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Subject: {ASSM} {REVIEW} The Annex Reviews, 5/27/00
Date: Sun, 28 May 2000 01:10:07 -0400
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The Annex Reviews, 5/27/00
by Lady Cyrrh (ladycyrrh@aol.com)
Website: http://members.aol.com/ladycyrrh OR
http://home.aol.com/ladycyrrh
The stories:
Jen's Titillating Behavior (DrSpin): M/F cons, exhib, oral, breast, cheat
Hard Dick High (Kari Alarus): m/f, f/f, teen, high school, humor,
femdom
The Secret Lair (Barbara B): F/M/M, cons
The Seduction of a Desert Prince (Killashandra, Rachael Sabotini,
elynross): M/M slash, first, Highlander
Jen's Titillating Behavior [A]
Where posted: ASSM
When posted: 3/14/00
Author: DrSpin
Address: drspin@newsguy.com
Website: http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/DrSpin/www/
Four suburban couples in their thirties are used to meeting regularly
for dinner, drinks, and the occasional partaking of weed. At one such
occasion, when everyone's gotten a bit tipsy, the subject turns to each
wife's wifely attributes: hair, tits, legs, ass. Jen has the tits. When her
husband, the narrator of story, turns in for the night, she decides to
show the other guys just what her demicup contains. The narrator
feigns sleep as she flashes them from the window, but soon she goes
downstairs again, and because this behavior is unusual for her, he
follows. As he watches from outside, he gets more than an eyeful as they
tease out one of her fantasies:
She bent her head and took him in her mouth, holding him with her
left hand. I watched bewildered as she applied herself, her head
bobbing slowly and evenly. This was Jen? My Jen? I mean, we'd done
this plenty of times but it was by no means her favourite activity. It was
always something of a gift she made to me, certainly not a wanton act of
lust on her part...[They] both pumped furiously, their hands over hers.
Martin pointed his shaft urgently at her breasts and she thrust her
shoulders back, lifting her breasts forward. His first spurt landed
directly on her right breast and he clutched himself, jerking, as he
sprayed her in four or five powerful bursts. Geoff was adding his
contribution before Martin was finished, sending
ribbons of semen across her chest.
She fell back suddenly, hands free and weight on her heels, her chest
area smeared with their sperm. Her head slumped forward and I thought
she'd lost her balance. It looked as though she been knocked over by the
primitive force of ejaculation. Then I realized. Both her hands were
kneading at the crotch of her jeans and she was in the throes of orgasm.
The narrator, naturally, is stunned. Though he chooses not to call his
wife to case, the dynamics of his marriage have changed forever.
I liked the story a lot; it seemed realistic of the way feckless couples in
their thirties would entertain themselves in well-ordered suburbia. The
ending was a letdown however. The happy group breaks up under the
strain, as if poor Jen had opened a Pandora's box of adultery, with the
narrator having no regrets about it. This I didn't quite buy. The story
would have been so much stronger if it had ended right after the
incident, with the narrator drawing his conclusions and moving on. But
what came before was pretty damn good, and for that I recommend it.
Hard Dick High [A]
Where posted: ASSM
When posted: 5/13/00
Author: Kari Alarus
Address: head2fat@soon.com
Posted by: <removed at request of poster 2003-02-08>
Poster address: <removed at request of poster 2003-02-08>
How can you resist a story with a title like this?
Hard Dick High is an imaginary place where the girls dress like sluts
and cocktease all day long and the boys are kept in perpetual
frustration. The author truly used his or her imagination in describing
the sluts ("Buxom Tamara Smith arrived in a top hat, black heels, and a
nylon see-through body suit. Unconstrained by any bra, her
magnificent 38DD knockers were full, firm, and deadly. The gorgeous
vixen's sole concession to modesty was a teeny tiny black thong. ") and
their language ("Whew! Is it drafty in here or are my holes exposed?
Perhaps someone's stiff pipe will plug the gaps") though they sound
suspiciously more like Showgirl rejects than high school girls. The
young men and the teachers are forbidden to respond to any of this by
the school's amazon guards, so they walk around with perpetual hard-
ons all day long. But sometimes the sluts just go too far, and for that
they're sent to the principal, who fucks them silly and spray-coats them
with cum. After that, things *really* get out of hand, with the sluts
streaming out into the halls and literally raping any male they
encounter.
This was more of a porny scenario than a story, and it was very, very
silly. The author said in the introduction, "Here's some straight up porn
designed to get your dick hard. I won't even pretend that there's much
of literary merit here" yet it was so ridiculous, so crass, and so over the
top, I just had to give it an A--it was possibly the sluttiest high school
story I've ever read, and I literally grinned right through it, and even
broke out into laughter in a few places. I wonder if the author realized
how humorous it was, or if it was even intended to be humorous. It had
the overdescriptive, deadly earnest tone a lot of stroke stories have, one
that usually receives my drubbing. But this time, for some odd reason,
everything worked.
