Hey everyone. Boy has today been an issue for writer’s block, and I still have a hell of a review to drop tomorrow. Figured I’d take a break and do something fun with some odds and ends. Also I’d like to plug a few bloggers\creators that have really caught my attention over the past couple of weeks and deserve a look.
First, we’ll go into the coffee thing, as that seems to make the writing world go ’round. This would be ‘one simple trick’ click bait if I put it in the title but it is absolutely and 100% true. Grind your own beans. Just do it. Get a burr grinder, start buying whole beans, start wondering why you suddenly like coffee brands you used to think were gross. So why is that? Coffee oxidizes over time, whole bean or otherwise, and starts losing its flavor and tasting bad. This is one of the reasons coffee is vacuum sealed and most of the containers it comes in can be closed again. Problem is that grinding the beans massively increases the surface area for this process and accelerates it. Keeping the beans whole for as long as possible prior to use is the singular best way to preserve freshness. We use the Cuisinart DBM-8 and right now you can get it for about half what we paid. Forget my normal penchant for graphs, facts, and figures and just trust me on this one if you have any love at all for good coffee. There’s a lot you can do to make it better, but I think this is the biggest and easiest.
So now for some shout outs, in no particular order.
First I’d like to give some props to Felicity and her amazing information-packed website for helping me bridge some gaps in my understanding of silicone firmness ratings, and for running a swell review site in general. You should check her out if you’re into vibrators especially, because that’s not so much our thing and she’s got much better coverage in that general area. Felicity is very thorough in her work.
The next one is a very recent discovery, and dovetails nicely with my last couple of blogs about transferring skills to children. In Dianes Kitchen is a digital cookbook full of all sorts of fantastic ideas running from desserts to appetizers to side dishes and main entrees. It’s going to be a go-to for “what do you feel like for dinner”
Next we have Ashley Dannielle, an erotica writer that I really think nails the style and truly gets how to communicate a sexy situation while giving you just enough wiggle room in the details to fill in the blanks rather than getting bogged down in detailed techniques that would detract from the experience. Ashley knows sexy, and she’s also recently joined the ranks of sex toy reviewers and is doing a pretty bang up job there too. Check her out.
Need a fun project to do with your kids? Are you of the outdoors persuasion or maybe you just like being self-sufficient? Well at basically 10 millions subs, there’s a good chance you’ve heard of it before, but I’m going to make sure. Check out the Primitive Technology channel on YouTube for some fun do it yourself diversions. As someone that spends a great deal of time smoking meat, the charcoal videos are my favorites.
These next two, well you seem to rapidly meet a lot of interesting people when you dive into the world of sex toy reviews and romance/sexuality self-help. Both are cam girls and while a lot of people seem to think they can end the description right there nothing could be further from the truth. These are creative, hard-working, conscientious people.
First up is Keri Berry who I never imagined or intended on getting to know beyond her work with some delightfully sized sex toys. Emily and I had actually seen her posts a while back on various image boards and especially on the r/BadDragon sub, and I forget why, it was blog related, but we were in her profile one day and noticed she had started a …discord server? Well that was odd to say the least but Emily was all about it, and she joined it. I remember her excitedly telling me that it was something so much more than another place to promote her work. “Henry you should really check this out, these people are so cool and Keri is super chill” well, something along those lines anyway, close enough. I was actually a bit suspicious but at Emily’s urging I checked it out and uh…well it’s a damn community over there. I’ve had to change a lot of embed settings in discord to force it safe for work but it’s one of my favorite places to shoot the shit now. Keri has given us both a lot of insight into the world of caming and we’ve been confronted with the reality of how much work and creativity is required to make something of yourself in that business. You can find the discord link—and many other things—in the reddit user link I put on her name at the beginning of the paragraph. Super NSFW.
Next up is Tawney Darling whom I discovered on twitter. What doesn’t this girl do? She reviews sex toys—that’s how I encountered her—runs a blog, and has written books, just to name a few things, and that’s all in addition to her cam work. What really struck me was her blog, Open Bobs BB, and a book by the same name. Yes, I am picking that up and I am reviewing it, it will probably be a big breath of fresh air from the last 3 did-not-finish books. If you think that’s an odd name for a book or blog or both, go take a look at the about page.
