Subject: FAQ: rec.arts.erotica
Keywords: [none; faq post]
X-Moderator-Review: [none; faq post]
Last-modified: 1 January 1996
Frequently Asked Questions: rec.arts.erotica
To get a current copy of this FAQ, send a blank email message to <erotica-faq@sub-rosa.com>
TABLE OF CONTENTS
rec.arts.erotica is a low-volume, noise-free, moderated newsgroup in which to post erotic fiction and verse. It is here solely for the enjoyment of the Usenet community.
Original submissions, and works either released into the public domain, or copyrighted but without restriction of distribution, are welcome.
Currently, the moderators of rec.arts.erotica are Michael Handler <handler@sub-rosa.com> and Ava Pettit-Mountain <ava@sub-rosa.com>. You can reach both of the moderators simultaneously by mailing <erotica-request@sub-rosa.com>. Fan letters are appreciated, hate mail will be broken down into its component electrons and used to feed starving UNIX daemons.
Anyone who can send electronic mail to an Internet address can submit a work to rec.arts.erotica. There are no other requirements to submit something for consideration. You don't have to be a published writer, a professional, a student, or anything else. You don't even have to be a carbon-based lifeform.
The newsgroup description line for rec.arts.erotica reads: "Erotic fiction and verse." We think that pretty much sums it up.
Any kind of written work that deals with _erotica_ is welcome here. We realize that 'erotica' means many different things to many different people; here, it spans the spectrum of erotic writing from love sonnets to graphic descriptions of sexual acts.
We would like to stress that this newsgroup is not restricted to what _we_ find erotic; a newsgroup devoted to only what turns on Mike and Ava would be pretty limited. Instead, this newsgroup is for any kind of erotic writing that _anyone_ out there reading might find erotic.
To that end: rec.arts.erotica will accept erotic writings of any nature: heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, transgender, or anywhere in between. We will post stories involving various fetishes and specializations: BDSM, bestiality, furry fiction, rape, incest, watersports, and yes, even pedophilia. Remember, this is fiction.
The one exception to this policy involves stories containing excessive amounts of violence. If it is the opinion of the moderators that the story submitted contains excessive amounts of violence for violence's sake alone, we will reject it.
When your article arrives at the moderators' mailbox, you will receive an automated reply informing you that your article was received by the moderators. If you don't get an automated reply within twenty-four hours, resubmit your article or contact the moderators at <erotica-request@sub-rosa.com>.
Once or twice a week, the moderators will process all the waiting messages in their mailbox. The moderators will check your submission, and insure that it falls within rec.arts.erotica's charter. If your article is not appropriate for rec.arts.erotica, it will be returned to you with a brief note explaining why your article was rejected.
If your article is on-topic for rec.arts.erotica, it will then be checked for excessive formatting problems, especially lines that are wrapped at greater than eighty (80) characters. Minor formatting problems may be corrected, at the discretion of the moderators, but articles with major formatting problems will be returned to the authors for reformatting and resubmission.
If your article passes all these checks, it will be approved and posted to rec.arts.erotica.
The moderators will read through your article completely. We will add a Keywords: header to your article, with a set of keywords that indicate the content of the article. This allows people to skip articles they may not wish to read, and to find things they do want to read. (A complete list of keywords can be found later in this FAQ.)
The moderators will also add an X-Moderator-Review: and an X-Ava-Review: to the headers. These headers will appear in this format, giving a numerical rating from 1 to 10, and a brief comment upon the story.
X-Moderator-Review: 6: better than average bdsm X-Ava-Review: 3: whip me, beat me, but don't make me read this
These headers represent the subjective and whimsical opinions of the moderators only. The comments are often sarcastic and / or satirical.
The review we give your story has nothing to do with whether your story gets posted, the order in which it is posted, or anything else. It's merely a way to let the moderators think they're being pithy and amusing. (This job has few rewards. Making fun of bad writing is one of them. Humor us.)
When the story is injected into the newsfeed, you will receive a copy via email to signify that your story was posted.
There are two ways to submit an article to rec.arts.erotica:
* Mail your article to <erotica@sub-rosa.com>.
