The Annex Reviews, July 2003
7/25/03 ~ Fur ~ Tanj's Tale, Parts 1 - 4 (Kittiara); Making the Passage With a Friend (Will A. Sanborne); Birthday Surprise (Divigon); Scaley (Divigon); Herbal Lupine (Narzil Blade); How Coyote Married a Man (Aethan); Sealoque - The Begining (Moon Dragon); DVD Review: Bjork's Greatest Hits, Volumen 1993 - 2003
7/11/03
In reading them I discovered that most pirate stories are, in a sexual sense, about the obvious: jolly, or cruel, or equally jolly and cruel buccaneers capture some poor young (usually female) thing, and have their way with her. The settings range from the golden age of piracy (the 16th - 19th centuries) to the modern and future ages. Sometimes the females are blushing upper-class virgins;, other times, spunky adventurers or spoiled daddy's girls, while the pirates have all the flash and glamour of Hollywood depictions. Rescues are rare: ravishment, often including BDSM and slavery, is the norm. The ravishings may be either romantic or nonconsensual in nature. What more can you ask for from a wily pirate captain? I would also like to note that in these reviews I will begin to add the Message ID of each story (if posted through the newsgroups) so readers can more readily look them up, and I will be leaving off the author's and poster's emails, as it has occurred to me they are far too tempting a target for spambots. If anyone wants to contact the author of a story, they're going to have to reference the original, sorry.
Pirates! [B-/C+]
This story was one of the modern ones with modern pirates. Rich-bitch Jordan goes on a sailboat trip with hunky Bucky (hee hee, nearly wrote hunky Bunky) in the hope he'll deflower her, which she sees as just one more distraction for the terminally bored. Unfortunately Bucky, being rather dim, takes along his younger sister Brianna, who is supremely uncool and unchic, prompting Jordan to invite along Darcy, an even dimmer hunk, in the hopes he'll distract the little busybody. Thus the merry crew sets out. Unfortunately they're soon stopped by pirates, the males are thrown overboard, and the gang rape of the two girls begins. Dark Dreamer is writer who has a large following among those who like non-con and rape tales, but frankly, I don't see where it comes from. The story is well structured and the prose carefully written, but the characters were so unrealistic I felt that, as a reader, my intelligence was being insulted. It's like the writer didn't have a clue what teenagers were like in real life. OK, they're rich, idle teenagers, and thus inhabit something of a fantasy world from the start, but surely their behavior would be more grounded in reality than a poorly written, endlessly droning soap opera. Not that realism is always needed in a sex story, but if it's lacking, the author had damn well better be aware that it's lacking, and proceed forthcomingly into satire or camp, or chock the story so full of other unrealistic elements that the lack of character doesn't matter. This story took itself too damn seriously. Not only were the characters and their machinations unpleasant, but instead of cheering when the "bad" girl gets her comeuppance, I yawned. There's no point to a torture story unless we can empathize with the victim and share vicariously in his or her fate, whether they deserve it or not. And in this story, I didn't empathize, and I didn't care, and reading the whole thing was extremely tedious. Not only that, there's plenty of offensive Latino stereotypes, and some truly stupid plot twists (Jordan fools the Mexican pirates into thinking she's the maid of the gringos by speaking high-school Spanish and wearing an unattractive dress. Yeah, right.) Not recommended unless you like overdetailed rape stories with unrealistic teenagers.
Captain's Whore [A]
This is what a pirate tale should be. A sheltered young lass is captured by a "Ho ho! Me lads" type pirate and brought before him for his inspection. The shredding of clothes, and the shredding of dignity, follows:
"Watch ye tongue lassie or I'll cut it out. Show proper respect for the captain," said he. Stars swirled before my eyes. No one had every struck me before. I would have fallen, but was still held tightly, now thoroughly cowed.
As I was trying to recover, I felt his hand lift my right breast as if to weigh it. "Ye got ample equipment lassie," said he as his other hand began to maul my left breast.
Yes, I'm perfectly aware that if you want to argue realism, the hairy, scabby brigands would be more likely to rape her, then kill her. But it's all tongue in cheek here and meant in good fun, playing off our preconceptions of pirates, and our romantic preconceptions of pirates as well.