Of course now that I’ve started getting to know these people my entire Twitter feed has become NSFW…..ah well I’ll deal, it’s for a good cause, and it’s inspired some large think pieces for my blog that I think everyone can enjoy. Well, that about wraps it up for today, I’ve gotta get back to work on that Hookah review so I can have it up by tomorrow morning. If I left you out don’t worry, I think this blog roundup thing is going to be a regular occurrence for a while, at least until I run out of cool people to talk about.
Our normal post schedule, insofar as it is scheduled, has been disrupted by some classic whole-house-sickness that’s crippled basic operations over here.
We’re still having trouble deciding on a good audio format, not because of lack of ideas but because there are 3 or 4 we really like and we’re having a hard time choosing. If there’s an audio format you’d be interested in put it in the comments, now is the time for feedback. Otherwise I’ll just pick one 😛
Tell you what though. One format we aren’t considering is ‘talking head’. Whatever format we’re deciding on is going to involve other people.
We uh…got greedy. We’ve started receiving the sexy items we ordered earlier and that number has gone up to eight! The blog is gonna have a sexier tone for a while.
Between sickness and focus on my last review the book reading ventures haven’t been coming along as fast as I’d like. That might be the books fault, these might make it on the did-not-read pile, which would be a first. Normally I can power my way through one in an evening. I’ve had these over a week and one of them is like pocket-reference sized.
Circling back to the audio. That’s the biggest thing on our minds right now. We’re both nervous and excited to get that off the ground.
So we did it, we pulled the trigger on that Mystic from Bad Dragon I told you about here. That brings our Bad Dragon collection to oh, eight, once it arrives. There are a lot of you in my audience that may think that’s a large number, and as far as the median toy collection goes you’re probably right, but we’re talking about Bad Dragon here, and while I’ve touched on it lightly in the past you need to know your first Bad Dragon toy probably won’t be your last. These things are like pringles, I’ve never seen someone buy just one. But why is that?
Emily and I have our own reasons for growing our Bad Dragon collection, but I got real curious about why others were doing the same thing. The community is scattered, but it exists, and whether it’s on the Bad Dragon official forums, or the subreddit, or the many other communities across the internet, a crowd we now feel a part of, one trend blazes brightly—photos of gigantic collections of Bad Dragon and other fantasy dildo manufacturer’s toys. Everyday people like Emily and I dropping several grand on brightly-colored vaguely-phallic hunks of silicone are a staple of these communities. Emily and I are well on our way and our modest collection—sometimes referred to as a family photo—is growing and is pictured below. Update: Banner image has been replaced with a more recent picture.
I decided to ask other members of the community how they felt about it. The following comment from this thread is from u/KittyLordSavior is something I found especially interesting.
Ya know… I actually hated dildos before I was introduced to bad dragon. Traditional dildos that I’ve used were boring, too firm, and made of potentially harmful materials. They never turned me on or made me feel good while using them.
I initially bought my first toy, a small ika, because i love tentacles and I thought it would be hilarious to own. Once it arrived I was blown away by the craftsmanship, quality, and over all aesthetic of the toy. That ika totally hooked me, I enjoyed it so much that I wanted to try every model Bad dragon offered.
The color and accessory options add another layer of depth to collecting for me. Not only do I want one of every model but it also has to be pretty and have a suction cup. For some reason the “hunt”, if you will, for the perfect toy is really satisfying for me. I enjoy browsing their weekly inventory drops and checking out their special promotional color options.
Collecting fantasy themed dicks is a hobby that I greatly enjoy. I’ve started to branch out to other indie toy makers as well, so many cool and unique designs are out there!
u/KittyLordSavior
KittyLordSavior’s Collection, used with permission.