If that address fails, try <rec-arts-erotica@uunet.uu.net>.
* Post your article to rec.arts.erotica.
If your site's news software is configured correctly, any posts to rec.arts.erotica will be automatically forwarded to the correct submission address.
Again, you should receive an autoreply within twenty-four hours of submitting your article. If you don't receive the autoreply, resubmit your article or contact the moderators at <erotica-request@sub-rosa.com>.
Glad you asked. :-)
Submissions for rec.arts.erotica _must_ be in plain ASCII text format. Lines must be wrapped at 80 columns or less (72 - 75 preferred). There must be no control characters, or special character sets in your submission. For the time being, submissions must be primarily in English. (Sorry.)
Do not submit files in WordPerfect, Micro$oft Word, or any other word processor format. Do not send your submission via MIME, UUENCODE, BinHex, NeXTMail, or any other mail protocol that is intended to transport binaries. rec.arts.erotica is for textual work; if you need to use one of those protocols to transmit your work, it's not appropriate for rec.arts.erotica.
If your submission does not fit these guidelines, it will be returned to you to be cleaned up and resubmitted, at your discretion.
* Wrap your lines at 72 - 75 characters. Lines longer than 80 characters are impossible to read on 95% of all newsreaders.
* Please put the title of your work, and only the title of your work, in the Subject: line. Please don't submit something with a Subject: line of "story" or "submission".
* Don't right-justify your text. It looks great when you're using a proportional font, but Usenet is mostly viewed using a monospaced, fixed-width font. Right-justification looks horrible with a fixed-width font.
* Place a single blank line between each paragraph.
* There is no reason to double-space Usenet postings.
* USING ALL CAPS WILL GET A STORY REJECTED REAL FAST!!!!1111!!!!!
* Cute ASCII art will be deleted before posting. Don't waste your time.
* Please don't include overly-long disclaimers at the beginning. The newsgroup includes "erotica" in the name; that should be warning enough. And if someone gets squicked by something they read, too bad; they should have read the Keywords: header to see what was in the story.
* Overly intrusive or long .signatures may be deleted at the moderator's discretion.
* Please don't include "Story X, by J. Random Writer" at the top of your story. That's what the Subject: and From: headers are for.
* Plot, character development, and intelligent writing. 'Erotica' is not just a story about how Jane and / or Jack fucked Jill and / or Jim, with lots of naughty words. To put this succinctly: go read "The Calyx of Isis", by Pat Califia, and a random letter in "Penthouse Forum". Both are explicit. The latter is garbage, erotic junk-food; the former is erotica. Can you spot the difference?
* If nothing else, run your work through a spellchecker to catch any really obvious spelling errors. If you can, print your story out. Check it yourself for spelling errors, and have a friend or two do the same. An outside observer can catch small errors that you've missed because you've read the same passage twenty times.
* Paragraphs are your friend. Learn how to use them properly. General rule: if a paragraph takes up three-quarters or more of the screen height, it's probably too long. Nothing is more annoying than reading a story that's one huge paragraph.
* Ellipses have three (3) dots. "..." See?
* A few hints from the Grammar Fairy:
o Do not use "'s" to construct the plural form. Examples: "Condoms for sale", not "Condom's for sale".
o "it's" should _only_ be used as a contraction for "it is". The possessive form of "it" is "its". Examples: "It's time for an orgy!", not "Its time for an orgy!"; "The cat licked its paw", not "The cat licked it's paw".
o Don't include body parts you can't spell. It's "tongue", not "tounge".
o "discrete" means "separate". It is also a specialized branch of mathematics. It does not mean "quiet, subtle, efficient". The word you are fumbling for is "discreet".
o "your" is the possessive form of you. "You're" is a contraction for "you are". Examples: "That is your cock", not "That is you're cock"; "You're going to get fucked soundly", not "Your going to get fucked soundly".
* A competent grasp of the English language will get you a higher moderator review faster than anything else, even if your story is about fucking chickens in Jello. It will also serve you well in countless other areas of life. Most community colleges in your area should offer a class in English composition or creative writing. It's well worth your time.
