hey whoa, i'm posting again!
yeah, sorry about my silence for the last half-year. i have four or five posts in drafts where i was going to talk about more of the scenes (and other releases) that came out in the months between july and now, but i got distracted with other things. so the nine scenes i've already posted about will have to stand as a sort of very rough guide to the kinds of things i'm looking for in porn. maybe i'll do more in 2020. i'm not promising that i will; but i'm definitely not saying i won't either.
but in the meantime i wanted to publish something that would cover what i most enjoyed watching this year. not, to repeat myself, because anyone else cares, but purely as a personal exercise. it's useful to reflect on the things i have liked, if only to remind myself where i should look for more things i will like in the future.
after april, i was pretty burnt out on watching porn, and went months without watching a full scene. so i have by no means watched all the porn that was available to me: of the sites i still subscribe to, i've probably watched 20% or less of their girl/girl output in 2019 (and much of that in april), and of course i've seen a much smaller fraction of their total output if they're not girl/girl-only sites. as a reminder in case it wasn't obvious, i don't watch porn with men in it. nothing against men — some of my favorite people are men — but i've tried boy/girl numerous times over the years and gotten nothing out of it. anyway i don't have time for all the girl/girl porn i could be watching, who needs another 800% worth of material on top of that?
so the following isn't some kind of definitive list in which i choose the best out of all the porn that was released this year. it's just what i happened to take in, and what, out of that, happened to click for me. i've written a blurb for each entry, to try to get the flavor of what i liked about it, and included a more or less sfw screencap.
in my previous entries, i've tried to judge by "objective" criteria rather than by what got me hard or wet, but here i'm allowing my horny preferences to show as well as my aesthetic ones. not that they're entirely separable: good lighting and cinematography are more arousing to me than shitty lighting and cinematography, but good performances (and the inexplicable alchemy of who i do and don't find attractive) trump all.
following the lead of the big porn awards like avn and xbiz, i'm dividing the year's output between features, featurettes, series, and vignettes, because that's what makes the most sense to me, and gives me a way to point out different ways and kinds of being good. porn isn't film, although there are occasional porn movies, and porn isn't television, although there are occasional porn series; vignettes (or stand-alone scenes) are perhaps porn's native form, particularly as the migration from physical media to the web accelerated in the 2010s, and so there are more vignettes on my list than any other format. i'm limiting myself to listing one release per site per category to avoid being here all day, but i'll occasionally give honorable mentions where there was just too much quality work.
so without further ado, here are the best girl/girl releases of 2019 according to the further shebang blog:
i don't suppose i'm blowing any minds by ranking this release first overall. if teenage lesbian doesn't sweep the all-girl feature category in all the awards it's eligible for, there's something cockeyed somewhere. it's easily the best-written, best-performed, best-set designed, best-shot, and best-soundtracked all-girl feature of the year, and its only competition in features that aren't all-girl are perspective, also directed by bree mills, and drive, directed by kayden kross. but kristen scott's soulful, conflicted performance at the center of the movie, as she works out how to understand and then how to express her sexuality, is almost certainly the best acting (as opposed to the most acting, cf. perspective) in porn all year. mills' meticulous shot compositions, flavorful script (kenna james rattling off a 1990s lesbian 101 curriculum to utter blankness from kristen is a highlight), and patient takes make this film à clef of mills' own coming-out years also something of an ode to 90s indie filmmaking, even though almost the only people in it who can actually remember the 90s are playing bit parts as parents and teachers. sure, there's room for nitpicking: no amount of set design and careful framing can make los angeles look even a little bit like canada, and while the original soundtrack is impressive for porn it's no great shakes in the broader scope of either film scoring or music. but a c+ indie movie is, thanks to the soft bigotry of low expectations, an a+ porn movie, and the unrated version with the visible sex cut out would be a perfectly acceptable afternoon cable drama. but then the unrated version isn't what i'm celebrating: the sex is neither gratuitous nor a distraction. with the exception of the emily willis/gianna dior scene, which gets dragged out to conventional porn scene lengths long after its narrative purpose has been fulfilled, all the sex is both textually important and revealing of character, and the kristen/kenna and kristen/kendra scenes are among the four or five most engaging sexual encounters in porn all year. last but not least, i have to appreciate the sardonic brilliance of bree mills in naming the movie two of the most popular porn search terms and then making it almost entirely unlike the typical results.
site: all her luv (missax)
production credits: whitney wright (dir., scr.), missa x (ed.)
release date: october 15–november 16, 2019 | trailer
whitney wright's first girl/girl feature as a director also leaves plenty of room for nitpicking, from the interminable pace (meant to be portentous, i think, but occasionally tipping into tedious) to the wildly uneven line readings (serena blair is, i think, the only actor who never made me wince) to the pseudo-philip glass library music overwhelming the soundtrack to the degree that it was genuinely hard to hear some of the dialogue even on headphones. and the dingy look that the missax cameo filter gives to every shot never helps. but despite its lack of polish, structural issues (why would cadence, just betrayed twice, so easily trust daisy in the last act?), and general unoriginality (not one but two sweetheart releases earlier this year, a woman's promise and confessions of a sinful nun 2, were variations on the same basic premise), there was something so weirdly compelling about it, a quality i can only call whitneyesque, that the occasionally shabby visuals and tentative acting fell aside. joanna angel as the horrifyingly charismatic leader of an all-girl conversion therapy program gave it a campy edge (as did whitney herself in two different unlikely wigs) that made the glib pieties and recycled bible verses (whitney either knows her fundamentalism or did really solid research) sting in ways i've never really seen them do in porn before. but maybe the thing that most pleasantly surprised me about the project was the casting of daisy taylor, a trans performer, as simply another girl in an all-girl feature. the all her luv commenters were decidedly mixed on this new frontier in representation, but since i've always included trans women in my girl/girl viewing, i couldn't be happier that one of the sharpest new directors in the industry seems to agree with me.
site: twistys (mindgeek)
production credits: xander porn (dir.), victoria nachos (scr.)
release date: november 9–30, 2019 | trailer
a throwback to the barely-coherent girl/girl releases of the 1990s (when i first started paying attention to porn), there's virtually no story here, and what there is isn't taken seriously by anyone involved. which i don't at all mind: there's room in my heart for the visually and narratively subtle works above as well as for the candy-colored brainless nonsense on offer here. i haven't dug through the archives well enough to say whether this is definitely the first-ever twistys feature-length all-girl release (although on the website they only call it a four-part series), but it's certainly the first since i've been paying attention, and although i've never noticed anything directed by xander porn before, that seems to be because mindgeek is very stingy about giving production credits; he's a brazzers/reality kings/etc. regular. the barely-there premise is that bridgette b runs a girl gang which gives wayward young women with no direction a purpose and a family, as reiterated over and over again in talking-head segments that feature each participant in the upcoming scene. it's cute, gorgeously shot, and makes no attempt to be remotely realistic, and i thoroughly enjoyed it as an exercise in giddy fluff with enjoyable if rarely believable sex. the one exception was the encounter between whitney wright and luna star, which takes place in a penthouse apartment looking out onto a nighttime cityscape, and is visually stunning in multiple ways.
site: all her luv (missax)
production credits: whitney wright (dir., scr.), missa x (ed.)
release date: april 15, 2019 | trailer
back in april, i gave this the highest score of the nearly 200 scenes i watched and scored that month, so i won't repeat myself here. i'll just note that even eight months and some dozen whitney wright productions later, it's still her most inventive script and most complete story. it helps that it's short; a two-parter rather than the four or more usually demanded of porn features, though released as a single scene. there were very few other girl/girl releases of so-called featurette length produced in 2019; most the rest were also from all her luv, and most of those were also written and directed by whitney wright. they have also been good; but maybe for sentimental reasons, endless is one of my favorite movies of 2019, porn or not.
seasons (all her luv), popular (girlsway)
site: girlsway ◅ adult time (gamma)
production credits: bree mills (dir.)
release date: december 23, 2018–december 15, 2019 | trailers
the premise of we like girls is simple: ask a performer who genuinely enjoys sex with women who she desperately wants to have sex with, then put them together and film the whole thing. they decide what they wear, how they interact, what they do with each other: the cameras are only there to document it. it helps that a gay woman conceived the series and directs every episode, so that the focus is on the emotional connection between the performers, which isn't the kind of thing that can be faked. no two pairings have had exactly the same emotional energy, because that's how people are. in any case, no other porn has given me nearly as much joy, gratification, and emotional fulfillment in 2019 as the we like girls project has, and very little media outside of porn has come close either. (maybe music.) i remain baffled by the girlsway audience that grumbles about it because it's not story-based, unremittingly silly, or insipidly choreographed with oversaturated colors like the site's usual fare; the emotional honesty, fluid camerawork, and patient lovemaking on display in we like girls add up to not just the best porn of 2019 but the best porn i've ever seen in my life. on the other extreme, the recurring statement in comment sections that "this isn't porn, this is art" is well-intended but ultimately misguided: sure, it's art, but that's not mutually exclusive with it being excellent porn, and the fact that porn so frequently fails to meet this standard of genuine connection and visual artistry is to the industry's (and its consumers') discredit. we can and should demand better, because if work like this is possible in porn, there's precious little excuse for the shoddiness on display just about everywhere else.
