People are always sending me porn, sometimes to harass and annoy (it doesn’t work), and sometimes because they think I’ll appreciate it. I suppose I’m unusual because much of the porn I get in my mailbox features cephalopods, and over the years I’ve become something of a connoisseur of cephalopod porn…and I’m sorry to say that 99% of it is crap, expressing a total lack of comprehension of why cephalopods have sensual appeal. I’ve put a couple of examples below the fold, and I’ll try to explain why they are so bad.
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First of all, fake, unrealistic octopuses photoshopped into the image? For shame. These are the unique focus of the photograph, and if you’re going to do them badly, you might as well not do them at all.
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Everyone who knows anything about cephalopods (and the only people who will be interested in these images will know cephalopods) has one thought in their minds when they see these: BEAKS. Is this a bizarre example of castration porn?
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Please, please stop using cephalopods as elaborate fig leaves. I’ve seen so many photos of nude vertebrates where the artist simply slaps a squid over a primary or secondary sexual characteristic to add a little exotic mystery.
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The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife has been done to death. Try to show a little creativity and imagination.
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Try to respect the erotic properties of the mollusc that make it an interesting subject for porn: texture. It’s the wet slickness, the velvety softness, the muscular rubberiness* that fascinate. I suspect it’s hard to capture in crudely representational figures, and should be more a subject of abstract art.
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The other central feature of the cephalopod are the tentacles, and they’ve been ruined by bad Japanese cartoons, which seem to be entirely by and for teenaged boys who see everything as an extension of their penis. Bad hentai has tentacles erupting and thrusting everywhere, and it’s wrong. Tentacles don’t thrust, they insinuate. They grasp, they fondle. Tentacles are not a penis analogue, but an exotic combination of fingers and tongues. Hokusai got it right, but everything since has been downhill. I see tentacle dildos, I see someone who has missed the point.
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You know that some cephalopods, in addition to beaks, have sharp, saw-edged, pointy hooks in their tentacles, right? Another feature poorly explored in cephaloporn is the contrast: smooth silky softness combined with deadly predatory razors, like a vulva lined with fishhooks. Use it, people! Good erotic art has tension as well as suppliance.
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Cephalopod porn should be all about beauty and strangeness. Yet all I see is an attempt to splat some grossness on a familiar vertebrate subject.
So next time any of you feel the urge to throw some cephalopod-themed pornography over my transom, keep in mind that I’m a man of wealth and taste, I’ve been around for a long, long year, and I have certain refined standards. I expect quality and I expect some appreciation of the nature of the organism.
*Although nothing beats a sea slug for that vulval feel, I’m afraid. Mmmm, Aplysia, if you weren’t so cold, I’d…ahem.
56 comments
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Rev. BigDumbChimp
5 January 2012 at 2:14 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
No beak please
neleabels
5 January 2012 at 2:15 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
This is one of the weirdest blog posts I have read for a very long time. Yet, I feel something like a confused feeling of being vaguely enlighted… :)
Glen Davidson
5 January 2012 at 2:16 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Could just skip the anthropomorphizing/bestiality tendencies as well.
Mostly I find humans, well, women, sensuous. Not exclusively, but any other animal is a distant placer at best.
Glen Davidson
Dave, the Kwisatz Haderach
5 January 2012 at 2:18 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Send some of this cephaloporn to Santorum. Maybe if he gets enough in his inbox, we’ll be treated to a rant about the terrible temptations of squidly sex.
piero
5 January 2012 at 2:22 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Don’t let the tongue-in-vulva tone mislead you. It’s just tongue-in-cheek.
F
5 January 2012 at 2:27 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Sea slugs? Hmmm. Glaucus.
forjo
5 January 2012 at 2:29 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Okay, so maybe there is something out there weirder than Eraserhead.
'Tis Himself, OM.
5 January 2012 at 2:35 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I can think of worse hobbies.
michaeld
5 January 2012 at 2:36 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
And for anyone (1% of you maybe) who doesn’t know part of the reason for the tentacle in japanese pornography is the censorship rules require genetals to be blurred. But a tentacle is A ok.
Brownian
5 January 2012 at 2:43 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Message received, loud ‘n’ clear, sir.
[Subscribes PZ to puRRRfectporn.com, the internet's premier site for cat-themed erotica and porn.]
Ragutis
5 January 2012 at 2:54 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Um, yeah… I avoid oral sex with beaked creatures. I’ve learned my lesson.
Oops! Did I type that out loud?
Moggie
5 January 2012 at 3:07 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Yeah, thanks so much for a mental image worse than the vagina dentata. Makes me glad I’m a vulva-avoider.
