Message-ID: <44108asstr$1061932204@assm.asstr-mirror.org> Return-Path: From: LadyCyrrh@aol.com X-Original-Message-ID: <1ce.fe54fd7.2c7cdba1@aol.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by sara.asstr-mirror.org id h7QFnr3b028852 X-ASSTR-Original-Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2003 11:49:53 EDT Subject: {ASSM} {REVIEW} The Annex Reviews, 8/26/03 Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2003 17:10:04 -0400 Path: assm.asstr-mirror.org!not-for-mail X-Is-Review: yes Approved: Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.moderated,alt.sex.stories,alt.sex.stories.d Followup-To: alt.sex.stories.d X-Archived-At: X-Moderator-Contact: ASSTR ASSM moderation X-Story-Submission: X-Moderator-ID: RuiJorge, dennyw The Annex Reviews, 8/26/03 by Lady Cyrrh (ladycyrrh@aol.com) Website: http://members.aol.com/ladycyrrh I am currently busy with another writing project, so I am straying from reading current newsgroup-posted stories for a while, reviewing instead stories I've read in the past. This posting will concentrate on slave stories, M/F, F/F, and M/M. It's a subject near and dear to my heart as anyone who's read me for a while can attest. I will also be moving my website to the asstr-mirror.org site and it will be operational soon. (PSST! Anyone want to gift me with a copy of Dreamweaver 3 so I can make it more modern? Please email me privately.) So let the whips and chains mayhem begin! The Stories: Blondilocks, Parts 1 and 2 (Bookgirl): M/F, F+/F, BDSM, slave, ncon THE FIRM I, Parts 1, 2, 3 (Bill Smith): M/M, BDSM, slavebiz Earth in Chains, Book 1 (blinky): M/F, cons, femdom, SF, slave The Forest in Spring (Mara): M/F, femdom, slave, fantasy Slave Girls of Actaeon (Alyssa S.): M/f, F/F, slave, mc, tg, SF Training Yamrah (Boris Ludamenko): M/F, mc, slave, fantasy Blondilocks, Parts 1 and 2 [A-] Where posted: ASSM When posted: 6/13/03 Author: Bookgirl Type: M/F, F+/F, BDSM, slave, ncon Adrianna and her husband are serious players in the local BDSM scene and decide to participate in their club's annual slave auction (the proceeds going to charity, of course -- bonk a slave, save an orphan.) A feature of such auctions are lengthy limits lists where would-be slaves list what sex acts they won't put up with. Feeling sure that her husband will buy her, and that it will give her an opportunity to safely indulge in many fantasies she felt hesitant about before, Adrianna edits her list severely. But lo and behold, her hubby fails to meet her bid, and she's sold instead to a group of three female roues who are sure to do various kinky things to her. This was a pretty good story in the BDSM/slave vein, but the author never made it clear how sexually liberal, and therefore sexually threatened, the protagonist was. At the beginning of the story it's clear she's tried everything except asphyxiation play, making it clear she's pretty experienced... but then she freaks out when she is bought by the women (each having quirks, though not especially deviant ones) making it seem she isn't so sophisticated after all. Part of the fun of reading a story like this is seeing how a slave can get more than they bargained for from their new master or mistress, but here there seems to be no reason for her fear. We'll just have to see where the author takes it. THE FIRM I, Parts 1, 2, 3 [A-] Where posted: ASSGM When posted: 2/2/01 Author: Bill Smith Type: M/M, BDSM, slavebiz This story was in the tradition of lengthy, detailed slave fantasies done so well by gay authors like Peter Brown ("A Middle Class Slave") and Joshua Ryan ("Christopher Enslaved."). All of them are basically alike -- as most het slave fantasies are basically alike -- concentrating not on the protagonists' struggle against their enslavement but on the mechanical process of it, the authors inventing an astonishing level of detail about how their pet operations work. For the reader, the enjoyment comes not from character or plot but from world-building of this sort. Or at least it should, if the story's done well. This story was the most businesslike slave fantasy I've read, coming across at times like an infomercial written by a bored executive. Forrest and David are two dully persnickety yuppie types who are out to make a killing in the gay male slave trade, buying stock cheap and selling it high. They are soon approached by an organization known as THE FIRM (annoyingly capitalized throughout the story, and reminiscent of that awful Jimmy Page heavy metal band of the late 80s) and witness exchanges like: >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> "THE FIRM has noted, as you'll not be surprised I'm sure, that both of you have bought considerable stock over the past few years - at least enough to get into the upper 10 percent of our customers. But we've also noticed that you have managed to resell a lot of that stock at considerable profit after further acclimation and training. Frankly, we're impressed. But I know that you can't extend yourself too much further with your own capital. So, right to the point, we want to extend an invitation and I'm sure you two will take it in the right way. We want you to consider becoming agents of THE FIRM, especially finding and buying the type of stock that would meet our very high quality standards and, with a lot of training once they're purchased, THE FIRM could guarantee fully. You'll use our money - you'll find our resources are almost inexhaustible - with no questions asked." >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> I quote at length here because it's indicative of the rest of the story, most of which consisted of commercial banter... dialogue that was anal enough (sorry for the pun) and detailed enough to give rise to a new genre of sex story: slavebiz. This doesn't mean that the story is no good, however. Most of the thrills do, in fact, come out of the droning, detached chit-chat about enslaved human beings treated like product, although the author is careful to say at several times that life as a slave is preferable to being worked to death in a diamond mine in Brazil, or life in prison ("But this