The Pirate, Parts 1 and 2 [C]
Pirates go slash in this story, which wasn't labeled as such, but clearly is by the style. It was originally written and posted ten years ago by someone with the name of "Wolfpup."
The male protagonist is the victim of a pirate raid in which his father dies and his mother and sisters are captured. He awakes tied up in the pirate's ship and immediately starts feeling sorry for himself ("He felt his tears flow in grief for his father, and the ship lurched again. He felt his stomach respond, and he vomited onto the floor, next to where he was laying.") That pretty much sets the tone for everything that follows, in which said vomit receives several more mentions before finally being cleaned up. I don't know, is dwelling on vomit really appropriate for a nice slashy sex fantasy? I'd rather be thinking of other body fluids. Anyway, as usual for a pirate story the protagonist is claimed as a slave by the captain:
This speech references an odd combination of personality traits for a pirate -- he's at once melancholy, sympathetic and sadistic, and prone to schoolmarmish lecturing -- and indicates a lack of writing skill on the part of the author. The rest of the story was not very good either. It had the overdetailed yet distant tone of the journeyman slash writer, with a boring style and lots of overwrought tears and sadism that never went anywhere. It read like the author was just tooling around, putting down whatever cliches (such as leashed and collared slaves crawling about on deck) came to his or her mind. I couldn't even figure out how old the protagonist was supposed to be, never mind how he felt about all this. Uninvolving and definitely on the "eh" side of slash.
Pirates of the 22nd Century [A]
This story began in classic mode: the female captive is about to be ravished by the brigands that captured her. In this case, she's naked and tied to the mast of the pirate ship, awaiting the arrival of a savior that never quite manages to save her. Yet in the middle it took a 180-degree turn into something else, when it's revealed the whole thing was a virtual reality setup and the innocent lass is not what she seems. In fact, neither are the two anti-pirates who eventually save her (they're gay, for one thing.) To reveal more would give the story away, but it has something to do with artificial intelligences and those who use them. This was a good, clever writing that played with a nifty science fiction concept and gave it a few extra twists. I do think, however, that it could have been longer -- an action or sex scene in the middle wouldn't have hurt. I would also have liked to read more about the couple at the end, who went off-camera as soon as we were introduced to them. It may be that this do-gooding pair have more stories written about them; if they don't, they should, because they intrigued me that much, and so did their world.
The Oarlock Tier [A-]
This story only mentioned pirates in passing, but it had two of the three necessary ingredients: high seas adventure and a female who's ravished. The protagonist of the story is a pleasure-slave whose owner has tired of her and thrown her to the galley slaves to give them some amusement. She's roundly raped, but when her ship engages in battle she becomes more useful, giving the slaves water and binding their wounds. So useful that when a pirate craft attacks them later on the ship's captain elects to whip her instead of banging his drum to time the slaves' oarstrokes, knowing that they'll row faster to protect her from harm. This was a deliciously cruel concept, and the author seems to have done her homework regarding the historical details of the ship and the slaves (though specifics, like century and geographic area, were not mentioned.) However, the story contained grammatical errors ("covering her with sperms" "to the Warf") and the character of the slave herself was inconsistent -- she's supposed to be a (presumably) Norse shield-maiden versed in battle, yet comes across as a passive victim in the beginning, and she mixes her mythology as well, referencing Norse gods on one hand and Poseidon on the other. Nevertheless I thought this was an interesting and unusual story. You don't see too much galley slave fiction.
A Pirate's Treasure [A+]
Spoonbender has long been one of my favorite writers. He hadn't written much in recent years, and has never created a website to showcase his work. Which is too bad, as he's one of the finest the ASS newsgroups have produced, switching from humor to science fiction to dark, disturbing tales of bondage with ease. What all the stories have in common is a fertile imagination, an attention to detail, and a wonderful sense of pacing and revelation.
