Jack’s Sack: Treat Me Like a Doll
Welcome back to Jack’s Sack. Miss the previous entry? You can read it here. Today, we pose (and attempt to solve) a philosophical question:
Is a literal sex object ever only that? Oh, right. We’re also reviewing a mini-sex doll.
Let’s begin.
Ball Jointed Love
One of the more interesting characters I’ve interacted with in recent years is the Doll in Bloodborne.
The Doll, when you first meet her, is precisely that. Totally lifeless porcelain that stares at you as you approach the hunter’s workshop. It’s only after speaking to Gehrman, her creator, that the Doll springs to life. She speaks with a soft familiar cadence, and welcomes you. She encourages you to rest. What’s more, to spend time with her. Her adoration and interest doesn’t come off as a learned/programmed behavior of some automaton-but genuine. It’s the little details that help this. When you channel your Blood Echoes (a level up mechanic), she tells you to close your eyes as she lifts her hands to the side of your face.
Kind of like, ya’ know, someone coming in for a kiss.
Gehrman himself even tells the player to “use the doll” if they wish, an obvious sexual reference. There’s even more lore beyond that-enough to flesh “the plain doll” out with as much life as any other member of the cast. She even mourns the player’s death and more depending on the ending.
The doll, and a genuine interest to learn more about her, drove a lot of my playthrough. Blame an innate bias towards Hanz Belmer styled portrayals of human sexuality. But what the Doll evoked in me-and many more, judging by the R34 out there–was still very real. She was an automaton, sure. Totally fictional. But in the moment, it was enough for my lizard brain to be fooled. The Doll isn’t alone either. I find it fortuitous that I’m writing this review literally on the heels of Project Melody taking Chaturbate by storm. Melody is a 3d anime girl piloted and voiced by a real person-but she blurs reality and fiction even more.
Enough to cause a massive shitstorm with real life models, at any rate. For the record, we here at Splathouse completely support Melody.
Melody, The Doll, and Belmer’s creation all share the central traits of explicitly being things. They’re objects (with all due respect to Melody’s very talented VA), but ones which occupy enough of a human shape to flick something in our subconscious. Perhaps it’s an emotion, perhaps it’s a desire. Regardless the response comes all the same. Despite logic, despite being learned and nuanced beings.
We want to fuck the things.
We want to love, to hold, to kiss them.
We project despite everything because that’s our nature as humans with anything vaguely shaped like a friend.
You can see this with how people react to stuffies as well. It’s something that, writing this series, has conveniently been placed on the back burner of my mind. I don’t have to face difficult questions reviewing sex toys because of how they’re shaped. They’re tubes. Sometimes colorful, sometimes fanciful. But it’s all tubes nonetheless. My brain has zero issue with using them and then tossing them under my bed.
Until this week.
And now, I sit here thinking about The Doll, about Melody. I find myself wondering why the fuck I got this excited over a toy. What’s more, why I so eagerly fucked it like I did. Was it just how it was shaped? Or was it something rooted deep in the back of my head and many others?
Girlfriend In A Box
Okay, so I’m not going to repeat the full title of this thing here. This doll is like many others on Amazon-made in china from soft medical grade TPE. While it’s not life size (you can order those too), this particular model is both larger than you’d think and slightly smaller. For reference, one of the breasts fits comfortably within my palm. Oh, and don’t worry-the body is an all over flesh tone, without the neon pink accents. You can see more accurate pictures in the customer shots.
The package is about the size of a shoebox, with “MEN’S FAVORITE THINGS” printed on it. I couldn’t help but laugh when I saw that. Aside from that, the doll comes double-sealed in plastic bags with two packs of lube. The translation department must have had a field day-the lube was lovingly emblazoned with “COKE LIFE”. I barely held in my chuckle.
The laughter was pretty quickly dashed when I flicked the doll’s nipple through the bag. Deep from the recesses of my mind came the sound of a lover’s moan. One that I only recalled because the doll’s body reacted realistically. It felt like a nipple. I lost myself to memory for a moment, and shook it off. I narrowed my brow and stared at the doll. This lewdly shaped daydream from a Hasbro factory had-nah, fuck it. The part of my mind making this all fucky-wucky? It was the same part that had so ardently fought for The Doll, and been so quick to defend Melody.