That’s just an amazing statement to me. I know Emily and I grew out of low-end toys because of how unsatisfactory and potentially unsafe they were, but to think they were so bad that someone willing to build this stunning collection thought that they hated dildos as a matter of course! This is a classic example of why I call our love of Bad Dragon toys the “fetish that isn’t”. These toys have a broader, mainstream, I dare say universal appeal that just isn’t being appreciated yet. Also, totally jealous of that table and I love the normalcy that it brings to the photo. You have this giant collection of out-there sex toys sitting on top of one of the most normal of objects.
Let’s break down that not-a-fetish thing. First, let’s get our definitions straight, otherwise we get nowhere. A fetish is “a form of sexual desire in which gratification is linked to an abnormal degree to a particular object, item of clothing, part of the body, etc. ” Emphasis mine. I’m actually pretty on the fence on this. If you limit the scope of this to fantasy dildos, guilty as charged. If these are just sex toys then this is normal enough to be a PornHub category. Statements like LordKittySavior’s and my own experience with them leans me towards the latter interpretation. The bulk of the responses in that thread reinforces the normalcy sentiment. It might be abnormal if they weren’t just superior sex toys in both form and function to mainstream offerings. If they weren’t we could just call this a fantasy fetish and be done with it but mainstream dildos simply provide inferior stimulation—which is why weak vibrators are crammed into most of them—and don’t look near as gorgeous. Photos don’t do them justice either. They aren’t quite Kantian disinterest beautiful, they have a utility after all, but sometimes I just look at some of the things we own just to look at them for a minute. Some of these pieces easily rival some of the pathetic things passed as art in trendy galleries. These items are hand poured, gorgeous, and intrinsically unique—that’s a collection motivator on its own.
I think a lot of us, even inside the community, are reluctant to admit the appeal these have outside their targeted niche group. The subreddit is full of reluctant first time buyers discovering that they’re now hooked and looking for advice in taking the first admittedly confusing steps. Is that abnormal? Emily and I were the same way and went through a period of asking ourselves “are we that odd? are we strange? is this kink?”. Now I don’t even feel like this qualifies as unusual. In fact, yeah, let’s share that story.
Emily and I have a mutual friend of the equine persuasion. That is, she actually cares for, rears, and trains horses. One day she came complaining to us out of the blue that she was really a size queen but there was just nothing at the local sex shops remotely big enough for her that weren’t outright gag gifts, poor quality ones at that. Emily and I lit up. We joked about her love of horses and how exactly it was she came to know she was a size queen, and when she was completely unembarrassed by that joke we showed her Chance, Tyson, and Bumble Hooves on the website—for those of you who don’t know, these are all horse shaped offerings. That’s her nickname now, Bumble Hooves. She wants a Bumble Hooves in large as soon as she has the funds. Emily and I think we’re gonna send her some store credit to get her started. Why store credit? Because gifting someone a custom dildo as a surprise gift is weird; her husband would not be about that. Yep, that’s the part of this story that’s weird to us. Not the group shopping, not the toys themselves, just the general notion that gifting someone a custom sex toy may be crossing some personal boundaries. The fetish that isn’t. By all other measures, we’re a bit conservative. Did I mention “Bumble Hooves” is a devout salt of the earth country catholic girl? This story has echoes of how we got our first Bad Dragon dildo. Abnormal? You be the judge.
u/Lapras_Lass has an enormous and gorgeous collection of her own, over 50 of them! But she reports in the same thread that her reasons for starting were remarkably similar to ours.
Haha, you sound like me and my husband! We definitely have fetishes, but we collect because we love the variety of shapes, textures, sizes, and colors.
My husband and I were once unable to even imagine affording one BD toy. Then our situation changed, our careers took off, and we were able to afford a little luxury. We bought three to start with, and that grew to about 12 in less than a year. Now, we have over 50. (blush)
We do have other hobbies, but they don’t cost much money at all. We like browsing thrift shops for used books; I enjoy birdwatching around the neighborhood; we do play video games, but we’re the type who buys a game and plays it for years. Our entire video game collection can fit on a single small shelf (plus we usually buy used). Collecting and using sex toys is our primary recreational activity, and it’s awesome. We’re now branching out to other toy-makers, and finding some definite new favorites!
