The Annex Reviews, May 2002
5/30/00 Who Wants to Rule the World (Farleven); The Paramour Island Club Parts 1 and 2 (Goblin King); Liquidity (Adrian Hunter); Website Review: Couture
5/26/02
Lord, I love a good slave story. When done well, they contain all manner of bondage, D/s, bodily modification, and torture situations; there is also considerable emotional drama, exotic settings, and hot sex. Not only that, since slavery doesn't exist in the modern world (mostly) they are a good way for authors to showcase their skills at writing SF, fantasy, or historical fiction. Gay, straight, poly... I love 'em all. So much I am dedicating this bimonthly posting of the Annex Reviews to them. This first story, culled from the ASSGM newsgroup, contains all the above elements, and more. It starts off with a bang: "The most horrible day I ever lived through was the day my life long friend Christopher Worthington was enslaved for life at the age of 22." Awww, what's not to love? The story -- actually more of a long novelette -- is set in a universe slightly skewed from the early 2000s in which slavery has experienced a resurgence as a form of social control. Convicts and debtors are the usual fodder, but parents may enslave their children, too, on the flimsiest of pretexts. That's what happens to the title character. His old man is experiencing financial stress, so strapping young Christopher is yanked out of college and sold to pay the debt... with no hope of reprieve. What follows is an excellent, lovingly detailed fantasy of a new slave's processing and training, told in first person form through the eyes of his friend who witnesses it.
Here the slaves are hogtied and suspended on meat hooks, moving
slowly along an assembly line of sorts:
The tone is typical of the rest of the story and makes for compelling reading. Just as I thought the author couldn't top the abjection and humiliation that came before he does... the hapless slaves are given new names (Knob, Wags, Doodles, Slit) shaved and forced to wear funny hats ("For a moment all I could do was stare at his totally shaved bald head... his goofy cone hat, his dazed and frightened look. He frightened me.") exhibited on the internet ("A lot of gals find the regularly updated pics of the naked slave's burgeoning muscles to be real hot frigging material") greased ("Todd," he asked, "would you like to help oil up your friend's backside?") and even used as... well, convenient plumbing fixtures. Everything is narrated in frighteningly plausible and realistic detail, especially the reactions of the bureaucrats who staff the slave center. (A very sly eye for satire, there.) In fact, save for the overenthusiasm (and the mentions of male-male spanking and the ultimate belled-and-harnessed humiliation that comes at the very end) the story could have been pure SF. And yet. Despite its detail and inventiveness, and its wish to be an actual story with character development and not an extended fantasy, the piece failed on some level for me. The problem was with the narrator, who seemed to be in the story only for purposes of detailing what happens to the victim. Although the author was careful to explain he tagged along in order to comfort his friend, not leer and jeer as the victim's hostile brothers do (another pair of plot devices) I didn't buy it. Seriously, if *I* was going to be enslaved, I wouldn't want witnesses, and especially not my best friend. It would have made way more sense for the narrator to have been dragged along out of parental threat: See Sonny, this is what happens if you piss me off. Along similar lines it would have been more dramatic for the victim's enslavement to be punishment; I could see both him and the narrator being involved in antislave activities, giving what transpires an ugly, ironic twist. The narrator's later change of heart towards his friend rings all the more hollow for lack of a grand scheme of this sort, though it genuinely surprised me. But since the narrator had no strong feelings about the practice of slavery beforehand, his realization seemed to have been thrown in there merely to give a tidy conclusion to things. Some drama was gained in the middle when the slave begs the narrator to help him escape, but overall, I think the author seriously fumbled the ball. Quibbles aside though, this was really an excellent read, with some unforgettable visual images that stayed with me long after the story was finished. I especially recommend it for slash fans who are turned on by kinky stuff.
