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Subject: {ASSM} {REVIEW} {REV} The Annex Reviews, 12/23/99, by Lady Cyrrh
Date: Sun, 9 Jan 2000 00:10:01 -0500
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The Annex Reviews, 12/23/99
by Lady Cyrrh (ladycyrrh@aol.com)
Website: http://members.aol.com/ladycyrrh OR
http://home.aol.com/ladycyrrh
These are the last reviews of the old year. In sum, it's been fun,
though I apologize that I've only been "here" -- as in immersed
in the little subculture of the ASS newsgroups -- for only half of
it. Have a happy & safe new year everyone, and may your dreams
be realized in the coming Millennium!
The stories:
Night of the Wolves (Lysander): F/F+, best, fantasy
Ten Days (Nessus): M/F, femdom
Mind Games (Michael Gouda): M/M, suspense
Wanna Fuck? (Taliesin): M/F, F/F
Book Review: The BUST Guide to the New Girl Order
Night of the Wolves [A+]
Where posted: Naked Blades
Address: http://nakedblades.over-the-edge.com/index.html
Author: Lysander
Author address: lysander@bitsmart.com
This review SHOULD have been in the last batch, dealing as it does
with women in a fantasy universe, but my hectic life being what
it is, it appears here. I found it at Naked Blades, a site devoted to
erotic stories in fantasy settings.
The tale begins with a group of village women performing a
ritual around a bonfire, and the author's skill was such it caught
my attention immediately without mentioning names, places, or
even a definite century. The ritual soon devolves (evolves?) into
an orgy:
A new dance began, but this one was a dance of hands and
fingers, lips and tongues. Mouths moved over bare breasts and
heads moved between naked thighs. The leader moved among the
small clusters of women, brushing a breast here, caressing a
mane of hair nestled between trembling thighs there.
The purpose of the orgy is revealed later when a pack of wolves
comes to visit. Naturally, they join in. Afterwards, there is a doozy
of a twist I won't reveal here, and a very satisfying conclusion
for both the women and their furry partners.
This worked as both porn AND a viable short story in the O. Henry
vein. Although I am not a fan of bestiality stories -- I find the
whole concept ridiculous, though I do admit I like the fur genre
-- the author's level of detail, wild back-to-nature romanticism,
and fine writing made the act almost repeatable. Can a porn story
have Rousseauian ideals? I am not sure, but read this to find out.
Ten Days, Chapters 1 - 6 [A]
Where posted: ASS
When posted: 6/23/99
Author: Nessus
Address: rgaa2@bigpond.com
A good femdom story is hard to find. Oh, there are plenty out
there, but most are poorly written snooze-fests centering on
pointy-heeled leather boots and male characters forced to inhale
crusty silk panties for hours at a stretch. In boring suburban
settings of course.
This story, however, stood out from the pack. Not because of
innovation, but for how well and skillfully it handled the basics
of the genre: a cocky young asshole who's mistreated his
girlfriend; a false arrest; a prison term; constant teasing/torture
by wardens of the opposite sex. Which is what also makes a
maledom story great, actually, or any combination of the genders.
This story also moved along at a great clip, avoiding the long,
dull, deadly descriptions of the various fetishistic humiliations,
and upped the angst level by giving dramatic descriptions of the
poor stud's ordeal:
I hung on the pole, my head low, a helpless feeling sweeping
over me. Verity has gone! To the Caribbean and, without me! She
must have found out about one of the girls I fucked on the side.
How, I don’t know but she must have. If she hadn’t why had she
reported my car stolen and left me here with these female
barbarians? These monsters!
A hopeless feeling swept over me. I was helpless with no choice.
A guilty plea or my balls lying bloody on the floor. These bitches
were crazy enough to do it! For the first time, I admitted to myself
I was scared shitless!
Admittedly, this isn't very sophisticated compared to, say,
Shakespeare. But it gets the point across, which is what a good
porn story should do. As a plus, the female characters were
convincingly strong yet feminine, creating a nice sense of
terror for the hero as the walls close in. Usually femdom women
are teasing wusses who couldn't stand up to a wet maxi-pad
wielded by a REAL -- non-porn woman -- who has a bone to pick
with the male gender.
Though I only got up to Chapter 6 of this, I recommend it enough
for you to dig up the remaining five.
Mind Games [A+]
Where archived: The ASSGM Archive
Address: http://www.assgm.com
Author: Michael Gouda
Author address: MGouda3464@aol.com
A man wakes up in a hospital bed with no recollection of how he
got there, or even of who he is. Memory comes to him only in
spurts:
Harsh pounding rhythms with the bass notes on drums and bass
guitar, the melody sharper, more intense, weaving in and out of
the throbbing pulse. Coloured beams flight which lit up sweat-
slicked bodies. Maleness and sex. Contorted limbs sharpened by
the rampant rhythms, dancing to the strident disharmonies of
the lights. The persistent, insistent thump had given him an
erection.
That and the whirling, athletic body of the guy with the
golden hair.
"Who is he?" he asked his friend.
"That's Edward Kemble. Eddie."
"He's beautiful."
The words were out before he could stop them but perhaps lost
in the music - or perhaps he didn't even say them for his friend
didn't comment.
>From this we know that the protagonist is gay, but even worse, he
is involved in a love triangle and a crime that only becomes clear
at the story's ending.