best individual episodes: emily & scarlett, ivy lebelle & lena paul, alina & kendra (but there are no bad episodes)
site: pure taboo ◅ adult time (gamma)
production credits: whitney wright (dir.)
release date: june 2–december 5, 2019 | trailers
the polar opposite of we like girls' overall sweetness and mutual affection no matter how extreme the sex gets, lesbian revenge maintains a dark, mean, and forbidding tone, even though the actual sex is generally pretty tame. in that it's just staying true to the pure taboo ethos of taking typical porn scenarios and playing them as straight as possible, with all the horrifying implications of pseudo-incest, coercion, and deflowering fantasies left intact. lesbian revenge takes typical girl/girl porn scenarios — parent-teacher meeting, nerd and bully, delinquent and cop, wife and mistress, stepmother and daughter, psychiatrist and patient — and twists the knife, replacing the usual campy comedy of porn with undercurrents of anger, spite, and resentment. it demands a certain acting level, and has to be shot more like cinema than sitcom, with dark shadows and muted colors, for the audience to take it as seriously as it takes itself. where whitney wright's directorial efforts for all her luv have tended to be triumphs of writing over relatively cheap filmmaking, her lesbian revenge episodes are, with gamma's bigger budgets and all-star casts, among the most riveting porn filmmaking of the year. i'm not personally a huge fan of self-consciously "dark" entertainment, but precious little girl/girl ever gets shot as thoughtfully, or with as meaty a script, as this.
best individual episodes: resisting arrest, strings attached
site: adult time (gamma)
production credits: bree mills et al. (dir.)
release date: november 15, 2018–september 18, 2019 | trailers
yep, gamma (and specifically bree mills) produced my three favorite girl/girl series of the year. you might call that a sunk-cost fallacy, just relying on my adult time subscription to show me everything worthwhile, but really, the fact is that no one else is really doing high-end limited-run series like this. and certainly no one has ever produced anything like transfixed before: a high-glam, fashion-forward showcase of trans women performers with the top female talent in the industry. every episode has a distinctive look, often drawn from fashion, pop culture, or even literature (chanel santini as little red riding hood! april o'neil as the mad hatter!), and they're often so good that i've grown disappointed when gamma's usual girl/girl fare isn't as visually or tonally inventive. but given the marginalization and cheap, grotty production values that trans performers have almost always received from the industry, it's a welcome corrective. the only substantive criticism i have of it is its overreliance on the same trans talent again and again. sure, natalie mars is amazing; but there's a deeper talent pool to draw from, and i'm looking forward to that pool being expanded in season two.
best individual episodes: chanel & the wolf, through the mirror, the heist, last call, the photo shoot, flower girls, stay gold
site: deeper (vixen media)
production credits: kayden kross (dir., scr.)
release date: june 23, 2019 | trailer
i wrote about this scene earlier this year, and have little to add, except that kayden kross is such an excellent pornographer that her otherwise complete absence from girl/girl filmmaking was one of the worst things about this year in porn. the rumors that vixen media is developing a girl/girl site are all but confirmed, and i can't wait; but nobody else will ever shoot it like kayden does.
site: all her luv (missax)
production credits: serena blair (dir., scr.), isabel dresler (d.p.), missa x (ed.)
release date: may 8, 2019 | trailer
i wrote about this one too, and the only real downside to whitney wright's amazing 2019 is that it has rather overshadowed serena blair's excellent 2019. her collaborations with photographer izzy dresler for all her luv have produced some of the most genuinely queer girl/girl porn on a mainstream site all year, and she is perhaps the only porn scriptwriter whose scripts can accurately and without qualification be called literary. her subsequent productions seem to have been a bit less ambitious, and so haven't knocked me out quite as much as this first one did, but i'm really looking forward to her future work, and i devoutly hope that missa x and all her luv (if not indeed bigger studios) continue to support it.
all her luv runners-up: fanatic, triangle of lies, forever young
site: sweetheart video (mile high media)
production credits: ricky greenwood (dir.)
release date: july 8, 2019 | trailer
yet again, i already wrote about this scene, and don't want to repeat myself too much. alexis loves women, one of two performer showcases from sweetheart video this year, was generally delightful even though i never really connected to it emotionally. (i like, respect, and admire alexis fawx; but i'm never really on her wavelength.) the one exception was the amazing body-paint scene with ana foxxx, which plays just enough with racial and gender signifiers that even though the sex isn't particularly amazing the visuals are among the most striking in all of porn this year.
sweetheart video runners-up: without hesitation, the feelings are mutual!, behave yourself
site: elegant angel
production credits: sid knox (dir.)
release date: may 20, 2019 | trailer
my favorite new pornstar of 2018 was the extremely sensitive and sinuous ivy wolfe. i was far from alone; her best new starlet win at the 2019 avns seemed all but preordained, however little she may have expected it. but her sudden hiatus from shooting almost immediately afterwards meant that the few previously-shot scenes trickling out over the next few months were all that fans like me had to content ourselves with. this scene from elegant angel's best new starlets 2019 showcase was one of the last ivy wolfe appearances all year, and watching it i could almost convince myself that it was a contributor to her sudden retirement: after confidently saying that she likes to dominate girls in the interview, to which jane wilde responds with an intrigued purr, ivy appears to lose her nerve during the scene, and jane, a supremely confident switch herself, takes advantage of that hesitation to relentlessly pummel ivy into whimpering submission via orgasm. the miserable acoustics and visuals of the location (it's all taking place in a shower) only enhance ivy's abasement (which, don't get me wrong, she mostly seems to enjoy), and scenes like this are why i can never wholly ignore traditional gonzo, as dull and repetitive as the format often is. the story has a happy ending: in november, ivy returned to social media, unveiled new breasts, and hinted she would be shooting again, with better work-life balance, in the new year. here's hoping.
site: when girls play ◅ twistys (mindgeek)
production credits: holly randall (dir.)
release date: december 15, 2019 | trailer
the long-running twistys brand has always been a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine: its girl/girl productions have never been particularly emotionally credible (especially once girlsway changed the game circa 2016), but the gorgeous visuals, especially when shot by such masters of glamour porn as holly randall, made up for a lot in my book. so perhaps my favorite development all year was twistys returning to exclusively girl/girl production after several years of attempting to be (in randall's own words) a shittier brazzers. the amazing thing is that they've been getting better all year instead of starting strong and declining: my favorite twistys scene of 2019 was this billie holiday riff released in december as sabina rouge's "treat of the month" showcase. her choice of kira noir as the wealthy secret admirer to rouge's torch singer shows excellent taste, and randall's stunning lighting makes both women's skin positively glow. even the conventional awkward porn positions became tender and urgent thanks to both performers' mutually appreciative professionalism.
twistys runners-up: on the inside, off limits, this way to debauchery
site: sexart (metart)
production credits: andrej lupin (dir.)
release date: september 16, 2019 | trailer
when i watched and rated all of the girl/girl porn released in april 2019 that i could stomach (see here for how and why), i ended up rating european scenes on average 10% lower than u.s. scenes. that still seems roughly accurate as a metric of my enjoyment: the rarity of verbal communication, or indeed any narrative at all, frequently makes european porn hard to enjoy on any level other than the purely visual. even so, i noticed that the serbian-born cherry kiss was one of the best talkers in european porn: so her rare appearance on the stylish, classy sexart site as the dominating mistress of housemaid kinuski (who is finnish) in a scene called kinuski's dark fantasy almost immediately became one of my favorite european scenes of the year. but it turns out that scene was edited to remove cherry's harsher physical and verbal abuse; once the full uncut scene was published as veto, her talent for malicious dominance was displayed to its fullest extent. i've discussed elsewhere why bdsm attracts me so much; its relative rarity in girl/girl porn is maybe why it's so overrepresented in my list here. in any case both cherry kiss and kinuski are fantastic performers, and andrej lupin, the caravaggio of porn, films it so strikingly that the action seems to take place almost out of time, as though it could be happening at any point between the nineteenth century and now.
sexart runners-up: 1, 2, 3 kiss, emptiness, ariel's secret project 05: stasy rivera
site: girlsway ◅ adult time (gamma)
production credits: craven moorehead (dir.), jericoholic (scr.)
release date: june 9, 2019 | trailer
girlsway went through a rocky transition this year. for a while now, i've considered the site a victim of its own success, as its great 2016 and 2017 led to overproduction and decline by late 2018. then when primary director stills by alan was suspended following allegations of sexual assault, gamma had to scramble to maintain production, and it showed. now alan has started a rival site with jules jordan (which i have not sampled and do not intend to), and the new directorial slate of casey calvert/eli cross, craven moorehead, joanna angel, and occasional guest directors has slowly improved the median scene from where it was in april (which really was something of a nadir for the site). one of the first actually good scenes under the new regime was this heartfelt romantic sketch between girl/girl legend carter cruise and then-newbie mackenzie moss, who holds her own. the usual girlsway failings are present: it's overlit, underwritten, and awkwardly choreographed; but the performances and moorehead's sharp camerawork make up for a lot.