Here he takes on the pirate story (though, being posted in 1999, it was not a response to this challenge.) He carefully fits in all the classic elements: an 18th century setting; a charismatic pirate captain; a virginal young thing; and various other females to be raped or abused. Sixteen-year-old Lisa is on her way to meet her betrothed on the Caribbean island of St. Georges when her ship is waylaid by pirates. Her combination of naivete, youth, and forthrightness attracts the notice of the dashing pirate captain ("dressed in a billowing white shirt, gathered tightly around his wrists and waist... his pearl white teeth gleamed in the nut brown of his face.") The other females are divvied up amongst the crew, but young Lisa is kept in reserve. She's tied to a post, stripped, and mercilessly diddled; after having been well heated up she is deposited in the captain's bed. Her reaction to her deflowering is sensitive and perceptive for this kind of story:
She'd heard about them, of course. Many a breathless, giggling gathering in the gloom of her dormitory had been called to speculate endlessly on what they looked like and what they could do. Emily had seen her brother's once when he was peeing and so she was the 'expert' on this matter which was considered to be of vital importance to both her and to all her friends. Emily had said that it was floppy and small and that he had had to hold it or it would spray everywhere. They had all giggled and blushed scarlet in happiness. But they all wondered, in the fastness of their cots, on how it was supposed to fit inside their secret places if it was so floppy that it had to be held.
The Captain's was anything but floppy. It looked hard and mean and menacing as it bobbed between his legs. She could see the ragged slit carved into the plum-coloured pulsating head and, to her innocent mind, it looked both evil and deformed. A true tool of the devil.
The other females don't have it so easy ("Her crotch was a glistening mass of shifting slime which coagulated and dripped to the floor") and neither does Lisa, who eventually has to clean up that glistening mass with her tongue. But on the whole the nastiness is not dwelt on, just mentioned, factually, in passing, giving us a little jolt of cruelty before the story moves on. The females are eventually by the English Royal Navy and the brigands imprisoned, but gossip and rumor follow them around, leading to trouble with Lisa's fiance, the odious Lord Mayverley. Extracting, and getting not a little turned by, the tale of her abuse he visits the prison cell to gloat over the pirates, who are to be executed the next day. But to no one's surprise the pirates ambush him and the captain makes off with Lisa, and the author has made it clear which man she prefers. A noncon tale that is romantic as well as being cruel. Recommended.
Share of Booty [A]
Captain Mesmon is a charismatic pirate known for his nobility of manner ("However, he had a strange code of honor that set him apart from most pirates. He did not slaughter a weakened enemy and, while he would take the valuables and female passengers, he did leave the ships in decent enough shape to return home"); his crew consists of both males and females, all of them devoted to looting and pillaging in a existentialist way ("We're not exactly the most popular people around. Although, if you think of it, we're none the worse than the very governors you serve. We're just honest with how dishonest we are.") When the pirate ship captures an English freighter and the luscious plum Kate -- an adventuress and a bit of a rebel -- she soon finds out how the captains gains such loyal followers -- his hypnotist powers, of course. This was an interesting twist on the subject matter by the author; playful without being too sinister, as mc stories can be. Tongue-in-cheek, too.
Slaves: The Lady and the Pirate of the Sands [A-]
In this story the pirates are desert (land) pirates who capture a caravan of bored English wives who are traveling from Cairo to meet their husbands in Khartoum. It's the Victorian age, and young Ivy Bradford is mortified when, after protesting her treatment like a good Victorian woman would, she is singled out for attention:
With her face pressed into the sand, she could not even scream. Her bare backside was exposed to all the marauding band of supposed rescuers, and, even more degrading than this, all of the ladies who accompanied the column were witness to this shame. Pain filled her entire body as the crop was laid across her buttocks three times. Pulled to her feet by her hair, she gasped for air as she was returned to the line of female captives. Her face was covered with a mixture of the dessert's fine white sand and shame.
Later she's slung across the pirate captain's saddle and secured with a knotted robe that rubs against her privates, causing continual orgasms as she slides back and forth. And as if that wasn't enough, at the pirate camp she's stripped, strung up by her wrists in a tent, and forced to wriggle to the beat of a whip aimed at her feet. This promptly converts her over to the joys of slavehood at the hands of her overwhelmingly handsome and masterful captor. This story combined several genres: pirate, Arab-slave, historical, and D/s, and while it handled them well, it lacked something. Perhaps the protagonist was too much of a strident Victorian moralist, instead of deliciously sobbing out her helplessness or having conflicting feelings like the heroine in the Spoonbender story. Perhaps there should have been some humor, some knowing asides to the reader. Perhaps the heroine's conversion came too quickly. She's strung up and within the space of a few minutes becomes a whimpering sub? Not very likely. Perhaps the whole thing was just too calculated.