was heaven compared to the constant abuse they got from those ugly old guards and even uglier warden in that filthy Mexican prison... They had to admit that since being enslaved they'd actually learned to enjoy having their bodies used and found significant satisfactions in pleasing their owners no matter what the demands were.") There were plenty of nice descriptions of the slaves, too, who are kept shaved with their nipples pierced, submissively presenting themselves for their masters' use while remaining unspent themselves -- sometimes for months -- until they are lathered into a sexual froth. What the slaves feel about all this isn't examined, though; the emphasis is on the executives of the trade. An unusual story, majestically cruel in some places, dull and easy to mock in others. Recommended for its imagination, though I wish the writer hadn't capitalized THE FIRM throughout the story. Imagine how my reviews would read if I continuously capitalized THE ANNEX or LADY CYRRH. Earth in Chains, Book 1 [B] Where posted: ASS When posted: 6/23/01 Author: blinky Type: M/F, cons, femdom, SF, slave This excerpt from an online novel was posted a while back on ASS. I found it in a Google search. The rest of it is "available in e-book format (pdf) for $2" at the author's site, which has long since blinked out of existence. This story could be considered a slavefic, but one couched in more conventional science fiction frame. It's centuries in the future and an alien race known as the Ska'an have taken over the earth and decimated its population. Oddly, they don't do anything with it. Instead of looting or pillaging they choose to live on small landholdings with the remaining humans as their slaves, a quasi-feudal lifestyle augmented by technology such as aircars and electric fences. Not very exciting, is it? That was how I felt about the rest of this story. It was cleanly written, the grammar was in place, and the author can reveal and carry forward an action/adventure plot. But it was just... dull. The style was competent, but never sparkled. The bad characters -- the aliens -- didn't evince the intense evil which would have made them hateable, and the hero, while sympathetic, was bland and blah. There weren't any of the piquant sadisms you'd usually find in a slave story. Even the unusual elements, such as aliens practicing a sort of femdom (Ska'an females are tall, muscular amazons, keeping Skan'an males as virtual slaves) didn't intrigue. By the time I got to the big escape and the sex (the male and female slaves finally get to mingle freely) I was seriously zoned out. If there was ever a perfect example of a B story -- one that isn't interesting and ambitious enough for an A, yet not poorly written and clichéd enough for a C or a D, this is it. I don't know quite where this went wrong, but I'd suggest to the author, if they're still around, to work on his or her writing style, making it more lively and distinct. The Forest in Spring [A+] Where found: The Gorean Voice URL: http:www.pantheus.com/TGV/archive122000/TGV/Guest.shtml Author: Mara Type: M/F, femdom, slave, fantasy You can't talk about slavery without Gor, can you? John Norman (a pseudonym) has written many slave tales about this barbaric world, which have inspired a fanatical following since being published in the 1960s. With the internet age its fans (known as Goreans) have discovered each other, creating websites where they can roleplay, discuss the books, or even pastiches of his style. This one was found on The Gorean Voice, an ezine devoted to all things Norman. Unlike many Gorean-derived fics, it's pretty good, a serious pastiche attempted in the same writing style. (As with Tolkien, I've read quite a bit of Gor.) It's different in that it's female-centric, dealing with slavery not from the viewpoint of a slave girl but from one of the free women of Gor. These creatures, in the books, were rarely mentioned, except they all tended to get enslaved sooner or later, but Norman never made it clear what the proportion of slave girls to free women was, or what happens to slave girls when they cease being girls, i.e., when their hair goes gray, wrinkles appear, and their titties go south. This writer attempts to fill in that gap. Her character is a free female trader who does business with the panther girls, sly, forest-dwelling amazons who enslave any males they encounter. She comes into contact with a man who, unusually for this world, has had the tables turned on him and become a slave of the females: >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> I peered around her then blinked in surprise. A man had indeed been foolish enough to enter the forest. There, spread eagled on the ground, his limbs bound to sturdy stakes, lay the proof. A stripe had been shaved down the middle of his shaggy hair as testimony to all that he had fallen to women. He'd obviously been much abused, his body covered with welts from switches and quirts . . . and the unmistakable marks of finger nails and teeth. The earthy smells of sweat and musk, both male and female, radiated from him. A personal capture, Ari boasted. Looking at his broad shoulders and long, muscled limbs, one word came to mind, Warrior. A coup indeed, I granted. Well, Ari said, with a wink, even the most powerful beast must sleep sometime. I see. She crouched beside the captive and idly toyed with his manhood. To his obvious and complete fury, his body, that of a male in his prime, responded. Ari ran a lingering hand down his thigh, then stood with a sigh. If only the rest of him was as cooperative. