The Nature of NavelColt Cuddlefics: Platonic Affection and Touch Starvation · 2:59pm Mar 25th, 2022
Artwork by ItsTaylor-Made, Underpable, Rossmaniteanzu & Lord Valtasar, and Luximus17 from left to right
As BabsCon approaches, I find myself thinking of a number of questions that are likely to pop up from other fans while I’m there. Because these questions are pretty big ones that I've been meaning to touch upon anyway, I decided to answer them in blog form as we lead up to the con.
Today, I want to focus on platonic physical affection and why it's in a lot of my stories. Things like cuddling, hugging, and tickling all make very regular appearances in my works, and my characterization—while largely mimicking canon—does purposefully explore situations where these things could occur with certain characters.
There's a much deeper reason for this past it simply being cute at face value, and like with most sources of inspiration, it comes from someplace personal.
As a kid I had very thick emotional walls. Not only did this make it hard for me to form lasting relationships with people, it made emotional display and reception difficult. Displaying emotion around other people in person was hard, and giving or receiving affection—even from my parents—felt uncomfortable to me for reasons I couldn’t explain. I didn't realize until much later, as an adult, that it was because I only enjoyed affection with people I had a deep emotional connection with, and I just never formed that with my parents. This was why I lived online for most of my childhood and teenage years, because only there was I able to express emotion and make meaningful connections with greater ease.
Up until my very early twenties, I had little to no meaningful physical contact with anyone.
Eventually I met an online friend, one I’d known for years and had formed a powerful emotional connection with, in person for the first time. I cannot describe the sheer happiness I felt the first time we hugged. At one point during the visit, something had happened that’d resulted in very brief tickling and wrestling around, and that same feeling of bliss just radiated from every corner of my brain. This was almost a decade ago, but I still remember these feelings so clearly, because it remains one of the happiest moments of my life.
There’s a term for this phenomenon, and it’s Touch Starvation, or Skin Hunger. Humans, like many animals, crave physical touch with others, especially from those we have powerful emotional connections with. When we don’t receive that over extended periods of time it has a negative impact on our mental and emotional health.
I’m approaching thirty now, and I’ve long since learned how to emotionally connect with others in and out of person. But nearly two decades of being emotionally isolated had a lasting impact on me. It gave me a very progressive outlook on platonic love, and it emboldened my hatred for behavioral and gender stereotypes.
Much of society would find some of the banner artwork of this blog odd, citing that brothers having a tickle fight or boys cuddling must be gay/incetuous. In one of my past works, some of this even reared its head in the comments. But if two sisters or female friends were to do these same things, well then, that’s a different story. Nobody would bat an eye. Girls are ‘emotional’, after all, that’s ‘normal’ for them.
Here’s what I think. Platonic love is for anyone, of any age or gender, who is comfortable enough to give or receive it from someone else who is also comfortable with it. Full stop. Mother and daughter? Great. Father and son? Yes. Brothers? Yes. Sisters? Yes. Friends? Yes.
Louder for those in the back: physical affection (cuddling, tickling, etc) does not innately carry any intent outside unfiltered fondness for someone, and so it should not be seen as exclusive to sexual or romantic relationships.
I believe a lack of emotional connection is a pandemic of its own. Toxic masculinity teaches men that showing emotions makes you weak, as if the positive aspects of masculinity cannot be achieved while also knowing how to express yourself to those you care about. The digital age has taken so much substance out of physically interacting with our friends and family in order to catch up or hang out that many of us do it far less. COVID-19's influence on gatherings is still being felt.
The King of Love Bugs explores all of my views on these things. The modern changelings eat, rest, and grow connections through merely expressing affection to one another. Thorax, once depicted as weak and meek, successfully leads his hive into an era of peace and prosperity by using his enlightened understanding of emotions and connection.
In From Your Brother With Love, Thorax experiences, for the first time, what it’s like to have an older brother who can emotionally interact with him, following their transformation. Released from perpetual hunger, Pharynx has more patience for his brother, and it helps him bridge his relationship with Thorax.
In my latest work, How to Hug Your Pegasis, Zipp and Pipp have a heart-to-heart after what could easily have been years of them drifting further apart, and by the end of the story, they're able to simply enjoy being in each other’s company without outside interference. Shortly thereafter, Pipp invites her sister over to watch a scary movie, but it's a guise. All Pipp really wanted was an excuse to cuddle with her sister, something she'd not done since they were foals.