* If you're going to write historical erotica, for God's sake: RESEARCH the time period you're writing about. It's hard to concentrate on reviewing or enjoying a story when you're busy counting the factual errors.
By submitting a story to rec.arts.erotica, you implicitly give permission to the moderators to post your story to the rec.arts.erotica newsgroup. Additionally, you implicitly grant permission for the moderators to save a copy of your work in the rec.arts.erotica archive, which may be made available via mailserver, FTP, or WWW page sometime in the future.
Please note: We can not and will not post stories involving copyrighted or trademarked characters. It makes us all vulnerable to large lawsuits >from bloodsucking humorless corporate lawyers. You _can_ write stories within a particular universe (Star Wars, Star Trek, Darkover, Pern, etc.) but you _cannot_ include specific characters from those universes (Luke Skywalker, James Kirk, Moreta, etc.).
* Ads, personals, discussion/comments, or other non-story postings. Discussion should be done in alt.sex.stories.d. All stories posted to rec.arts.erotica will have the followup set to alt.sex.stories.d by default.
* Copyrighted work that is not electronically redistributable. These stories _are_ being archived.
* Stories about copyrighted or trademarked characters.
* Anything submitted from an anonymous remailer that does not generate a valid return address.
* Binaries of any type.
* Anything that has previously been posted on rec.arts.erotica.
An unmoderated newsgroup for erotica, alt.sex.stories, was created some time ago. There are also other newsgroups for posting general fiction and verse, such as rec.arts.prose and rec.arts.poems. If your post is rejected from rec.arts.erotica, you may either edit it so that it falls within the guidelines for submission and then resubmit it, or you may post it directly to one of the above-named unmoderated newsgroups.
Any submission for rec.arts.erotica must be submitted with a valid From: address on the message. This means that we must be able to send email to the address that is on the post.
You can remove your the "full name" portion of the email address, or have us do it, or place a pseudonym in your full name, but your email address must be valid.
The following are all valid:
From: someone@somesite.com (Joan Nobody) From: someone@somesite.com (Wowbagger) From: someone@somesite.com
The following are all _not_ valid:
From: someone From: @somesite.com From: asdasdasdasd From: hahah@im.not.telling (B1FF R00LZ!!111!!!!)
We will accept submissions from anonymous remailer and anonymous accounts, again, as long as they provide a valid return address. Specifically, we will accept submissions from anon.penet.fi, anonymous accounts at Nyx (nyx.cs.du.edu), and the twwells.com anon-server. We don't know of any others at this time, but we'll be glad to accept submissions from there once we've verified their policies.
For help regarding how to use anon.penet.fi, send email to <help@anon.penet.fi>.
For help on getting an anonymous account at Nyx, telnet to nyx.cs.du.edu, login "new".
We will not accept submissions from "root", "guest", "news", "postmaster", and the like. Use a real account.
We reserve the right to cancel posts which have already been approved to rec.arts.erotica, for any reason. This includes, but is not limited to, submissions which violate someone's copyright, which are subsequently shown to be reposts of old rec.arts.erotica material, or which prove to be intended primarily to harass or humiliate another Usenet participant.
We also reserve the right to refuse to cancel any post which was sent somehow in error. It is your responsibility to check and proofread messages before they are sent, to know your local site's policy on postings to Usenet, and to understand what it means to have your name appear in the header of a post to rec.arts.erotica. We cannot be responsible for such mistakes, and we don't think it's appropriate to unnecessarily inconvenience readers of this newsgroup by canceling posts that were submitted carelessly.
The most likely problem is that although the newsgroup appears on your system locally, for some reason some site upstream from you is not passing it along. As a result, you will only receive rec.arts.erotica articles which have been cross-posted to newsgroups that *are* sent to you. This FAQ is one such article; it is cross-posted to news.answers and rec.answers, among others.
To solve this problem you will need to speak with your system administrator, or with the administrator of a site that feeds you news. We cannot help you further in this.
Ask your local administrator. Questions regarding problems local to your site will be studiously ignored by the moderators.
