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Subject: {ASSM} {REVIEW} The Annex Reviews. 5/18/03
Date: Sun, 18 May 2003 07:10:06 -0400
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The Annex Reviews, 5/18/03
by Lady Cyrrh (ladycyrrh@aol.com)
Website: http://members.aol.com/ladycyrrh 



In these reviews I return to original slash and yaoi, a 
genre near and dear to my heart. I suppose it's because 
it's the kind of literature I would have liked to read 
when I was a young teenager. There wasn't a lot of it 
around in the late 1970s, but times have changed. 

Thanks to the net slash is now easily available with 
many different story types available for every taste, 
and virtual communities where fans, many of them in high 
school or the early years of college, can write, read, 
and crit stories for each other. For young women, it's 
one of the few outlets in which they can have fun and 
share with their sexuality  -" and go as far as they can 
with their (written) sexual fantasies -- in an 
environment that is safe and supportive. Men have always 
gone to strip clubs and brothels together, indulged in 
locker room talk, had circle jerks. Women haven -(TM)t had 
those outlets, unless it was as whores, in a whorehouse, 
or as a "girl -(TM)s night out" to see male strippers (a 
activity borrowed from the male world of sexual 
consumption.) It -(TM)s for these reasons I support slash, 
even though, as writing, much of it is badly written 
and/or pointless. But the same can be said of mainstream 
porn posted to the net.

So, to indulge my inner fourteen-year-old, are the 
reviews.



The Stories:


Captive (Maureen Lycaon): M/M, original slash, BDSM, 
   fantasy, first

Captive (Ryu I and Cassiopeia): M/M, original slash, 
myth

Spring (Assassin Shura): m/m, original yaoi/slash, rom

Slave to Love (Fallen Angel): M/m, orginal slash, 
   fantasy, slave

The Fallen Dragon Key (Roulette): M/M, original 
   yaoi/slash, fantasy, slave

The Adored (Yaoigoddess): nosex, original yaoi/slash, 
   SF, rom

Playing the Game (Yaoigoddess): M/M, original 
   yaoi/slash, SF, rom

Ezine Review: MAS-zine




Captivity [A] 
Where found: Maureen Lycaon's Velen Archive
URL: http://members.vclart.net/Maureen/index2.html
Author: Maureen Lycaon 
Type: M/M, original slash, BDSM, fantasy, first

Maureen Lycaon specializes in slash, both fur and non-
fur. She is perhaps better known for her fur tales, but 
there's some good swords n' loincloth adventure as well.

This story is promised as the first chapter of a longer 
series. To ensure a continuing peace, the nomads of the 
plains must offer selected young males of their tribe as 
slave tributes to their city-dwelling conquerors. The 
position is both an honor and a penance for the slaves, 
for their new masters don't follow the taboos against 
homosexual relations that the plainsmen do. The story 
follows the adventures of one of these sacrifices, Rain, 
who becomes the slave of Lord David. The Lord is 
alternately affectionate and brutal in his quest for 
Rain's submission, and conflict comes about because poor 
Rain is quite straight, not to mention being confused 
and wanting to do good by his people:

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
He had thought he could bear any pain. Instead, he had
been broken in the space of a single flogging.

Lord Michael had reduced him to begging for mercy,
even the mercy of death, so easily. Rain would gladly
have killed himself or the Lord, betraying his honor
and his Clan, rather than go on enduring that lash for
one more moment.

Surely he could be made to suffer like that for much
longer -- perhaps for days or even weeks. The thought
made bitter nausea rise in his stomach, forcing him to
swallow down the bile. What would it be like to have
to endure such pain again and again for the rest of
his life? By the terms of the oath, he could not even
slay himself to end the pain.

He could not possibly abide by what he had sworn. He
would certainly forsake his vow and betray the Clans.
His people's only hope was that when that happened,
Lord Michael would ignore his pleas for mercy and not
let him go back on his word.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

It's different from the standard slash fare, and I found 
it intelligent and involving. A very good start to a 
longer tale, but as a reader I wish there had been a 
chapter before this one explaining how these events had 
come about, instead of the brief prologue the author 
gives. I felt dumped too quickly into the middle of the 
action; what could have been a well-rounded original 
slash story instead had all the rushed earmarks of 
fanfic. 




