~Subject: Celestial Reviews 75 - April 4 ~From: celeste801@aol.com (Celeste801) ~Date: 4 Apr 1996 15:30:04 -0500 ~Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.d Celestial Reviews 75 - April 4, 1996 Note: I am now using a rating system which gives each story three discrete ratings. These are explained in more detail in my FAQ, but here is a summary. Athena Rating. This rating covers such matters as grammar, spelling, formatting, and creative use of the language. A story with essentially no serious grammar, spelling, or usage problems will receive a rating of 8. To get a rating of 9 or 10, the author will have to do something creative with the language. Venus Rating. This rating describes such matters as plot and character development. Celeste Rating. This rating describes how much I myself liked the story. Second Note: Authors often ask how I select stories for review. I get them from two sources: (1) authors (or others) send me stories via e-mail, and (2) I find stories that sound interesting in the a.s.s. postings. When I get busy, I rely more heavily on (1). If you have a story that you would like me to review, you should probably send it to me. If you send me a story, I consider that to be a sign that you want me to talk about it publicly in these reviews. If you want help with a story before you post it, I can match you up with one or two of the volunteer proofreaders who have offered to help authors on this newsgroup - Celeste "Funhouse" by RC (mind control) 10, 9, 10 "Old Friends" by Mark Aster (ff sex & voyeurism) 10, 10, 10 "Mating Flight" by D.A. Ignatius (dragon sex) 10, 8, 5 "Bed and Breakfast" by RC (ghostly sex) 9.5, 9.5, 9 "Term Paper" by BillyG (sexy flirtation) 10, 10, 10 "Travels with Aunt Paula" by Estragon (female dominance) 10, 10, 10 "Funhouse" by RC (74734.271@CompuServe.COM). If you have ever ridden the "funhouse" ride in an amusement park, you have no doubt noticed that there is a side track that does not follow the normal route. You have perhaps wondered where that track goes. The two women in this story find out. As their car nears the entrance, the female operator smiles mysteriously and pulls a lever that sends them into a dark, hypnotic area that Deirdre would be proud to call her own. This is a good story, but it does not exhaust the full potential suggested by its setup. Since it has been over three months since my last Annual Celestial Writing Contest, I hereby proclaim another. The only requirement is that the story has to include a funhouse theme. Any sort of funhouse theme that includes sex will do. Send entries to me by April 30. I'll announce the winners and review all entries shortly after the deadline. Authors will be encouraged to post their stories at that time as well. In the previous two contests we've obtained some great "Locksmith" stories and "In Flight" fantasies. I look forward to receiving your entries. If you submit early, I'll even give you feedback that might help you improve your story. Ratings for "Funhouse" Athena (technical quality): 10 Venus (plot & character): 9.5 Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 9.5 "Old Friends" by Mark Aster (MyFrThAl@aol.com). In a barely awake state, Our Hero is watches the Allen sisters make tender love to each other. What I enjoyed most about this story is that even though Pat and Julie do the same things that people usually do in ff sex scenes, the author manages to convey a sense of tranquil passion and friendship that seems to be perfectly natural. There's not a lot of grunting and groaning, just warm passion heightened by the fact that we know Our Hero is watching without bothering to wake up completely. Ratings for "Old Friends" Athena (technical quality): 10 Venus (plot & character): 10 Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 10 "Mating Flight" by D.A. Ignatius (jash@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu). The sex in this story is a little more animalistic than that to which I am accustomed - literally. By that I mean that this story describes a mating ritual between two dragons. Authors have a right and I guess maybe a need to stretch the wings of their imagination, but I'm not a dragon person. In spite of what I just said, this story did hold a certain fascination for a while; but I just didn't know or care enough about those creatures to remain permanently interested. I suppose a person married or engaged to a dragon or who keeps one in the back yard might find this story more interesting than I did. Ratings for "Mating Flight" Athena (technical quality): 10 Venus (plot & character): 8 Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 5 "Bed and Breakfast" by RC (74734.271@compuserve.com). A man arrives at a New England bed and breakfast inn; the owner assigns him to a back room; and the owner's daughter becomes visibly upset over this assignment. What's her problem? I always tell my students that when the author catches their attention like this, they should try to guess what might happen next. Then as new information emerges they should adjust and modify their initial guess to suit the new context. I have done this in the past with Deirdre's stories, and so I'll try again here. So what's the problem? One possibility is that the room is simply adjacent to the daughter's own room. She might be a shy lass, and having a well-hung stud next door might make her nervous. That hypothesis