We do not have the time to send individual posts in the rec.arts.erotica archive to people, nor do we have the resources to make the archive available via FTP or mail server. Any requests we receive for reposts, old submissions, or to be subscribed or unsubscribed from mailing lists, are likely to be dropped in the bit- bucket without comment or acknowledgment.
Such archive sites almost certainly do exist, but many do not wish to make their existence publicly known because of the crush of archive requests which invariably results from such an announcement. Please do not jeopardize the existence of erotica archive sites by posting their names. We will include the name of such a site here only if the administrator of the service has given us permission.
If you manage such an archive site and are willing to announce it publicly, please notify us and we will include it in this posting, which we hope will be updated from time to time with new information of this kind.
The following archives of rec.arts.erotica have been made known to us:
FTP sites:
None. If you manage such a site, please let me know so we can include the information in this FAQ.
Mailservers:
* server@hermes.acm.rpi.edu
Send mail to server@hermes.acm.rpi.edu with the word "help" in the body of the message. Note that this archive contains a variety of erotic texts, but does not presently archive all posts to rec.arts.erotica.
* louvre@dido.fa.indiana.edu
Send mail to louvre@dido.fa.indiana.edu with the Subject header "LIST" to get an alphabetical list of available files and retrieval instructions. "LIST-NEW" will return a list of files ordered from newest to oldest. Appending "-SIZE" to either of these commands tells the server to include the size of each available file as well as its name.
Follow these instructions *exactly* or it will not work. If you experience problems or confusion, send mail to dhuberma@indiana.edu and ask for assistance. Like the hermes server above, this one does not presently include everything posted to rec.arts.erotica.
(Note that the name of this machine is "dido," not "dildo." For the literary-minded among you, "Dido" was Aeneas's lover. Do not send mail to "dildo.fa.indiana.edu" or you will look very silly.)
Web servers:
None currently.
DO NOT SEND US MAIL IF YOU EXPERIENCE PROBLEMS WITH THESE SERVICES. WE WILL BE UNABLE TO HELP YOU.
We do not know of any mailing list reflector of rec.arts.erotica currently in operation. If you administer such a mailing list and would like it advertised here, please let me know.
We are currently considering setting up a mailing list for rec.arts.erotica, but it has not been completed yet. Please don't harass us with requests; we will keep you duly informed when such a service becomes available.
Go away.
Herein ends the FAQ for rec.arts.erotica. Huzzah huzzah. And may God have mercy on our souls.
"I do not believe that sex has an inherent power to transform the world. I do not believe that pleasure is always an anarchic force for good. I do not believe that we can fuck our way to freedom. But this is not what the discourse of sexual repression tells us. In that discourse, unleashed sex has enormous disruptive potential. Minority forms of sex have to be repressed or the social contract will hang in tatters. People will look to their friends and lovers for warmth instead of to their biological families. Women and children will have no protection from male violence. Work for the sake of work will cease to be valued. The nine-to-five, five-days-a-week wage labor that is the foundation of commerce will be disrupted by bored and frustrated workers who use any excuse to come in late, get high as often as possible to alleviate their tedium, rip off their employers, and spend their evenings trying to pick somebody up in a bar or going to political meetings organized by antisocial elements. Nobody will go to church. Children will be thoughtlessly conceived and carelessly reared, and venereal diseases will flourish.
"This is, of course, in wild opposition to our present system."
-- Pat Califia, from the introduction to _Macho Sluts_
"It's your choice / don't buy it / don't read it / and don't say your opinion's right"
-- Anthrax, "Starting Up A Posse"
SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL ACLU CHAPTER! <URL:http://www.aclu.org>
RIP THE SYSTEM.
CREDITS
Currently maintained by: Michael Handler <handler@sub-rosa.com> Ava Pettit-Mountain <ava@sub-rosa.com>
Originally maintained by (in order of appearance): Evan Leibovich <evan@telly.on.ca> Tim Pierce <twpierce@unix.amherst.edu> Tina (aka) Discord <tina@tezcat.com>
Copyright 1996 by Michael Handler and Ava Pettit-Mountain. Permission is granted to copy and redistribute this document electronically provided that it remains complete and unmodified. CD publishers take note: this does not include you.
Go back to the main erotica page.