The Annex Reviews, February 2000
2/27/00 Dark Damsel II: Betrayals (Echo); Bernadette Unchained, Chapter 1 (Aquillae); Creampie Fluffer (Creampie Eater); Amber in a Box (MrBondskin); All Young Actors Now Must Show Their Cocks (Kemer); Book Review: The Male Body, by Susan Bordo 2/29/00 Help Desk (Chew Toy); The Tickleopps Tourist Attraction (Orestes); Ciphering (Lawdron); Life Cycle of the Kaelen (Artie); A Smart Girl (Orestes); Website Review: The ASSTR Archive
2/27/00
Superhero stories with original characters are hard to find. Sure, there's plenty of Batgirl and X-Men tales out there if you know where to look. But comparatively fewer writers feel compelled to give life to their own creations.
Dark Damsel is one such creation, and seems to have been
modeled on Batgirl, or perhaps one of those 1940s heroines who
always seem to be related to someone in the police force. (Unlike
many superheroines, her undoubtedly tight lycra costume is
never described.) Dark Damsel -- DD -- foils a robbery at the art
museum, putting away several members of the Organization, a
criminal syndicate. This earns her the wrath of its Colleen
O'Brien, its Chairman. The story is also Colleen's, and follows her
humiliation as she is punished for the failed heist by a sanctioned
rape witnessed by her peers on the board, ministered by Royale,
the woman she thought was her closest ally:
Not only that, but the plastic balls have a vibrator unit hidden inside and the whole act is taped, ensuring that Colleen receives unwilling enjoyment from the degradation, and looks like it on camera, too. The whole humiliation episode is one of the best I've seen, as much for the psychological games played as the physical, and is worth any trouble you might have in digging it up. After the rape Colleen is stripped of her title, and Royale decrees that if Colleen fails to capture DD to become her personal sex slave, Royale will demote Colleen to that position to serve in her stead. Needless to say, this makes for an exciting set-up to the rest of the story. Good writing, sexy thrills, catfights, vengeance, humiliation...all anyone could ever want.
Teenage Bernadette sneaks out of the plantation manse one night
to admire the black, nude body of a slave named Ja'Har, who has
been manacled in the barn for punishment. Her combined lust
and skittishness, and Ja'Har's arousal, makes for arousing reading
in itself:
The rest of the encounter shows the same mixture of delicacy and
animal heat. Afterwards, in teenage hopefulness Bernadette frees
the slave from his chains so he can deflower her. But Ja'Har has
other plans. He tricks her and strings her up instead, taking her
virginity, and afterwards notes grimly:
But the author plays yet another trick on us, as Ja'Har frees his victim to act as his guide to the plantation house, which he intends to raid for clothing and supplies for his escape. But both are betrayed and kidnapped by a third party, who I'll keep a surprise. It's only in this last section that I discovered the story was an SF one set on a colony planet, as prior to this it read like the pre-Civil War south. Aside from that nit (if Ja'Har is an alien, he should be delineated as such much earlier in the story) I enjoyed the chapter a lot. A female-centered coming-of-age story, but a deeply sexual one.
Today I learned a new term. It is "Creampie" and refers to a woman's vagina filled with fresh cum. I think it's kind of appealing, ranking up there with "Mr. Willy" for the silliness factor.
The author of this story thinks so, too, because it's all about his
love of creampies and the relationship with his Domme, Nathalie,
who is his main source of them. In the course of their
shenanigans she suggests a special adventure to him:
And they do, and the narrator is supremely satisfied. Although this story was well written, it wasn't as sexy as some bi stories that I've read -- the narrator's tone was a bit too matter of fact. Still, it was an interesting read about one of God's true gifts to dominant women, and if you like the idea of that, you'll like this.
A story like this, with nothing redeeming about it, can make you
feel oddly good. Nothing new, but what there was, was well done.
At a swank party rich dilettante Charles opens a box to reveal the
nude, gagged, and manacled form of Amber, a teenage slave lent
to him by her Master for extra "training." The story's first taut
thrill comes from her shipping label, which has been pinned to
her through the skin of her chest, and after that the sadism
comes fast and furious with the addition of two Asian slave twins
who are to act as maids/keepers to her:
The twins try to give poor Amber relief by loosening her buttplug, but they are found out for it and bound on the stage floor, fated to be pissed on by Charles' snooty guests and shat on by their charge, who is has been hung dangling above them. The use of piss and shit in this story is relatively sophisticated and restrained compared to others I've read, but I warn you, there's a lot of it. Amber is later re-packed in her crate and sent home with a few extra modifications, including a 40 DD chest, about 30 piercings, and a couple of tattoos, as is common for these stories. So why do I like them? For the same reason bored fingers like to pick at drying scabs.
Click here to see Book Review: I'll Take Beefcake
2/29/00
The late, great Chew Toy contributes this brief story, which is told entirely in dialogue.
A confused person (who may be either male or female, there are
no tags) calls a software help desk to solve an email problem. The
exchanges are banal at first -- "What sort of trouble?" "My email
won't work" -- but changes as a spiral-shaped loading cursor
appears on the screen (think Netscap's spinning globe) which
hypnotizes the victim and gets him, as it transpires, in the mood
for some phone sex:
"Yes..."