A Middle Class Slave [A]
This story, the first chapter of a longer series, deals with the same
themes, but with more spontaneity. American society has crashed
because of rampant inflation and unemployment, so President Shelley
has reinstituted the practice of slavery for the 15% of the population
with "no jobs, no income, and no hope." The young (again, a 22-year-
old) narrator is our window into the social changes wrought by this
development, especially when he takes a trip to the south and befriends
a slave tennis partner at an upscale hotel:
Foreshadowing, no? But this time it's the narrator who's enslaved rather than his friend... in a time of strict sexual morality he knocks up a cheerleader, and pays the price when he goes on trial for sexual assault. As in the previous story the sentence of slavery is lifelong and without reprieve, the slaves sold and re-sold under a series of registration numbers so their real identities are forever lost. This is a very good start for a longer series told in a colloquial and personal tone. It didn't have the awesome level of detail of the story above, but promised more adventure and less contrivance.
Slave Girl Convict [A]
Females receive the slave treatment in this story, which was much more
cruel and brutal than the previous two... no piquant shave-and-oil
humiliations here. (I guess it's because it's traditional for women to be
terrorized, or something.) Again, it's a near-future world skewed from
our own. Female criminals are enslaved, chained, sexually assaulted, and
sentenced to judgment on national TV... where they must perform
(think strip club/sleazy peep show) for the viewers' pleasure, their
lives literally depending on the quality of the act. If viewers judge them
lacking, they are executed on-camera in creative ways:
There's sly satire in this piece too, considering the show is sponsored by Magic Moments vibrators. This was a very intense story, and hard to read in some places, but the narrative voice made up for it. The victim's mixture of fear, defiance, and turn-on by her predicament was well handled, something you don't see too often in fiction of this sort.
My Brand of Slave [B+]
This was one of those abbreviated "you" stories where the reader role- plays the part of the narrator's love object. In this case, the you- character has been instructed to truss herself up in a hotel room with a suitcase full of toys as part of a mutual D/s contract with the story's Dom narrator. (How she does so alone is not explained.) The narrator then sticks a vibrator in her ass, paddles her hard and long, then brands her on the side as a member of his 'herd.' "You have read all the stories I sent you and acknowledge that I might, at anytime, do anything contained in those stories to you?" he warns dramatically. Boy, slave contracts are a bitch. The story set out to do what it wanted to do, but was slightly too bloody for my taste. Ass-whoopings, yes; blood pouring down your butt, no.
Fate's Design, Parts I and II [A-]
Here we have a kinder, gentler slave fic, discovered when I was searching out material for my upcoming essay on boyband fanfic. I was going to save it for then, but it fit so neatly into this months' theme, I couldn't resist. The story is about the members of N'Sync, rising stars in the current fanfic scene. Hundreds of websites and thousands of stories are out there, most dealing with the members' struggles with fame and fortune, their sexual relationships with each other, or dramatic events like kidnappings and drug and alcohol addiction. This story was unusual in that it featured the boyband members transported to a fantasy world, where three of them are slaves of the other two.
As usual for alternate universe fanfic the fantasy world is not detailed,
though it's vaguely Middle Eastern by the name (Kismet.) In these two
chapters Master Lance sends slave Christopher on an errand to the
auction where he buys green slave Justin and brings him home. There
the shy Justin meets a veritable harem of other boys, most of whom
have little to do except lay around and bathe each other all day. Lance
takes care to be thought of as a kind master, but he's not above using his
charges as fuck-toys, in the sort of semi D/s fuck scene so beloved by
fanfic writers:
"Yes, Sir. I..." Christopher pressed back against Joshua as he tensed and
came in the warm water of the tub.
"Such a good boy." Joshua licked the base of Christopher's neck as he
gave a few final thrusts and let himself go inside of Christopher. "So
good."
The awkwardness of that last paragraph comes about as a result of the author's "vizzy" style (vizzy=visual) where a story is told as if watched on a TV screen, not experienced by one's characters. In severe cases this leads to epithetitis, or the practice of using multiple story tags for one character: Justin, younger man, blonde boy, etc, which makes it seem as if there are six characters in the room instead of two. Despite slash fans' educational outreach in writing matters the trait still persists, and it drives me crazy. That aside, I enjoyed reading the story anyway; the slightness of it was a nice change from more brutal fare. However, I found it hard to picture the members of N'Sync acting this way, or even picturing them in sexual situations at all. My ideals of male beauty date from the late 80s and early 90s -- sinewy striplings like the young Michael Hutchence and Chris Cornell -- or modern pop Latinos like Tommy Torres and Shalim. The members of N'Sync look like they should all be spinning a pizza somewhere... too frat-boy-pushing-30 for my taste, and at least 60 collective pounds too heavy. Sure, they can dance. But I'd think younger, cuter groups like MDO and Uff would have more appeal. Well, to each his or her own. The story worked fine for me when I divorced the underdescribed characters from their real-life counterparts. You might want to do the same.... or not.
