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NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 25 Dec 2005 15:22:44 -0600
From: "Stasya T. Canine" <stasyatk9NOSPAMED@juno.com>
Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.d
Subject: {ASSD} Review/Critique - Frank McCoy's 'BLIND.TXT' (Mf, cons, incest, teen/pre, preg, humor)
Date: Sun, 25 Dec 2005 13:25:09 -0800
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===================
A Canine Commentary: Frank McCoy's 'BLIND.TXT'
====
First, a word from the authors, excerpted from another thread:
(The quoted text is mine, the rest is Frank's.)
==
>There are a lot of people here who aren't aware of the style of
>review/critique you want.
>
As good or bad as you feel it deserves.
Mainly I look upon reviews of *finished stories* like this one, as
guides as to how to improve or correct later stories I write.
Bad reviews let me see mistakes I've made and correct them next time.
Good reviews tell me when I'm doing something right.
Actually, I usually get more out of a well-documented *bad* review
than a similarly documented good one ... Because it allows me to fix
things.
However, a good review *does* tell me when I'm doing things right ...
Which helps also.
>Whichever, when it's all over, there will be no hard feelings on my
>part.
>
Never.
Even when I come out and defend vigorously a position taken in a
story, it's never personal unless the reviewer attacks me personally
instead of the story.
>Now, do you *really* want me to get out the combat peeler on Christmas
>Day?
>
Damned tootin' I do!!!
>Wouldn't bother me to give you a present you asked for... <vbg>
>
Pretty Please, with thick white cream on it?
;-}
====
After reading 'Blind', I was faced with a problem. I enjoyed the
concept he was using, that of the contortions an observer will put
themselves through to justify staying blind to a situation, in this
case, incest.
The opening does an excellent job of setting things up. With the
humor code, there were three ways Frank could have taken this story,
none of which are eliminated in the first two paragraphs:
-
Jonathan Swift was right; as my idiot husband proves. Sandy is
*his* little girl, always has been, and he just cannot see what's
going on.
Even as a little girl, when two or three years old, Dan would
dress up Sandy in the most outrageous clothes ... FAR too "adult"
for such a child ... and never see how he was attracting men's (and
older boy's) attention to the kid in ways that a little girl
wouldn't understand. But Sandy *loved* the attention. She pranced,
she *glowed*, she basked in the male adoration; and still does, for
that matter.
-
The only obvious things so far, in my view, are that the story will be
from the mother's pov and that she has mixed emotions about what's
happening.
But there *is* that humor code... Where is Frank going to take this?
After we read some more, about a swimming suit and some other things,
we read:
--
And Dan, that blind old fool, couldn't see anything wrong with
this! He said it looked "cute" on her. That three-quarters of the
men around the pool were staring (usually out of the corner of their
eyes; not wanting to seem like perverts) at our little girl padding
around like she was naked in bare feet, didn't seem to bother him
either. "They're just looking out for her," he explained. This
*almost* made sense; as Sandy was a cute little heartache, padding
madly around the pool until everybody winced with each little stub
of toe or other minor mishap.
--
Ah Hah! Dan, the husband, has been relegated to a very minor role in
the mother's thoughts. The daughter, too, is becoming a supporting,
instead of a major character.
Tentative conclusion: This will be about the mother and the ways she
seeks to not let herself see her husband's obvious sexual interest in
her daughter.
This *is* a Frank McCoy story though, and he's quite capable of
providing us with a plot twist later on. Predictable now doesn't mean
it will be later.
Still, there's that humor code, and the heavy hammer of cliche'd
predictability works quite well.
Let's see where this leads...
It isn't long until we see:
--
Dan seemed to *like* showing off his little girl; never realizing
it seems that it wasn't the child's *beauty* that attracted so many
men's admiring stares, but her blatant sexuality! Dan always was
blind to the fact that Sandy even HAD sexuality, let alone that the
clothes he bought for her or encouraged her to buy actually flaunted
that same aspect of her developing young body. Little girls aren't
sexy, are they?
--
The mother's obsession with denial is confirmed. She's sounded a bit
more frantic about it, as if it's getting more and more difficult for
her to self-justify her ignorance
This feeling is confirmed in the next paragraph:
--
These days you hear a lot of crap about incest on TV. I say
"crap" advisedly, because most of it is. Probably 3/4 of the so-
called "incest" isn't really; being between cousins or such, which
shouldn't even be *called* incest. Some idiots even include sex
between second-cousins incest! Almost as silly, is calling
uncle/niece and aunt/nephew sex, incest. Grandfather/granddaughter
sex is kind of borderline; so might be incest in some circumstances
(say the grandparent lives in the home) but not others. No, I'm
*not* going to draw a sharp line. For sure stepfather/stepdaughter
sex isn't really incest, as the people aren't even related any more
than the second husband and his wife! Really, except for it being
"cheating on his wife", there really isn't any valid reason for a
man not having sex, yes, full vaginal intercourse, with all of his
wife's daughters, as long as they aren't *his* kids. There are
instead, even several valid reasons FOR a man fucking (yes,
*fucking*) his new wife's daughters; not the least of which is that
it gives the girls a chance to love their new stepfather by making-
love with him. It also gives the woman a better chance of staying
married, by giving her new husband several women to fuck instead of
just her. Since it isn't really incest (though some call it that),
why not
--
A little on the preachy side, but some people really do think this
way.
