yeah. Other masks are a problem. And do you really want to ask a sub that’s already halfway to subspace to take off their pup mask before they go off and chew on a bone? No! I’m not here to harsh anyone’s mellow, or ruin the moment.
I did think about putting in multiple pictures, including the subs in their various masks, but it turns out even that wouldn’t work. Even if each sub always only wears their own mask, often the masks are those generic black leather puppy hood things, so they look identical.
(In fact, there’s one dom who prefers that! He bought a bunch of identical puppy masks and does a thing where he sends one puppy sub to pick out one or two more, and put them in the same mask (with hidden gag) before being them to him. It’s some dehumanization power move thing where he has scenes where he’s got two-three subs he can’t tell apart, so they’re like interchangeable toys to him, rather than people.)
(you’d think body types would be a problem but it turns out given how many transfemmes we’ve got (because we move in herds) it’s not exactly hard to find a tall kind of chubby girl with a penis who is into being treated like a puppy. We’ve got a bunch of those gals!)
Are you using one of the cataloguing standards that are already established, or is it custom or proprietary? For example MARC records or the sort.
Yeah our system is set up for MARC records but we had to define a lot of new fields. Normally libraries don’t need to track if an item is straight, gay, bi, etc, for example, let alone if they are into being peed on.
People keep asking me to publish our schema so that other similar organizations can use it but I haven’t had time to clean up and document it yet.
I reviewed the MARC record standards and I think I have some guesses on what you’ve done?
Since Holdings are the most flexible, and thus probably the most easy to modify the software around …
I think we’re looking at catalogue cards like this?
Submissive format block:
0XX = Control information, numbers, codes
1XX = Primary names
2XX = Titles
3XX = Physical Qualities
4XX = Important Squicks
5XX = Notes
6XX = Favored Kinks
7XX = Other Subs That Go Well With This One
8XX = Favored Rooms
9XX = Reserved for local implementationI wonder if your software has Z39.50 support, it could be cool to setup an ILL with different parts of the polycule based on where they’re centralized.
Ok but if you’re setting up ILL, you’re probably talking about at least a polyconsortium, not just a polycule, so you’ll need to harmonize lending terms between the local polycules. You’ll also need to set up a delivery network, because the last time I checked I’m pretty sure subs were NOT eligible for delivery through standard carriers.
I think if you’re at the point you’re cataloging you probably figured out Delivery in some capacity at some point. Subs are pretty easy to package up so I don’t think its too much of an issue. Also, isn’t that the whole point of making a record standard?
Yeah. we’ve got IPL (Inter-polycule loan) with some other institutions. This is somewhat tricky to do because we have to negotiate terms and ensure our bylaws can be matched closely enough that we don’t end up violating any agreements. Fortunately, that’s not my responsibility. We’ve got negotiators and lawyers to work on that. So we’ve got like 4 (or 5? I can’t recall off the top of my head and my terminal isn’t currently hooked up) other polycules we have free sub trade set up for.
As for delivering them, again, not my department. from what I understand there’s several drivers in the polycule who do those jobs.
How exactly it happens is up to the sub and gets negotiated between them and the dom and/or driver. I don’t usually have anything to do with that, I just coordinate setting their location as being the proper IPL location and make sure their return date is included. Sometimes I have to call my counterpart at their location for late returns, which is always Fun (I’m an autistic asexual! I do not like talking to people on the phone, especially Weird Preverts (like me)).
ANYWAY the one part of the whole sub-transportation thing that I have to deal with is the “kidnap” flag on the sub’s profile. One of the ways subs sometimes get transported is that they’re grabbed by a couple strong people who tie 'em up and stuff 'em in a van.
Obviously if their kink is for the “unsuspecting kidnapping” part we can’t exactly have them come in and coordinate how and when to do it, you know? So if they’ve got that flag set on their account, instead they just get called into the library or one of the main poly houses, with a fake reason. I think it’s usually just “Mistress Foobar wants to play with you” or “We need to do some annual paperwork involving your consent forms” and then when they show up, SURPRISE!
I don’t have to deal with the other transportation stuff. The Toys & Tools guy has supplies for that. They’ve got the usual extra-large pet carriers, and one of those foam-cutting tables so they can encase people snugly inside standard crates. That one is fun. I took a nap in one once and nearly got mailed to LA.