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From: LadyCyrrh@aol.com
Subject: The Annex Reviews, 11/30/97
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I'm stretched for space at the end of this week, so I'm going to forego
story reviews in favor of two website reviews I've been working on and
an administrative message from Steven. S. Davis concerning
soc.subculture.bondage-bdsm postings. It was posted about a month
ago on ASSD, but I only came across it only recently. I'm repeating it here
to promote trans-newsgroup harmony and also in case any ASS writers
would like to post to this group.
******************************************
Just a FWIW: soc.subculture.bondage-bdsm, unlike the groups in
the soc.sexuality.* hierarchy (whose names make them instant
magnets for binaries and ads and so require that they be moderated),
is not moderated, though being in a Big * hierarchy gives it an
option to become moderated if that proves necessary, an option
not effectively available to alt.sex.bondage, the newsgroup to
which soc.subculture.bondage-bdsm is the successor group. So far,
a combination of a name that doesn't contain the string "sex" and
ferocious netcopping against the off-charter articles which do
appear has kept the off-charter postings to a manageable level.
There are some stories that appear on SSB (and fiction is expressly
permitted by the charter), though stories are a small percentage
of the postings to SSB (though there are probably more stories
posted to SSB than are now posted to alt.sex.stories.bondage).
The stories, of course, generally feature BDSM or nonconsensual
activities (nonconsensual activities being
accepted in the BDSM community as fiction and fantasy - and
only as fiction and fantasy).
By convention, fiction posted to SSB is expected to be prefaced
with "STORY", since while fiction is allowed both by the charter
and by the ASB traditions which the group inherited, there has
always been a portion of the readership that preferred to be able
to easily killfile or skip stories. Other labeling conventions
are similar to alt.sex.stories, though the author's name is seldom
used in the subject line (reposts by other than the author are rare
and would probably not be well received without a statement in the
text permitting such), and the fact that SSB uses capitalization
to denote the "pitcher" (dominant/top/sadist), not the adult party
(i.e. F/m means that the party in control is a female and the party
being acted upon is male, not that an adult female is interacting
with male minor; FWIW, neither the charter nor any ASB tradition
bars stories involving children, however SSB has become rather
inhospitable to such).
Just a brief overview for anyone who might be considering
posting any fiction to SSB.
The soc.subculture.bondage-bdsm FAQ is available from the WWW at:
http://www.unrealities.com/adult/ssbb/faq.htm
The soc.subculture.bondage-bdsm charter is available at:
http://www.mindspring.com/~frites/charter.htm
Both can be found on the SSB Homepage, the URL of which is:
http://www.phszx81.demon.co.uk/ssb/
The Welcome to ASB, almost all of which applies to SSB,
can be found at:
http://www.mindspring.com/~frites/wel.htm
Steven S. Davis * ssdavis@ot.com * sd@magenta.com *
sdupland@delphi.com
http://links.magenta.com/lmnop/intro.html (go to Kinky page, Users
section)
**************************************************
Website Reviews: The World According to Julie (transgender and gender
issues); Torch's Archives (M/M slash Voyager fiction)
The World According to Julie
http://soong.club.cc.cmu.edu/~julie/index.html
This site is the most delightful aria to gender confusion I've ever seen. It
is run off a university server, so I'm guessing that the creator is a
student...of indeterminate gender, it we can believe what the page says
about him or her. (Oh, the mysteries of cyberspace.) He or she is also an
artist, a vegetarian, a lover of armadillos and wombats, and...oh, what
else? The only thing it needs is some erotic fiction, but I don't let lack of
fiction shoot a page out of being reviewed.
I first came upon this page last summer and I'm happy to say it has
received a facelift since then, with new, crisper graphics and a more
pleasing, less confusing, layout. It was easy to navigate, with the main
material in the center and various departments arranged in horizontal
bars on either side. The meat of the site is contained in the "Gender
Issues" department, which contains some intelligent commentary about
gender roles and has lots of links, both silly and serious, to sites, rings,
and mailing lists dealing with transexuality, bisexuality, women's issues,
and feminism. The "About Me" department is also an interesting soapbox
for the creator's views on this subject. He or she seems to be saying
gender is all a matter of the mind--taking as a symbol rock and roll
singer Annie Lennox, whose butch haircut, suits, and delicate, sexless
beauty bring to mind a photo negative of Grace Jones. (If Annie's ever
mistaken for a guy, it would a very fey one.) The creator also designs T-
shirts; my favorite has clusterfuck of male and female mars-venus
symbols flying off in every direction. Other departments contain fun
links to Mars, Xena, and wombats; info about witches and vegetarianism;
a page of news sources; fractals and tarot cards; Riot Grrl links...and
much, much more. I found these all entertaining, but I suspect the site's
real appeal to readers of this newsgroups its varied and excellent TG
links.
