Hog Slapper
The hog slapper is an impact tattooing implement designed for pigs. You can also hit transgenders with it (for sex)!
Video Info
The song used is ESTRADIOL DUST, by ANGEL_TECH (metagirl+melanie fangz) and featuring saoirse dream, from the album AUTO HYMN. Used with permission. This is holy music!
The "t4t" pig head is from Torrey Peters' Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones (PDF, Alternate link). It's short and good -- go read it!
I also used the manufacturer's instructional video. I used yt-dlp to download the video.
I learned how to edit videos for this! This is my first time! I used DaVinci Resolve.
I posted this video on tumblr (version with commentary) and Feb posted some pics if you want to reblog those/see what people are saying about this in the notes :3
Here's a slightly higher res version if it's desired, for archival purposes.
Inspiration credit goes to kink performer yourgirlfriendcarta posting about this and answering some questions for us :)
This is a tattoo. You're having ink shoved into your skin with needles, it is both violent and permanent.
How-To
Equipment
- Hog slapper and letters
- Foam pads; 1 per person. We used these. This way you can double-dip for multi-hit designs without cross-contamination, and you can re-use letters among fluid bonded creatures without contaminating the pad or re-sterilizing letters (takes 4ever).
- Containers to hold foam pads
- Alcohol to disinfect foam pads; we used 70% isopropyl.
- Tattoo ink designed for humans
- Something to disinfect the skin; we used this alcohol-based handrub.
- Plastic sheet so you don't get ink on the floor (e.g. a shower liner or cut-up trash bag)
- Tools to sterilize letters. We used a stovetop pressure cooker and sterilization pouches.
- Clean nitrile gloves
- Optional: sterile drape to put stuff on
Prep
Tattooing is not a sterile process, but we can do some harm reduction. Follow Proc > Sterilize Tools for the letters. This takes a while! Be aware the spikes are likely to tear the bags; touch the bags only with tongs and decant letters onto a sterile drape to mitigate this.
We're not sure the best way to disinfect the ink pad. We soaked it in isopropyl alcohol and squeezed it out, but that took a while to dry. I don't think the foam would hold up to steam sterilization, but I'm not sure.
Ensure consent for this permanent procedure for all involved, both now and throughout the process. Ensure you're prepared for aftercare and know what that looks like for those involved.
Selecting a Location
It's hard to hit in the exact location you pick, so ensure you're not too close to any joints, or anything else you wouldn't want to hit (like another tattoo). Consider the relative risk of different locations; consult something like this guide if you're not sure. This is impact as much as it is tattooing.
Pick a flat surface, with a higher concentration of body fat being preferable. If slapping on a thinner thigh, consider having the slappee stick its/their foot out so the fat squishes down a bit.
February notes it wishes it had done more slaps while straddling the slappee, for better stability. Try out different positions and see what feels comfortable.
Practicing
Practice a few times before doing it for real.
- You want to do it like throwing axes, with a pure translation of force along a single 2d plane of the arm and shoulder. You don't want to have to rotate your hand.
- Pay attention to how extended your arm and shoulders are at the point of impact. Make a practice swing against a couch and see - are you actually swinging your arm in slow-mo like you will in the scene, or are you using a controlled motion that doesn't capture the joint dynamics of the arm in the swing?
- Depending on the model of the slapper, the face of the slapper may be tilted a bit away from the line of the handle; if it was in line, your hand would be about even with the slapping surface at the termination of the motion, but because of the offset/tilt your hand will be slightly above the line that is perpendicular to the skin, the handle will tilt up away from the skin at impact.
- Practice the motion with an unloaded slapper on a thigh to minimize bounce. If you've done percussion you can feel it out. It's about holding it loosely and tightly in different ways.
Slapping
- Put down plastic sheeting under where you'll be slapping.
- Disinfect slapper with alcohol/cavicide wipes/whatever. Don gloves.
- Use the unloaded slapper to mark the desired location, outlining with sharpie/body art pen/surgical skin pen.
- Disinfect the skin with an alcohol-based handrub. If the skin is visibly dirty, clean with soap and water first.
- Insert letters. Do not touch the spikes. It is riskier to re-use letters between different bodies without re-sterilizing them. Double check that you've loaded correctly; it's easy to load the letters backwards. Confirm this with a third party, if available. Confirm with slappee that you got the phrase itself right.
- Soak ink pad with a copious amount of tattoo ink.
- Line up your swing before dipping the tool. Tell slappee you're just lining it up, to take big, deep breaths to the count of 5, and that you'll say before you do anything. Have the ink pad in hand when you're lining up, because you want the same foot and body positioning. Confirm slappee is ready.
- Flip the ink pad. (The ink flows down, so there's more on the bottom.)