Captive [B+] 
Where found: Slash Cotillion
URL: http://www.cotillion.slashcity.org/archive/
   archive/2/captive.html
Author: Ryu I and Cassiopeia 
Type: M/M, original slash, myth

My! This is a popular theme. 

Mikk, the son of the Celtic god Lugh, is captured and 
brought before his father's greatest enemy, Lugh Danube. 
Lugh is as heavy a god of war as they come, arrogantly 
tormenting innocent underlings and possessing great 
magic and telepathic power, but he senses Mikk is his 
near-equal in strength. This sparks a sexual tension 
between captor and captive with lots of cat-and-mouse 
dialogue play between the two. After these (rather 
inconclusive) mind games young Mikk rather nonchalantly 
offers sex as the price of his freedom, and the two then 
go at it in a slutty slash scene:

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Gods. The boy was fucking gorgeous. Pale skin over slim 
muscles, flat stomach, broad shoulders, a couple of 
scars that added to rather than taking from the 
perfection of his body. 

Mikk chuckled, hands sliding against bare skin as he 
slid Lugh's shirt off. "Impatient." He scratched lightly 
over a nipple with one thumbnail.  "Delicious too." His 
eyes raked over Lugh's chest, his tongue darting out 
appreciatively over his lips. 

Lugh sank his teeth into the curve of Mikk's neck, 
making the boy jump and moan. "You're sexy as hell and I 
haven't gotten any in a long time." 

His captive thrust against him with a sound very like a 
whimper. He was already hard and obviously very 
responsive. "Not even," he panted, slipping a hand in 
Lugh's pants and stroking along the shape of his 
erection, "a pretty pet to suck you off?"
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The story had many similarities to the Duncan/Methos 
Highlander fanfic I've read and I wonder if the authors 
didn't come out of the same fandom. It wasn't a bad 
read, but there was a lack of tension. Since the authors 
made it clear from the beginning that Mikk is in no 
great danger from Lugh -- and in fact seemed only to be 
biding his time before his seduction -- there was no 
incentive for me to keep reading. Since the characters 
didn't take their predicament too seriously I couldn't 
take it seriously either, and neither could, I suspect, 
the writers. I know I often complain about the level of 
brutality in some slash stories but here it's needed -- 
let these characters suffer some before they have their 
reward. 

The story's future fantasy setting -- in which the 
deities of Earth religions are presented as larger-than-
life immortals who are continuously at war with each 
other -- was confusing also. In this respect it borrowed 
heavily from anime, which has similar mythologically 
mixed, often illogical backgrounds; in this case, 
however, the anachronisms annoyed me. Lugh zipping off 
one-liners you'd hear in a gay bar? Not very likely. 

Well, at least none of the gods were wearing boxers. 




Spring [C+] 
Where found: Yaoishrine
URL: http://www.yaoishrine.com/fictions/spring.htm
Author: Assassin Shura
Type: m/m, original yaoi/slash, rom

Often I'm not sure if yaoi is a subgenre of slash or an 
anime-influenced companion to it. Its writers and 
artists are synthesists rather than extrapolaters, 
borrowing themes, character archetypes, and mythic 
elements from Japan's Asian neighbors, and often from 
European mythic culture as well... unlike most fanfic 
slash, which adheres by its nature to canon (and fanon.) 
This accounts for the yaoi profusion of robe-wearing 
princes with neon-colored hair who ride winged horses 
and live in magical Sleeping Beauty castles. I'm 
exaggerating of course, but that's often how it is.

This story was about two of those princes, raised as 
brothers though they are not related by blood. This 
creates a naughty incest plotline when the two discover 
their attraction to each other. One is tall and robust, 
the other aqua-haired and fey, and most of the first 
chapter is given over to their day-to-day life as they 
try to figure out how to act on it.

This wasn't a very interesting story even given the 
exoticism in the setup. The lovers are sticky-sweet and 
undifferentiated, the seduction goes about at a snail's 
pace (with the usual yaoi clothing obsessions) and 
nothing much happens to impede the romance, or aid it. 
Some glaring errors ("his procession slowly wound over 
the dessert sands" "shinning with sweat") enlivened the 
going, but weren't enough to loose my usually sarcastic 
juices. In fact not many juices of any kind were 
released.

Read only if you like your lemon on the young side and 
overly sweetened.