7/25/03
As a genre, furry overlaps into both vore (creatures eating each other, with sexual overtones) and transformation (creatures transformed into other creatures, with sexual overtones) with mostly science fiction, fantasy, and supernatural themes. The genre is a tolerant one, with all sexual pairings finding acceptance, if prone at times to cliquishness and polyamorousness. There seems to be a 60/40 split between males and females, with many of the males being gay or bisexual, which is interesting. The subject matter of fur stories truly runs the gamut. As in regular erotica, many stories are simply sexual encounters made more interesting by the fact one partner is a wolf, the other a fox. But other stories strive to be something more, differing little from straight fic except the protags are anthropormophized animals. In many cases the writers try very hard to treat this concept seriously -- which they must, because unlike human sexual encounters, no matter how bizarre, fur encounters are a total fantasy -- and this earnestness and seriousness of tone is one of the genre's great flaws. Often the earnestness becomes belabored, and many stories seem to devolute into something resembling a rewrite of a role playing chat log, which many of them could be. But others are delightful. Here are reviews of some stories I've culled from several sites with a variety of pairings and subject matter.
"Tanj's Tale" is one of the more famous -- or notorious -- fur stories out there, spanning several "books" of many lengthy chapters each. It was originally called "Trouble's Tale" and still may exist in that form on some sites, but the name of the protagonist was changed because of problems with a certain science fiction author.
The story is one of those where fur crossbreeds with bondage and D/s, specifically the slave story, and it's a space opera slave story to boot. But such combinations are common for fur, which pretty much crossbreeds with everything. (Another fur space opera/BDSM tale can be read at Maureen Lycaon's Velan Archive.) Tanj is a cheetah fem, an engineer aboard a junky space transport which has very bad luck: the crew is stranded in a spacedock without a means to pay their moorage, which means they are sold into slavery. Tanj winds up in a coffle headed to a sex-slave training facility where she is subjected to sex deprivation and sleep deprivation, mental conditioning, canings and whippings, various bondage positions, and enforced sex with multiple partners, of multiple species. Despite the heaviness of the scenario it's very lighthearted, very fun, reading like the author wrote it over a long period of time without any literary goal in mind besides a descriptive one. In other words, it's episodic rather then novelistic. Here Tanj completes her "final" in Bondage 101:
I thought the author's voice was fresh and enthusiastic, without the labored seriousness of many fur stories, or the polished seriousness of BDSM ones. Its imagination and humor, in fact, are more reminiscent of a naughty cartoon or furry comic. I liked it, but the stories don't lend themselves to being read in one long draft. By the time I got to the self-bondage scenes in Chapter 3 I was mighty tired. But in small doses the story is very enjoyable and I found myself forgetting the characters were furries after a while, save for the offhand mentions of paws or pelts. A furry, on the other hand, might see those same mentions as keeping the animal nature of the characters in mind. Recommended, even if you don't normally like furry stories, because it is the biggest and best furry space opera slave/bondage story on the net.
Making the Passage With a Friend [A]
If is Kittiara is sprawling, undisciplined, and unpolished as a furotica writer, Will A. Sanborn is the opposite: his stories are very tight, controlled, and comparatively uncomplex. He is the more polished writer, but in fur, and in erotica in general, this isn't always to the advantage of a story, as excess of all kinds is what makes neterotica interesting.
Alfen is a young dingo, or Australian wild dog (once the domesticated pets of the aborigines) making his "walkabout" through the Australian wilderness, a journey familiar to anyone who's read the "The Celestine Prophecy" or seen the great Nicholas Roeg film of the same name. He has his fears and doubts about it, but is able to gain confidence when he kills a wild boar with the aid of a mysterious Dingo fem. Later the two become lovers, bedding down for the night:
Working the garment over his shoulders and down his arms, being very careful of the tender wound there, she soon had him bare to the waist. Running her fingers gently through the white fur of his belly and chest, she giggled as he moaned softly to her touches. Running his hands through her hair once again, playing with the soft, light-brown locks that ran in gentle, flowing waves, he scratched behind one of her ears and smiled back at her.