Congrats on your newfound hobby!
u/Lapras_Lass
The unique shapes, colors, textures, sizes, craftsmanship, all the primary reasons Emily and I started collecting. Lapras is very busy in the subreddit helping the community out with their questions about the overwhelming variety of options available and also runs a blog where she reviews the items she’s collected. I’m especially a fan of the post for beginners. I highly encourage you to check it out. One of the reasons we started talking about fantasy toys on this blog was because we felt we had experience it would otherwise take a non-trivial amount of money and risk to make a guess on and we felt obligated to start sharing those experiences. I asked Lapras if that’s why she started reviewing hers as well and we share that experience. When it comes to experience though I think it’s very safe to say that Lapras has us beat by a country mile. Check out this collection!
Used with permission from u/Lapras_Lass
As you go through the thread comments you start to notice a theme. Sample size not withstanding there’s overwhelming support for the idea that the thing that really makes these toys attractive are the shapes and aesthetics. A few people also mention the functionality perks—suction cups and cumtubes are wonderful things, those suction cups can manage on slightly textured walls and there’s just nothing like a toy that can creampie you—and a few actually are into the fantasy fetish itself, which, I’d have expected more of if it was primarily the fantasy fetish crowd buying these things. But that’s kinda the point, I don’t think it is primarily that crowd doing the buying—at least not based on the composition of reddit and forum posts. In serving that community Bad Dragon seems to have stumbled on a formula that speaks to a much broader group of people. I think that’s awesome, and I think it’s high time sex toys were pleasure focused rather than focused on being a facsimile for a person. In the latter case, you have a superior option in the person in every way, in the former case the person may still insist on using the toy and without the person the experience is nonetheless unique. Apparently a lot of other people agree.
It’s not just the thread we created to ask the question either—that was just a way to get a few of those responses in one place. You can see this all over the community if you hang out long enough. There are constantly threads about reluctant first time buyers taking the plunge after having looked into it a while, waffling. It seems for every thread showing a very large toy being conquered (size is something these toys are famous for) there’s a thread about someone worried that going bigger than a mini might be too much. Buttressed against the nervous newbies are the people like us that have a few models already but want details to make an informed decision about the next one. They already know what they’re into and what they want out of the toy, but they have questions about whether or not the model they’re looking into actually does that. Many very experienced buyers still get the ‘big eyes’ phenomenon and buy more than they can handle—that was another reason we started using D-score, and it’s another reason collections grow.
People also use these toys to explore preferences they didn’t know they had. Some discover they’re size queens, some discover they certainly are not! Some figure out they really love texture and others really enjoy a smooth ride. Some, Emily being one, discover they can orgasm off of sheer size—no thrusting required, thanks Apollo. Many have purchased several toys in pursuit of the Goldilocks size, we sure did, that alone can start a collection, it’s yet another reason we devised D-score, and it’s one of the reasons fantasy dildos have a vibrant second hand market—though the ability to 100% sanitize a silicone toy is another big reason. There’s so much to learn about yourself, your body, there’s the thrill of the chase for the next great experience, and some sell their previous toys to help them keep chasing, keep hunting, for that perfect toy, with the perfect texture, the perfect size, the perfect shape, the perfect color and pattern, and the perfect pour. The gaming community once made sending people ‘Dragon Dildos’ a meme, and some of these people started with a ‘gag’ gift that turned out to be more pleasurable than a comedy club. It’s why we collect.
If none of that’s your thing, that’s perfectly fine. Not everyone is into spanking or being tied up either (we call that a fetish too even though it seems a plurality of us are into that, I guess 50 Shades sold so well for being too weird eh?). Some people just don’t like toys—though, as mentioned above, that could be due to unfairly poor experiences. Some people can’t get over the animalistic aesthetic. Heck, there are shapes we find to be a turnoff, like the ones that look a little too much like a dog. I personally don’t dig the sheathes either and I’ve never once wanted for a masturbator, much less one that reminded me of a horse. That however, is the point. I’m not saying that all of Bad Dragon, or all of the fantasy dildo scene is for everyone. That certainly isn’t the case with us. What I am saying is that inside the fantasy toy scene, there’s something for everyone (maybe a lot of somethings), and of that I am absolutely sure.