The Secret Lair [A+]
Where posted: ASSM
When posted: 4/18/00
Author: Barbara B
Address: babs42ne@hotmail.com
Like the writer of this piece, I'm a big fan of libraries. They're the
perfect place to people-watch and the quiet lends itself to building
fantasies about those people, as the narrator of the story does:
I'm about to open the Astronomy magazine when an older man comes in.
He doesn't even seem to notice me as he takes his book and settles into
one of the oversized chairs that frame the fireplace. I watch him as he
puts on his reading glasses, opens the volume he's brought, and soon is
deep into the story. <<Wonder what he's reading?>> I ask myself. He's
dressed casually in a white polo shirt that sets off his tan and the
muscles in his arms, a man who was obviously handsome in his youth
and doesn't look all that bad now. <<He probably likes tropical settings,>>
I decide or how else could he have gotten that tan in the winter. He's
very tall and slim. <<Probably was an athlete, and smart with a good
sense of humor>> I deduce. He has most of his very curly hair, which is
now entirely gray, and except for a very slight, almost imperceptible
limp, he's in great shape. About 62 years old is my guess. And as I often
do when I study someone, I wonder about the women he's made love to,
the ahhh's and ohhh's he's heard, the pussies he's tasted, the mouths
he's explored, the breasts he's fondled and suckled. I wonder if his dick
still gets hard when he's holding his beloved. And I wonder when he
falls asleep at night if he dreams about the ladies who over the years
have brought him pleasure as he returned the favor. I wonder how
many fond memories he's made.
In the course of her visit she fantasizes about another man...and her
fantasies come to life when he seduces her behind the stacks, and then
the first man joins in!
This is a type of story I don't review that much, because it's the hardest
type to do well: the plotless encounter that is steamy, realistic, AND
written well enough to be unique and entertaining. It took a while to
get going, and was slightly rough in the beginning, but the sex scenes,
which were sweet, passionate, and explicit, made up for it. So for that a
hearty recommendation from me, plus I do like the idea of getting it on
in a library. It's a secret fantasy I didn't know I'd had.
The Seduction of the Desert Prince [B+]
Authors: Killashandra, Rachael Sabotini, elynross
Available from: Lair of the Krell
Address: http://mediafans.org/krelldom
All right, I admit it. I've got a love/hate relationship with slash. On the
one hand I like its audacity and its pink-cheeked, crochet-potholder
endorsement of the kinky, the maudlin, the melodramatic. On the other
hand, I'm frustrated with its sloppy structure, its repetitive stories, its
lack of true imagination.
When I came upon this novel-length story I thought "Oh boy!"
anticipating a juicy M/M sex slavery tale in a Middle Eastern setting,
with lots of hot sex, angsty emotional confessions, and florid language,
not to mention D/s and bondage. Well, I got that, but ...there were
problems.
This was a Highlander fandom story about Duncan (the slave) and
Methos (the tribal leader who buys him). It was a whopper -- over
75,000 words, and yet unfinished. I should say here I don't watch
Highlander and never have, although I'm familiar with the basic
premise of it. Logically, a fan of the show could say "That's why you
didn't get the story, dumbass" but in my defense I'll say I've read slash
from shows I watch or watched a lot (Star Trek, Gatchaman) shows I
watch only occasionally (Xena) and shows I never watch (Buffy) and --
guess what! What makes me enjoy a story is how well and convincingly
it is written, not how familiar I am with its predecessor. In other words,
a fanfic story stands alone as a work of writing, not an extension of a TV
show. Slash writers often seem to dismiss or make excuses for this truth.
In fact, they have ready excuses for a lot of authorial shortcomings,
which they post both on their websites and in various newsgroups.
Many times they purport to want feedback on stories but tell us in big
capitals NO FLAMES ALLOWED. Some go as far to say they aren't
interesting in learning to become better writers (read: communicators)
at all -- they're just doing it for the fun of it, a handy way of escaping
the critical glare. So say anything negative about slash fiction, and
you're bound to offend someone.
That said, the story began well. Duncan, an Immortal good deed-doing
Scottish warrior, is being sold at a slave auction and Methos, an older,
more cynical Immortal (the "Desert Prince" of the title), buys him. The
Highlander TV show is set in the present day with frequent historical
flashbacks, but this story plays with canon a bit: it is an AU (alternate
universe) depiction of how these two met sometime in 16th century
Morocco or Algeria, after the rise of Islam but before the widespread
dissemination of firearms. I expected, as is common for slash, long,
detailed descriptions of the two falling in love with each other: the slave
overcoming his pride and rebelliousness and learning how to be
properly submissive and love his master, while the master must how to
see his slave as a human and not a plaything, and open up his heart.