Slave to Love [C/C-] 
Where found: The Hothouse Archive
URL: http://members.tripod.com/evol_siren/archive/
   fallen/fic/slave01.html
Author: Fallen Angel
Type: M/m, original slash, fantasy, slave

This story was found on the Hothouse Archive, a 
yaoi/slash original fiction site.

Young Keif is a catan, a sort of diminutive elven 
humanoid with pointed furry ears. He wanders away from 
his tribe (to "where the trees are naked") and is 
promptly captured by slavers. This is a yaoi tale, after 
all. He's put up on the auction block and nearly bought 
by the fearsome Lady Elsa, who likes to torture slaves 
to death. But a mysterious stranger ups the price and 
rescues him in the nick of time, and after escaping from 
the henchmen of the disgruntled Lady, the two flee into 
the wilderness. The master later frees him, but Keif, 
apparently infatuated, elects to stay enslaved. "Thee" 
and "thy" declarations of love follow.

This story wasn't very good. It was also poorly written; 
past and present flowed together, with willy-nilly 
changes of POV. The main character of the catan was a 
girly little creature ("...beautiful light blue eyes, 
blond hair, brownish complexion, a rare catan no doubt. 
Mostly he heard that catans have light wood colored 
skin, so he guessed this one was a late bloomer. He 
wears nothing except a short skirt made by animal skin 
and a rope to hold it together, covering his private 
parts") given to childish temper tantrums (" 'NO!' Keif 
shouted. 'I don't wanna be his slave, I don't wanna!' As 
he began to remove the collar, he twisted and turned, 
but he could not remove it... He just slumps to the 
grass and cries.") I know yaoi requires a certain amount 
of prettiness and passivity from its love objects, but 
this is going too far. 

Aside from the atrocious writing and unconvincing 
characters, the problem I had was that there was 
absolutely no reason for the master to free a slave he 
paid upwards of 60,000 monetary units for -- which in 
the context of the story is a small fortune -- and 
absolutely no reason for the slave to stick with him 
after being given his freedom. The supposedly shared 
infatuation didn't convince, and that's the purpose of 
yaoi, right?




The Fallen Dragon Key [A] 
Where found: Palace of the Keys
URL: http://www.ravenswing.com/~keys/myth/
   fallen_dragon_ch1.html
Author: Roulette
Type: M/M, original yaoi/slash, fantasy, slave

Since I last reviewed the Palace of the Keys site 
(1/24/03 Reviews) two new games have started up, one 
featuring keys based on mythological creatures 
(phoenixes, dragons, chimeras) and another on types of 
magic (black, white, scrying) This story is one of the 
first of the Mythological keys.

Things start with a Neil Gaiman tone as the eternal 
incarnations of Torment and Delight, a brother-sister 
pair of gods, discuss with their father Fire about what 
to do with the recalcitrant Zoreem Atulan Fetim, once 
the Great King, an arrogant, rapacious warlord sentenced 
to eternal torture until he recants his misdeeds. He 
hasn't so far, so it's decided that he will be 
reincarnated into the body of the fey, twinkish 
Kasander, a skinny, mistreated whore of the Palace, 
where he will receive sexual abuse as his lot in life. 
This doesn't seem to do the trick either, so Torment 
himself visits in the guise of Kukuluth, one of the 
mysterious dark knights common to these keyfics. 
Kukuluth takes on the job of mastering Fetim in a loving 
way: he makes sure that every day he eats healthy meals, 
exercises, and cleans himself thoroughly, both inside 
and out:

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
"You will place a little of this oil on the tip of the 
hose." He demonstrated what oil he meant and how much. 

"Then you will insert the tip." 

He ran the oil-slicked nozzle down the cleft between 
Kasander's ass cheeks, and rubbed the pucker hidden 
there. A shudder ran through Kasander at the light 
probing. Kukuluth gently pressed the small tip into 
Kasander's body. 

He heard Kasander's hiss. Kukuluth looked at him with no 
sympathy. 

"I told you not to fight. You're just making it worse on 
yourself." He paused. "Then you'll turn on the water." 

Kukuluth turned the water on to a decent trickle. 

"You *will* tell me when you're full." he commanded. He 
had no intention of being sprayed in revenge. 

Finally, Kasander started gurgling something and 
Kukuluth shut the water off and removed the tip. 