We’ll end on a couple of imgur galleries just for fun, in order: Individual shots of u/lapras_lass’s collection, u/ainaakjama’s collection, and u/a_dirty_account’s collection.
So far I’ve been using the rules of the WP reader to keep NSFW images from popping up in y’alls feeds since we have a lot of mixed content here. My next feature length post won’t be able to avoid that, there are too many pictures. It’s nothing too bad, just some inanimate objects you probably don’t want showing up in a work context. So I’m planning to drop that piece on Saturday and I think you should look for it. It’s not going to be boring!
On a related note, we pulled the trigger on that unicorn horn shaped dildo from Bad Dragon. That should be arriving in a few weeks.
I’m currently reading two books at the same time because one is witty and the other is really dry. One is Getting To Yes and the other is If You Are In My Office It’s Too Late. So those are the book reviews that are coming. Most of my time recently has been spent on the post mentioned above.
Although we love Bad Dragon to death, we’re going to be exploring items from some of the other fantasy toy manufacturers soon. We’re looking at items from Pleasure Forge, Twin Tails, Dread the Empire, and Primal Hardwere[sic].
We recently crossed 30 subscribers and I’d like to thank all of you for following us. I remember being concerned about getting 5. It means a lot.
Nothing to announce yet, but I’m looking at the idea of doing audio in a group discussion context. Let me know if you’d like to see err, hear that. You’ll be hearing a lot more from Emily directly that way. She likes how I write so much she doesn’t do it herself >_>. Until next time.
Emily and I have been interested in the Satisfyer line of toys for some time, but we hadn’t pulled the trigger on it until just last week. Our impetus for finally making that happen were two fold. Valentine’s day was fast approaching, and we were reminded of their existence by a wonderful review of the Satisfyer Pro Penguin by Ashley Dannielle. I told her we’d just link to her review if we found that our experience sufficiently matched hers and I’m very pleased to say it did. Go check it out, and if you’re interested in the Satisfyer please use her affiliate link and support competent sex toy reviewers. The sex toys tag needs much better content than it currently has, especially in the department of curation. I don’t really have my sights set on monetizing the reviews I’m doing for now or the near future so, no skin off my back, show some love. While you’re there, there’s some excellent erotica to check out too. The penguin is as cute as it is effective.
Bad Dragon recently released a unicorn horn shaped dildo. It looks pretty awesome. The timing of that release amuses me personally for reasons I wish I could share. Nevertheless, I had me a giggle mate. Seriously though, that toy looks fun, and it also looks as if there could be a convergence going on in the silicon toy market. I mentioned before that I thought Tantus was getting pleasantly bolder in their designs with the Magma, and I also wrote an entire post about why Bad Dragon brings value to consumers that don’t share in any fantasy fetish. The unicorn horn dildo—it’s named Mystic—is probably the tamest design I’ve seen from Bad Dragon or if you’d prefer, the most normative. Seems like they’re making an appeal to the broader market, I hope that decision works out for them because it’s a fun lookin’ appeal. I also hope Tantus finds success in their bolder designs and we can all enjoy a really fun middle ground.
Twelve Rules for Life is easily my most popular review and post so far, but not far behind is some original content I wrote for the blog. The readers have spoken, so I’m going to try and bring you more original content, and review books that more people care about in the self-help genre.
Finally, if you sub to this blog or are thinking about it I’d like to hear from you. What content do you want to see more of? What content do you want to see less of? Feedback is always appreciated. Until next time!
Have a comment or a question? Is there a topic you’d like discussed? Let me know through my contact page.
So we’ve gone over D-score before, how I arrived to the conclusion to use it as a measurement and why. Meet the reason I felt like it was absolutely necessary to have. I encourage you to read that article if you haven’t already, but if you don’t have time, D-score is the percentage difference between the girth of a toy (in area) and the girth of the median penis (1.67 square inches for the curious).