However, the writers fumbled things by having the slave obviously
attracted from the get-go:
Movement at the edge of the crowd drew his eye, and the Immortal he'd
seen drew in close. Hope surged at the thought -- he might not need a
sword. An Immortal's loyalty lay with other Immortals, perhaps this
man would buy him merely to keep him out of mortal hands, to keep the
Immortal secret safe. Duncan could finally make out the fair features
under the swath of black that covered the man from head to toe. Pale
skin and well-formed features, lips that drew the eye, framed by a
narrow beard, and a searing, piercing gaze... he quickly looked away,
those eyes knowing more than Duncan could even understand, yet he
could not look away for long. The strength and desire he'd glimpsed
drew him like a moth to flame, and he shuddered to think of his duties
should such a man --such an Immortal -- buy him.
Thus punctured the tension a lot, as we already *know* they're going to
get together without any real problems, right?
Duncan winds up being an oddly narcotized captive. He spends most of
his time feeling only slightly embarrassed, as if the authors wanted
to honeycoat his predicament. In fact he comes across more as a sincere,
logical, cautiously detached female than a sword-swinging warrior. He
gets wet a lot (it's precum, but described suspiciously like vaginal
wetness) and his abdominal muscles clench when he gets aroused and
his belly burns; he feels all-over tinglings rather than organ centered
ones. This I don't have problem with; it's a fantasy, and it's slash, and
many female readers identify with the male sex objects in the stories.
But in the logic of the story, if he's a warrior, and a proud honorable
Immortal warrior at that, he should be acting more proudly and
aggressively, so we know that's who he is.
Methos, on the other hand, is more of a "man," but even he flubs up; as a
tribal leader he's supposed to be leading his people through a tense time
but instead he paces about and moons excessively over his slave, and
one moment he's distant and the next companionable -- very
inconsistent. Some of the problems with the romance may have been
due to the fact the story has three authors (among them Killashandra,
highly regarded in Trek circles), and it may have been written in a
round-robin fashion. If so, it's a good job, because the joins were
seamless, and the proofreading, as usual for slash, is excellent. But the
effect is still that of the characters being used as puppets moved around
a game board for the benefit of the writers...which can be seen as a
parallel process to the act of watching the shows and projecting the
homosexual relationships into them. There's something both endearing
and insulting about this; it's like the writers are deliberately playing
dumb as to what they're *really* writing and fantasizing about. I've
seen this in a lot of slash, and usually, it's part of the fun; but 75,000
words of it was just too much. Again, one could say, "Well, who cares, it's
a sexual fantasy about two straight men having a gay relationship."
Right, but if its entertainment value is based on romance and gradually
growing feelings of love, why not make the process as realistic and
believable as you can?
That said, I found most of the sex scenes to be pretty steamy and they
were written well, though they became repetitive after a while. Oddly, I
found the best of the bunch were the most blatantly heterosexual -- one
in the beginning, where poor Duncan is mortified to be oiled up by an
attractive female slave in preparation for his master's bed; and the
other where, having established an uneasy relationship with Methos,
he masturbates on the bed for his pleasure. Aside from the organs, he
could have been a woman. Actually, the whole thing was almost a female
wish fantasy: the relationship does not develop in a linear way, but
instead eddies around in little pools, backcurrents, and stagnations, with
Duncan as the "female" who is constantly losing control of himself and
Methos playing the "man" who is just as passionate but feigns cruelty
and detachment because he doesn't want to get hurt for loving too
much.
But despite the hot sex the story moved very slowly. This was a shame, as
the authors had a very nice subplot going with the tribe under threat
from another, and the minor characters were well drawn, and the
sociocultural bits, while not especially detailed, seemed well-researched
and plausible; but this made the romance all the more draggy and
tedious. Between Chapters 5 and 18 nothing is advanced in the
relationship besides a mild master-slave accommodation and a sort of
transcendental soulbonding accomplished through sex. Usually when
two people of whatever gender develop a relationship they share fun
times together, or talk about what they have in common, or
endure/enjoy common experiences; all the emphasis on pure passion,
while fun for the authors, is lost on the reader, as it's a well-nigh
impossible concept to get across to someone not in the relationship (or
not creating it, as the author is.) The story was also not served well by
depicting events from both Methos' and Duncan's POVs--it was like the
entire story was neatly plotted and stitched and laid out in advance so
you could see it all at once.
To be fair, the story shaped up around Chapter 18 when things finally
started happening, and the two Immortals began to have conversations
and got to know each other, and some real excitement began to gel when
Methos considers abandoning his charges and running off with his
bed-slave. But those chapters that came before were very hard to get
through.
So, do I recommend this? Yes, if you are a slash fan and love the show or
you want to read some hot M/M sex in the slashy vein. The writing was
good and so was the sex. But if you're looking for good novel length D/s
erotica, I'll think you'd be frustrated.
This is the last slash story I'll review for a while, I promise.
___________________________________________________
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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