"You will wait until you can't hold it anymore, and then 
you will release the water in the toilet."
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Hmm, this seems a little out of place for a yaoi-
oriented pretty-boy keyfic... not to mention that daily 
enemas are now frowned on in the medical community as 
damaging to the body, loosening certain muscles so, uh, 
what's inside slips out at awkward times. And bringing 
the body's colonic chemical balance out of whack, or 
whatever. Nevertheless, there was a lot of good BDSM in 
here, not presented in scenes but rather hinted at, such 
as the coyly underdescribed furniture that doubles as 
torture devices, a musical ballgag, and a wall of 
mirrors facing a wooden cross. Later chapters will tell 
if any of it is put to good use. The writing was good, 
too, the yashiness (an amalgam of Yaoi and slash) in 
full flower, lush and cruel. 

More than that, however, the writer seemed to be doing 
some very interesting things within the genre, 
presenting the slave as a rather nasty, powerful being 
under a compulsion to obey, which will somehow serve as 
his redemption. It's an inverse of all those fics where 
the key is a helpless being tortured for no reason at 
all; here the key has every reason to be tortured but 
isn't, his Master acting to improve his life instead. It 
was different, and the story promises to unwind in 
unexpected ways, too. 




The Adored [A/A-] 
Playing the Game [A/A-]
Where found: Yaoigoddess
URL: http://www.yaoigoddess.com/originals/adored.html
URL: http://www.yaoigoddess.com/originals/playgame.html
Author: Rochelle
Type: M/M, original yaoi/slash, SF, rom 

As slash writers spawn multibook fanfic epics, complete 
with PWP interludes, sidebars, character studies, and 
bios, so do yaoi writers, though it's less common 
because there are comparatively less of them. Some yaoi 
sites I visit must contain hundreds of thousands of 
words, which is not so surprising considering the anime 
tendency to do the same thing, particularly in Gundam 
Wing, Patlabor, Dragonball, and Gathchaman series. 
Fanfic, being a child of the shared media experience, 
always imitates that media to some degree, along with 
the content of that media.

This story was from one of those epic sites, which 
contained a lengthy story series about a science fantasy 
world known as Rhepsadi. Rhepsadian society is divided 
into the Makers (the overlords), the Chosen (the elite), 
and the proles (everyone else) with the Chosen having 
enhanced physical and mental powers that lets them rule. 
However, they are forbidden by the Makers to marry or 
have children, so, in "The Adored," a male and a female 
scientist (who may or not be incestuous siblings) create 
the synthetic Lyle Frost, as a surrogate son. In 
"Playgame" Hadal Ruby, the telepathic prole companion of 
the Queen (disparagingly referred to as "gene trash" by 
the Chosen) is forced into the role of assassin when he 
is sent to kill the boy-prince of another city. He is 
thwarted at the last minute when he falls in love with 
his target in a scene more shonen-ai than yaoi. 

Both stories were chock-full of exoticisms like "His 
lashes are long and dark-silver; his hair is like 
platinum blended with talc" and "he presented me and 
Rhea with ornately carved silver-and-ruby rings, our 
passes to Titania Palace's Chamber of Decisions" which 
gave it a lush Michael Moorcock (the science fiction 
author) flavor. The writing was good and the author 
sketched out some memorable characters in this beautiful 
yet oddly bloodless world. My only criticism is that, 
even though both stories were at the beginning of the 
series, I still felt like I had jumped in on the middle 
-- there was little explanation of exactly how this 
society worked, for example. But that's common in many 
published SF and fantasy stories as well, where it's a 
given that the main characters are the ennobled 
aristocracy who rule the contemptible masses. Though 
it's now a netfic cliche, character bios and a world 
guide would have been helpful. 

In sum, interesting shounen-ai with no sex, though there 
may be some in later chapters. But the world was 
intriguing enough to make me want to return.




Ezine Review: MAS-zine [A+] 
Website: http://www.mas-zine.com


You pretty much know original slash has arrived as a 
genre when ezines begin to spring up. Although fanfic 
slash has been around for decades in printed, web, and 
ezine form, MAS-zine is the first continually published 
'zine of original slash I've seen, and it's also one of 
the first to come out in CD-ROM format (an intelligent 
alternative to the high priced printed 'zines with their 
high production and shipping costs.) It's available for 
$10 per issue from the site, and the fiction is very 
good. The strongest stories are as fine as anything 
you'd see in mainstream published fantasy like a Terri 
Windling anthology, but with the addition of slashy sex. 
And what is the focus of that sex, exactly? The editors 
say it best: "M/M romance with non-consensual elements. 
The stories we feature are daring, controversial, very 
intense, and emotionally gripping." Which means angst, 
abuse, rape, and all that other good stuff.

