in this society cuddle puddles are viewed as like unbelievably unreasonably affectionate, an archetype of maximal affectionate touching
i find that really disturbing somehow, because to my affectionado ass cuddlepuddling has always seemed pretty distant, like there’s still more avoiding than touching
in contradiction to the “cuddle” in the name of the touch, “cuddlepuddles” are actually mostly comprised of small contacts between an exterior extension of one partner (head, hand, foot) to a central place on the other partner (chest, belly, thigh, upper arm)
the reason it gets arranged that way is that generally there’s little to no ability to communicate specific touch requests, so new participants in the puddle have to enter by just putting a touch somewhere into the puddle and then watching to see if they’ve just hurt anyone
to actually make it so there’s cuddling to the puddling you’d have to have larger contacts between people next to each other, which is too much to negotiate without richer communication
it goes beyond non-sexual to be actually anti-sexual, it’s still revolving around sex in a way in how potently it’s directed negatively by sex, like intensely avoiding contact with crotches, asses, breasts, thighs, necks-- that’s a lot of the body, so being that rigidly anti-sexual makes the shape of the whole puddle necessarily expand out into this very un-puddle-like spikey spokey thing
but of course it has no self-consciousness as a spikey spokey thing, which could be fine, if you were going for that you’d probably throw in more extending exterior-to-exterior touches like top of the head to top of the head, handholding, touching bottoms of the feet with people facing the other way-- but that would require some negotiation with someone who’s head is far away to establish that touch shape, since you’re doing this thing w’here you guess (wrong, often) whether or not people are enjoying or will enjoy touches, you have to be close enough to anyone’s head that you’re touching that you can look on their face for signs that you’re hurting them
idk i feel like i could talk about it forever but also these thoughts are really disorganized, maybe once i’ve complained for a while i can put together also a more coherent analysis