If you're interested in trannie weirdness, check this out.
Interface: A+
Content: A
Will I visit again: Yes.
Website Review: Torch's Archives
http://www.geocities.com/TelevisionCity/2130/warp.html
After reading some slash fiction both in the newsgroups and on the web,
I thought it was time to review a site by a writer of this genre. I picked
Torch's, both for her reputation among slashers (she's very good) and
for the amount of material she keeps on her site.
I've talked about slash fiction before, but to reiterate, it's any media-
oriented fanfic where two heros or heroines of the same gender enjoy a
sexual relationship with each other. Such relationships often include
elements of D/S and B/D; the explicitness of the portrayal ranges from
saucy talk to full-blown erotica. The porn and slash genres cross over to
some extent (evidenced by Mistress Janeway's recent revamp of her
site) but though both contain explicit sex, they portray that sex very
differently. As science fiction writer Pat Cadigan once postulated, porn is
anything that gets you excited, and not necessarily for sex. Instead, it's
the state of me-gimmee-mine craving stimulated by images or ideas of
plenty, as seen, for example, in a TV commercial. Though slash may
contain explicit sex, the me-gimmee-mine isn't focused on it; it's on the
relationship and emotions behind the sex. Thus slash is at its core,
relationship porn. It's noteworthy that 95% of slash writers are female,
and this type of fiction may serve as outlet to express female desires that
are not satisfied by mainstream porn or erotica. The only way to read
slash and gain enjoyment from it is to keep this in mind, otherwise it
collapses into a tipped jello mold of unadulterated silliness. Which the
slashers themselves are well aware of, judging from the amount of
parodies they write.
Back to the website. Torch is a very prolific writer and has split her site
into her X-Files, Star Trek: Voyager, and Vampire Chronicles fanfic, each
archive containing at least two books' worth of stories, many of which
were posted first on various newsgroups. The layout of the site is clean
and readable, with an attractive matching border and button array
(courtesy of MadCow graphics). The site was a little hard to get around in
(there seemed to be no main page) but the concise, Harlequin novel-like
summary blurbs given for each story made up for this. Click on a link,
you go to the story. Some slash writers have taken to only listing the
titles and descriptions of their work, requiring an email to get the actual
story, so Torch's instant access is appreciated.
I don't care for the X files, so instead I perused Airponics Bay, where the
Voyager stories are. Most of them focused on Harry Kim and Tom Paris.
Tom Paris is the cocky, devil-may-care cynical playboy of the series,
whereas Harry Kim is the thoughtful, quiet Asian. There are three story
series about the P/K (Paris/Kim) relationship (The Sonnet Series, The
Playboy Series, and The Legends of the Fall Series), and each may be
considered an alternate universe scenario of how the relationship plays
out. For my review I chose The Playboy Series and two short stories that
dealt with other characters.
First, the short stories. "Rough and Ready" dealt with two males about to
have kinky sex on the USS Voyager, but we don't know who they are, as
the story is told through untagged dialogue. At the end, the participants
are revealed, and it's not who you think it would be. An amusing joke
both for and on slashers. "Screwed and Perfect," also told only in
dialogue, reveals what happens when Voyager second-in-command
wooden Indian Chakotay goes to visit Tom Paris and finds a dildo in his
couch cushions, with some naughty repercussions. Both these stories
were easy to read and probably easier to write, as the characters and
setting were already at hand from repeated viewings of the television
show, with the dialogue easily extrapolated from the show, too. It's like
the verbal play of my friends who duel in improvised Monty Python
dialect with each other: "Know what I mean, know what I mean? Nudge
nudge, wink wink, smirk smirk?"
The Playboy Series was much longer, with eight chapters of about 7000
words each. In the canon of the show Tom and Harry are best friends,
but in Torch's story they take it one step farther, beginning on the
tropical beach of a pleasure-planet resort. The rest of the story deals
with the hesitancies and doubts they have about the growing
relationship. That's it. No time/space anomalies, Jem'hadar attacks,
strange alien diseases, or warp core breaches. They eat, talk about the
relationship, get grilled by their friends about the relationship, have
hot, kinky sex, talk about the relationship, swap intimacies, visit the
holodeck, talk some more about relationship, swap spit, etc. There was no
way I could picture a man, gay or straight, acting, thinking and talking
like this with another man (or woman), and I loved every minute of it.
The very unreality of it was extremely enjoyable and lent itself well to
the Star Trek world. For example, as one's shipboard duties consist of
little other than running one's fingers across a plastic board, one's job
doesn't interfere with all the interior emoting going on. Likewise,
because there are replicators that reproduce any sort of food on demand,
there's always an opportunity to sit down with one's love and soulfully
discuss things without worrying about buying and preparing food.
