Path: not-for-mail
From: Antheros <antheros_REMOVE@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.d
Subject: {ASSD} Farewell
Date: Sat, 26 Apr 2008 02:47:15 +0200
Organization: NewsGuy - Unlimited Usenet $19.95
Lines: 230
Message-ID: <futu0501mnf@news2.newsguy.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: pcec9a9bfff000000ebd21414e089fdea55b51159961f7b51.newsdawg.com
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format="flowed"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040618
X-Accept-Language: en-us, en
Bytes: 13441
X-Original-Bytes: 13397
===================
I've been away for the last months for many reasons. One of
them, however, overwhelms the others; I'm drawing no pleasure from
being Antheros anymore.
This post is a farewell.
I could have just disappeared, but there aren't many chances
to say good bye in life, are there? Most things are unexpected, which
is good and bad. It's also interesting, as a writer, to write something
unexpected: killing the nom de plume is a certain form of suicide, as
soft as stopping to play the piano or football on Sundays.
I think I've always been an outcast in this group, not by others
but by myself, for the simple reason that more often than not I ignored
the "sex" in "alt.sex.stories", leaving it between lines or just casting
a faint and distance shadow (very much like vermouth in a Churchill
martini); yet, I've always been surprised by the fact that there is no
plain alt.stories hierarchy. The few writing groups outside a.s.s.* are
uninteresting and rarely have stories nowadays.
ASSM (and its sister assd) have, however, always been 'infected'
by the occasional story/discussion in which sex was part of it, not the
main theme in a null plot. Those stories drew me here, those stories
made me post mine own here. I find it sad that they come only rarely
now, and only by authors who have been here for a long time. The stories
posted recently are almost all raw or extreme, and I find them
uninteresting even for the most lonely purposes.
It's not only the kinkiness. No, I can't understand how one can
be turned on by violence, to pick just one theme among many that I
abhor. Even then, it's necessary to separate quality and personal taste,
here and anywhere else. If I may, let me single out an author of this
group, who, I believe, won't mind it too much, since we have touched
this subject before. Stasya's themes are not to my liking at all; but
one should be allowed to write freely, I think, and to each his own,
and I recognize that he writes well, despite my dislike for the theme
of his stories. I wish he wrote more essays (or stories more to my
liking), and he's often trying to make something interesting here in
ASSD. It's possible to separate an author's style and talent to the
particular stories written.
Before some of you transform this post into a flame war, read
a little more, please (although I wonder if a few flame wars wouldn't
help assd to catch some breath again). I'm not writing this post to
blame anybody or to be a SOB critic; neither am I being a moralist,
for stroke stories should exist too. I don't think censorship of any
kind is a solution to any problem, although tirants of all epochs
disagree.
I'm writing it to let people know I'm gone, which some authors
don't do and leave readers looking for them, wondered if stories will
be finished and new ones written. And I'm writing to leave a last thing
behind me, in the faint hope that it may be a seed. For a long time I've
been meaning to write a long critique of online writing, but I thought
I wasn't up to the task; who am I to be such a judge?
Yet a writer is always egocentric (I was going to say that
writers are the most egocentric people, but politicians and showbiz
people beat us). A writer ought to be egocentric! Otherwise he
wouldn't write a 500-page long novel and publish it. He must think
he's a good storyteller, that he's original or involving. I know there
are many here afflicted by doubts, who take a long time revising and
pondering before releasing their stories, but, to be frank, I now
believe this is part this egocentrism. It's our desire to be good--
or more, the best--, to entice the reader for hours and to achieve that
perfectness we seek, a story carefully written so that each and every
phrase pleases us and when added to each other convey the precise
feelings we strove to put down into words.
Not having this egocentrism is a problem. I know people who
would be terrific writers, but they don't believe that. They can't
bring themselves to such a position, to believe that they have
interesting things to do and to write. I didn't write that long
critique I mentioned above for this reason--and because it's a lot of
work, perhaps more than I could've tackled. But having too much of it
makes a writer cocky and dull, for he'll think anything he writes
is good, and who the hell is this moron criticizing him?
The period during which I wrote reviews taught me very much.
Writing a good review is much harder than writing a story. It takes
much thought and consideration. It's easy to say that a story is bad,
but to pinpoint exactly what makes it bad is not; even harder is the
story that almost makes it. What is missing? I suggest this as an
exercise to anybody who writes, sit down and write a review. Write
something that you would like to read if you were being reviewed, not
because it says nice things, but because it has substance, suggestions,
notes. Try to find what makes a story good. It makes you pay attention
to the prose, to the choice of words, to nuances that would otherwise
be missed.
Take the average story here and compare with the average
published story. There's such a difference! Most stories here are
so focused that they don't have a bigger picture. They're sequences
of events, not narratives. I see some of you raising hands.
"They are just stroke stories," someone says. Yes, but what
do you want in a good stroke story? A detailed description of who
licks what and how? That's tiresome, and that's not reading, that's
laziness, an excuse not to create your own fantasy. A porn movie in
text.