This was a more simple tale than the Tanj story, as many of this author's fur stories seem to be; he has written at least 50 of them, many of them presenting different sexual encounters between species, such as a man kidnapped by alien wolf fems, or a young mage forced to serve a humanoid dragon. Though all were well done for what they were, particularly the descriptions of the furs, there was something missing in them for me. Perhaps they were too edited and labored over (from his site he also writes for mainstream SF publications) without the individuality of authorial voice that there was, perhaps inadvertently, in the "Tanj" tales and the Divigon stories below. However, this less -- extreme, let's say -- style would be appealing to readers who may not like the more wild or cliquish aspects of furry fandom, such as the rampant polyamory, the cartoonish plotlines, and the in-jokes. What he writes are basically romantic encounter stories with protagonists who are a little bit different, and they are recommended if you like the idea of fur but are unsure of where to start.
Birthday Surprise [B/B-]
Scaley [B+]
In my reading I've found that most fur stories concentrate on animals that can be easily translated to anthropoid terms, those who have entertained us through centuries of legend and myth, and Disney and anime offerings in the modern day. Generally, this means mammals with prehensile limbs like raccoons or squirrels; animals related to those kept as pets, like canids and rabbits; and glamorous predators known for their fur, like snow leopards and tigers. There are a fair amount of serpent, crocodile, and dragon folk represented, and avian ones such as hawks or griffons; horses and unicorns are seen occasionally, but you don't come across anthropomorphized pigs very often, or salamanders, or shrews. This story was unusual in that it featured cetaceans ("phins.")
As with every story featuring fur protags certain liberties must be taken with nature to anthropomorphize them and in many cases these attempts were more interesting to me as a reader than stories themselves. This being a story about cetaceans, the author had a lot of postulating to do, not least of it how these creatures communicate by sonar and have sex in an underwater setting. Alas, the author wasn't quite up to the challenge, and the phins came across more like human beings wearing dolphin masks with pointy fins glued to their backs:
The orca took a step backward in surprise. The sight of a dolphin in a party hat not exactly what he had expected.
"Devon, what the hell do you think you are doing?" he asked gesturing for the phin to enter.
"Just wishing you a happy birthday," said the perpetually grinning dolphin. "Surprised to see me?"
The dolphin put the present on the table then gave the orca a tight hug.
"How you been old boy?" he asked, sliding his hands over the larger mammal's sleek back.
I was mightily mystified by this opening passage, as cetaceans do not have hands and arms, or (later on) shoulders and biceps, as far as I can see. And how the hell can they walk around and sit on a couch if they don't have legs? Or wear a pair of speedos if they don't have hips? I realize, not being into furry fandom myself, that I don't have the right to dictate how furries should "see" themselves when role-playing their respective personas, but if you're going to write a story about it that others might read I suggest you make it clear from the get-go exactly what kind of creature you are, so readers don't get confused. OK?
I don't mean to rag on the author too much, though, because he does try for the unusual and has one hell of an imagination. The creatures were better delineated in another short story he wrote on the same site, "Scaley," where a Terran man is kidnapped by a reptilian alien princess and transformed into a hermaphroditic, mind-controlled, dragonoid bondage slave, complete with lactating teats:
Tom suddenly became aware of a tautness in his chest and his attention was reluctantly drawn away from the scent which held him captive. Looking down he watched his chest swell, pushing out into a definite pair of feminine breast with large nipples made from tiny scales which stuck out proudly before him. For a moment he was strangely happy, then he became aware they were still growing... Finally they stopped, a huge pair of tits protruding form his chest, pulling down on him. He let out another meep of surprised and watched as a dribble of milk ran down the cracks in his scales out of view.
The Hedonism site, on which both these stories were found, seems to specializes in the more extreme sorts of furry tales; one of them, "Baeral Milkmaid" (written by Hedonism himself) features humans enslaved by furries and scalies and reduced to a form of intelligent barnyard animal to give both milk and egg products; there's unbirthing scenes as well -- unbirthing being a comparatively new form of fetish featuring adult organisms climbing back into their mothers' wombs -- and various transformations between humans and animals, even a bit of mind control. You can't get any more wilder than that, can you?