This is Apollo, another dildo from Bad Dragon. Yes, both of them. This isn’t a review however, this is a story, a story of measurement and expectations. We purchased the first one—the larger of the two—while Emily was pregnant with our last son. I don’t know how many of you have ever heard rumor of or experienced the sometimes ravenous sexual appetite of a third trimester pregnant woman at its peak but that was Emily all over and all the time. Emily had some big eyes then, and her vagina was extra cooperative because well, it was getting ready to pass a baby through it. We both immensely enjoyed her large Apollo after it arrived.
Then the baby came, and the six weeks of sexual layover that go with. We didn’t really wanna jump back in to the large toys right away even though we’d been cleared for sex by her GYN. Somehow, neither of us thought she’d be taking into account a giant toy with a 3 and a quarter inch diameter knot. Eventually we gave it a shot. She couldn’t even get the head in. We kinda anticipated this, vaginas are kinda magic and if you wait the appropriate amount of time after having a child well, sometimes it was uncomfortably tight, no complaints. So Emily slowly worked her way back up to being able to take the big boy, and let me emphasize, it was work. We both loved Apollo, I for the aesthetics and Emily for how the aggressive texturing that caused that aesthetic felt inside her, but Apollo was work now, the prep time was pretty lengthy, and we thought we might do better with the same toy but another size down the chart.
On that note. Here’s the chart.
Diameter of Head
Diameter of Knot
Large Apollo
3 Inches
3.25 Inches
Medium Apollo
2.25 Inches
2.5 Inches
Apparent Difference
+33%
+30%
So lets talk about that apparent difference. When we look at numbers like that, our brains tend to think linearly, it’s really just natural, even if you know that’s a geometrically scaling number, your brain just compares how much bigger one number is than the other. It’s a thing. We don’t think in volume like that.
We decided we were going to participate in the absolute madness that is the Bad Dragon Black Friday sale. If the company needs to improve anywhere it’s here. The event is always marked by frustrated customers who could never get the site to load as everyone makes a mad dash for the literally one-of-a-kind creations at 60% off and the site breaks under the load. Emily and I had three computers going just to make the attempt. We saw an Apollo in medium with an adorable coloration and we pulled the trigger immediately. Somehow we got it in the cart and hit purchase before the hold timer expired on the item (if that happens it goes back on the website and other people can grab it).
A little while later, our medium Apollo arrived and….what? I spent a lot of time trying to get the true difference in size to show up in the photo, but it has to be seen to be truly appreciated. I ended up weighing them just to try and communicate this to our readers. The medium Apollo is 500 grams (1 pound 2oz), the large is 1.2 kilograms (2 pounds 10.5 ounces).We thought we might have been the victim of some sort of mix-up, surely this was actually a small. We broke out the tape measure and sure enough, this was a medium. The length, head, and knot circumference all matched perfectly. The large sat there, dwarfing it, and we were concerned it might have been a bit too small to give Emily the feeling she’s accustomed to from that toy. It almost was. It takes a few days of regular use and gratuitous amounts of cum lube for Emily to hilt the large Apollo, and it’s a fun couple of days let me assure you, but with the medium, double penetration is on the table. Not complaining, but those are worlds apart experiences and it didn’t meet our expectations (Fortunately the medium Crackers we got in the same sale was the perfect size for this, more on that toy in the future).
This occurred during the planning phases of this blog, and I knew I’d need to come up with something to save any potential readers from the same trap. And that’s when we came up with D-Score. Let’s try that table again, comparing the two toys, but with D-score instead of diameter. We’ll throw the weight in as well.
Medium Apollo
Large Apollo
Apparent Difference
Head D-Score
2.4
4.2
+76%
Knot D-Score
3
5
+70%
Weight
500g
1200g
+140%
Now that conforms with our experience a lot more closely. The difference in those two sizes is huge, and if you just look at diameter you could be tempted to think it was a minor bump, just the slight reduction we were looking for, but the D-score makes it clear, this toy is flirting with being twice as large as it’s medium counterpart in felt size.
You might not be as interested in the process of making dildo reviews this nerdy as we are, but I hope you at least had some fun with this post, if not got some useful information from it.
Have a comment or a question? Is there a topic you’d like discussed? Let me know through my contact page.
It’s that time again, a collection of small blurbs that are worth sharing but not worth their own post.
