Fantasy has always been part of human intimacy. From childhood games of make-believe to the stories we tell ourselves as adults, imagination helps us explore identity, power, vulnerability, and desire. In kink and BDSM spaces, roleplay and fantasy become intentional, collaborative tools for consenting adults to step outside everyday norms and into something curated, negotiated, and deeply personal. At its best, roleplay isn’t about escaping reality. It’s about understanding ourselves more clearly through creativity, communication, and trust.

Set within the shadowed elegance of a Victorian-style mansion, "The Manor Men: Victor" opens a new photo essay series for PROUD & Kinky Magazine—one that explores power, poise, and presence through a distinctly gothic lens. Victor moves through the pages like a well-kept secret, blending classic masculinity with quiet provocation as history, desire, and individuality intertwine. Each image invites the reader deeper into the manor, where the past lingers, confidence reigns, and every gaze tells a story.

Las Vegas is often described as a city of excess, spectacle, and fantasy… but beneath the neon and noise lives a community that understands something deeper: liberation is not just about pleasure. It’s about safety, consent, dignity, and care. That is where the Sin Sity Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence live and work. Squarely in the beautiful gray space between sacred and sinful. For more than two decades, the Sin Sity Sisters have served the LGBTQIA2S+ community of Southern Nevada through radical visibility, irreverent joy, and unapologetic service. While we are widely known for our signature over the top “habits”, glittered faces, and campy style fundraising, our deeper mission has always been rooted in compassion, particularly for those living with or affected by HIV/AIDS through our AIDS Drug Assistance Program, SADAP. In recent years, that mission has expanded to more explicitly include kink-affirming, sex-positive, and fetish-friendly spaces… not as novelty, but as necessity.

There’s a moment that happens, sometimes on a stage, sometimes in a dungeon, sometimes in the quiet honesty of a conversation, when someone decides to stop shrinking. To stop apologizing. To stop waiting for permission. This issue of PROUD & Kinky Magazine lives squarely in that moment. From the velvet-draped rebellion of Las Vegas burlesque to the carefully negotiated fantasies of kink and roleplay, every story in these pages asks the same essential question: What happens when we show up fully, authentically, and without shame?