"Good. Pull your cock out so it sticks straight out in the air for
me. I love to see a hard naked cock poking out in the air. And I
love to watch a guy jack off, knowing that he's thinking about
me. I
want you to come for me soon. Can you do that?" The story ends with the hint this strange power of the technician lets him or her get their way in other areas of life, too. Chew Toy has written a very enjoyable piece here, almost perfect in its brevity and shift from the mundane to the fantastic, and I was a little surprised because the last Chew Toy tale I read didn't impress me much. A big plus to this story is that, aside from the clueless computer user's comment that the technician has a "low, sexy voice" the technician could be either male or female, as could his/her next victim Sasha, as men usually don't compliment other men for their sexy voices, even if they are gay. However, I admit could be wrong about this. Can any gay readers enlighten me? I also humorously suggest the writer adopt "Brokensqueaker" as an email moniker rather than "Wellgnawed." It's a little more evocative.
Two travel agents, Briget and Mark, meet at a conference. Mark specializes in "special" tours of the kinky sort and tells her so (in veiled language) then invites her up to his room. When the door is locked, Briget finds herself naked and bound on the bed, the apprehensive yet willing future victim of one of Mark's clients, who has booked a night to tickle a naked, bound female to the point of hysteria.
This was a fun and very well-written story, and I enjoyed it
immensely. In tone it was soft-core and naughty rather than
explicit, yet the softness somehow made it more kinky than a lot
of hard-core BDSM I've read, because the characters were so
shocked (yet turned on) by their naughtiness. The writer also
comes up with a couple of sexually philosophical passages, such
as this one (Briget is lying trussed on the bed):
The above was the most erotic passage about feet I've ever read. Who knew toenail polish conveyed so much.
The author calls this "a perverse little morality tale." A teenage boy living with his single mom discovers his mother's boyfriend is a recovering pedophile. Oddly, mom doesn't mind one bit. The boyfriend then tells her an old acquaintance of his who is also a pedophile is coming over to visit. No sweat, says mom, asserting her 14-year-old son can handle the sticky situation himself. Right, mom. The conjunction of the two chickenhawks brings out the teen's own budding (gay) sexuality, and he soon winds up seducing his erstwhile "stepfather" who later commits suicide over what he has done. The old acquaintance then turns up to enact a revenge on the boy. The author's ambition was in the right place here -- he was obviously trying for a psychological suspense tale with gay overtones, of the kind Michael Gouda does so well -- but it fell flat in execution. It wasn't the writing that was bad, but the plausibility of it all. What mother would blow off a lover's confession of child molestation, even if the narrator admits "I don't hate my mother: I simply don't give a damn about her. Our relationship is mutual that way?" Some evidence of mental instability should have been shown, or a messy addiction. The story bombed again when the 14-year-old evinces thoughts and behavior that are way too sophisticated for a 14-year-old. At least, show the kid pouring over gay mags, figuring out how such a seduction could be done. He had no absolutely motivation for the act; he doesn't even realize that his sexuality is different. On the other hand, the seduction scene itself was well portrayed, particularly the messy physicality of it (bloody underpants, et. al.) In sum, this was a good idea for a story that was not handled well. If the writing was mediocre, you could blow it off as cheap entertainment. But I think the author meant for it to mean more, and unfortunately, that means more work.
[ NOTE: This story was inspired by a short story by Nikolai Kingsley http://www.very.net/nikolai/ ] In Part 1 of this 4-part series, a husband-and-wife team of planetary explorers set down on Island, a planet whose culture and inhabitants are reminiscent of Polynesia. The natives share a strange symbiosis with the Kaelen, foot-long, gemlike insects with musical calls, and it is this symbiosis the pair intend to investigate. The first two-thirds of the test are devoted to the explorer's preparation and landing on the planet, in language that would make an anthropologist proud. When they are seemingly settled in, however, the couple starts to experience an increasing amount of horniness, which is tied to the presence of the Kaelen. Thus the mystery is set up. Apart from the talk of probes and AIs, story was more like a textbook anthropology case than an SF tale ("...some may decry the intense sexual content of this report. Indeed, many who knew us closely at Survey may find it difficult to believe") but to me it was readable rather than dense. At the end of the first chapter, I felt I knew the explorers as people and wanted to find out how their adventure winds up. But then, I've always liked reading about intepid encounters with strange tribes in those old textbooks.
A well-off college guy at a well-off college hires fellow student Maria to tutor him in algebra. Used to dating WASPs, he doesn't know what to make of her half-Mexican heritage and welfare- class origins. But she is smart, very, very, smart, and passive by nature, so she doesn't resist his boorish frat-boy advances, and serves him sexually in any way he asks without demanding anything for herself. When she asks to move in, he lets her (with the caveat she sleep in the laundry room so his rich blonde dates don't find out) and soon she's doing the housework, handling his finances, cooking, doing all his homework, AND sleeping him with him when he can't get anyone better. The ideal (for the guy) situation continues until he makes the mistake of telling her she must let his friend fuck her in the ass, and pours a can of beer over her head when the act is done.
This treatment pushes her to edge, for when the asshole wakes up
he's tied to the bed, and Maria is tormenting his balls with her
fingers, declaiming:
Smart, very smart indeed. This was one of those "biter bitten" stories, and the class conflict (rich asshole vs. Miss One-step-from-the-ghetto) lent it extra spice. At the end of the story, Maria gloats that not only will she dominate the narrator (his reactions let us know his body will like it, at least) but his WASPy girlfriend Trinity, too. (Is that a real name, or has the author watched "The Matrix" too many times?). Class revenge has never been so sweet. The only thing that kept the story from perfection for me was the revelation that Maria needed a helper to abet her transformation to domme, namely the pal of the narrator's who brutally fucked her in ass, who is revealed to be a secret master of domination himself. This I don't quite get. How nice it would have been for the "Smart Girl" to one-up the narrator by herself. But this was still a very good story.
Click here to read Website Review: The ASSTR Archive
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