5/30/02
My reviews of slave fic continue in this story and the two others that follow.
A mysterious man trails two fresh young college coeds on a shopping
trip. Feigning a fall, he injects one, then the other, with nanobyte
machines that take over their minds. When they wake up from strange
dreams later that night they find they have already been transported to
the Master's lair, where first one, then the other, go into a lustful
frenzy and have unbridled yet rather conventional sex with him. We
learn later their fate is to be turned into sex slaves for sale to the
highest bidder, their bodies transformed into porn-star perfection:
Surprisingly, neither coed is too upset at this turn of events. With a bod like that, I might not be too upset either. The chapter ends with two investigators from the Special Affairs Bureau ("the last refuge for law enforcement") preparing to dive into the case; since one of them is a beautiful bisexual woman, you can bet your bippy she's going to get the same treatment in some later chapter. (The complete version of this story is available on the author's website.) This was a workmanlike mind control story that didn't break any new ground, but what it did, it did very well. The sex scenes were a definite turn-on, and the mingled arousal/shame of the two girls was excellently and sensitively handled. I question, though, why coeds in these stories always seem to be fixated on shopping for 'hot' clothing at the local boutique. Twenty-year-old women can be very stupid and shallow (as anyone who's watched TRL can attest) but c'mon, let's have them think about their classes or world hunger once in a while. The character of the Master was likewise shortchanged -- he was never really described, so we don't know why he inspires such lust. On the other hand, for a story like this, perhaps character development isn't so important... it's the naughty themes and situations that stoke the fire. And for that any puppets will suffice.
The Paramour Island Club, Parts 1 and 2 [B]
Fourteen-year-old Julie runs away from home to attend a cheerleading camp in Southwest Texas and winds up in a heap o' trouble; the camp is a front run by Brad and Joanna, a couple with a taste for sweet young things, whom they kidnap and ship to their island resort to serve as underage sex slaves. Joanna tries the kid out herself, her gentle lovemaking peppered by platitudes like "Sex is a beautiful and exciting thing, and that it can be very enjoyable" and "Masturbation is a normal, natural part of your sexuality." I guess being a sex slave isn't as bad as it's been made out to be. This was an interesting idea (and unfortunately, one that the writer or poster may be busted for, under internet child porn laws) but, as with the story above, the character of the girl was more than a little cliched. To begin with, what teen would defy her parents and run away from home to attend a (square) cheerleading camp? These days she'd be more likely to split to follow the Blink182 tour. Also problematic was sexual vocabulary that switched from the naive "My date for the eighth grade dance played with my boobies" to the sophisticated "I want you to put your fingers back into my pussy and fuck me with them until I cum" which is the sort of phrase most young teens wouldn't know unless they're regular consumers of explicit commercial porn. In sum, could have been better.
Liquidity [A]
A pair of insectoid aliens slumming on Earth crashes "a fantasy-
fulfillment ritual that was traditionally held between the autumn
equinox and the winter solstice" -- otherwise known as Halloween -- in
search of human females for their nefarious plans. Such plans include
keeping the females for their 'silk' which we later understand to be
their vaginal secretions, and which the aliens consider a euphoric
drug. The two are amused by one partygoer's provocative dress:
The aliens decide she is to be their next victim, in part because she has been packaged for transport so neatly. This story was humorous, slightly squicky, and definately needed a second reading to catch all the jokes, which poked fun at BDSM fetishists as well as science fiction tropes. I would only suggest that it needs a sequel about what happens when the victim wakes up and becomes fully aware of her plight.
Click here to read Website Review: Couture
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