Like all of Gouda's tales, this was a very satisfying read and a
satisfying mystery. I was a little disappointed in the ending (I
won't spoil it for you); the conclusion seemed a letdown to the
fine buildup it got. But for a mixture of sex and suspense, you
won't find anyone better...on either side of the Atlantic.
Wanna Fuck? [A]
Where posted: Pagan Pleasures
Address: www.paganpleasures.com
Author: Taliesin the Bard
Author address: taliesin@paganpleasures.com
I've read that Swinger's clubs are experiencing a resurgence
these days, as aging boomers and early X-ers who've found their
success in the high-tech fields turn to them for sexual excitement
and experimentation, all within broadly drawn lines of personal
safety. Taliesin a "popular porn performer, pagan pundit, and
prominent prosex partisan" would take this in stride. His stories
center on a group of sexual adventurers called the S.L.U.T.s, and
they have adventures that are typical but hot. There is no guilt
here, no fetish or kink, just pure Saturnalia:
All around them an orgy of lust and desire was underway, and
they had become part of it. A cacophony of moans and mewls,
gasps and grunts came from the bodies around them as the
orgiasts pursued their pleasures. The sound was music to Bea's
ears. She loved the sounds of sex. They were shouts of life, of the
defiance of death. She did not think those thoughts at that
moment; they were thoughts for her journal, for later, when she
would write about her experiences of this night. For now,
fucking was her sole focus.
It all boils down to the eternal tagline: Wanna fuck?
For a quick read with quick action, this story has it down pat.
More are available at the author's site, which also lists
information about the soCal swingers' scene and sex in general.
Book Review: The BUST Guide to the New Girl Order
Edited by Marcelle Karp and Debbie Stoller
Penguin Books, 1999
$15.95
The Riot Grrl movement was a phenomena of the 1990s with equal
roots in feminism and grunge. Basically, the attitude is this: I'm
proud to be a girl, but I'm also a tough, shit-kicking girl who
likes sex, can mosh and snowboard as well as a boy, has unlimited
life prospects and career choices, and takes no guff from the
male gender. A Riot Grrl's fashion sense is subverted femininity:
clingy slip dresses with combat boots, and it's no surprise pre-
Hollywood Courtney Love is one of their patron saints.
BUST (www.bust.com) is the most influential of the Riot Grrl
'zines. Its creators have compiled this book of interesting articles
and essays from the site, which are divided into eight sections
such as Sex and the Thinking Girl, Men are from Uranus, and
Growing up Girl. In sum, what you'd find in a typical ish of
Cosmopolitan (which Riot Grrls like to make fun of.)
The book isn't exactly porn, but I am reviewing it because a) I
think it will be of interest to a lot of female readers; b) it's very
funny and on-the-spot in parts; and c) it does contain some
amusingly prurient articles. I recommend Nancy E. Young's
interview with Harry Finley, founder of the Museum of
Menstruation, and Celina Hex's and Betty Boob's three-part
personal account of vibrator use, which can serve as a funny,
non-threatening primer on the gizmo. Other articles and stories,
while intending to show how wild and wacky these Riot Grrls are,
can also be taken as the very kinds of porn they are trying to
subvert: dog-tongue abuse in "One Sick Puppy"; water sports in
"Waste"; the immutability of gender roles in "Electra Woman and
Dyna Girl; and female rivalry in "Watching Him Fuck Her." There
are also interviews with 1960s Roger Corman star Tura Satana and
teen author Judy Bloom, and other disparate essays on 60s and 70s
girly junk-food culture like Tiger Beat magazine and Farrah
Fawcett Majors.
The idea behind all of this is, I think, that girls should be proud to
be girls and not shy away from saying things that girls have
traditionally kept quiet about. Boys have always had their
masturbation jokes and locker-room talk; now girls can share
their dirty secrets about menstrual blood and getting wet between
the legs with the same freedom, style, and low-down dirty humor.
Lady Cyrrh approves of this. However, I do have some criticisms
of the book, or rather the book's attitude. Two recurrent themes
are Sex Is Good and Men Can Be Real Assholes; what female alive
for the past thirty years hasn't realized this? It's hardly a new
idea. Also, for a book that supposedly empowers young woman, it
dwells an awful lot on Woman-as-Victim, with the conceit the Big
Bad Fashion/Media/Movie industry promotes anorexia, skin-
cutting, and hellishly bad self-esteem by promoting exalted
images of female beauty that are impossible for normal women to
achieve. This bias isn't surprising, as many of the anthology's
writers also write for other publications (Spin, Salon, Details,
etc.) and are part of that big New York/LA media axis; there's a
persistent ugly belief among them that they have to look like a
skinny supermodel to attract a man and eternal happiness, even
as they acknowledge the belief's vapidity and destructiveness.
Writing about media topics, I suppose it's hard not to get sucked
into this. But this belief bothered me after a while -- common
sense saying, "Well, if skinny supermodels bother you that much,
turn off the TV, damn it" -- so therefore the most refreshing
articles for me were the ones that explored more universal
female territory.
In sum, a good read and a good book to pass around to one's
friends and discuss. The staff at my local gay/lesbian bookstore
gave it a "staff pick" sticker. But be careful about giving it as a
present, 'cos it may too raunchy for some folks.
___________________________________________________
Comments to: ladycyrrh@aol.com
Website---> http://members.aol.com/ladycyrrh
--
Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights
reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated.
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