My Girlfriends are Made of Fabric

As a fair warning, this essay might get a bit personal and contains topics on sexuality. However, I feel that talking about it in hushed, vague tones is not doing anyone, especially young people, any favors. It's a part of life, yo.

So it's Pride Month, hey? The very utterance of this statement seems to trigger all kinds of emotional responses from people of all kinds of backgrounds and orientations. Regardless of how you feel about it, I think it is the perfect opportunity to discuss and celebrate our sexual differences, regardless of whether or not they fit into some rigidly defined label or category. Let's ignore for a moment the arguments of what is a fetish, paraphilia, sexual orientation, romantic orientation or sexual identity because there are not enough letters to string onto a label which is not universally agreed upon in the first place! Be happy with what you are, yes, but let's include those of us in conversations who aren't like everyone else and those whoes struggles may or may not be as life threatening as some, but are still very human struggles.

As for myself, I can be sexually attracted to all genders but I have a preference for female identities. However, I have a problem with expressing romantic emotions with other people and I feel really weird and dumb in intimate encounters. Could this be a result of lack of experience or not finding the right partner? This is very possible but at the moment I am perfectly fine with never exploring human relationships. What suits my fancy though, are soft plush toys...

Isn't that just a fetish or a paraphila? Well sure, but for me it is much deeper than what these words tend to bring to our minds. I don't know why I like stuffed animals but I've always loved those cute little faces and soft fur. I am also a bit of a texturephile and running my hands or lips over something fuzzy gives me chills! When I got to that hellish age when every day is a struggle with bio-horror and broken, tribal social encounters, experimentation found me playing with my toys in new and exciting ways. As Danny Sexbang once said regarding masturbation: "You don't have anyone to talk to about it but your stuffed animals. Who you are already fucking." 

I know a lot of people who are romantically or sexually attracted to objects or structures believe in animism, but that isn't really for me. I don't detect a soul or presence in my plushes, but I do feel like they have a personality in the same way that, say, a river or mountain can have. We tend to project "spirits" onto things all the time. How many people do you know that have named their cars, for example! If I believe in anything, I believe in the magic of imaginiation. (Insert rainbows!)

I thrive on creativity and I have a particular passion for games. I'm trying to make my own video games but I also enjoy role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons. It's very easy to escape into these alternate worlds as if we were really there. Most of us are well aware that it is just fiction, but we let ourselves pretend for a little bit. I'm a bit different in that while I do enjoy the escapism, part of me is revelling in the fact that I know full well that it isn't real. I enjoy the vast expanses of exotic worlds in the theater of the mind, but I also enjoy the "crunchiness" of a game's mechanics. I like to feel like I'm playing a game, but at the same time telling a good story.

The same can be said for intimate moments with stuffed animals. I treat them as if they were living creatures but I know that they are just toys, and I love that they are just toys. I like to trace the stitching along their bodies that holds them together with my fingers and whisper embarassing things in their ears and tell them that I love them. Both forgeting that they can't hear me and blissfully aware of it. A stuffed animal won't judge you and they will always be there for you if you want them to be.

More people sleep with stuffed animals than society will have you think. To me, sex with a stuffed animal is just a natural extension of cuddling them. We hug them and pet them and kiss them so why not hump them too! They are a joy to care for; to repair and clean and just spend time with. I've talked to them during anxiety attacks to calm myself down, and programmers sometimes suggest talking to a rubber duck to help you work out a problem or find a bug. So how weird is it after all?

There are artists that will gladly sew together your ideal partner, with wonderfully crafted, easy to clean intimate body parts lined with satin, minky or able to accept a silicone toy of your choice, or even external parts if you want them! If we are paying a fortune for a commission of a custom design, we might as well ask if we can get it modified as well, instead of just cutting a hole in it. Although, there is also something to be said about an unmodified bunny bottom to rub against...

I hope this was not too painful to read. I love learning about sexuality and hearing about what people are into even if I'm not into it myself. Confidence and individuality are very attractive qualities to me so if you want, share some of your own perversions! Do not be ashamed of who you are and what you love because the world certainly needs more affection in it.

Role Playing Games

There has always been a part of me that's been an adventurer. Though I like to think I am, by nature, rather demure and more likely to sit quietly at home with a cup of tea and a stuffed bunny rabbit, I have devoted a fair amount of my time learning the skill of travel and exploration. These days my nerves aren't up for another 3am flight when it's about 12 degrees farenhight at the airport and then sailing across the Caribbean Sea until crusted salt and 30 hours of no sleep are the insane gods I pray to. Still, I consider myself an adventurer of the mind; always learning new skills and sending my mind to fantastic new worlds and planes of reality. Better yet is crafting those worlds by my own demented will!