Depicting that moment where two characters spark or rekindle their relationship and relish in it is one of my favorite things to write because I have felt that joy myself. Many of my stories feature at least one moment like this.
I write cute things because it makes me and my readers a little happier. But I also write cute things because I’m disgusted by our society and how it obsessively tries to categorize people. I enjoy depicting what I know is perfectly healthy between two comfortable people. I know it’s healthy, because I can tell you for certain that what I went through was not.
Thanks for coming to my PONE Talk. I'm sorry if it came off as rather preachy. There is no other topic that I'm as emotionally driven by as this one.
There will be two more upcoming blogs before the convention, but this is definitely the heaviest topic of the three. Next week I’ll be making a blog going over my focus on siblings, why I love writing them, and my favorite aspects of portraying those kinds of relationships.
Thanks for reading, everyone. Extra cookies if you’re reading this after having met me at Babscon. Hello, from the past!
Awwwww, I agree completely! Toxic Masculinity is horrible especially when dealing with backlash from people who believe stereotypes for males and females are the "right" versions of them. I think hugs make everything better, and affection and the like aren't something that are "soft" or "feminine" or anything. It's just a way of showing other people that you are there for them, you care about them, and you want to make them feel better (if you're the kind of person who doesn't like hugs though, like you explained, I will happily leave you be if you let me know)
Well said
*sends hugs*
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Happy to have hugs, now.
I've outgrown most of the social and emotional hangups I had when younger.
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Hooray!
Toxic Masculinity can take a long walk off a short cliff.
Thank you for making this.
Oh my gosh those are pretty amazing I really like that and not only that showing your emotion doesn't make you weak it shows that you are human that everybody has feelings and there's nothing wrong with it and not everybody's perfect sometimes I really wish people stop thinking like that
You're one of the people who makes the world a brighter place.
I think characters like Thorax and Fluttershy are characters who might be seen by some as weak and pathetic for being so loving.
No it is the opposite. It takes true strength to love and be affectionate even in a rough world like ours. We should never forget that love is a beautiful thing worth fighting for. Thorax and Fluttershy are true heroes therefore.
That's why I'm thankful to have family who truly is close to me. And says they love me.
I remember Hacksaw Ridge set in WWII where the hero was a pacifist. Before I watched the movie I thought he was going to be a wimp. But was I wrong, his compassion for others even for the enemy, was what made him truly strong. It helped to know what real strength was.
And likewise I think that love is the greatest power there is. And I'm glad your fanfictions show that fact.
It is never weak to show your affection and love for another. In fact it's this that often makes people do deeds of true heroism.
Based on the title, this is basically me except any difference between family love, platonic love, romantic love, and sexual attraction are totally beyond my ken.
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Very insightful, and I completely agree. In a world that embraces strife as the go-to, being compassionate is the real show of courage. If society didn't try so hard to lock emotional connection and intimacy behind a wall for sexual/romantic relationships I think we'd all be a lot less lonely and miserable.
The literal definition of platonic is non-sexual intimacy. I'll never understand why some people think it's a thing that doesn't exist, or only exists for one of our sexes but not the other.
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Well, we know. And with stories like these maybe more will too.😇
Hey man, i reaply appriciate this post. As someone who was really lonely in middle/highschool (maybe not as touchstarved as you, but still), it warms my heart to see this sentiment expressed in words. It was so great to see, in fact, that it managed to pull me out of the sensory/mood spiral i had been falling into, and i really appreciate that.
I also appriciate that you subtly acknowledged the good sides of masculinity. With the way human brains work, its all too easy for people to see the bad that has been done in the name of masculinity, and just throw the baby out with the bathwater. Heck, ive done it myself. But i find I'm my best self when i fully own my masculinity, yet also fully own the parts of me that arent "traditionally masculine".
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Glad you were able to take something away from it! And yeah, obviously masculinity is important, it's a biological thing to a large extent. It's just the labeling and attempts to sanction certain things off as this or that, that needs to go.
I have been meaning to catch up with you're stories and I'm sorry to say I haven't had the time recently (it's finals week), but seeing this after I logged in absolutely made my day.