girlsway runners-up: cheeky sense of humor, the skater girl, interrupted anniversary
site: ultra films
production credits: fredy riger (dir.)
release date: april 9, 2019 | trailer
my review of this scene from april still more or less stands, but as the year has worn on and ultra films has never come close to matching the chemistry between stacy and sybil, it's only grown in my estimation since. it was my introduction to the czech stacy cruz and the first time i'd ever particularly noticed the ukrainian sybil a, and the soft lighting, gorgeous photography, and patient foreplay keep it in my affection. once more, a european scene with a narrative introduction, however flimsy, stands head over shoulders to those without.
site: girls gone pink ◅ mofos (mindgeek)
production credits: none listed
release date: april 12, 2019 | trailer
i wrote about this too back in april, and it remains virtually the only pseudo-reality scene i've ever enjoyed. the mofos conceit that every scene is being shot by the performers themselves often makes for awkward, ungainly framing and dull, rote action, but abigail mac and kendra spade are such terrific professionals, maintaining both the viewer-berating premise and their enjoyment of each other so well that i'm carried along regardless. and maybe it turns out that i really enjoy girl/girl porn where the girls remind the presumptively male viewer that they're cucking him.
site: hot and mean ◅ brazzers (mindgeek)
production credits: none listed
release date: november 12, 2019
brazzers has had phenomenal success as the most cartoonishly silly porn brand on the market, which i respect. i like comedy in my porn just fine, so long as there's real wit to it and not just the same stale setup again and again. but the thing i most appreciate about brazzers is that of all the major brands they are most welcoming to black women of all sizes; although they almost always shoot them in boy/girl scenarios, so i have to be content with the few girl/girl pittances i can get. but for once, silly comedy and plus-sized blackness joined forces here in a sublime manner, as maserati (a personal favorite of mine; this was her first post-maternity leave release), teaches a lesson to her new boyfriend's spoiled daughter by the pool. the uncredited actor who plays the henpecked father is the funniest thing about the scene, particularly his bumbling, apologetic response to finding the two in flagrante delicto; if you're going to do comedy, you might as well go all the way. maserati frequently gets paired with petite performers in her girl/girl work for the contrast, but carolina sweets is one of the few youthful-looking starlets who can keep up with her. even with the action confined the uncomfortable environs of a deck chair, this was one of the most delightfully goofy scenes from brazzers all year, and that's saying something.
brazzers runners-up: sneaking out, sneaky sex, honey, it's not what you think!, the age of sexlightenment
site: massage rooms ◅ sexyhub (really useful)
production credits: none listed
release date: november 23, 2019 | trailer
my favorite performer on the european side of the industry in 2018 was the brazilian-born luna corazon, so it was a disappointment that she seemed to spend most of 2019 traveling, doing boy/girl, and shooting content for her personal outlets. (i realize that with my focus on professionally-produced scenes for corporations i am increasingly a dinosaur; but i can't help it, i just don't enjoy performer-generated content as much. i don't want the illusion of a personal connection, i want beautiful visuals and an engaging narrative.) so when this massage rooms scene turned up late in the year, it was a ray of sunshine in a dismally lunaless world. and it reminded me all over again why she's one of my favorites: she's so very good at girl/girl. the spanish anastasia brokelyn (who was new to me) seemed to agree, and this was not just one of the best massage rooms scenes all year (they're nearly always worth a glance, even wordless; massage provides its own seductive narrative), but one of the best on all the generally pleasant sexyhub megasite.
sexyhub runners-up: hot asian lusts for big tits blonde, sea sand and outdoor sex at sunrise, stunners with amazing natural tits
site: lesbianx (xempire)
production credits: mason (dir.)
release date: march 2, 2019 | trailer
lena paul is one of my favorite currently working pornstars for several reasons, but one of the biggest is that she's a talker: whatever she's thinking during sex is likely to come out of her mouth, and she's a creative and intelligent person, so it's never boring. when she looks surprised at the younger and newer nia nacci and says, "oh you like girls. you like, like girls" while being eaten out, it's a small thing, but it's characteristic of how supportive and appreciative she always is in gonzo. the title of the scene is a reference to the fact that (unusually for mason) there are no cuts in this scene, that's how well lena and nia are vibing.
lesbianx runners-up: cecilia's first lesbian anal, deep lesbian connection, when superstars collide
site: shape of beauty ◅ adult time (gamma)
production credits: freddy licious, françois (dir.)
release date: march 27, 2019 | trailer
as i've hinted above and elsewhere throughout these blogs of mine, i'm a big fan of physical diversity in girl/girl porn, which apparently makes me an unusual consumer. so when adult time launched its shape of beauty series showcasing plus-size performers, i was thrilled, and hoped there might be at least one girl/girl episode. this delightful scene between the british estella bathory and the vegas-based mischievous kitty was the answer to my hopes. everything, from the cute dance estella does instead of cleaning, to kitty's flirtatious teasing, to their eventual enjoyment of one another, to even the library music that plays over the intro, was wonderful, and of course i only wanted more. there was one more girl/girl release in the first season of shape of beauty, and happily social media indicates that more is on its way.
adult time originals runners-up: our family tradition (age & beauty), dirty naughty filthy (bubblegum dungeon)
site: digital playground (mindgeek)
production credits: lena paul (dir.), zach (scr.), xander porn (d.p.)
release date: july 12, 2019 | trailer
as stated above, i don't watch boy/girl porn. but even beyond that, i'm not generally a big fan of porn features period. partly because, given the financial and time constraints porn is made under, they mostly can't live up to their ambitions, and partly because who has the time. so it's rare that i'll even check out a girl/girl scene in a standard porn movie. but the alina lopez/cecilia lion scene from out with a bang became one of my top priorities as soon as i knew about it: not only do i really like both performers, but it was lena paul's first feature as a director, and she could hardly have had a better cast. casey calvert, karma rx, michael vegas and xander corvus all show up in strange halucinatory fragments of narrative that seem to largely be a product of alina's feverish unconscious (the intense colored lighting only adds to the uncanniness), and once the scene transitions into sex it almost remains just as phantasmagoric, as the sun sets more quickly behind them than (if the sex was shot in real time) it possibly could. interrupting the sex and changing locations halfway through is daring, but lena, alina, and cecilia pull it off, making the second half almost as riveting as the first. i'll never know how the story wraps up, but i don't feel i need to: this scene gave me a complete aesthetic experience in itself.
runners-up: the silent caller: episode 2 (digital playground), the possession of mrs. hyde scene 3 (wicked pictures)
site: vivid ◅ adult time (gamma)
production credits: joanna angel (dir.), 3x west (scr.), kinkylink (ed.)
release date: october 2, 2019 | trailer
when gamma announced that they had bought the library of venerable porn brand vivid and would be making a new series of the classic vivid title where the boys aren't, i was thrilled: where the boys aren't had been my introduction to the world of girl/girl back in the 90s, when you had to go into a back room in the video store to access the porn vhs tapes. i still have a lot of affection for the original series, as silly and poorly shot and stiffly acted as it frequently was. but when the new series rolled out in the fall of 2019, i found it disappointing. it only differentiated itself from gamma's regular girl/girl production in two ways: by including men in supporting roles (so that the girls get frisky whenever they're not around, making the title literal), and by making every episode pop with primary colors. otherwise, the flimsy setups and extended athletic sex was exactly like the episodic girlsway format rather than forming a continuous narrative with atmospheric, moody sex as in the old where the boys aren't series, themselves available on adult time for an easy compare and contrast. which is to say that there was very little in them that i felt i hadn't seen before, and quite recently at that. the one scene that i actually enjoyed was the second episode, with legendary former vivid contract girl briana banks as one of two married lesbian cougars devouring their son's girlfriend emma hix. (kenzie taylor as the other cougar is an interesting coincidence that underlines how unusual her classic pornstar physique is in the gamma stable; unlike classic vivid, contemporary porn trends skinny and natural, like emma hix.) male performer small hands (husband of the brilliantly comic director) gives a typically hilarious nonsex performance as emma's clueless boyfriend; but the funniest bit is when emma asks briana why she looks familiar, and the scene cuts to girl/girl footage from her vivid glory days: "i've never been anywhere," briana deadpans, and winks to the camera. that acknowledgement of vivid's history (even though her 2000s-era heyday was well after the vivid era i'm most nostalgic for) was exactly what i felt was missing from the rest of the series. come to think of it, twistys' girl gang was closer to the spirit of 90s vivid than anything gamma's produced all year.
yeah, sorry about my silence for the last half-year. i have four or five posts in drafts where i was going to talk about more of the scenes (and other releases) that came out in the months between july and now, but i got distracted with other things. so the nine scenes i've already posted about will have to stand as a sort of very rough guide to the kinds of things i'm looking for in porn. maybe i'll do more in 2020. i'm not promising that i will; but i'm definitely not saying i won't either.