Vicki
5 January 2012 at 3:08 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Pleased to meet you.
generallerong
5 January 2012 at 3:14 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Hm. When I think of sea slugs, I think of recycled nematocysts and acid secretion. Ow.
Or maybe I’m just not hanging with the right nudibranch crowd.
Marcus Ranum
5 January 2012 at 3:14 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
As the photographer who shot one of the stock images that was used to produce one of the images you’re commenting on, let me say – I completely agree. :) The model in image #2 (with the smokin’ octopus on her) and I are both fans. So…
Rip Steakface
5 January 2012 at 3:16 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I hope you guess his name.
Irene Delse
5 January 2012 at 3:18 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
PZ, on tasteful cephaloporn:
Hmmm… Like something out of H.R. Giger. Or Clive Barker’s “Tortured Souls”. (Caveat for those who haven’t yet come across that stuff: not something to Image Google on an empty stomach.)
In a more “cute” vein, PZ, I hope you know the webcomic Love and Tentacles? ;-)
GodotIsWaiting4U
5 January 2012 at 3:34 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lwfu1ilVXZ1qcwhkeo1_400.gif
Random Mutant
5 January 2012 at 3:42 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I now fully expect PZ to post a follow-up with examples of quality cephaloporn and await the post with great interest. Because, y’know, well, just Because.
evader
5 January 2012 at 4:14 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
It’s harder to find a more enjoyable morning read than Ol Pharyngula, I tells ya.
Regarding the ‘tentacle rape’ subject, I read in a comment section in youtube (yes, I know…) that the tentacle rape is kind of symbology for living in Japan and being subject to nature and the wrath of the sea(?)
The video I believe was DIFFERENT SENSE by DIR EN GREY.
feralboy12
5 January 2012 at 4:28 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Sunday Cephaloporn?
Hatchetfish
5 January 2012 at 4:33 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I just can’t help hearing “over the years I’ve become something of a connoisseur of cephalopod porn” in Jean Shepherd’s voice, and then picturing Ralph’s facial expression as he spits the Lifebuoy out at “and [...] 99% of it is crap”.
Cuttlefish
5 January 2012 at 4:46 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
The sexiest thing about a cephalopod is its intelligence.
Present company excepted, of course.
anuran
5 January 2012 at 5:16 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I miss Ghastly’s Ghastly Comic
w00dview
5 January 2012 at 5:35 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
When you mention beaks and tentacle suckers armed with hooks, I imagine realistic cephaloporn would be really extreme BDSM.
F
5 January 2012 at 5:39 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Exciting, isn’t it?
Gregory Greenwood
5 January 2012 at 5:40 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Where is the cephalopod-friendly porn, I ask you? All these fake, photoshopped tentacles and unrealistic mantle proportions, does nobody care about the body-image issues of young molluscs?
EvoMonkey
5 January 2012 at 5:46 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
PZ, I had the envious job while an undergrad of eliciting a siphon/gill withdrawal reflex in many Aplysia 10 times a day for many months in a neurophysiology lab. I never thought of Aplysia as vulval; they always seemed like a huge slimy wriggling livers to me (more hepatic than vulval). Having my hands constantly submerged in 15° C seawater was not erotic in anyway. It was a very good experience since I could study during the intertrial intervals and it spurred me on to go to grad school, but perpetually cold pruny fingers was definitely the downside. Occasionally being inked and slimed with opaline was another downside. That job, however, engendered a strong appreciation and love (maybe not quite so erotic as your post) of invertebrates and invertebrate neurobiology.
ccfoo242
5 January 2012 at 6:06 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Hey do you mind putting the pics below the fold next time? That was an awkward moment at the office today…hehe…
No One
5 January 2012 at 6:30 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
PZ… a while back I sent you a pic of a Florida Sea Hare. I hope you enjoyed it…
Ermine
5 January 2012 at 6:46 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Was it just yesterday that we had yet another person complaining that there wasn’t enough cephalopod goodness for them here?
Heheh! How’s that now? Satisfied? *snicker*
Dr. Audley Z. Darkheart, liar and scoundrel
5 January 2012 at 6:48 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Damn.
That was kinda hot, PZ.
ambulocetacean
5 January 2012 at 7:43 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Yah, really. It’s about as appealing a prospect as having a piranha or a Tasmanian devil hanging off the end of one’s todger.
Trebuchet
5 January 2012 at 8:19 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Conservapedia already has an “Atheism and Bestiality” article; you can expect this post to show up soon as proof that all atheists love them some squid.
No, I’m not going to link to it; I refuse to give them more hits.
ilyasmukh
5 January 2012 at 8:59 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Great post! But why do I read it in Professor Zoidberg’s voice?
pacal
5 January 2012 at 9:16 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
The first picture made me laugh. It was just so GAY!!!
allie
5 January 2012 at 9:24 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Because PZ stands for Professor Zoidberg. We’re just pre-horrible experiment that went awry and turned him into an unaging cephalopod.
