"There's nothing wrong with wanting to get rid of pain - I just..." 

Her hands fidget a little. 

"I just hope that doesn't mean that the people who genuinely want to avoid pain aren't avoiding getting out of that, too. I've tried Udi minting and... If I focus I can get maybe half the OTC income that you get from the standard rate? That can be exhausting in itself but... It's not inherently painful to hope." 

"Well yeah duh. 't's good to be freer to do whatever and get away from shit you don't want, and income diversity is good - though Udi mintin' isn't exactly the most reliable income stream, you know? Plausibly you get the whole series of complaints about having to deal with it being more painful then the advantage, though I don't super duper buy that." 
She shrugs. 

She lets out a vaguely discontented sigh. 

"That rather is the conundrum...There's a number of plausible fixes on the wider level such as altering the Udi model to pure commission and wide dispersal for ease of use, but I can't say that I expect any solution to be especially satisfactory across the board - including 'let the market decide' one the OTC so loves." 

There's a number of nods across the room. 

She smiles a little excitedly. 
"I hope you don't mind if I change the topic to something a bit more... exciting~?" 
She bounces in her chair a little. 
"I'd love to hear about everyone's favourite flavours and macros, especially ones they want to show and tell over~!"  

"My favourite is 159 - Constricting Collar. The way it's spread out bluntly combined with how it fits and just... feels to have that extra layer of sensation on my neck is wonderful. It's also nice in that you can use it to augment the feeling of actually wearing one with the stronger tight feeling without actually fitting badly around your neck, you know? I find it works best at around naught point 2 Takkar, though I started way lower and there's definitely a lot of fun to be had if you crank it up." 

She shifts in her seat a little, a tiny ripple moving through her hair as she lets out a barely audible pleased sigh. 

"Nice." 

"Have a lotta favs, of course, but 'll mention a softer one - 59 fucked raw. I really like the way that you can give yourself... almost this simulation of the satisfaction of a night beneath the sheets with the way it can get your sex feeling rubbed raw, your muscles with that warm strain and those little edges of bruise-pain across the lips 'nd such." 

"It's a touch hard to list them in any particular order but I like..." 
She pauses. 
"507 chill touch for that shivering edge, 772 pulsing need for hopefully obvious reasons, 551 Dancer's dream for how tall and graceful it feels, and 185 Aureola's Caress." 
She purses her lips. 
"It can be impressive how low you can go for some of those without making the feeling totally irrelevant - I've gone as low as 0.01 Takkar and gotten value out of it - sometimes you just need something to feel in a respect, and your sense of pain can sometimes be just as good as your sense of touch, to enjoy." 

"I guess we're round tabling, then!" 

She lets out a soft sigh, and adjusts the way that her shirt fits on her chest. 

"There's so much to love! I really appreciate the phantom art ones - I think they've filled up the 1300s - the feeling of having wings of pain, or a tail or even just trying out the way that new hair feels on my scalp and against my neck can be really fun! It's impressive how divergent that sort of design can get, and how much you can get out of it to just feel good from the way you can have it all at your fingertips. But really..." 

"That's just a start!" 

"I really like a lot of shorter ones that give you that warm feeling you get from a burst of affection - the feeling of a talon lightly sliding across your neck or a little affectionate pinch or something like that. You don't need it to be extended to be good fun!" 

"And that's just the immediate light ones - there's a lot of fun to be had with the hunger series and the way that it can leave you simmering..." 

"Yeah, Pain is good in 'nd of 'tself, but like..." 

"A lot of the experience of pain tha I like is the way that it leads the horse to water - if there's pain, then it's real is an instinct that's pretty ingrained, in that the point of it is to jostle you into doin' somethin' about it. I'm perfectly capable of fantasizing about tender touches, but when you have the jolt of pain as you picture it's..." 

She shivers.

"Mmph."

She shifts a little in her seat, a slight flush to her cheeks. 

"It's also that the limits are easier to transcend when you can tweak it differently - the physical reality of getting stretched out from a intense session tends to be best avoided, but if you can reimplement the pain seperately you can do it a lot more cleanly and safely, and you can emulate some of the deeper feelings after a simulation, too - I found kinesthetic pain integration really immersive in most of the titles that I've played." 

Blink, blink. 
"Kinesthetic pain integration?"

"It's one of those... 'complete experience' mods that many gamers so love, letting you link your minter up to the gameplay. It's a later addition - considering that the sort of full body pain mapping settings that you would naively implement didn't have much of a market outside of those for more traditional sexual play sims due to the intensity of it or the lack of meaningfulness to the system when dialed back, they got the bright idea to map it to exertion alone. The feedback of an overstretched arm, the build up of the strain from a long battle, or worn feet from a journey, rather then the feedback from the wounds or anything like that. They kept the tunability, of course, but the ability to follow along the struggle of your character is something I personally found fairly powerful, even if there isn't the same sense of stakes you get when you play the more hardcore titles." 

"Oh..." 
She laughs a little. 
"I suppose it can be hard to remember how much it's something that people are out there looking for and developing to facilitate, rather then just something that you hide away in clubs and such, even with everything the OTC does to change norms when they are around." 

"Yeah! Really, it's not even 'knowing where to look' as much as it s knowing to look in the first place, and remembering all the pieces that people can put together. 

"Yep." 

She raises an eyebrow and inclines her head at Ruby as she gestures for her to go on. 

She runs her hand across her face, little dribbles of gold and red sliding across her face as she does. 
"Beyond the obvious 'Ask your partner" shit, I'd say it can be good to look into the 'pain version' of the stuff you already like - even if you don't how the hell Pain bowling or kayaking or synth music or whatever works. There's probably like half a dozen versions of each of them made by a bunch of people with totally different opinions on what that means, their own porn forums and rivalries and cultures, if you care to look."

"Yeah but..." 

"Oh yeah it's totally a bit much, and can be super weird to just dive into, even beyond any barrier to entry concerns." 

"I'd be more inclined to recommend little things like just keeping a note on a computer or Message Board about things that you are curious about exploring - there's a lot of stuff that's this whole new experience layered atop, rather then something more integrated. If you want to dip your toe in, generally it's good to start at minimum settings and increase anything that feels unsatisfying, and look for things that aim to add realism or simple perceptual integration first - you want it to wire into your instincts, not nesscarily create this whole new system." 

"There's listings of the standard ones too, of course, and that can be worth at least searching for." 

"That makes sense, though the default library on a device can be guiding and helpfully small, at times."