but in the meantime i wanted to publish something that would cover what i most enjoyed watching this year. not, to repeat myself, because anyone else cares, but purely as a personal exercise. it's useful to reflect on the things i have liked, if only to remind myself where i should look for more things i will like in the future.
after april, i was pretty burnt out on watching porn, and went months without watching a full scene. so i have by no means watched all the porn that was available to me: of the sites i still subscribe to, i've probably watched 20% or less of their girl/girl output in 2019 (and much of that in april), and of course i've seen a much smaller fraction of their total output if they're not girl/girl-only sites. as a reminder in case it wasn't obvious, i don't watch porn with men in it. nothing against men — some of my favorite people are men — but i've tried boy/girl numerous times over the years and gotten nothing out of it. anyway i don't have time for all the girl/girl porn i could be watching, who needs another 800% worth of material on top of that?
so the following isn't some kind of definitive list in which i choose the best out of all the porn that was released this year. it's just what i happened to take in, and what, out of that, happened to click for me. i've written a blurb for each entry, to try to get the flavor of what i liked about it, and included a more or less sfw screencap.
in my previous entries, i've tried to judge by "objective" criteria rather than by what got me hard or wet, but here i'm allowing my horny preferences to show as well as my aesthetic ones. not that they're entirely separable: good lighting and cinematography are more arousing to me than shitty lighting and cinematography, but good performances (and the inexplicable alchemy of who i do and don't find attractive) trump all.
following the lead of the big porn awards like avn and xbiz, i'm dividing the year's output between features, featurettes, series, and vignettes, because that's what makes the most sense to me, and gives me a way to point out different ways and kinds of being good. porn isn't film, although there are occasional porn movies, and porn isn't television, although there are occasional porn series; vignettes (or stand-alone scenes) are perhaps porn's native form, particularly as the migration from physical media to the web accelerated in the 2010s, and so there are more vignettes on my list than any other format. i'm limiting myself to listing one release per site per category to avoid being here all day, but i'll occasionally give honorable mentions where there was just too much quality work.
so without further ado, here are the best girl/girl releases of 2019 according to the further shebang blog:
best features
1. teenage lesbian
performers: kristen scott, aidra fox, emily willis, gianna dior, alina lopez, kenna james, casey calvert, maya kendrick, kendra spade
site: adult time (gamma)
production credits: bree mills (dir., scr.), matt holder (d.p.), clit eastwood (ed.)
release date: september 19, 2019 | trailer
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| kristen scott and kenna james |
i don't suppose i'm blowing any minds by ranking this release first overall. if teenage lesbian doesn't sweep the all-girl feature category in all the awards it's eligible for, there's something cockeyed somewhere. it's easily the best-written, best-performed, best-set designed, best-shot, and best-soundtracked all-girl feature of the year, and its only competition in features that aren't all-girl are perspective, also directed by bree mills, and drive, directed by kayden kross. but kristen scott's soulful, conflicted performance at the center of the movie, as she works out how to understand and then how to express her sexuality, is almost certainly the best acting (as opposed to the most acting, cf. perspective) in porn all year. mills' meticulous shot compositions, flavorful script (kenna james rattling off a 1990s lesbian 101 curriculum to utter blankness from kristen is a highlight), and patient takes make this film à clef of mills' own coming-out years also something of an ode to 90s indie filmmaking, even though almost the only people in it who can actually remember the 90s are playing bit parts as parents and teachers. sure, there's room for nitpicking: no amount of set design and careful framing can make los angeles look even a little bit like canada, and while the original soundtrack is impressive for porn it's no great shakes in the broader scope of either film scoring or music. but a c+ indie movie is, thanks to the soft bigotry of low expectations, an a+ porn movie, and the unrated version with the visible sex cut out would be a perfectly acceptable afternoon cable drama. but then the unrated version isn't what i'm celebrating: the sex is neither gratuitous nor a distraction. with the exception of the emily willis/gianna dior scene, which gets dragged out to conventional porn scene lengths long after its narrative purpose has been fulfilled, all the sex is both textually important and revealing of character, and the kristen/kenna and kristen/kendra scenes are among the four or five most engaging sexual encounters in porn all year. last but not least, i have to appreciate the sardonic brilliance of bree mills in naming the movie two of the most popular porn search terms and then making it almost entirely unlike the typical results.
2. the path to forgiveness
performers: cadence lux, serena blair, scarlett sage, joanna angel, kenzie reeves, alex coal, kira noir, daisy taylorsite: all her luv (missax)
production credits: whitney wright (dir., scr.), missa x (ed.)
release date: october 15–november 16, 2019 | trailer
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| daisy taylor and cadence lux |
whitney wright's first girl/girl feature as a director also leaves plenty of room for nitpicking, from the interminable pace (meant to be portentous, i think, but occasionally tipping into tedious) to the wildly uneven line readings (serena blair is, i think, the only actor who never made me wince) to the pseudo-philip glass library music overwhelming the soundtrack to the degree that it was genuinely hard to hear some of the dialogue even on headphones. and the dingy look that the missax cameo filter gives to every shot never helps. but despite its lack of polish, structural issues (why would cadence, just betrayed twice, so easily trust daisy in the last act?), and general unoriginality (not one but two sweetheart releases earlier this year, a woman's promise and confessions of a sinful nun 2, were variations on the same basic premise), there was something so weirdly compelling about it, a quality i can only call whitneyesque, that the occasionally shabby visuals and tentative acting fell aside. joanna angel as the horrifyingly charismatic leader of an all-girl conversion therapy program gave it a campy edge (as did whitney herself in two different unlikely wigs) that made the glib pieties and recycled bible verses (whitney either knows her fundamentalism or did really solid research) sting in ways i've never really seen them do in porn before. but maybe the thing that most pleasantly surprised me about the project was the casting of daisy taylor, a trans performer, as simply another girl in an all-girl feature. the all her luv commenters were decidedly mixed on this new frontier in representation, but since i've always included trans women in my girl/girl viewing, i couldn't be happier that one of the sharpest new directors in the industry seems to agree with me.
3. girl gang
performers: bridgette b, sabina rouge, gia derza, skye blue, whitney wright, luna star, gina valentina, skylar voxsite: twistys (mindgeek)
production credits: xander porn (dir.), victoria nachos (scr.)
release date: november 9–30, 2019 | trailer
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| gia derza, skye blue and bridgette b |
a throwback to the barely-coherent girl/girl releases of the 1990s (when i first started paying attention to porn), there's virtually no story here, and what there is isn't taken seriously by anyone involved. which i don't at all mind: there's room in my heart for the visually and narratively subtle works above as well as for the candy-colored brainless nonsense on offer here. i haven't dug through the archives well enough to say whether this is definitely the first-ever twistys feature-length all-girl release (although on the website they only call it a four-part series), but it's certainly the first since i've been paying attention, and although i've never noticed anything directed by xander porn before, that seems to be because mindgeek is very stingy about giving production credits; he's a brazzers/reality kings/etc. regular. the barely-there premise is that bridgette b runs a girl gang which gives wayward young women with no direction a purpose and a family, as reiterated over and over again in talking-head segments that feature each participant in the upcoming scene. it's cute, gorgeously shot, and makes no attempt to be remotely realistic, and i thoroughly enjoyed it as an exercise in giddy fluff with enjoyable if rarely believable sex. the one exception was the encounter between whitney wright and luna star, which takes place in a penthouse apartment looking out onto a nighttime cityscape, and is visually stunning in multiple ways.
honorable mention:
girls of wrestling (sweetheart video)
best featurette
endless
performers: avi love, lacy lennon, ana foxxxsite: all her luv (missax)
production credits: whitney wright (dir., scr.), missa x (ed.)
release date: april 15, 2019 | trailer
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| avi love and lacy lennon |
back in april, i gave this the highest score of the nearly 200 scenes i watched and scored that month, so i won't repeat myself here. i'll just note that even eight months and some dozen whitney wright productions later, it's still her most inventive script and most complete story. it helps that it's short; a two-parter rather than the four or more usually demanded of porn features, though released as a single scene. there were very few other girl/girl releases of so-called featurette length produced in 2019; most the rest were also from all her luv, and most of those were also written and directed by whitney wright. they have also been good; but maybe for sentimental reasons, endless is one of my favorite movies of 2019, porn or not.
honorable mentions:
best series
1. we like girls
performers: kissa sins, angela white, kristen scott, jenna sativa, emily willis, scarlett sage, lena paul, ivy lebelle, cadence lux, serena blair, shyla jennings, aj applegate, lexi lore, harmony wonder, dee williams, syren de mer, alina lopez, kendra spadesite: girlsway ◅ adult time (gamma)
production credits: bree mills (dir.)