Ermine
5 January 2012 at 9:42 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Pacal..
You’re not going to go very far here using that epithet. I would highly recommend you think of something that isn’t a homophobic slur – or was it your intent to make yourself look like an idiot?
I’d like to think it was meant as a joke, but I just can’t see that, since you haven’t included any sort of punchline that might have made sense of what you actually said. Not cool!
Azkyroth
5 January 2012 at 10:27 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I am sure homophobia is the only reason someone could associate a picture of a naked muscular man ostensibly being pleasured by an octopus with “gayness.”
magistramarla
6 January 2012 at 12:04 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Brownian @ #10 –
Tee heh hee! Perfect thing for PZ!
Happiestsadist
6 January 2012 at 1:04 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
You’re weird, PZ. And I like that.
Pacal: Dude, is there something wrong with you? Like, really wrong?
caekslice
6 January 2012 at 2:16 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
The sad part is you can be assured these comics are almost exclusively written by, and for, adult men.
Stacy
6 January 2012 at 4:45 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Damn.
I checked. And was so disappointed when there was nothing there.
(P.S. I kinda like that first picture.)
sawells
6 January 2012 at 5:41 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
This post went way past Too Much Information, PZ, I now know things about your mind which I can never un-know. It is as if Cthulhu had written a letter to Penthouse. “Respect the erotic properties of the mollusc”. Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh.
Just to be clear, the above is an expression of love, fear and respect; not a complaint :)
nesetalis
6 January 2012 at 7:16 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
oh man you made me hot.. vagina dentata is my favorite! :D
Irene Delse
6 January 2012 at 8:16 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
caekslice:
Don’t forget there are many women mangaka (creators of Japanese cartoons) and lots more who write tentacles fanfiction.
Forbidden Snowflake
6 January 2012 at 9:54 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
sawells
That’s how the tone came through to me, anyway.
binjabreel
6 January 2012 at 12:31 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
@46:
That’s what I was going to say- I’ve known more than one woman who enjoyed the batshit crazy end of the hentai pool.
naturalcynic
6 January 2012 at 3:04 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
You have my sympathy, you ol’ devil, you.
Rick Pikul
6 January 2012 at 6:39 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
michaeld says:
You mean except for the little problem of Japanese pornography being just as tentacle heavy starting at least a couple centuries before those 20th century[1] laws were enacted.
[1] To cover the other myth: They are from the inter-war period, MacArthur had nothing to do with it.
jalyth
6 January 2012 at 8:21 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Pacal said it was Gay, but it didn’t sound like an insult to me. Just stating the obvious that any pics of naked men in our strange American culture are coded gay. Anyway, I laughed at the comment, a little bit.
I really logged in to agree 1000% with Mutant at 19. I am agog with curiosity as to what quality cephaloporn would look like.
Irene Delse
6 January 2012 at 8:30 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
@ jalyth:
Weird. In my eyes, the pic would only have been gay porn if the octopus was a male too.
stuartsmith
7 January 2012 at 9:56 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Apparently, the explanation for the prevalence of tentacles in Japanese works of porn is simple – it’s illegal in Japan to show an erect penis penetrating a woman, but not illegal to show a tentacle doing so.
Midnight Rambler
7 January 2012 at 3:35 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Not porn per se, but this photographer has some good (real) cephalopod shots. You have to be logged in to see the ones with nudity though. Also snakes.
Azuma Hazuki
8 January 2012 at 1:34 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
@46 and 48
Thank you :) Personally while I can’t stand most H art, there’s something about the right kind of tentacle-themed image that reaches in and flips some primal switches somewhere.
Someone I know from high school coined the term “consentacles” to describe this. There’s a surprising amount of that out there, and it was a nice realization to learn it wasn’t all rape and monsters and such.
PZ is right that tentacles don’t thrust, too; they slither, they slide in, they undulate, they curl…in short, they caress. They’re like the best of tongues and fingers side by side. I had forgotten about the beak and didn’t know about the organic razorblades, of course; the ones in my head are always smooth and silky.
And the artist of the character whom I’m using as an avatar apparently doodled one picture of her getting nicely worked over, which was another surprise…Lady Carnelian is apparently kinkier than I thought :)
mari
8 January 2012 at 2:42 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Long-time lurker, slightly embarrassed first-time commenter because I feel the need to tell people who are actually interested in erotic tentacle stuff that there’s a really excellent ebook that came out recently called Whispers in Darkness that has a couple of stories that fit the bill.