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> This passage evinces a female sensibility towards slavery that any number of mistress tales, femdom stories, and even female-written slash stories doesn't; it depicts the mixture of pity and power so well and so succinctly, yet it's very to find. That to find it in a Gor fandom is even more unusual. This was a short story, and you can probably guess the ending -- it's a noble one. But it was very well done, transcending its trashy pop-fic origins and becoming something profound. Slave Girls of Actaeon [A+] Where found: Crystal's StorySite URL: http://www.storysite.org/story/slacesofacteon~01.html Author: Alyssa S. Type: M/f, F/F, slave, mc, tg, SF Here's a transgender take on Norman, and a very good one I'll add. Though not quite Gorean it had many similarities in both theme and subject matter. Laurence Joo is an interplanetary surveyor sent to the planet Actaeon to investigate its culture, which is more advanced than Gor's (there are knights, lords, and castles) but keeps the caste of slavegirl chattels who exist as a sort of third sex, alternately venerated and abused by males and females both. The author adds a twist in that they are specially bred for that purpose, becoming over many generations small boned, passive, and obedient, with variations such as the "Archipelago small mouth girl" who is specially bred for oral sex with a mouth that approximates the size and shape of a female anus. Whoa. The plot begins when an upstart lord makes off with a mind/body switching device brought by the surveyor, who he then proceeds to entrap in the body of a luscious 14- year-old slavegirl. The upstart then proceeds to create havoc and leaves the now transgendered and transbodied surveyor to his fate, a fate made even more dire by the fact the slavegirls are fed a drug that makes them even more passive and sensually stupefied. And of course no one believes him when he insists he's someone else. Though it had an exciting plot centering on the narrator's struggle to regain his proper body, the story was really about his reaction to his reduction in status. And he does go on and on about it, evincing a take similar to, but told in more erudite and sympathetic words, than Norman's philosophy. Here the narrator is enslaved by another victim of the device, a male warrior thrust into the body of a slavegirl who is decidedly not as resigned as the narrator about it: >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> It felt natural to me, even satisfying, to have my helplessness demonstrated to me yet again, and though I knew that this woman, if confronted by a true man now, would break and succumb to the needs of her bodily passions, would show herself to be as responsive to direction as I; even though I knew her domination of me was relative and forced, a coping mechanism of hers, I responded with open thighs and open mouth as I would for any true master. She fed me only enough to curb my hunger; the proper care of a slavegirl usually dictates the girl's wants are never quite satisfied - she never quite gets enough to eat; kneeling for hours at a time, she is never comfortable; certainly the methodical arousal of a slavegirl isn't so much to please her as to frustrate her, for she is rarely permitted to bring her arousal to fruition. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Most of the story, like Norman's opuses, does consist of philosophizing of this sort, told in first person rather than third, without all the he-man posturing that made the books so interminably dull. It evinces what may be a transgendered male's envy of the female slave's humiliating but sensual sexual rewards... although, frankly, slavegirl orgasms were few and far between the hours of callous treatment, boredom and frustration, which makes me think that if the author REALLY lived that life he'd be more than a little fed up with it. (The slavegirls transferred into the bodies of men lose no time in whooping it up with their newfound freedoms.) I also think the author pulled his punches by revealing the narrator had role-played being a slavegirl on his ships' holodeck, and gotten great pleasure from it, before falling into his fate; things would have been more dramatic if he had discovered his transgender inclinations by actually living them. But the story was well detailed, had some excellent writing and plotting, and certainly delivered the slavegirl goods without the windy chauvinisms of the original. As the author of "The Forest in Spring" did above, it improved on the original product while adding its own spin. Training Yamrah [A] Where found: JRParz URL: http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/JR_Parz/www/BorisSlaveWorldTrainingYamrah.htm Author: Boris Ludamenko Type: M/F, mc, slave, fantasy Boris Ludamenko, who has his fiction hosted on JRParz's ASSTR site, has come up with his own take on the Gor scenario: his "Slave World" series of stories features mind control in addition to conventional whips and chains. So not only are the poor slavegirls bored, horny, and perpetually frustrated ("She shivered: it did her no good to think about her lost Master. She was still bound to him: the thought of him, so far away, still aroused the slave-heat in her loins, a heat no other man could fully quench") they're enspelled into being perfect little pets as well. The spells to do this are applied through a ring piercing the septum of the nose, and transfers may be made to other owners as thus: >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> She crawled forward on all fours and as her face reached his knee, his right hand reached forward and delicately grasped her nose ring between finger and thumb. A few whispered words left Kandolous' lips and a surge of magical energy flowed down into Yamrah's body. Her head swam and when it cleared she knew that the wizard had altered the enslavement spell so that she was now sexually and submissively focused on him. She moaned as his hand stroked her hair. The simplest touch made her instantly helpless with total lust for him, with the need to serve him. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Another good take on Gor that transcends the original. ____________________________________________________ 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. +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | alt.sex.stories.moderated ------ send stories to: | | FAQ: Moderators: | +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |ASSM Archive at Hosted by | |Discuss this story and others in alt.sex.stories.d; look for subject {ASSD}| +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+