It’s February, and you know what that means, the 14th is coming. My e-mail has been getting blasted for days already with offers from various sex toy stores and other Valentines day related business like lingerie stuff.
Bad Dragon has released their valentines day colors, the pink has caught my eye, but I think I’ll be skipping this round.
Tantus also has some valentines day deals going and has released a new item that I’m tempted to take for a spin. It looks like Tantus has realized that they can get away with doing more interesting shapes. Magma looks genuinely tempting.
Don’t forget to check out your favorite shops for bedroom and romance items, because I bet if they’re going to do sales they’re already doing them.
The whole house has the flu. Just thought I’d throw that out there.
A new book review is coming but I can’t decide which one I wanna read first. It’s either going to be 12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson or Getting to Yes by Roger Fisher and William Ury. I’m leaning towards Getting to Yes.
Our next toy review will be this weekend so look out for that.
Until next time.
Have a comment or a question? Is there a topic you’d like discussed? Let me know through my contact page.
Not everything I want to post deserves its own stand alone. Here are some of the small things we’ve been taking a look at that don’t rate their own post (yet).
Sex Dolls Keep Making Headlines
There’s an article over at The Sun that’s taking a look at the lives of three men who decided to become long term companions with very expensive sex dolls. While the article seems to focus on the weirdness and the laughable idea that these are dangerous to real women, I was more interested in the fact that all three of these men, having purchased an object specifically to act as a sexual proxy, all did things like feed, dress, and cuddle their dolls. I don’t think it’s lack of sex that causes someone to drop over 6,000 pounds on a silicone facsimile of a woman, it’s the lack of companionship. I think it says a lot about our assumptions of the male motive in a relationship.
Satisfyer Pro 3 Vibration Released
Emily and I have been keeping one eye on the Satisfyer concept for a while now, we’ve just never pulled the trigger. The original and best selling concept was simple, use pulses of suction instead of traditional vibrations to simulate an oral experience. There are lots of reviews and praise out about the results. We’ve never pulled the trigger on these items despite our curiosity. The third generation of these products goes hybrid, and adds traditional vibrations to sucking pulses. We’ll be pulling the trigger on this soon.
Book Reviews
I’ve almost made it through the pile of books I’ve read prior to launching this blog. I’m looking forward to getting more reading done. Book reviews are by far my most popular posts so I know y’all are looking forward to them as well.
NSFW Images In Feed
Had a reader alert me to this shortly after our review of The Vamp. I’m still learning some of the details about how WordPress picks images (or doesn’t pick them) for the reader feed. Apologies to anyone who got an eye-full of silicone dildo on their feed without warning. Emily and I are working on some branding tricks that should make this a thing of the past.
Amusing Antics From the APA
Apparently the APA could use the services of a harder science, like marketing. They’re currently engaged in a totally avoidable PR nightmare that psychology at-large could have done without. How about next time you simply call it “guidelines for achieving better therapeutic efficacy in men” or any of the other dozens of options that weren’t obvious dog whistles for pushing an agenda. The truth behind the intent of these guidelines no longer matters, they’ve been poisoned by terrible ttone deafness about their presentation. Sheesh.
That about wraps it up. Cya next time.
Have a comment or a question? Is there a topic you’d like discussed? Let me know through my contact page.
Told you we’d be making time for fun now and again. Emily and I are busy working on our first sex toy review, which is mostly already done. In fact, we could probably both independently write the first one from memory and the sum of all of our experiences with it. There’s a catch though.
It may seem like a stuck-on-stupid moment, but while we were going through building a format we thought would be most useful to our readers we ran into a bit of a stumbling block, size. There are plenty of objective ways to describe the size of a toy; the diameter, the length, the areal cross section, or even the displaced volume, but how do you turn that into a subjective recommendation? What exactly is a good size for a beginner? We have no clue, Emily hasn’t been a beginner in some time, we’ve completely lost frame of reference for that experience.
