hey love, I'm an inconstant satellite

Well. It turns out that the friend who set off my libido avalanche recently is totally up for experimenting together. And it is experimenting, on both sides -- I've thought for a while that I needed a close friend who was up for messing around rather than an unknown person, because there's just too much to deal with otherwise. I have a lot of shiny new goddamn hangups about consent and my own desirability, and I haven't been managing to juggle that even with people I've otherwise felt cautiously interested in. Plus, I still haven't had penetrative sex with anyone since the hysterectomy, which maybe shouldn't matter so much but does. (She has her reasons for going slowly too.)

It's going very well, and we figured out a good edible/dose that helps with anxiety and isn't disorienting, which I've used at other times since.* It's really exciting and great?

It's also frustrating and difficult, because she lives far away and is not easily substitutable with other people. Especially since I technically could move anywhere I wanted now! But it's a bad idea. (Right? Bad idea. Even though there are a number of good things about the idea that are not directly related to sexy times. Too soon. World might explode again if move for girl again. Let's not.)

Having this awareness of a physical connection with another person is wonderful, though. Distracting at times, obviously, but it's something that I've missed and am really enjoying. Flirtation is great.

I'm still not physically well, and I feel anxious a lot, but this one thing is pretty unalloyed good, and I'm happy about it.

* The danger of using this is that you might get obsessed with the texture of a family member's shirt and demand to pet it. I'm sure she's not onto me at all, though.

Getting work done at work this week.

Good appointment with therapist Monday. After which I went somewhere I hadn't been before, got a Ms. Marvel trade and Squirrel Girl #4 and ate frozen yogurt, and eventually managed to find Good Vibrations. Treating myself and also being a quality person who does things in the world.

Hurt my neck as a direct result of GV visit and woke up with nasty headache. Unsure of cost-benefit here as both make strong cases.

Had an adventure with rushthatspeaks. After being confused by inferior maps and displeased with the hot soupy weather, we did find our rose-garden goal, and then there was a convenient and free train, and ice cream for dinner. Then showering. I remain very grateful for such an excellent partner and also for the central air at my apartment.

Getting real work done really, like, I did PCR today and ran it on a gel and all. Still working out some damnfool crap from my botched reappointment, but mostly doing well right now.

Spate of fun hectic planning on dragon game, unfortunately spurred by bad news of cool people leaving our subgroup. But I drew a trout with which I am pleased.

1. Smut Peddler 2014 is ouuuuuuuut! ♥ I may have read some of it at work and then been physically and socially uncomfortable as a result.

2. Racing game reunion today! Got to swap gossip with some people I haven't talked to in a quite a while, though we were still missing a few. Must make time to hang out there occasionally.

3. Hair re-pinked! (Bleaching pretty patchy, though. Need much better mirror skills if I am to bleach the back of my own head.)

4. The large bookshelf is attached to the wall, because I am smart and persistent. I figured out how to put it together, which was a learning process but totally worked, and then worked out a scheme to get the new stabilizing boards screwed into drywall anchors. Didn't work the first time because my screws were too short to account for the space between the wall and the shelf, oops, so I got two other sizes today and the one I thought would work did. Small one will be easy-peasy, and then books can be unpacked.

5. I get to see rushthatspeaks and J tomorrow.

1. Slept much better than I have lately after discussing self-soothing strategies and taking a bath (for which I cleverly rigged lighting so I could read Year of the Griffin in the tub despite my terrible bathroom configuration).

2. I do not understand how this happened, but this happened:



3. Rainbowgrads is updating their constitution. I am so happy that my little organization is still holding together and doing things!

4. Cracked myself up with my own reaction to these vaginal fingering techniques when I got to "Cervix Clock" -- I made a terrible face, squirmed, thought "ewww noooo", and actually crossed my legs. (This undermines all my grand pronouncements about having a reaction-filter pretty thoroughly, doesn't it?) Some of the others were just like "who came up with THAT?" and the cumulative effect of the whole strangely creative and specific page had me crying with suppressed laughter (because of course I was reading this at work).

5. More crying at work, courtesy of Greg Rucka. "I am the father of a daughter, and she is my light, and she shines, and I want for her every-fucking-thing she desires, and I want those things for her earned, not given; I want for her the reward of effort. I want for her inclusion. I want for her validation. I want for her a world that recognizes her worth as a human being." YES. That fiercest love. (Emphasis mine.)

Sometimes, video games work as training for things we actually do in life. It's pretty well known by now that certain games can improve spatial reasoning ability, presumably by providing practice. (Some video games have been inimical to spatial reasoning, though I think not so much the newer ones -- I've always been good at spatial stuff, and early-90s FPS set me against the entire genre forever by regularly putting walls in front of my face for no apparent reason.) Unfortunately, relationships are one of the ways video games fail badly at training people. As much as I'm enjoying having visual novels and otome games in English these days, they support the Kindness Coin approach to humans. (Usually, these humans are women, though for instance Bioware is at least expanding that to include people of all genders and species. Hooray?)