release date: december 23, 2018–december 15, 2019 | trailers
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| ivy lebelle and lena paul |
the premise of we like girls is simple: ask a performer who genuinely enjoys sex with women who she desperately wants to have sex with, then put them together and film the whole thing. they decide what they wear, how they interact, what they do with each other: the cameras are only there to document it. it helps that a gay woman conceived the series and directs every episode, so that the focus is on the emotional connection between the performers, which isn't the kind of thing that can be faked. no two pairings have had exactly the same emotional energy, because that's how people are. in any case, no other porn has given me nearly as much joy, gratification, and emotional fulfillment in 2019 as the we like girls project has, and very little media outside of porn has come close either. (maybe music.) i remain baffled by the girlsway audience that grumbles about it because it's not story-based, unremittingly silly, or insipidly choreographed with oversaturated colors like the site's usual fare; the emotional honesty, fluid camerawork, and patient lovemaking on display in we like girls add up to not just the best porn of 2019 but the best porn i've ever seen in my life. on the other extreme, the recurring statement in comment sections that "this isn't porn, this is art" is well-intended but ultimately misguided: sure, it's art, but that's not mutually exclusive with it being excellent porn, and the fact that porn so frequently fails to meet this standard of genuine connection and visual artistry is to the industry's (and its consumers') discredit. we can and should demand better, because if work like this is possible in porn, there's precious little excuse for the shoddiness on display just about everywhere else.
best individual episodes: emily & scarlett, ivy lebelle & lena paul, alina & kendra (but there are no bad episodes)
2. lesbian revenge
performers: alexis fawx, mackenzie moss, kendra james, emily willis, gianna dior, kenzie reeves, abigail mac, brandi love, valentina nappi, gina valentina, reagan foxx, angela white, serena blair, scarlett sagesite: pure taboo ◅ adult time (gamma)
production credits: whitney wright (dir.)
release date: june 2–december 5, 2019 | trailers
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| kenzie reeves and abigail mac |
the polar opposite of we like girls' overall sweetness and mutual affection no matter how extreme the sex gets, lesbian revenge maintains a dark, mean, and forbidding tone, even though the actual sex is generally pretty tame. in that it's just staying true to the pure taboo ethos of taking typical porn scenarios and playing them as straight as possible, with all the horrifying implications of pseudo-incest, coercion, and deflowering fantasies left intact. lesbian revenge takes typical girl/girl porn scenarios — parent-teacher meeting, nerd and bully, delinquent and cop, wife and mistress, stepmother and daughter, psychiatrist and patient — and twists the knife, replacing the usual campy comedy of porn with undercurrents of anger, spite, and resentment. it demands a certain acting level, and has to be shot more like cinema than sitcom, with dark shadows and muted colors, for the audience to take it as seriously as it takes itself. where whitney wright's directorial efforts for all her luv have tended to be triumphs of writing over relatively cheap filmmaking, her lesbian revenge episodes are, with gamma's bigger budgets and all-star casts, among the most riveting porn filmmaking of the year. i'm not personally a huge fan of self-consciously "dark" entertainment, but precious little girl/girl ever gets shot as thoughtfully, or with as meaty a script, as this.
best individual episodes: resisting arrest, strings attached
3. transfixed
performers: cherie deville, venus lux, kleio valentine, chanel santini, riley reyes, natalie mars, athena rayne, lena kelly, kenzie taylor, kayleigh cox, sarah vandella, casey kisses, maya kendrick, aspen brooks, haley reed, joanna angel, ts foxxy, april o'neil, sinn sage, ana foxxx, natassia dreams, cadence lux, jessica fox, dee williams, khloe kay, kenna james, bree daniels, aubrey kate, kristen scott, gabi paltrova, gia page, adriana chechiksite: adult time (gamma)
production credits: bree mills et al. (dir.)
release date: november 15, 2018–september 18, 2019 | trailers
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| ts foxxy, casey kisses and joanna angel |
yep, gamma (and specifically bree mills) produced my three favorite girl/girl series of the year. you might call that a sunk-cost fallacy, just relying on my adult time subscription to show me everything worthwhile, but really, the fact is that no one else is really doing high-end limited-run series like this. and certainly no one has ever produced anything like transfixed before: a high-glam, fashion-forward showcase of trans women performers with the top female talent in the industry. every episode has a distinctive look, often drawn from fashion, pop culture, or even literature (chanel santini as little red riding hood! april o'neil as the mad hatter!), and they're often so good that i've grown disappointed when gamma's usual girl/girl fare isn't as visually or tonally inventive. but given the marginalization and cheap, grotty production values that trans performers have almost always received from the industry, it's a welcome corrective. the only substantive criticism i have of it is its overreliance on the same trans talent again and again. sure, natalie mars is amazing; but there's a deeper talent pool to draw from, and i'm looking forward to that pool being expanded in season two.
best individual episodes: chanel & the wolf, through the mirror, the heist, last call, the photo shoot, flower girls, stay gold
honorable mention:
1. play with your life
performers: kayden kross, riley steelesite: deeper (vixen media)
production credits: kayden kross (dir., scr.)
release date: june 23, 2019 | trailer
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| riley steele and kayden kross |
i wrote about this scene earlier this year, and have little to add, except that kayden kross is such an excellent pornographer that her otherwise complete absence from girl/girl filmmaking was one of the worst things about this year in porn. the rumors that vixen media is developing a girl/girl site are all but confirmed, and i can't wait; but nobody else will ever shoot it like kayden does.
2. the holy sacrament
performers: kira noir, sovereign syresite: all her luv (missax)
production credits: serena blair (dir., scr.), isabel dresler (d.p.), missa x (ed.)
release date: may 8, 2019 | trailer
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| kira noir and sovereign syre |
i wrote about this one too, and the only real downside to whitney wright's amazing 2019 is that it has rather overshadowed serena blair's excellent 2019. her collaborations with photographer izzy dresler for all her luv have produced some of the most genuinely queer girl/girl porn on a mainstream site all year, and she is perhaps the only porn scriptwriter whose scripts can accurately and without qualification be called literary. her subsequent productions seem to have been a bit less ambitious, and so haven't knocked me out quite as much as this first one did, but i'm really looking forward to her future work, and i devoutly hope that missa x and all her luv (if not indeed bigger studios) continue to support it.
all her luv runners-up: fanatic, triangle of lies, forever young
3. precious gold
performers: alexis fawx, ana foxxxsite: sweetheart video (mile high media)
production credits: ricky greenwood (dir.)
release date: july 8, 2019 | trailer
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| alexis fawx and ana foxxx |
yet again, i already wrote about this scene, and don't want to repeat myself too much. alexis loves women, one of two performer showcases from sweetheart video this year, was generally delightful even though i never really connected to it emotionally. (i like, respect, and admire alexis fawx; but i'm never really on her wavelength.) the one exception was the amazing body-paint scene with ana foxxx, which plays just enough with racial and gender signifiers that even though the sex isn't particularly amazing the visuals are among the most striking in all of porn this year.
sweetheart video runners-up: without hesitation, the feelings are mutual!, behave yourself
4. ivy wolfe & jane wilde pleasure each other in the shower
performers: ivy wolfe, jane wildesite: elegant angel
production credits: sid knox (dir.)
release date: may 20, 2019 | trailer
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| jane wilde and ivy wolfe |
my favorite new pornstar of 2018 was the extremely sensitive and sinuous ivy wolfe. i was far from alone; her best new starlet win at the 2019 avns seemed all but preordained, however little she may have expected it. but her sudden hiatus from shooting almost immediately afterwards meant that the few previously-shot scenes trickling out over the next few months were all that fans like me had to content ourselves with. this scene from elegant angel's best new starlets 2019 showcase was one of the last ivy wolfe appearances all year, and watching it i could almost convince myself that it was a contributor to her sudden retirement: after confidently saying that she likes to dominate girls in the interview, to which jane wilde responds with an intrigued purr, ivy appears to lose her nerve during the scene, and jane, a supremely confident switch herself, takes advantage of that hesitation to relentlessly pummel ivy into whimpering submission via orgasm. the miserable acoustics and visuals of the location (it's all taking place in a shower) only enhance ivy's abasement (which, don't get me wrong, she mostly seems to enjoy), and scenes like this are why i can never wholly ignore traditional gonzo, as dull and repetitive as the format often is. the story has a happy ending: in november, ivy returned to social media, unveiled new breasts, and hinted she would be shooting again, with better work-life balance, in the new year. here's hoping.