So I turned heel and went for a drive. The sun was out, and my head needed to empty. I managed to soak up enough sun to place myself in a better mood. I came home, worked out, and showered. When I emerged from the bathroom, there sat the doll. Right on top of my sex suitcase.
Oh. Right.
Work. I had work tonight.
A lot of you are probably aware I do photoshoots for people that buy me toys. Recently I’ve upped my game with a tripod and proper lighting. For me at least, it’s a minor amount of additional work that totally makes the photos I take pop. It even enables me to do really, really fun stuff.
Like make a two person shoot with a single actor.
I can’t share more due to client confidentiality. But the end result of the shoot (themed “Whose afraid of the big bad wolf?”) would be enough to fool someone at a glance. I mean-it was enough to fool me, and I was the guy in the shots. My co-star-ahem, I mean the sex doll-was soft and pliable, textured in a way that flicked that aformentioned switch in my head. It kept flicking it too. After the shoot, I felt physically and mentally exhausted. Like how I’d feel with a real lover. Between the events of that evening and seeing Melody in my twitter feed? A thought started to worm its way from the back of my skull. One I feel is pertinent to share here.
SHODAN from System Shock, But Cute
Sexuality is something that largely takes place in the mind first. A mind is an incredibly fragile thing that can be lied to, psyched out and otherwise fooled. If a soft doll shaped like a voluptuous woman can fool people, things like Melody, The Doll and even Hans Belmer’s creations aren’t grotesqueries. They’re inevitabilities. As artificial intelligence, automation and more improves, as more and more people turn to digital life for companionship and to satiate their loneliness? We’re quickly going to be encountering an era of human sexuality where we can’t deny the humanity of something simply for not being made of flesh.
Yes, I wrote that line completely sober. If you’re still reeling, think of it like this: Imagine Hatsune Miku able to pass a Turing test, carry on a natural feeling conversation, and project genuine warmth.
Oh wait, you don’t have to. Because it’s already here.
Speaking as someone who has always felt at-odds with human interaction? I can’t say that I don’t welcome this. Because there’s application beyond fooling our lizard brain needs that such things fill. I know I’m not alone in saying feeling wanted, even knowing it’s empty, can sometimes have a salve-like effect. If a digital assistant could act enough like a person for me to speak with them?
I probably wouldn’t be on twitter at two AM. The gentle nudge of a machine saying “hey man, go to bed, you need rest!” is just advanced self-care. It’s no different than, say, crafting a self insert that’s a more charismatic version of yourself and pretending to be that. If a machine can fool us into thinking we’re loved and wanted, if it can emulate our desires in a way that makes us comfortable…
In a way…
Isn’t that enough?
Deep In The Hunter’s Dream
So. There’s something I forgot to mention about The Doll (the Bloodborne one) at the start of the article.
It’s strongly hinted in the lore that The Doll was constructed by Gehrman for company. But that she also was made in the visage of a woman he loved. Someone he no longer could be with, someone that could no longer hold his face as she kissed him. Gehrman’s creation isn’t absurd or morbid-people would cut the hair of their lovers for centuries and keep them after death.
This begs the question of how, in the modern era, we’ll long for what we know we can’t have. If you want to twist this into a dark discussion, be my guest. But personally speaking?
I see automation and friend-shaped AI filling a gap for a lot of people. Many who are lonely, many who just need enough to fool the chemical synapses in their brain. These people deserve the same rights to happiness and life as anyone else, and I think it would be cruel to deny them that. If it can give them the strength and wherewithal to interact with physical people, all the better.
I mean. If I hadn’t enjoyed a friend-shaped doll? None of us would be here right now.
I’ll end this by saying this:
Sex toys are a varied market. Some are simple, some are complex, some are friend-shaped. Regardless of your reason for buying, it’s valid. You’re valid.