I have been touch starved for years as well, but I was the opposite of you; I was too emotional. I'm 18 now, but I never had a hard outer shell. I TRIED to have one, because my sensitivity made me a very easy target for bullies throughout middle and high school, but it was always a thin coverup that anyone could see right through, for better and worse. My first real close friend told me once that I opened up entirely within two days of knowing her, which I never even realized, and looking back I see that I was more alone then I was even aware of. It was normal for me, and still kind of is. Don't get me wrong, my parents are loving, caring, and wonderful people who raised me well, and they gave me all the love and affection I needed, but it's not the same as a close friendship.
I have never really felt that kind of affection yet. Sure I've been hugged, but honestly... even though I've been cuddled once or twice it never felt intimate or real to me. I turned to online for friends too, and my current boyfriend is visiting me for the first time in May, and you better believe I'm over the damn mood. We are both touch starved, so two of us together for a week is like heaven on earth.
Also, kind of unrelated, but I thought it was funny.
I'm asexual, and I knew early on because when people my age started to hit puberty, everyone's libido was starting to kick into gear, but not mine. I still don't care about sex much at all. In fact, puberty only heightened my desire for romantic and platonic fluffy stuff, which is still the case to this day. So I often joke that my body fucked up, and instead of giving me a sex drive, it just gave me a hug-everything-in-sight drive lmao
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"A long walk off a short cliff" I'll be using this in the future.
Also, agreed.
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I'm so glad you took so much away from this, and I know you'll take even more away from my stories, themselves, once you're able to catch up on them. You'll have to let me know what you think when you do!
Getting comments like yours are why I enjoy writing about these topics.
I'm not asexual, and do enjoy sex, but even with that said, I can confidently say that physical intimacy through cuddling with someone I deeply care about is better than sex to me. Even when sex is involved, the subtler intimacy always comes after.
I think it's disgusting that our society, the US in-particular, almost idolizes violence, but stigmatizes certain forms or expressions of affection and love. Slashers, games based around war, etc are marketed to hundreds of millions of people every day, but if I want to have a relationship with another man, or want to simply hold my younger brother or sister while we watch cartoons, that's automatically shunned or fear mongered as a sexual relationship (respectively)?
Frankly, fuck that. We have our priorities backwards as a society.
I really hope you and your boyfriend have a fun time! I'm glad you've found someone like that. I don't have a boyfriend or girlfriend, but I do have several close friends I'm physically intimate with, and I'm pretty happy.
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Thank you for the best wishes! We will have the time of our lives, I assure you! And I'm glad you have close friends like that, it's a wonderful thing.
I agree with you on the gaming thing for the most part. I mean, I play violent video games, and I'm not effected, but that's because I'm mature enough to not be influenced by it. It still is a problem in the world at large though. Still, me and my friends like to dick around in GTA and be all like "HAHA fast car shoot pew explode derrrrrr!" lmao
Personally, and this is a very specific personal gripe, I hate how sexual violence especially is glossed over by people, and in many cases, accepted and defended. While it wasn't the main focus of the class, taking a Gender Studies course this semester shed light on that for me, and it scared me. Not because it exists, but because society is not in unanimous disagreement with it and we fail to hold people accountable. It's not in our nature as humans to want to senselessly hurt one another and to take pleasure in other's pain, and I hate to see this kind of stuff treated as okay, especially when, like you said, showing love is considered weak or immature.
Just love people. No matter if it's hugging them, kissing them, cuddling, having sex if it's your partner, tickling them silly... all of it at once, I dunno. Just care for people and make them happy, make them smile and laugh, and give them that warm feeling inside that we all want and need. Cherish those you hold dear, and make sure they know damn well that they are loved. There's already enough negativity and bad people in this world, lets try to spread some wholesome positivity and the message of loving your fellow poni- err, people. Hence, I have a feeling my stories (whenever I write some) will follow a theme like yours.
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Oh, I'm not trying to say video games beget violence, just that it's insulting that violence is idolized while love is stigmatized. It should be the opposite, I think, and the contrast of tolerance between them, itself is insulting.
I'll be sure to keep an eye out for your stories as well!
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Agreed 100%. And thank you very much!
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I first heard it being used somewhere else, but I can’t seem to remember where.