Herbal Lupine [A-]
Kyle and Simon are a gay couple who like to get away from it all at their country cabin on the weekends. On one trip they stop at a country store to pick up extra supplies and spot a mysterious box of tea called Herbal Lupine (a pun on the flower and the Latin word for wolf I suppose.) It's obviously magical because the store manager can't remember putting it there, but the two buy it anyway. Later, when they each brew a cup on a moonlit night, its effects become known: "They pressed their eager muzzles together, tilting them, licking and nibbling one another's faces; slipping their long canine tongues into each others' mouths and across sharp new teeth... They could smell the closeness of their bodies, the warmth of their mate's fur, the strength in their shoulders, arms and chest."
Compared to the phin fantasy the story was a more successful handling of the various permutations between (gay) human and wild animal, and how each of those stages experiences its sexuality. Most of the story was, in fact, taken up with these permutations, so it couldn't be said to be much of a story. But the writing was detailed enough to be interesting, if overearnest in the way I have found many fur fics to be. When the two have changed completely,
Awww, what a *happy* ending!
How Coyote Married a Man [A+]
This was one of best fur stories I've read. Not surprising as Native American myth contains all sorts of references to supernatural sentient animals, as well as a dreamtime past when all humans had some qualities of animal in them. These myths are custom-made for fur.
This story read so smoothly and completely like one of those myths it almost could have come from a book of them; the author did an outstanding job of capturing the tone, subject matter, and even the crazy sense of humor. He or she must have studied those myths very closely to come up with a pastiche like this. Coyote is the trickster of Native American myth, a godlike being nonetheless prone to the venal human emotions of pride and greed. Wanting to have a tribal feast in his honor (for he likes food and is always hungry) he spies upon an Indian brave, Proud Elk, who has been refusing the suit of the young women of his village. Wanting to take him down a peg or two Coyote disguises himself as a maiden named Laughing Fox to seduce him; Proud Elk, being closeted and not realizing it, falls for the "princess" hook, line and sinker. Apparently his people lack good sex education, for he doesn't realize Coyote is male even after their wedding night:
"Oh, uh...much the same as you," Coyote said with a nervous grin. He stroked his paw along the large shaft in his hand. "Only smaller."
"Show me!" Proud Elk commanded, lust in his eyes. Coyote meekly obeyed, stripping out of everything. Proud Elk was fascinated. "Why you're just like a man!" Coyote blushed. "I'm pleased," said Proud Elk, drawing him closer.
Coyote succumbed to his "husband's" caresses, his back arching when Proud Elk's hands slid down to caress his buttocks. Almost involuntarily, Coyote began to kiss and lick at Proud Elk's throat. Some part of his mind kept insisting, "Just to make the trick better!"
Mistaken-identity hilarity ensues, as well as realization from both characters that they enjoyed the encounter. Later the story develops truly touching qualities as the two fall in love, the promiscuous, bisexual, immortal Coyote realizing eventually he's unsuited to life with the mortal brave. This was very good story for both its pastiche qualities and its human ones; it tried to be something more than a furry encounter, something greater. After reading it, though, I'm still not sure if the tale is an actual one or not... perhaps, at one time, passed around by the elders of the tribe after the kids had gone to bed.
Sealoque - The Beginning [B-]
Sometimes you find fur -- or in this case, scale -- in the strangest places. This was found on an author's site who as far as I know is not affiliated with any of the fur ones. It's the first part of a longer novel about two weredragons, Sealoque and Neila, lovers who can take on human form, and their modern-day battle against Blakfyre, an evil druid. It read very much like a legitimate fantasy novel, one that perhaps the writer had been workshopping for a while, a supernatural urban fantasy with touches of mystery, romance, mythical creatures, bid a' wee Irish and Celtic themes, and suspense. This sounds like a sure fire recipe for commercial success, but the author couldn't leave things alone and inserted a number of gratuitous sex scenes:
"Mmmm! Ooh yeah," she moaned, "I want ye to make me cum baby. I'm almost there. Do it baby, do it for me. Make me... Ungh, ungh! Aaaaaaaaah!"
As her pussy began to spasm wildly, Neila wailed out her climax and her thighs locked around the dragons face, with her hips jerking out of control until her orgasm subsided.