Being able to create is something I crave down to my very core. Though, telling a story is something I have never quite gotten the hang of until much recently when I have discovered more interactive ways of doing it than traditional one sided texts. I'm trying to get a video game development project to a viable and sustainable state. That will be a story for another day, for this day I want to talk about old fashioned, pen and paper, Role Playing Games.

I think it is safe to say that Dungeons and Dragons is the most well known game of this variety. Often the butt of many jokes such as that old American telephone company commercial, ("So what level dungeon masters are you guys?" "Dungeon masters don't have levels! Dork!") some misguided warnings of corruption of our fragile youth like that infamous moral comic strip, (The one where someone kills herself because the character in the game died) and perhaps a bit of mysticism and intimidation of the uninitiated, with a rule book more complicated than Risk or any other conventional board game could ever hope to have.

My history is not one that was particularly suited for role playing games. The people I knew in school, who we don't know any better than to call our friends, had often talked about playing it. I know that even if I ever was invited to those sessions that I would not have been treated with any respect. In fact, it is very likely that I would have come out of it with a personal possession of mine being broken, destroyed or stolen. It's happened far too often. I had read a few books and manuals in my highschool years, wondering how I could ever play them by myself. Some of them obscure- raise your hand if you remember Erma Felna. Anyone?

Last year I bought my brother the 5th Edition D&D starter set for christmas. Naturally I was chosen to study the rules and come up with a game within the week. People will often say that Game Mastering for the first time is a frightening prospect. I suppose it is, but for me it wasn't too bad. I already have some experience in laying out dungeons and thinking of where the player might poke their noses around. The hardest part for me was, and still is, having any kind of voice at the end of the session. I need to research ways to help with this. I also found very quickly hat no matter how well I prepared a puzzle, the players will always find a shortcut to the solution I haven't considered, or smash their way through, ruining everything I had planned and now I have to make everything up on the fly. But this is a good thing. It's something that I think defines the game and sets it apart from the video games that take so many influences from it.

A year later and I have a stack of Pathfinder books on my shelf. Pathfinder is apparently based on the 3.5 edition of Dungeons and Dragons. Why so many editions? How can anyone keep track of all this! This is precisely why I chose to focus on Pathfinder; it just seemed like a stable and well tried system to start from. And honestly, I like the artwork.

The rules may seem intimidating and monstrous to anyone who is used to games like Clue or even the decidedly more obscure but still worth your time if you can find it: Key to the Kingdom. Indeed, it takes several sessions to really get the hang of it and not constantly screw up the rules so badly that the game totally breaks down. One major criticism I have with the Pathfinder rulebook is that it is very difficult to look something specific up in a hurry. Tables are not very well labeled and sometimes not even referenced in the text. Make sure you study how to level up before you actually do it or you will be very quickly frustrated. thankfully, I have found a website that indexes all the rules from an easy (or at least more intuitive) central menu.
Rules are one of the biggest problems I've been having recently. My brother and his friend, although they understand role playing and the general format of the adventures, at any mention of a rule more complicated than rolling a d20 (that's a 20 sided die) and adding their strength to it is met with groans and eye rolls. To be perfectly honest, they are not wrong. The rules are only there as a guidline. If you, reader, want more of a free form improv style adventure, then as long as your group expects the same thing there is nothing wrong with that. I however, like a little bit of structure.

I don't pay all that much attention to the lore of the universe. A lot of it is contradictive and some is just plain dumb. But I feel there is something to gain from keeping track of your character's skills; watching them grow, telling their story through what they can and can't do well and making them unique and yours. I started rationalizing this. I thought since I paid for these books (OK, I bought a lot second hand and I just like having stacks of books around) and put in the time to study the rules I have the right to dictate what rules will be followed. I put probably too much time into the game for what I feel I get out of it. And besides, I'm the GM. But I do wonder if there is an age effect here. That crisis when we realize we can't "play" like we used to as children has never affected me like some poetic souls tell us it has effected them. I can't say I have ever been frustrated by it. But maybe I am now. Maybe this need for structure and well defined rules and boundaries is my adult brain being unable to play freely. It is an interesting thought.