- Tell slappee to take a deep breath in. Squish down slapper into soaked ink pad very hard. It should gush, it should drip. You need to saturate the surface of the hog slapper and the base of every spike with ink or it will mark unevenly.
- Move immediately from inking to hitting. Don’t worry about ink splatters. Tell slappee to breathe out, line it up, and swing confidently and hard. You don’t get multiple chances at the mark.
- Make sure all points penetrate fully by rolling slapper back and forth with your hand.
- Remove spikes, provide aftercare, and clean up.
Healing
Standard tattoo/impact aftercare. Eat, rest well, keep it covered for the first couple days except to clean, keep it moisturized (jojoba oil or petroleum jelly work well).
Consider using second skin or tegaderm to protect healing wounds. Topical antibiotics are not indicated.
Don't pick at/scratch the dots; you can in fact pull them out by accident!
When we've done stick-and-poke touch-ups I'll post learnings from that here too.
Examples
When we did this, we had five bodies total. Below are unedited videos of each slap, fresh and healed images, and what we learned from each one. Notes were taken by February and are condensed above. View the videos to see approximately how hard to hit. (hard enough: Enne's, Selene's, not hard enough: February's)
February [it/they] (FAG DYKE + M0R BID)
- Did not mark as well as all others; 4th was best-marking. 4, 2 blocks each leg, 1 set at cant, 1 set vertical
- Less ink on pad, MUST squish down into soaked pad, the slapper should be dripping.
- Move immediately from soaking the slapper to hitting.
- Hit hard.
- You don’t get multiple chances at the mark, you need to swing confidently, hard, and make sure all points penetrate fully by rolling slapper back and forth with hand. You need to saturate the surface of the hog slapper and the base of every spike with ink or it will mark unevenly.
- Tried re-doing with hand press, did not work. Need to swing to re-do, or stick and poke. July also tried redoing letter, redipped ink, hammered in, did not work. Need full swinging motion to deliver ink fully to tissue, is hypothesis??
1 day after:
42 days after:
Enne [it/she] (R0T x3)
- Did 3 in a row on 1 leg, back of right leg, laying down on stomach, squatting at her left side by her torso. They ended up pretty vertically oriented, only marked out 1st one, spacing was weird, 2nd one was a little lower than I wanted it, and came close to the knee, so something to watch.
- Ink was excessive, saturated, dots turned out consistent
- Enne was more sore than others the next day, probably because all slaps were in a line on back of leg, i.e. same muscle group getting traumatized?
- Note to mark all placements for more guides - and to do more work to see how will lay on body
- Had folks sit down and stretch their legs some to get slapped for the most part - those were more awkward to hit sometimes, or had to be done at a cant to make sure it marked/landed. Did Enne’s straddled and wish I had done some straddled, wonder how it would impact stability.
1 day after:
39 days after:
Selene [they/them] (CUTE)
- Ez, best mark. Right leg, done from behind with left hand
- Higher BF% definitely helps with properly landing the slap
- Healing notes: note gap in C, Selene attributes it to picking at dot, reports ink loss from that area
1 day after:
39 days after:
Katie [she/her] (FAKE DYKE)
- Left leg, sitting, “FAKE DYKE” at cant, angles same for both blocks of text but further apart than i would like. Not quite as consistent as Enne, Selene, July but good marks.
- Good tissue for it
- Was a little close to other ink on the 2nd one, didn’t mean for it to be so close
- Extra dots present where slapper attempted to re-emphasize marks by stamping slapper into skin with more ink. Partial success, unlike when we tried with July's, but it is difficult with so much ink present to determine immediately where actually needs more emphasis and how that is landing, so ended up overemphasizing same parts.
42 days after:
July [it/its] (M0RE)
- Right leg, "MORE," M turned out less clear on left side, due to angle of leg/not getting initial penetration to depth?
- Noting for next time, if unable to form adequate flat surface for slapping, limit letters to flat area, add on any more
- Tried stamping in M after the fact, both of us, neither showed up very well. I definitely hit it to depth and had a fair amount of ink, the particular dynamics of why that doesn’t work as well have got to be interesting. Maybe just doing waaaay way more ink for stamping like that, drizzle some on just before smack.
- Subjective pain seemed higher
- Note extra dots around “more” in pic1 where slapper and July attempted to re-do the M bc it seemed apparent it was not stuck there! Other dots seem slightly long, possibly because of rocking slapper too widely.
1 day after:
42 days after:
Here are pictures of others who got slapped, but not that night:
Nyk [they/them] (FAG DYKE)
Day of:
16 days after:
More
- I have some more stuff posted on tumblr under the tag #hog slapper
- I have a kinda shitty program for finding things you can spell with available letters. If you want to use this, pls say something and I'll clean it up/add usage docs.
- Please message me if you do this!! I'll link your stuff here if you want, but also I just want to see :3