Sheesh, is she dead from pleasure yet? Anyway, I said gratuitous in reference to the sex scenes because they were so disconnected from the rest of the story -- and the mainstream tone the author was careful to build up -- that they came off as ridiculous, smacking of the most tired, stereotypical porn cliches out there, the kind where the characters are cumming buckets and scream it. Later a jarringly introduced teenage character, the would-be ward of the weredragons, masturbates herself for no reason at all, observed by the female weredragon (whose speech patterns resemble those of that annoying Irish chick on "Touched by an Angel") who masturbates in response, also for no reason at all. This was an acceptable idea for a fantasy novel that could have been either commercial-mainstream or erotic, but not both, at least not in this way. The passages involving the human and dragon were unusual, but dull compared to the other fur I've read, which, while it can be silly at times (as in the phin story) can also display some truly creative erotic writing. The filler material, on the other hand, wasn't erotic or sexual at all and read like it came from a different book. In sum, the story wasn't bad, but the attempts to sex it up were, as the author didn't seem to know what he or she was doing.
DVD Review: Bjork's Greatest Hits, Volumen 1993 - 2003 If there was ever a recording artist said to be fur it would be Bjork. Her videos from the start have shown a fascination with the erotic qualities of the natural world as well as a playful use of state-of-the-art CGI effects, with a wink or two along the way at "National Geographic" type television documentaries; much of the imagery also evinces a tension between civilization and nature, nature and man's computer simulations of nature, and conscious, stylized eroticism with basic animal reproductive urges. I don't know if all these makes any sense, but it does make the videos weirdly watchable, true works of art in a way that very few rock videos are these days. All are worth repeated watchings even if you are not a fan of Bjork or her music. Who knows, she may grow on you. I was not a fan of hers, but after watching the DVD, I grew to appreciate her a little more, and will be checking out her recorded material. If a video can inspire you to do that, it's done its work. The DVD was a collection of videos from the years 1993 to 2003. Seeing them together one becomes aware of the repeated images in her work: light bulbs, flying insects, bears or bearlike wild creatures, mouths and teeth, cyborg limbs, the liquid excreta of the body. Some of these themes are evident in her earliest video, "Human Behavior," which shows her being menaced by a Godzilla-like felt Teddy Bear who later eats her; another video, "The Hunter," features a Bjork in a baldcap who periodically sprouts, via CGI effects, metallic blue armor over her face which gradually coalesces into the visage of a high-tech grizzly bear. In this video she keeps an impish smile on her face throughout despite the intensity and seriousness of the song, as if reveling in miracles of computer technology and what it can do. Other nature themes occur in "Nature is Ancient" and "Ioga." In "Nature is Ancient" two microscopic pond organisms (again, sophisticated computer simulations) perform what seems to be a tentative mating dance, surprisingly sensual in an odd way, which leads at the end to the generation of a fetus inside one of them with Bjork's features. "Ioga" also uses high-powered image generation to create a series of landscapes reminiscent, with their tundra, ice bogs, and volcanic ridges, of Bjork's native Iceland, the effect again surprisingly sensual. Not only does Bjork do fur, she also ranges into other fetish genres. She is not afraid to bare her body for purposes of artistic expression, though with the years she has become more Earth goddess than spright. "All is Full of Love," with its two humanoid industrial robots, each with a seamless integration of Bjork's face, does for ASFR what "The Hunter" does for fur, showing the robots kissing and caressing each other as pointed instruments lube their joints. It's at once touching and spooky, grandiose and winsome. "Cocoon" (directed by the great Japanese production designer Eiko Ishioka, who did art direction for the movie "The Cell") does the same for mummy fantasies: a nude, geisha-wigged Bjork, powdered to look like one of the members of the Butoh dance troop, generates twirling crimson lines out of the nipples of her exposed breasts like animated redvines, the strands cocooning her toe to head throughout the song, which by her gestures she seems to welcome. In "Pagan Poetry" the fetish is piercing: in one of those CGI effects she loves, video images are run through a Sobel manipulation giving tantalizing hints of nipples being pierced with beaded strings. At the end there's a closeup of a back pierced with parallel rows of rings, a ribbon laced up corset-style between them. Definitely recommended for some interesting watching.
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