5. an erotic encore
performers: kira noir, sabina rougesite: when girls play ◅ twistys (mindgeek)
production credits: holly randall (dir.)
release date: december 15, 2019 | trailer
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| sabina rouge and kira noir |
the long-running twistys brand has always been a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine: its girl/girl productions have never been particularly emotionally credible (especially once girlsway changed the game circa 2016), but the gorgeous visuals, especially when shot by such masters of glamour porn as holly randall, made up for a lot in my book. so perhaps my favorite development all year was twistys returning to exclusively girl/girl production after several years of attempting to be (in randall's own words) a shittier brazzers. the amazing thing is that they've been getting better all year instead of starting strong and declining: my favorite twistys scene of 2019 was this billie holiday riff released in december as sabina rouge's "treat of the month" showcase. her choice of kira noir as the wealthy secret admirer to rouge's torch singer shows excellent taste, and randall's stunning lighting makes both women's skin positively glow. even the conventional awkward porn positions became tender and urgent thanks to both performers' mutually appreciative professionalism.
twistys runners-up: on the inside, off limits, this way to debauchery
6. veto
performers: cherry kiss, kinuskisite: sexart (metart)
production credits: andrej lupin (dir.)
release date: september 16, 2019 | trailer
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| cherry kiss and kinuski |
when i watched and rated all of the girl/girl porn released in april 2019 that i could stomach (see here for how and why), i ended up rating european scenes on average 10% lower than u.s. scenes. that still seems roughly accurate as a metric of my enjoyment: the rarity of verbal communication, or indeed any narrative at all, frequently makes european porn hard to enjoy on any level other than the purely visual. even so, i noticed that the serbian-born cherry kiss was one of the best talkers in european porn: so her rare appearance on the stylish, classy sexart site as the dominating mistress of housemaid kinuski (who is finnish) in a scene called kinuski's dark fantasy almost immediately became one of my favorite european scenes of the year. but it turns out that scene was edited to remove cherry's harsher physical and verbal abuse; once the full uncut scene was published as veto, her talent for malicious dominance was displayed to its fullest extent. i've discussed elsewhere why bdsm attracts me so much; its relative rarity in girl/girl porn is maybe why it's so overrepresented in my list here. in any case both cherry kiss and kinuski are fantastic performers, and andrej lupin, the caravaggio of porn, films it so strikingly that the action seems to take place almost out of time, as though it could be happening at any point between the nineteenth century and now.
sexart runners-up: 1, 2, 3 kiss, emptiness, ariel's secret project 05: stasy rivera
7. fearing the worst
performers: carter cruise, mackenzie mosssite: girlsway ◅ adult time (gamma)
production credits: craven moorehead (dir.), jericoholic (scr.)
release date: june 9, 2019 | trailer
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| mackenzie moss and carter cruise |
girlsway went through a rocky transition this year. for a while now, i've considered the site a victim of its own success, as its great 2016 and 2017 led to overproduction and decline by late 2018. then when primary director stills by alan was suspended following allegations of sexual assault, gamma had to scramble to maintain production, and it showed. now alan has started a rival site with jules jordan (which i have not sampled and do not intend to), and the new directorial slate of casey calvert/eli cross, craven moorehead, joanna angel, and occasional guest directors has slowly improved the median scene from where it was in april (which really was something of a nadir for the site). one of the first actually good scenes under the new regime was this heartfelt romantic sketch between girl/girl legend carter cruise and then-newbie mackenzie moss, who holds her own. the usual girlsway failings are present: it's overlit, underwritten, and awkwardly choreographed; but the performances and moorehead's sharp camerawork make up for a lot.
girlsway runners-up: cheeky sense of humor, the skater girl, interrupted anniversary
8. boobs date
performers: stacy cruz, sybil asite: ultra films
production credits: fredy riger (dir.)
release date: april 9, 2019 | trailer
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| stacy cruz and sybil a |
my review of this scene from april still more or less stands, but as the year has worn on and ultra films has never come close to matching the chemistry between stacy and sybil, it's only grown in my estimation since. it was my introduction to the czech stacy cruz and the first time i'd ever particularly noticed the ukrainian sybil a, and the soft lighting, gorgeous photography, and patient foreplay keep it in my affection. once more, a european scene with a narrative introduction, however flimsy, stands head over shoulders to those without.
9. vagina vendetta
performers: abigail mac, kendra spadesite: girls gone pink ◅ mofos (mindgeek)
production credits: none listed
release date: april 12, 2019 | trailer
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| abigail mac and kendra spade |
i wrote about this too back in april, and it remains virtually the only pseudo-reality scene i've ever enjoyed. the mofos conceit that every scene is being shot by the performers themselves often makes for awkward, ungainly framing and dull, rote action, but abigail mac and kendra spade are such terrific professionals, maintaining both the viewer-berating premise and their enjoyment of each other so well that i'm carried along regardless. and maybe it turns out that i really enjoy girl/girl porn where the girls remind the presumptively male viewer that they're cucking him.
10. pool toy
performers: maserati, carolina sweetssite: hot and mean ◅ brazzers (mindgeek)
production credits: none listed
release date: november 12, 2019
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| carolina sweets and maserati |
brazzers has had phenomenal success as the most cartoonishly silly porn brand on the market, which i respect. i like comedy in my porn just fine, so long as there's real wit to it and not just the same stale setup again and again. but the thing i most appreciate about brazzers is that of all the major brands they are most welcoming to black women of all sizes; although they almost always shoot them in boy/girl scenarios, so i have to be content with the few girl/girl pittances i can get. but for once, silly comedy and plus-sized blackness joined forces here in a sublime manner, as maserati (a personal favorite of mine; this was her first post-maternity leave release), teaches a lesson to her new boyfriend's spoiled daughter by the pool. the uncredited actor who plays the henpecked father is the funniest thing about the scene, particularly his bumbling, apologetic response to finding the two in flagrante delicto; if you're going to do comedy, you might as well go all the way. maserati frequently gets paired with petite performers in her girl/girl work for the contrast, but carolina sweets is one of the few youthful-looking starlets who can keep up with her. even with the action confined the uncomfortable environs of a deck chair, this was one of the most delightfully goofy scenes from brazzers all year, and that's saying something.
brazzers runners-up: sneaking out, sneaky sex, honey, it's not what you think!, the age of sexlightenment
11. hot oily ecstasy with brazil beauty
performers: luna corazon, anastasia brokelynsite: massage rooms ◅ sexyhub (really useful)
production credits: none listed
release date: november 23, 2019 | trailer
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| luna corazon and anastasia brokelyn |
my favorite performer on the european side of the industry in 2018 was the brazilian-born luna corazon, so it was a disappointment that she seemed to spend most of 2019 traveling, doing boy/girl, and shooting content for her personal outlets. (i realize that with my focus on professionally-produced scenes for corporations i am increasingly a dinosaur; but i can't help it, i just don't enjoy performer-generated content as much. i don't want the illusion of a personal connection, i want beautiful visuals and an engaging narrative.) so when this massage rooms scene turned up late in the year, it was a ray of sunshine in a dismally lunaless world. and it reminded me all over again why she's one of my favorites: she's so very good at girl/girl. the spanish anastasia brokelyn (who was new to me) seemed to agree, and this was not just one of the best massage rooms scenes all year (they're nearly always worth a glance, even wordless; massage provides its own seductive narrative), but one of the best on all the generally pleasant sexyhub megasite.
sexyhub runners-up: hot asian lusts for big tits blonde, sea sand and outdoor sex at sunrise, stunners with amazing natural tits
12. one take lena
performers: lena paul, nia naccisite: lesbianx (xempire)
production credits: mason (dir.)
release date: march 2, 2019 | trailer
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| nia nacci and lena paul |
lena paul is one of my favorite currently working pornstars for several reasons, but one of the biggest is that she's a talker: whatever she's thinking during sex is likely to come out of her mouth, and she's a creative and intelligent person, so it's never boring. when she looks surprised at the younger and newer nia nacci and says, "oh you like girls. you like, like girls" while being eaten out, it's a small thing, but it's characteristic of how supportive and appreciative she always is in gonzo. the title of the scene is a reference to the fact that (unusually for mason) there are no cuts in this scene, that's how well lena and nia are vibing.
lesbianx runners-up: cecilia's first lesbian anal, deep lesbian connection, when superstars collide
13. confidence is sexy!
performers: estella bathory, mischievous kittysite: shape of beauty ◅ adult time (gamma)
production credits: freddy licious, françois (dir.)
release date: march 27, 2019 | trailer
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| estella bathory and mischievous kitten |
as i've hinted above and elsewhere throughout these blogs of mine, i'm a big fan of physical diversity in girl/girl porn, which apparently makes me an unusual consumer. so when adult time launched its shape of beauty series showcasing plus-size performers, i was thrilled, and hoped there might be at least one girl/girl episode. this delightful scene between the british estella bathory and the vegas-based mischievous kitty was the answer to my hopes. everything, from the cute dance estella does instead of cleaning, to kitty's flirtatious teasing, to their eventual enjoyment of one another, to even the library music that plays over the intro, was wonderful, and of course i only wanted more. there was one more girl/girl release in the first season of shape of beauty, and happily social media indicates that more is on its way.
adult time originals runners-up: our family tradition (age & beauty), dirty naughty filthy (bubblegum dungeon)
honorable mentions:
my mistress does not ask (babes), pumping up those pussy lips (cherry pimps), have you seen my clothes?! (fantasy massage), sweet couple of lesbian lovers (real sensual), home and away (reality kings), my geeky girl (viv thomas)
other notable releases
best girl/girl scene in a non all-girl feature
out with a bang: episode 2
performers: alina lopez, cecilia lionsite: digital playground (mindgeek)
production credits: lena paul (dir.), zach (scr.), xander porn (d.p.)