"They're supposed to be simple, easy to read," someone else
argues. Yes, they can be so. It's not often we're in the mood for a
classic book which demands attention. We want quick stories, best
seller books which are pleasing and interesting, not deep. But these
are engaging, well written. Or do we? Have you noticed how grades
are higher for long stories, even mammoth ones like Scipio's? People
don't like to get acquainted to new situations all the time, new
characters. They like to see what happens to them, how they evolve.
Simple and easy to read doesn't mean dumb.
What has always amazed me the most in online stories,
particularly here, is how little we use of the freedom we have. Here's
a world in which "printing" is free, there's no page limit, you don't
need to convince a publisher to risk lawsuits and to publish your
risque novel, or that your risque novel should be printed because
it's revolutionary. There's anonymity (almost). Endless paper.
Everybody in the world who speaks your language can read your story
for free. It's Utopia!
It's Utopia. Wasted, degenerated utopia. Men seek freedom,
and when they finally get it, they don't know what to do with it.
We have all this at our disposal, and we write bad stroke stories.
How did we take advantage of what is available? No, there aren't
new nonlinear stories taking advantage of the web, new movements
redefining literature, or who knows what else could be done--and
just having links in the text is rubbish, not novelty.
Why are most stories straightforward, dumb, mindless sexual
fantasies? Pure stroke stories, linear from beginning to end,
picturing situations that are unlikely or impossible, many seeming
to have come straight out from the mind of a 15 year old boy.
Where are the interesting stories? The ones which have real
characters, dilemmas, situations likely to occur and which we often
wonder about in real life? The mistress and why she accepts her
role, the cheater and why he does it (one of the few subjects which
were reasonably exploited here), the inexplicable passions, the couples
in trouble, aren't they interesting to anybody? There are hundreds
of themes which could be tackled here in ASSM & co., yet they are
forgotten or forsaken. Writers choose the banality of describing
tongue movements instead of choosing to linger in the minds of the
characters.
Many people often complain that usenet is dying. I've been
reading this phrase for so many years that I prefer not to count
them, and my interest has spanned many groups over time. My current
opinion has changed lately; it's not dying, it's finally reaching
equilibrium, at last finding itself at the same level of mediocrity
that prevails in any other medium. Have you ever read a blog? I've
yet to find one that is so captivating as to keep me a regular
reader, waiting for the next article.
The blessed time we had in the 90's net was a fluke. It just
happened that the users were naturally selected by the medium:
people who had access to computers and internet back then, and
who would find their way into a usenet group were remarkably alike,
and marveled at the idea of internet, this wonderful new medium. You
could find people like yourself living thousands of miles away,
interested in the same things you were, and more, your writing could
reach all of them and whoever is interested, for free. There's
freedom to talk about whatever you want. Welcome.
That time will never come back. I don't think we alive
today will ever see anything like that--and, though all predictions
are dumb, I think we may only see something like it again when
people find a way to hook brains together directly. It all happened
because the internet was built in a way that allowed this initial
critical mass to form--unlike Second Life or your favorite social
network site, which grows so fast and with so many different people
that it never shapes itself into something well defined.
On the other hand, most of the users back then are still
around (if not here, somewhere else), and many more alike joined
later. Where are them? I think they are lurking, perhaps filling
Wikipedia or something like that, but most likely just tired. The
Utopia is not new anymore, and it's very polluted. We browse because
it's a given--it's a necessity--in this world of today. We have
"evolved" to shorter messages; as much as I love short and flash
stories (probably because there's no way to stall in them), it's
impossible to create something meaningful in Twitter.
I'm the first to say that I'm not helping by leaving. It's
this very attitude which has brought this group down, with the
leaving of many interesting people, for one reason or another. But I
think one has to be reasonable and realize when one is at the wrong
place. Neither do I think I'm too good to be here, I just think I'm
pursuing things that are out of fashion in this group (and other
places). Besides, I get no kick of writing in the style of Antheros
anymore.
I often wondered why authors here would retire. I think I
finally found the reason why many of them did.
Every time something ends, besides feeling sad, we should
look at why it ended and what it meant. I had a lot of fun, great
friends and a few stories I'm really proud of. If it's ending,
it's because I changed and the group changed, as it's natural.
Among the many unfinished stories I have, there were three
that I wanted to finish before retiring. During these last few
months I changed my mind, and decided to finish and post only of
them, one which belongs to this group. It has been inspired by it,
and hopefully it will be interesting to some of you. I'm posting it
to ASSD together with this post and to my website. I wish it were
better--there's much I wish I would have written into it that I
didn't. But it's time to let it go. It's called "Beneath the
masks of ourselves," and I hope the writers of this group will find
it somewhat interesting. I posted it to my website (see my
signature), ASSM and SOL.
One never knows; it wasn't only one or two writers here who
retired and came back. There *are* times to say never, but this
isn't likely to be one of them. I'll check if this post becomes
a thread and keep my email for now. Knowing myself, I'll still read
this group, very occasionally. Yet, if I had to bet, it'd be that
Antheros is dead for good.
Before I leave, I want to thank you all. Thanks for the
stories, for the posts, for the emails. Even more, to those of
you with whom I had direct contact, thank you; I won't name you
here, for you all know who you are and why you mattered to me.
It was a good ride, because I wish it lasted longer.
Farewell.
--
Antheros [antheros A T gmail.com]
http://www.asstr.org/~Antheros/