If you spend any time looking up Pathfinder or D&D you will quickly find a great deal of underwhelming reactions to it. The leveling up system is indeed cumbersome and video gamey and not very realistic. I will start worrying about realism when I play a game where elves and sorcerers don't exist. But for the gamey stuff? Well yeah, it totally feels like a video game at times. However, I would not complain about King Solomon's Mines because it reminded me too much of Indianna Jones. I'm unsure exatcly what year the first Dungeons and Dragons manual was pulished but I do know that whatever video games that existed at the time did not have the complex mechanics and deep, lush worlds that they do today. And I actually kind of like it.

I imagine Dungeons and Dragons to be very cartoonish. This is not a bad thing; any fan of animation will tell you a cartoon does not have to insult the intelligence of its audience. One can tell moving, awe inspiring and thought provoking stories through the medium. At the same time, one can run around in scanty armor with a great battle axe and rip off every single piece of fantasy pop culture you can think of for the sheer joy and appreciation that these themes and archetypes exist. I enjoy the game as a game. I feel this way with video games as well. This is not to say that I cannot be immersed in the game world. In fact, I would argue that I am even more immersed because of it.

This is something that I don't know how to fully describe. When I play a game like the classic Sonic the Hedgehog, realism is the last thing on my mind. To me, it knows it's a game and doesn't try to hide that. The world inside the game is built around it and us reality obsessed humans cannot try to project our world onto it without some serious negative side effects. And I love it. We don't need to make sense of floating coins in the sky and sideways moving rotten mushrooms. They follow the laws of their own universe just as we follow the laws of ours. If we are stepping into the game world for the sake of leaving ours for a little bit I don't see the point in trying to bring our world with us anyway.

In addition, Role Playing Games can do something Video Games cannot. A game designer must build the world well in advance; everything the player will see must be thought of before the player thinks of seeing it. There may be some alternate endings and branching paths to give the player the illusion of free will, and indeed I encourage all designers to include these in their games, but in the end, the player follows a set and pre determined story. When playing a game like D&D, plans are constantly foiled, important characters killed, dangerous dungeons totally side stepped and new ideas being implimented before they barely have a chance to be considered. That's part of the fun of it. When a player just barely escapes danger and everyone stares silently at the settled dice for an awestruck moment, or rolling so poorly that the character face absurd, hilarious and highly improbableconsequences. A spell bothced so badly the entire party is set on fire and new characters springing up to help a woefully underpowered team fight the poorly calculated villain's destructive sorcery.

I wish I could play more often than I do. Often times I'm promised a session and it never happens. And while I do enjoy being the Game Master, I never really got a chance to be on the other side of the table. No offense meant to anyone of the age of 13, but maybe you should stick to GMing players your own age...! Let's pretend I don't have any social anxiety for a moment. There used to be a weekly gaming session near me long before I was interested in the game, but it's no longer active, and the internet reliability at my house makes online sessions a hassle to shedule. Though not impossible, I should say. Hopefully I'll get a chance to play a magical rat character I created soon enough. In the meantime, I'm left listening to stories of memorable sessions on youtube or listening to The Adventure Zone podcast.
Everyone should give the game a chance. Especially anyone studying writing, acting, game design, leadership, or any of the multitude of skills one learns from playing an old fashioned, pen and paper role playing game.

Let the dice fall as they may, Phano

Paleontological Expedition no.1

Practically in the shadows of the ominous and unmistakable cooling towers of the nuclear power plant in Danville Pennsylvania is a collection of segments of undeveloped land and water all named The PPL Montour Preserve. (PPL standing for Pennsylvania Power and Light. The electric company, naturally.) After a two hour drive and five minutes of driving much slower, my Mom, my brother, his friend and I got out of the car in the Visitor's Center parking lot. It was Sunday, so the center was closed, but the large sign with a map printed on it is always willing to aid misplaced adventurers. If you should go there even now, you might be greeted with the same useful, though maybe slightly soggy directions to the fossil pit, or anywhere else in the preserve you would like to go.

Eventually we found the sign and the designated parking area. We grabbed our hammers, chisels, brushes and water and crossed the street. We followed a gravel path surrounded by thick vegetation, not putting much effort into hiding our anticipation of what we will see behind the bend.

We saw a pit of broken grey rocks somewhat smaller than a baseball field and a handful of other humans of various ages up on the slanted side. It was wonderful.