Sure, there are lots of toys that claim they’re good for beginners, take the Tantus Starter for instance, but we’re doing a review here. We’re supposed to be examining those claims. Does great for a beginner also mean bored in a week? At 1 inch diameter and 4.5 insertable length the Starter seems like it could be just that. Problem is, we really don’t know, we can’t wave a magic wand (or a Hitachi Magic Wand for that matter) and make Emily a beginner again, and even then while vaginas have an average size like everything else, they’re also unique. These types of things are things I’d like to be able to tell my readers with confidence; this is good for a beginner, or experienced users only. Things like lubricants are a little easier due to their subjectivity. We can simply say in the case of a water based lubricant if it felt like it dried out too quickly for us, things of that nature, but it’s hard for someone who can hilt a large Apollo to make subjective recommendations about being ‘good for beginners’ in the size department. Getting back to the Starter, it’s easy to say the shape is exactly what a beginner would want, the head is a bit larger than the shaft, the whole thing is smooth and glossy, it’s relatively short (you probably won’t be accidentally slamming your cervix), made from a body safe material, and relatively cheap. The problem really comes in the girth department. Is one inch diameter really good enough, even for a newbie? In other words, are you going to be getting your 30 bucks out of that?
We’re struggling to answer questions like that. One thing we do know is, just the simple diameter of a toy isn’t really something that translates well to gauging size. These aren’t pants, you can’t really try them on in the fitting room, and you definitely can’t return them if you’re dissatisfied. Diameter also doesn’t scale linearly to the felt girth, which we’ll get into soon. We need a way to accurately communicate the difficulty, or lack thereof, of using a toy of a certain size.
For a while I considered taking the volume of the total displacement of a toy, which would give us its absolute volume, but some toys have very large portions that aren’t insertable or meant to be insertable. This includes the flared bases of anal safe toys, harness compatible toys, and things like the gigantic bases of toys meant to literally resemble a horse’s dick. Absolute displacement is out. So then I thought about just measuring the insertable portion and doing a rough approximation of a cylinders volume. This presents trouble for two reasons. Some toys change drastically in thickness like the Crystal Delights Twist and you can always control how much the toy is inserted, making the total volume largely adjustable by the user. The real difficulty comes from roughly 3 factors; the firmness of the toy, the shape of the head, and the area of the cross section of the toy. There’s still the problem of making a useful comparison however.
For very experienced people like Emily, it would be useful to compare the diameter to a standard soda can, but then you’d have to say what kind of soda can—they’re different around even English speaking countries.
Then it clicked, since our target audience are traditional couples, we can take the average areal cross-section—though in functional terms the circumference is just as good they really reflect the same measurement—of the average member and assign a score to how much larger or smaller the area of the toy is than that. For a variety of amusing reasons; diameter, deviation, dick, rhyming with Z, and because this is supposed to be fun, we are going to call this the D-score. We are still going to post the diameter, that’s still useful information, but we will also be posting the D-score. A D-score of 1 means the toy has roughly the same area as your average man (that’s 1.67 square inches for those curious).
Some of the more mathematically inclined out there might be asking, “why don’t you just use diameter then? The area is based on radius in the first place so reporting the listed diameter is as good as listing the area right?”. I get it, and you’re right, those measurements are intrinsically related. However, if you caught that bit, you also likely know that a 50% increase in diameter doesn’t equate to a 50% increase in area, and that’s why listing diameters can be misleading. Let’s go back to the soda can and our new base measurement. The average human has a diameter of 1.46 inches (1.67 square inches) and the standard 12oz can in the united states has a diameter of 2.6 inches (5.3 square inches). If we just eyeball the diameters we might be tempted to think the soda can is 78% larger than your average guy, but the area is just over 3 times as much (3.17x to be exact). It should be obvious which one of those better reflects the felt reality in the difference between the two objects. Thus, we would say the soda can has a D-score of 3.2 (we will be gratuitously rounding here). For those of you curious about the Starter I mentioned earlier, it has a D-score of .5!
I hope that was as fun for you to read as it was for me to write. First toy review will be up soon. In the mean time, have a good one.
Have a comment or a question? Is there a topic you’d like discussed? Let me know through my contact page.
![[COLLECTION] Had to Move Down to the Next Shelf](https://i.imgur.com/LUyljed.jpg)