release date: july 12, 2019 | trailer
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| cecilia lion and alina lopez |
as stated above, i don't watch boy/girl porn. but even beyond that, i'm not generally a big fan of porn features period. partly because, given the financial and time constraints porn is made under, they mostly can't live up to their ambitions, and partly because who has the time. so it's rare that i'll even check out a girl/girl scene in a standard porn movie. but the alina lopez/cecilia lion scene from out with a bang became one of my top priorities as soon as i knew about it: not only do i really like both performers, but it was lena paul's first feature as a director, and she could hardly have had a better cast. casey calvert, karma rx, michael vegas and xander corvus all show up in strange halucinatory fragments of narrative that seem to largely be a product of alina's feverish unconscious (the intense colored lighting only adds to the uncanniness), and once the scene transitions into sex it almost remains just as phantasmagoric, as the sun sets more quickly behind them than (if the sex was shot in real time) it possibly could. interrupting the sex and changing locations halfway through is daring, but lena, alina, and cecilia pull it off, making the second half almost as riveting as the first. i'll never know how the story wraps up, but i don't feel i need to: this scene gave me a complete aesthetic experience in itself.
runners-up: the silent caller: episode 2 (digital playground), the possession of mrs. hyde scene 3 (wicked pictures)
best performer showcase
angela loves women 5
performers: angela white, alina lopez, ana foxxx, autumn falls, natalie mars
site: agw entertainment
production credits: angela white (dir.)
release date: september 30, 2019 | trailer
the angela loves women series remains the gold standard for all-girl performer showcases. a lot of that is, of course, due to angela white, the greatest pornstar of her generation (and it's not close), whose ability to always match the energy of her scene partners, then raise the temperature, is astonishing in its consistency and effectiveness. i know alina lopez, ana foxxx and natalie mars (once again, the inclusion of a trans woman in an all-girl release is barrier-breaking) well, but i'd rather avoided the work of autumn falls for petty porn gossip reasons, and so she was a bit of a revelation. just about everyone looks good when given the angela white treatment, though. the use of library-music pop songs to set the stage for each scene, creating a miniature music video as an intro to each encounter, was inspired, and i was aching to know who was shooting those gorgeous visuals, but the vod file doesn't include credits. you win this round, physical media.
site: wild on cams ◅ cherry pimps (pimp.xxx)
production credits: none listed
release date: march 4, 2019 | trailer
as i've said before, i'm not a fan of the cam-show format: i have no desire to experience even the illusion of a connection with the performers, and would prefer never to be acknowledged, much less encouraged, as a viewer. but occasionally, when the performers and their chemistry are just right, it works for me. demi sutra and ember snow really seem to enjoy working together (they apparently shot this not long after first being paired for a sweetheart video scene which i adored), and their bubbly attitude and mutual admiration made for a delightful session, marred only by the constant pro forma requests that the viewers masturbate to it.
site: agw entertainment
production credits: angela white (dir.)
release date: september 30, 2019 | trailer
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| natalie mars and angela white |
the angela loves women series remains the gold standard for all-girl performer showcases. a lot of that is, of course, due to angela white, the greatest pornstar of her generation (and it's not close), whose ability to always match the energy of her scene partners, then raise the temperature, is astonishing in its consistency and effectiveness. i know alina lopez, ana foxxx and natalie mars (once again, the inclusion of a trans woman in an all-girl release is barrier-breaking) well, but i'd rather avoided the work of autumn falls for petty porn gossip reasons, and so she was a bit of a revelation. just about everyone looks good when given the angela white treatment, though. the use of library-music pop songs to set the stage for each scene, creating a miniature music video as an intro to each encounter, was inspired, and i was aching to know who was shooting those gorgeous visuals, but the vod file doesn't include credits. you win this round, physical media.
best cam show
ember snow gets her way with demi sutra live
performers: ember snow, demi sutrasite: wild on cams ◅ cherry pimps (pimp.xxx)
production credits: none listed
release date: march 4, 2019 | trailer
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| demi sutra and ember snow |
as i've said before, i'm not a fan of the cam-show format: i have no desire to experience even the illusion of a connection with the performers, and would prefer never to be acknowledged, much less encouraged, as a viewer. but occasionally, when the performers and their chemistry are just right, it works for me. demi sutra and ember snow really seem to enjoy working together (they apparently shot this not long after first being paired for a sweetheart video scene which i adored), and their bubbly attitude and mutual admiration made for a delightful session, marred only by the constant pro forma requests that the viewers masturbate to it.
best individual episodes of not-great series
1. girlcore s02e03: she blinded me with science
performers: serena blair, cadence lux, kenzie taylor
site: adult time (gamma)
production credits: bree mills (dir., scr.), remzy jizz (ed.)
release date: december 26, 2019 | trailer
finally, i wanted to nod once more to some exceptional work being done by gamma, even when i haven't always enjoyed the whole of which it is a part. girlcore season 1, an idiosyncratic and evocative mixture of lesbian pulp tropes and 80s nostalgia, was the best thing bree mills had ever done (in my estimation) when it was released in the fall of 2018, and only we like girls has surpassed it since (teenage lesbian has maybe equaled it). but the law of diminishing returns, possibly accelerated by expanding the directorial pool, has caught up to girlcore in its second season. out of the three episodes released in 2019, only this one, the first of girlcore season 2 to be directed by mills herself, has enough narrative juice to remain engaging throughout. the strong high concept helps: it's a note-for-note parody of weird science, with cadence lux and serena blair as twitchy nerds (serena is an unusually capable porn actor, but cadence's weird al-esque mannerisms for once outshone her with goofy aplomb) and kenzie taylor as the science fiction bombshell they conjure out of computer code. (the director making a cameo as a combination rod serling and max headroom is the icing on the cake.) attention to detail is a hallmark of mills' productions, and the hyper-80s set design was out of a stranger things fan's wet dreams. kenzie instructing the "younger" women (serena is two years older than her, cadence two years younger) through various aspects of lesbian and porno-lesbian sex was both hilarious and oddly touching, as serena and cadence played their freaked-out virgin characters so well that their amazement and gratitude at the delight of sex became an emotional touchstone for the scene. which means that it exceeded the zero emotional content of the original weird science; this is the second porn parody that kenzie taylor (a.k.a. axel braun's captain marvel) was involved in this year to be a richer text than the original film.
site: adult time (gamma)
production credits: bree mills (dir., scr.), remzy jizz (ed.)
release date: december 26, 2019 | trailer
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| serena blair, kenzie taylor and cadence lux |
finally, i wanted to nod once more to some exceptional work being done by gamma, even when i haven't always enjoyed the whole of which it is a part. girlcore season 1, an idiosyncratic and evocative mixture of lesbian pulp tropes and 80s nostalgia, was the best thing bree mills had ever done (in my estimation) when it was released in the fall of 2018, and only we like girls has surpassed it since (teenage lesbian has maybe equaled it). but the law of diminishing returns, possibly accelerated by expanding the directorial pool, has caught up to girlcore in its second season. out of the three episodes released in 2019, only this one, the first of girlcore season 2 to be directed by mills herself, has enough narrative juice to remain engaging throughout. the strong high concept helps: it's a note-for-note parody of weird science, with cadence lux and serena blair as twitchy nerds (serena is an unusually capable porn actor, but cadence's weird al-esque mannerisms for once outshone her with goofy aplomb) and kenzie taylor as the science fiction bombshell they conjure out of computer code. (the director making a cameo as a combination rod serling and max headroom is the icing on the cake.) attention to detail is a hallmark of mills' productions, and the hyper-80s set design was out of a stranger things fan's wet dreams. kenzie instructing the "younger" women (serena is two years older than her, cadence two years younger) through various aspects of lesbian and porno-lesbian sex was both hilarious and oddly touching, as serena and cadence played their freaked-out virgin characters so well that their amazement and gratitude at the delight of sex became an emotional touchstone for the scene. which means that it exceeded the zero emotional content of the original weird science; this is the second porn parody that kenzie taylor (a.k.a. axel braun's captain marvel) was involved in this year to be a richer text than the original film.