Let's rewind a bit. I'm not exactly sure what started my "sudden" interest in paleontology. Or rather, what made me take a more active interest in it. I get quite bored and restless at my job and a small grain of sand quickly turns into a pearl in my intellectually starved mind at work. The grain in this case was a small aquatic fossil I have found several years ago in a stream bed near a house in which I used to live. I wasn't looking for fossils, but when I broke open a rock with a hairline crack running through it for no other reason than "I could," my mind was blown at what I saw.

For years I couldn't identify it. But now I am quite certain it is a type of brachiopod as the characteristic gap in the striations would suggest. It's not unreasonable to assume it came from the Devonian Period which ended about 350 million years ago if my printed authorities are to be belived.

Just think about that. 350 million years. This is before dinosaurs anyone could easily recognize started walking around. In fact, I'm lead to believe that life on dry land was just barely starting to move away from sources of water. It's almost dizzying, but unquestionably exciting.

Pennsylvania was mostly under water for quite a few millenia. The mud and silt that settled at the bottom of this water formed shales that are exposed quite frequently across the countryside. Road crews blasted away some of it to get a highway built through it. The orange cliffs I've seen on the other side of the car widow my whole life are from a world an impossibly long time ago. Now, nearing 30 years old, I'm slightly obsessed in finding the secrets that hide under eons of rock. Eventually my slightly rambling web searches lead me to the designated fossil pit I mentioned above and a few other less specific locations and I wouldn't stop talking about them. (I still won't.)

My brother's birthday found me tagging along and playing miniature golf not too far from here. It's not that the game wasn't fun, but I'm sure you would forgive me for putting an otherwise unhealthy amount of interest in the orange rocks scattered about. That same day our most recent foster sister was working out places to go for her own birthday and %100 jokingly I audibly wondered where I was going to be treated for my birthday too. My mom said that the fossil pit would be interesting to go to sometime.

Huh.

Sometime after my birthday had come and gone, but before my mom's, she texted me to ask when I wanted to go. I ordered tools within the hour and said I hoped they would arrive before the weekend.

This and the threat of wet weather caused a bit of anxiety. The tools came quickly but it rained all day saturday. I wasentally resigned to postponing it to a much later date. Which became the very next day. Which was a hellish morning by the way. Anxiety tries as hard as it can to prevent you from doing anything fun. The weather reports were conflicting and I was very close to using that as an excuse to scrub the whole thing. But after an unfortunate event the night before inolving the ER and my foster sister on which I feel it is unfair to publicly elaborate, my mom basically said fuck it, we need this.

So while the preceeding days were quite wet, this day wasn't bad at all. The sun even showed up for a few minutes. Little yellow and white butterflies flitted about and for most of the day we were alone.

I found a feint and incomplete impression of a shell within the first five minutes. Foolishly, I discarded it thinking I would find much more sophistiated specimins if I dug deeper. My brachiopod had misled my expectations. To say I was disillusioned is inaccurate because I never felt like I was missing out. Even when everyone else was finding something interesting before me.

 I was in my element; attention and mind focused on my task. I felt as if I were on some other planet. Or more appropriately: Earth millions of years ago. The shale really gave the impression of being transported to another world, and then the rock was split to finally reveal an echo, a ghost of a life form that hasn't seen sunlight since the night sky was filled with very different constellations. My mom and I would walk back and forth to share what we found and puzzled over what we were looking at. Whether it be a fossil or just some interesting mineral stuff going on.

I've been finding it a bit difficult to be cheerful lately. I can blame it on a bunch of little things or just one big one, but I know what makes me feel at peace. It may seem like tedium to some but I could have stayed in that pit for hours and hours. But eventually my brother and his friend got bored and everyone got hungary. That's ok. We all found something interesting to take home. My finest specimins are a barely visible hint of a trilobyte and what I suspect is an impression of coral, but it could be a cluster of small, individual creatures.

Danville is a long drive to dig in the dirt, but I've kept an eye out for road cuts that would be safe to park the car by and excavate. There are not many dinosaur traces around here, but several sources claim evidence of Triassic animals can be discovered in the South Eastern part of the state. I would like to check it out, eventually. Ancient sea creatures are a bit more intriguing to me than dinosaurs for whatever reason, but I have made it a goal to find foot prints. It may be extremely difficult and it may never happen, but there is something mystical and wonderful about the thought of touching the ground where an iconic creature once stood. Even more so than its bones. A foot print is a remnant of something that was once living, was once breathing. Something that walked on this planet an unimaginably long time before I ever did. It might be impossible to know what the animal is like, but for a fraction of a second it stepped in the mud. What is a fraction of a second compared to millions and millions of years?

Phano