There's also a holodeck which can create any physical setting from
gothic bedrooms to forest glades, thus obviating the need to waste
precious story words on travel time. Reading the story was like reading
the literary equivalent of a soap opera where the side characters blandly
chit chat with each other while the main ones agonize in lots of
closeups, and nothing ever happens. If this sounds like I'm being
sarcastic, I am; but I also liked the story a lot, and its campiness was one
of the reasons. The other was its over-the-top depictions of passion and
romance.
To get back to the plot, the main conflict comes from the nature of the
young mens' relationship. It seems Tom is very happy to be a bottom and
Harry, the first one to fall in love, is happy to oblige him. The
bottoming/topping causes problems, however, as the two characters
ponder what it really means in the delicate psychological balance of
trust and friendship they are trying to establish. In this the story works
as a good character study like the finest D/S porn does. However, the
main fault of it--and for all fanfic--is that if you've never seen the show,
you have no idea of who the characters are, where they're at, and what
they're doing, because intimate knowledge of the show is, in effect, the
storyteller's silent partner here. For example, nowhere in this story was
it said that Harry Kim was Korean, or that Beh'lanna was half-Klingon.
It's just assumed we know. Another common shortcoming with slash
fanfic is its treatment of the minor and female characters...they stand on
the sidelines and clap approvingly as the affair unfolds, like they've got
nothing better to do than gossip about their colleagues. But then, this
*is* relationship porn, and the laws of normal earth are suspended
when you check in at the gate.
(As I write this I am picturing the nervous, white-mouse face of the
actor who plays Tom Paris in my mind, and now I picture the Chinese
gymnast build--complete with hamlike upper arms--of Garret Wang,
who plays Harry Kim. I can't see the two having sex. I just can't. I can't
even picture them without their doubleknit jumpsuits on. I see two Ken
dolls. Torch was very smart to leave detailed physical descriptions out of
the story...it helps enhance the fantasy.)
I liked the sex in these stories, but was surprisingly androgynous. I've
read a lot of gay stories written by gay men, and the feel is entirely
different. If you changed Tom to Tina and substituted pussy for asshole
and clit or labia for cock, you'd have het sex. This isn't to say the sex
wasn't hot or unbelievable, but to me it seemed more like a female
gender-swapped fantasy than something a gay man might write (though
a gay man might *want* to have sex like this.) However, it is clear Torch
did her homework in the sex department as far as part A goes in slot B,
even though the characters always having lubricant at hand was a little
unbelievable. Most gay fantasies don't mention lubricant at all. (Saliva is
always available if you're caught in a pinch.) And I've never seen the
terms finger-fuck and deepthroat occur in gay fiction either--those
seem to be het terms-- and the orgasms read suspiciously female as well.
But, as the purpose of slash is to titillate female gonads rather than male
ones, these shortcomings are part and parcel of the genre. If any woman
tried to have sex in the real world with a real man like this, chances are
he'd give you a very strange look, then run. Sigh.
The site also has a rich array of Vampire Chronicles fanfic based on the
works of Anne Rice. By the peeks I took, it's high quality slash also. The
highlight is the multipart "All my Vampires" a Rice/soap opera spoof
that appeared sporadically on the alt.books. anne.rice newsgroup last
spring. It proves slashers have the wit and grace to make fun of
themselves. There are also many other stories about Lestat, Pandora,
Mael, Jessie, and Santino in this site, so if you're a fan of Rice fanfic,
take
note. In addition to the three main archives there's a smaller one called
"Snippets" that serves as a repository for Torch's fiction fragments,
many of them originally posted to newsgroups. I could write another
whole review on newsgroup and shared-universe fanfic. I really wonder
how the author finds the time to write all this stuff. (She may rival Elf
Sternberg in a few years.) But perhaps it isn't surprising considering
fanfic is not that demanding to write. Torch's style is technically sound
and she does write a hot sex scene, so I can't help wondering what would
happen if she turned her talents to some original fiction of her own.
Lastly, this site also has interesting things to say about the slash
community. It's a close knit one, and the authors take an obvious delight
in their work--they bubble over with the innocent enthusiasm of 13-
year-olds who've just discovered the magic of sexual attraction. They
cheekily title Dr. Julian Bashir "Deep Space 9's super slut" and I've seen a
site devoted to Tom Paris pictures, one with a cartoon balloon over his ass
that says "nice butt." It's like these writers are suddenly exploding with
all the preteen pent-up sexual desires that have been whipped out of
them through the "normal" psychosexual socialization of an American
high school. It's a pleasure to witness.
Interface: A-
Content: A+(slash) A-(porn)
Will I visit again: Yes.
I'll be back to reviewing stories next week.
Comments to:
ladycyrrh@aol.com
Website ---> http://members.aol.com/ladycyrrh
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