2. where the boys aren't s01e02: dinner with the in-laws
performers: emma hix, briana banks, kenzie taylorsite: vivid ◅ adult time (gamma)
production credits: joanna angel (dir.), 3x west (scr.), kinkylink (ed.)
release date: october 2, 2019 | trailer
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| kenzie taylor, emma hix and briana banks |
when gamma announced that they had bought the library of venerable porn brand vivid and would be making a new series of the classic vivid title where the boys aren't, i was thrilled: where the boys aren't had been my introduction to the world of girl/girl back in the 90s, when you had to go into a back room in the video store to access the porn vhs tapes. i still have a lot of affection for the original series, as silly and poorly shot and stiffly acted as it frequently was. but when the new series rolled out in the fall of 2019, i found it disappointing. it only differentiated itself from gamma's regular girl/girl production in two ways: by including men in supporting roles (so that the girls get frisky whenever they're not around, making the title literal), and by making every episode pop with primary colors. otherwise, the flimsy setups and extended athletic sex was exactly like the episodic girlsway format rather than forming a continuous narrative with atmospheric, moody sex as in the old where the boys aren't series, themselves available on adult time for an easy compare and contrast. which is to say that there was very little in them that i felt i hadn't seen before, and quite recently at that. the one scene that i actually enjoyed was the second episode, with legendary former vivid contract girl briana banks as one of two married lesbian cougars devouring their son's girlfriend emma hix. (kenzie taylor as the other cougar is an interesting coincidence that underlines how unusual her classic pornstar physique is in the gamma stable; unlike classic vivid, contemporary porn trends skinny and natural, like emma hix.) male performer small hands (husband of the brilliantly comic director) gives a typically hilarious nonsex performance as emma's clueless boyfriend; but the funniest bit is when emma asks briana why she looks familiar, and the scene cuts to girl/girl footage from her vivid glory days: "i've never been anywhere," briana deadpans, and winks to the camera. that acknowledgement of vivid's history (even though her 2000s-era heyday was well after the vivid era i'm most nostalgic for) was exactly what i felt was missing from the rest of the series. come to think of it, twistys' girl gang was closer to the spirit of 90s vivid than anything gamma's produced all year.
like i said, i didn't see anywhere close to everything. in fact, clicking around while building this list, i noticed that some of the studios i had given up on as hopeless cases in april have started to maybe possibly attempt decent work. serene siren directing some exercise-based pseudo-features for girlfriends is an intriguing if not particularly enticing development. ddfnetwork has upped their girl/girl content; sure, little of it looks particularly appealing, but it's a start. a girl knows has returned, though without ever reaching the heights they did in 2017 and 2018 (but then a european site that doesn't bring luna corazon back can only ever be so good). along the same lines, dorcel released a handful of attention-grabbing scenes in the back half of the year. filly films, which i had given up for dead, produced a new feature ("directed" by darcie dolce, so, uh), and kink produced a feature-length quasi-horror movie with casey calvert, charlotte sartre, and decent production values. even the 21sextury brand is starting (very belatedly) to show signs of intelligent life under gamma.
then, in stuff that looks totally appealing to me but which i haven't checked out because there was only so much i could get to in a single year, there's bellesa films, the new romance studio headed by jacky st. james which includes occasional girl/girl; erika lust's lustcinema project will bear keeping a close eye on as its productions ramp up; and hank hoffman directed a full girl/girl feature for wicked with an all-star cast.
going into 2020, the prospects for excellent girl/girl porn are looking up. the traditional winter slump, as the holidays and convention season take their usual toll on production, will have to be gotten through first, but mindgeek recommitting to girl/girl via twistys (it looks like they might have abandoned the we live together brand, which had been on life support for years, and i'm hopeful they'll dedicate those resources to even more creative efforts from twistys) is such an encouraging sign. and all her luv's growth over the past year from a studio that made cheaper but more psychologically intense girlsway content to being a focal point for some of the most creative voices in the industry is the kind of success story all too rare in porn.
because despite my heaping praise on gamma and adult time productions above, i don't really think that one studio cornering the market in girl/girl is a good thing. in fact girlsway's dominance in the sector for the past five years was detrimental to the overall health of the genre, as girl/girl studios that couldn't compete with the charm and variety of their web-first work (like filly, girlfriends, and even sweetheart) doubled down on their own various formulas (and the edge they had on the dvd market) to the point of creative bankruptcy, while mindgeek (the only other company with deep webcentric pockets) basically ceding the intelligent girl/girl market to gamma in an attempt to make every brand a shittier brazzers meant that when good girl/girl came out of mindgeek brands over the past several years it was more or less an accident.
but things are improving on many fronts. the aforementioned twistys renaissance is wonderful to see — they've even started a more buttoned-up spin on the we like girls format, a gonzo series called girl crush; lexi lore, in her scene there with agency-mate mackenzie moss, seems so much less nervously stiff than she did with her actual girlfriend on we like girls. a new series of lesbian revenge has been greenlit, and i'm looking even more forward to whitney wright's work now that she's ditched the abusive ex who was her primary cinematographer. (clear porn of all the assholes and creeps, we're done being complicit in 2020.) adult time's partnership with new indie studios like black label magazine and light southern cinema is promising (i didn't love any of their productions this year, but i'm always hoping to), and bree mills' projection of a slight decrease in production (no more girl of the month, curtailed webyoung, etc.) for an overall budget increase is the most excited i've been about girlsway in over a year. if and when the endlessly teased vixen media girl/girl site launches, i'll be there with bells on. then too, certain performers are making such high-quality content that i may have to start breaking my rule about studio-only porn and join an onlyfans or two or seven.
money, which seemed as though it might have fled porn forever after the tube-site crash, appears to be trickling back in to the industry. (is there something about a republican presidency that redounds to porn's benefit? if so, gross.) even if it is just a vc-funded bubble, as several people have theorized about the lavish vixen brand, i intend to enjoy it while it lasts, and stock up against the pendulum swinging back to extreme cut-rate gonzo.
girl/girl fans of a certain stripe often say that the golden age of girl/girl porn was the early 2000s, when viv thomas' classy, all-natural productions cut against the porn-industry grain, launching a wave of more realistic, orgasm-centered "lesbian" porn. maybe it was as great as they remember; i had other priorities as the time. but for my money, the golden age of girl/girl porn is now. separating the wheat from the chaff might be a little more difficult than it was back during web 1.0, when you could follow a single brand and get everything good, but the variety, quality, and breadth of girl/girl content has never been better.
diversity, on the other hand....
yeah, bring on 2020.
the french dorcel studio is probably the biggest-budget, most high-end porn brand in europe, and its girl/girl efforts are accordingly hit and miss, often little more than expensive ads for dorcel-brand sex toys. but when they connect, they really connect — and this patient, wordless but still narrative-driven scene knocks it out of the park. a lot of that is down to jia lissa's star power: she only started performing in 2018 but her fresh-faced beauty and vivid responsiveness have made her possibly the most in-demand european starlet of the day. alis locanta's camera, dripping with natural light, adores her, and the twenty-minute short film that precedes the sex, in which lucy heart, finding herself lonely in an enormous mansion on the mediterranean, hires jia as a maid, then proceeds to seduce her over a period of days, is elegantly sculpted from footage which could easily have been presented in a humdrum or embarrassing way. but the sex makes that slight narrative even more compelling, as both stunning passion and impossibly beautiful camera work ravish the senses as the two women (both of whom are russian) make expert love. the "[starlet] 4 you" series at dorcel, one-scene showcases that break (for i think the first time) with dorcel's creaky dvd feature-oriented model, is one of the most intriguing recent developments in european porn; i have to check out all of the girl/girl episodes now.
money, which seemed as though it might have fled porn forever after the tube-site crash, appears to be trickling back in to the industry. (is there something about a republican presidency that redounds to porn's benefit? if so, gross.) even if it is just a vc-funded bubble, as several people have theorized about the lavish vixen brand, i intend to enjoy it while it lasts, and stock up against the pendulum swinging back to extreme cut-rate gonzo.
girl/girl fans of a certain stripe often say that the golden age of girl/girl porn was the early 2000s, when viv thomas' classy, all-natural productions cut against the porn-industry grain, launching a wave of more realistic, orgasm-centered "lesbian" porn. maybe it was as great as they remember; i had other priorities as the time. but for my money, the golden age of girl/girl porn is now. separating the wheat from the chaff might be a little more difficult than it was back during web 1.0, when you could follow a single brand and get everything good, but the variety, quality, and breadth of girl/girl content has never been better.
diversity, on the other hand....
yeah, bring on 2020.
postscript: best scenes i missed
as noted above, i didn't see anything close all the porn released in 2019. so of course i missed some great stuff. i'll be using this space to point to wonderful 2019 scenes as i catch up to them. i still won't get to everything; there's too much porn for a single lifetime to take in, and i have a limited budget. and of course plenty of what i run across will be average at best. but when it would break my heart not to have pointed out the merits of a scene, i'll include it here.1. jia 4 you
performers: jia lissa, lucy heart
site: dorcel
production credits: alis locanta (dir.)
release date: november 15, 2019 | trailer
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| lucy heart and jia lissa |
the french dorcel studio is probably the biggest-budget, most high-end porn brand in europe, and its girl/girl efforts are accordingly hit and miss, often little more than expensive ads for dorcel-brand sex toys. but when they connect, they really connect — and this patient, wordless but still narrative-driven scene knocks it out of the park. a lot of that is down to jia lissa's star power: she only started performing in 2018 but her fresh-faced beauty and vivid responsiveness have made her possibly the most in-demand european starlet of the day. alis locanta's camera, dripping with natural light, adores her, and the twenty-minute short film that precedes the sex, in which lucy heart, finding herself lonely in an enormous mansion on the mediterranean, hires jia as a maid, then proceeds to seduce her over a period of days, is elegantly sculpted from footage which could easily have been presented in a humdrum or embarrassing way. but the sex makes that slight narrative even more compelling, as both stunning passion and impossibly beautiful camera work ravish the senses as the two women (both of whom are russian) make expert love. the "[starlet] 4 you" series at dorcel, one-scene showcases that break (for i think the first time) with dorcel's creaky dvd feature-oriented model, is one of the most intriguing recent developments in european porn; i have to check out all of the girl/girl episodes now.