Luxuria Superbia doesn't fail.

Luxuria Superbia is a game about having sex. (It's not at all about getting to the point of having sex, so it skips the reductive game-relationship dilemma.) Your willing partners are flowers: beautiful, soothing, endless corolla tubes that you're flying into forever. They gain in complexity and differ in response as you go, adding more ranks in which stimulatory buds can appear, so that it's harder to keep up -- plus, you have to pay attention to which flower you're with and which stage of the process you're in if you want to fondle them appropriately. The idea is to touch the buds to bring color to the flower, which starts out white. If you overstimulate it, though, the stage will finish with the flower unsatisfied, and instead of gratitude, praise, and a heart graphic you'll get a kind deflection and a little thundercloud. I got a heart with an arrow through it at one point, but I'm not sure how. Pretty sure it was a good thing!

When touched, the buds pop open to reveal different images for each flower, presumably things that the particular flower enjoys. I wasn't at all sure about the sexiness of weird eyes opening to stare at me, and the hats seemed a little random, but the popups give an idea of each flower's personality, as do the things they say. Yes, the flowers talk to you if you're doing well. Their suggestive phrases are great: sometimes surreal, sometimes a little off-putting, mostly funny. My favorite is probably "Defragment my memory," but there are so many options in so many metaphorical ranges that the innuendo is really worth the price of admission all by itself.

To me it's really interesting that you're having sex with multiple flowers. For the overly literal like myself, this seems like multiple partners -- though, of course, it's also hard to sell a game with just one level. But it's also true that every flower could be a different sexual experience with the same variably-responsive person (for instance if that person has a menstrual cycle!), and that is also very cool.

The game developers say they wanted to make a game that reflects the experience of joy, and they did a good job. Plus, in the way of games, it can build skills that you want to use later: the observation of response, the varieties of touch, the amusing innuendo, the politeness, are all very useful parts of a real-life sexual repertoire.

Obviously there aren't a bunch of little buds all over humans, and you don't fly infinitely into anyone's vagina. But you get what I'm saying.

People who want to play a dreamy game about patience, attention, and careful-to-intense touch depending on response (and their current goals) are probably going to be pretty good lovers anyway. But I am imagining not letting a teenager out of that barrel he's nailed into until the game's temple is beautifully illuminated, and, you know, I like the idea.

Luxuria Superbia is available for a variety of platforms, with improved graphics for the computer versions, but I honestly can't imagine the sensuality coming across without the tablet interface. The ability to touch more than one place at the same time in an intuitive way is necessary. Unfortunately I wasn't able to turn off all the interface gestures on the newest iPad OS, so once in a while I'd get an intrusive arrow at the side and have to try to make that go away, even after turning off all multifinger gestures. I've also had a few slowing and jittering issues with the game, occasionally to the point of needing to kill the process, but it's definitely worth it.

Conclusion: If you have an iPad, buy it now. [ETA: It is only $3!]

(And if you get it for another platform, tell me how it is!)

Other reviews:
http://www.thegia.com/2013/11/05/luxuria-superbia-push-my-buttons/
http://www.theverge.com/2013/11/5/5065980/luxuria-superbia-sensual-ipad-game
http://pixelpacas.com/luxuria-superbia-review/

Interview with the devs:
http://www.148apps.com/news/learning-sensuous-spiritual-luxuria-superbia/

Game site:
http://luxuria-superbia.com/

[ETA: Awesome recommender: My sweetie Wim, who knows me well enough to be aware that I required this game immediately.]

Seattle's weird homemade porn festival turns out to be awesome, if also disturbing in places. We were late due to a bus that didn't come, which Wim later noticed was two cars behind us. No idea what happened. We saw lots of great stuff, though we missed at least one quite good one and a hitting one that I wouldn't have enjoyed. So glad I lucked into these tickets this afternoon!

Some favorites:

• creatively blocked ad exec has hot gay sex with bike messenger in his office, gets inspired


• adorably nerdy girl has difficult long-distance romance, expresses herself by documenting fucking someone else in the guy's apartment (words cannot convey how amazing this one turned out)


• America's Funniest XXX Home Videos, of which I really have no idea how much was remixed from the real show, though a pretty good idea of what definitely wasn't; included wonderful commercial parodies


• large, white letter A shakes champagne fizz over a tableau of gold-painted hot dogs in buns (really) and a petalled cake


• nun has kinky outdoor threesome with a homeless guy and her boyfriend Jesus


• hilarious mostly-needlepoint video for a bouncy, earworming song called "Twincest" [ETA: oh hell yes, the Twincest video is available online]