Blogging (for the most part) is enough of a dead medium that when I talk about this project with those in their 20s sometimes they hear. “I self host a site” to mean that I run a discord. I’m still at this largely because I can avoid a lot of the problems of censorship one gets in someone else’s site more than I expect to be wildly successful. That’s fine.
Likewise, the heyday of when the demands of SEO made sex toy review blogs a reasonable side hustle or even a full time gig has largely passed, and though I tried it same as many people in the space at the time, it was never a good fit for me. Most toys on the market didn’t do anything for me, and l lack the ability to be pleasantly neutral in reviews. Therefore this is going to be a rare departure to the before times, where I talk about getting something for free.
I have actually been a little shameless. This is my second time at it, with Lovense sending me something to review, no strings attached except the request that maybe I send them a link of my review when I am done. Since I wasn’t a big fan of the Solace (good concept, needs more time to bake), I assumed that this would probably be the last I heard from them. Such is the trade off of the nature of reviews. You have to be some sort of big deal that just the attention you paid to say you didn’t like something was worth it, or the brand needs to be functioning on such a need to be noticed that the product is unlikely to be something you would want to try in the first place.
Then, fortuitously two things happened. Our several year old Hush finally stopped holding a charge and we were vaguely considering buying a replacement, since we’ve been pretty happy with them for the duration of our relationship. Then Lovense reached out again to ask if I would like to try one of their products.
There’s an affiliate link here as a result, but it’s kind of a lukewarm commitment to that. I won’t blandish you with claims of my incorruptible nature, but honestly I think there’s still something interesting to say about the topic (and product) beyond that I got one.
I like the Hush, and think it remains the gold standard for accessible, ready to go remote control buttplugs. Over the course of Silver and I’s time together, this would actually be the fourth one we have had. It was particularly helpful when we were long distance, but it’s still good at what it does in person. Lovense knows that, their cheerful reach out email even mentions how lots of D/s couples use their stuff.
The technology has been through many iterations at this point, mostly improving the quality of the signal strength of the toy. I will grant that Lovense had most of what it needed down pat from first conception, a silicone outer housing and waterproof charging port, plus the standard teardrop egg with flared base anything meant for a butthole needs to be. It’s the signal part that was a work in progress. Silver’s first model was actually pretty terrible, even if it beat out any other wireless options, with the vibrations and whatnot perfectly fine but the fatal flaw that if you sat down there was a strong chance that your body plus the chair would cause it to drop connection. Purchase #2 had a much better connection ability. Purchase #3, their largest size, connects fine, but is too big for the user, an entirely a user side thing.
Silver is very bad at pacing himself, and the rather saw tooth approach we take to play versus other real world distractions mean that the slower stretching part. Furthermore, Freud was not entirely speaking from the depths of his cocaine habit when he described people with high anxiety as “anal retentive”, which is to say that stress and butt stuff are not compatible. Prod a person enough, metaphorically or literally and they will tense up.
It is a remarkable (and probably coincidental) phenomenon that butts operate much like genitals in the sense that getting into them becomes remarkably easier when someone is aroused. While I shall leave self lubricating anuses to the realm of boylove comics and the omegaverse, it is still true that as arousal causes blood flow to the rest of your pelvic floor, the anus typically goes from curled like an angry pangolin to ruddy pink and soft feeling, almost spongey in its give. You probably have a baseline, variable bit of ability to open up sans arousal, but it just works so much better when everything between your navel and your thighs is at full steam, all flood gates open.
The trouble is that the order of operations of buttplugs tends to be that you put them in near the start of the recreation activity you are going to do, solo and by yourself. In function they are a stationary additive, a little extra pressure on a nerve rich area. For those with prostates the right shape pokes that, but for everyone else the anal ring is one of the human universals. Matching timing to when your bottom is aroused enough to get the damn thing in, but not near enough at the end of an encounter to be anticlimactic is an art in itself.
And the difficulty extends further: If you own the butthole and your brain is already raring to get going it can be very tempting to push past that moderate discomfort. But banging up the rectum is going to cause cumulative irritation. If this is a precursor activity to larger things, or some variation of thrusting penetration (regular anal, pegging) racing is going to actually run contrary to what you were intending.
I think that’s also something to think about on a paired activity versus solo. All by yourself it is much easier to make those micro-calibrations for an easy slip in. Someone else being in control of the push and angle is just more likely to make you encounter physiological resistance.
In a D/s dynamic I find this is its own fraught territory, because the goal is to make it seem like action and response are seamless. Starting encounters with the bad kind of ow is opposite of this, and liable to have one of you internalize you are failing, which is hardly the experience you want to have. And since a lot of subs internalize being pleasing over being comfortable as the goal or even a value add, you end up with a situation that encourages long term bad habits. They assume you want it to hurt because why wouldn’t you?
One solution is to make it part of the pre-scene prep, instructing the sub to show up dressed or stripped to your preference and plugged. This means that there’s less pressure against pacing themselves. Still, sometimes you want to go hands on together or you may want to make your habits encourage better odds of an outcome every time. For that we have settled on a bunch of edging, until there’s a much higher probability that everything will fit together smoothly. The other step we decided was to go a bit smaller than we might typically. Specifically the “1.5” is a step down from the usual. That’s not to say that it’s precluding using other larger toys in our collection, but
The Hush’s main value is using it for prolonged wear, so it’s better to think in terms of comfort over immediate impact. Which brings me to another point of interest, the app. You are going to need to sign up for an account with the company and then download an app to your phone. All the sex toys they make require this for the other major functionality of the toy, a Bluetooth enabled slider dial remote. What has changed is the sensitivity of the Bluetooth part.
I remember the original ones we had were actually sort of frustrating in that they had very poor reception or the connection could easily time out mid play. Sitting on a bed could also block a connection, a pretty unfortunate issue. That seems to have been the focus of most of their improvements.
Lovense the company seems to have figured out the trick for passing the two app stores’ draconian hatred of anything sexual. Nevertheless as a point in their favour, in the event of some calamity they have left some “dumb” features into their design. Can’t connect for some reason? You still can push the single on button to cycle through it’s pattern of intensity and pulsing. Still, I am curious if they have any worst case solution to offer a side loading program or if calamity pushes them out of the app store eliminates the remote control feature.
Still, that’s probably a case of having worse problems if it does happen. And in the end this one will likely have the same route as the ones that went before it. Used intermittently until battery failure.
Additional Notes & Follow Up:
If you are new to pegging, Ruby Rider runs regular free online classes for both the basics and the next steps after that.