And there's that humor code. The context helps make this approach
work.
I'm wincing a little but it's nothing to put me off the story
completely.
There's also a nagging suspicion starting to form. Is Frank going to
pull this off? Or is he going to insist on this heavy, sledge hammer
approach for the rest of the story?
I notice there still a LOT of story left and while I'm still enjoying
the story, there's a bit of dread forming somewhere deep in my mind.
Not much further and we read:
--
Hell, if you're the jealous type, and your mind is always *on*
sex, then even the most innocent of things can be construed as
sexual. Like the time when Sandy was about three years old, and I
saw her and Dan meet in the hallway when he came out of the bathroom
one morning with a hard-on; almost poking the little girl in the
face with the thing. Sandy, of course, opened her mouth, and Dan's
prick slid right in. For the next three minutes or so, if you were
the suspicious type and had walked in on the two without seeing what
happened all the way, you might suspect our daughter was being
molested by Dan forcing her to give him a blow-job. But it wasn't
that way at all! Sandy just slid her little mouth back and forth on
Dan's prick like it was some big lollipop, until she suddenly gave a
choking gasp and white drool spat out her mouth and even her nose.
Then Sandy gave one last lick, swallowed heavily, and wandered off
into the living-room as she lost interest. To somebody who didn't
know better, it almost appeared as if Sandy had just sucked her
father off. A suspicious woman might even count that as Dan having
sex with the child.
--
OK. There's progression. The story is moving at last and we'll get
to see this mother agonize and find new ways to justify her blindness
while she watches her daughter and husband openly take advantage of
her willful blindness.
With Frank the author, and humor as one of the codes, this should be a
romp in the park. It should be enjoyable to see him deftly handle
this while the reader sits back and smirks at such human folly, even
while admitting his fiction is all too often very close, if not
exactly, reality.
It wasn't a romp in the park.
By the time I was past the first third, it was a careful, but still
hopeful slogging through the endless mud. The father and daughter
were obviously enjoying themselves.
Now, there was humor, but it was the repetitious humor of contempt.
The contempt of a father and daughter who no longer cared about the
third person in their lives.
They changed but the mother hasn't She's locked herself into being a
chattel, ostensibly the main character, but in reality, a foil for the
obvious and openly displayed contempt that her daughter and husband
share.
The story is no longer funny, and even considering the humor code, I
can't find it in myself to have any sympathy for her--or the others.
It isn't funny any more, on any level that I can see.
But this is by Frank McCoy, an author of excellent skills, and while I
can't see any obvious ways to avoid where the story is headed, he
might yet do something to rekindle my genuine interest.
By the halfway point the only reason I'm reading is because Frank
wrote it.
By 3/4 of the way through, and the rest of it, the only reason I have
for continuing is so I can honorably say 'I read it all' when I
critique it.
That characters are all painfully, obviously overdone caricatures with
no sense of being anything more. My sense of humor is gone. It was
bludgeoned into a frothy pulp that has drained away into the gutter,
with no evidence it ever existed.
I have a personal rating system that is simple, which effectively sums
up many divergent things.
There are two ratings:
A raised tail for interest and appeal if I like it
A raised leg if I don't.
This one started with the raised tail, and not because it was written
by Frank. The opening caught me, as did the idea he was working with.
By the time I was past the first third, the tail was drooping but I
wasn't quite ready to lift my leg.
By the halfway point the leg was definitely ready to lift, but the
urgency wasn't there to demand I do so.
It wasn't much longer before I'd forgotten about 'raising the leg'
Sorry, Frank. As much as I'd like to do otherwise...
it doesn't matter who wrote it,
I give it a definite 'squat' on overall appeal and the use of the
'humor' code
In a technical sense, wrt to punctuation and that sort of stuff, it is
excellent work.
Even the flow is pretty good, with the caveat that there were several
times near the end where I had a strong feeling that you'd simply
copied and pasted sections wholesale, then changed a few words.
This feeling of repetition helped destroy the story imv.
Yet another, more telling thing *didn't* happen. I didn't realize
this one, which I *should* have seen very quickly, until I'd been away
from it for several hours.
There was no sense of resolution. No feeling that anything had
changed from the very first sentence. By my count, you took 12,600+
words to take me nowhere--but you'd bludgeoned me with heavy handed,
repetitious 'humor' so much that if I wasn't deliberately planning a
critique...
I'd never have realized it.
Heavy handed humor works. I enjoy it and sometimes use it myself.
Repetition works, too.
But still, there's a sense of timing involved. You have to know when
to stop.
My opinion here is that you missed that point, to the detriment of an
otherwise well written story.
----
"Popularity is based on selfishness.
Respect is based on generousity.
This is the primary difference between them."
--Anonymous--
~~~
http://www.furnation.com/Nikkolai - Furry, general audience