The stories range from under to 1,000 words to 100,000, 
with the emphasis on longer and multipart works. Most 
are set in science fiction or fantasy worlds, or altered 
realities that are set off enough from this one to 
accommodate the concept of legalized slavery or cloned 
sex toys. A sampling from the first three issues reveals 
many excellent gems from authors who have been busy 
honing their craft in this very specialized niche; all 
of them know the type of material they're producing and 
how to wring out its jollies. 

Heather Elizabeth Peterson has produced the outstanding 
jewel in "Debt Price," the story of a young terrorist in 
a medieval world of lords and peasants who is sentenced 
for his crime to a brutal form of sex slavery at the 
hands of his victims... and his eventual redemption when 
he is freed by the brother of one of them. The story is 
one of tallying one's karmic debts and paying them off; 
it also explores the justification for extreme 
punishment and why it may or may not work, and the 
relative nature of guilt and innocence. Slash more in 
its subject matter than its sex scenes (which are brutal 
and not really played as erotica, skirting 
sensationalism without quite falling in) it's a very 
dense, fascinating read, well worth by itself the $10 
price tag, at least for someone of my tastes.

Also excellent was Francesca's "Lynn" which was typical 
of the longer pieces on the site. The tale of an 
unemployed architect and the genetically engineered sex 
slave he rescues out of pity, it was set in a mythical 
Kafkaesque European state that's a socialist cautionary 
tale come true. This piece was not so much slash as 
playing with slashy themes -- the architect was not some 
swooning feyboy but a real 20th century man concerned 
with his image of maleness; he alternates between 
contempt and compassion for the slave, who is again more 
of three-dimensional than he first appears. This novel 
was very long, dense, and lovely, and all the more 
impressive because the author's native language is 
Swedish and not English.

Among the others, Madame Hydra's "Black Feathers" was a 
amusing twist on the typical cliched yaoi plot: instead 
of a some lord capturing a fey, angelic being for sexual 
use and abusing him, we have a fey, angelic being who 
captures a prince, and controls him sexually, for 
reasons of revenge, with the aid of feathers from his 
wings. (I won't give away more of the plot than that.) 
"Pathfinder" by Rushlight also went against cliche by 
having its young protagonist, who's periodically 
kidnapped and abused because of the psychic gift he has, 
to be rebellious and resourceful in handling his 
predicament rather crying buckets like a lot of other 
yaoi leads seem to do, or moping around resigned to 
their fate. The latter story also managed to be a fast-
moving SF adventure tale -- I could almost imagine it as 
a movie with Samuel L. Jackson and Keanu Reeves in 
certain roles -- and a touching emotional drama as well. 
Intensity of a different sort exists in Remy's 
"Expulsion." In the near or not-so-near future slavery 
is once again legal and poor Joran, once the pampered 
son of a wealthy businessman, is thrust kicking and 
screaming into it through a legal loophole when his 
father dies. Most of the story is taken up with his 
descent into domestic-servant hell, where he's abused by 
the kitchen staff and the household staff in a "Gosford 
Park" role-reversal scenario gone terribly awry. Though 
gripping in a Russian-gulag way it seemed less unified 
than the others, without the initial character and 
background setup that would make it a fully rounded 
story and not a thematic exploration. Overall, though, 
the writing quality of all the stories here was 
excellent, and if some were pointless or weak, they were 
balanced out by the strengths of the others. 

The layout of the 'zine was professionally done in Adobe 
Acrobat, the editing light to leave the authors' voices 
intact. Some of stories featured pictures in the 
anime/yaoi vein, but as I am not a visual reader (I have 
a hard time getting into graphic novels, for example, 
though I will happily read comic fanfic) they didn't add 
anything to the experience for me. When it comes to nude 
males, I tend to like more realistic art; I also have 
the vision of male beauty that is Mr. Cyrrh to look at 
whenever I want, so yaoi art doesn't really yank my 
crank, in other words, though anime lovers should enjoy 
it.

All in all, highly recommended if you want to read some 
good stories in the original slash vein. 

-- 
Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights
reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated.
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