sounds dull. Or the room might previously have been occupied by someone near and dear to the girl - perhaps her first true love who subsequently died under unfortunate circumstances. This hypothesis sounds good. Or the room might be haunted. The second hypothesis sounds best so far. I'm glad I mentioned that last possibility, because Abigail (the daughter) grabs the visitor and warns him that when the place was first built, the owner's daughter resided in that room. She had been arrested and executed. Her ghost still haunts that room. Our foolhardy boarder laughs gently and resolves to stay. It's time to revise my hypotheses. It's almost certain that a ghost will appear. One possibility is that the ghost will have her merry way with our wayfarer and send him happily on his way. {Since the narrator lived to tell the story, he probably won't die during sexual exstacy.} Another possibility is that Abigail will join in the festivities. A third possibility is that Abigail IS the ghost. I like this theory; but I'd have to see her naked to verify it. More likely, Abigail might be intimately involved in some way with the ghost. Soon we find out the ghost's crime: having sex with another woman. Colonial New Englander's frowned on that practice, which was akin to witchcraft. Interestingly, at his point I had to pause: was the boarder a man or a woman? I glanced back over the earlier text. Although I had assumed this was a man, the text didn't tell. A few lines later I read that bras and panties from the suitcase were strewn about the room. So we have either an unusual man or a woman here. I'll go with the woman theory. This forces a major shift in my thinking: we now have a (presumably) middle-aged woman, an attractive young woman, and the ghost of a young woman who had been executed by Puritans for lesbianism. I'm going to stop telling the story now. As you know, ghosts operate under different rules in different stories; and part of the fun of a ghost story is finding out what those rules are in the current tale. All I can tell you now is that this ghost is capable of engaging in sexual activities that are extremely satisfying to human females. Ratings for "Bed and Breakfast" Athena (technical quality): 9.5 Venus (plot & character): 9.5 Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 9 "He Likes to Watch" by Richard Baudouin (ribaud@cycor.ca). A man responds to a personal ad in the newspaper and finds himself matched up with a sexy exhibitionist whose husband enjoys watching another man slip his wife the hot salami. He does, while they do. The action is clearly described and sexy. The main problem that I had with this story was that the presence of the voyeur was almost invisible. It would seem to me that if the voyeur is the focus of the title, his activities and state of mind should be more central to the plot. Instead, I mostly forgot about the husband except when the narrator occasionally mentioned his innocuous presence. Ratings for "He Likes to Watch" Athena (technical quality): 9 Venus (plot & character): 8 Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 8 "Term Paper" by BillyG (billyg@hooked.net). The older male student is working with the younger female student on a joint term paper in a class on Erotic Themes in Contemporary Theater." They retire to his apartment for practical verification of their theoretical research. The main emphasis in this story is on flirtation, and the author carries it off very well. Ratings for "Term Paper" Athena (technical quality): 10 Venus (plot & character): 10 Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 10 "Travels with Aunt Paula" by Estragon. Paula is the guardian for her ten-year-old nephew, the child of her deceased sister. Since she generally requires Cal to appear naked in her presence, we might suspect that she is a dirty old woman. Not true! Paula's every desire toward Cal is indeed maternal, even her long-established insistence on his naked humility. It is all for his own good. She has always known in her heart that a worshipful man is a happy man; and an adored and well-served woman is happier still. All she wants for her sweet nephew is as much happiness as a life of early sorrow can still afford. We learn several important Hidden Truths from the Feminist Catechism - a few things that make one go "Hmmmm." For example, why does it feel good for a boy to have his penis become hard? Answer: Because the erection shows that the nearby female has power over him, and it's good to be honest and respectful in that way. We also witness a detailed description of circumcision - that sacrament (best conferred when young girls are holding the boy's legs apart) which is designed to humiliate and shame a young boy and to enable him to find his place in the world designed for women. After his circumcision, young Cal became popular with the local girls, many of whom had been present at his gala circumcision and who had told their friends that here was a lad who was willing to become obediently naked for instructional or conversational purposes. They could ask him questions about his boy things and even touch them if they wanted. His aunt didn't mind at all, and nobody even knew whether he did. Nobody asked him. Nobody really cared. The girls who heard all this said it was incredible but they'd believe it when they saw it. Cal had many visitors. The censors might be suspicious of this story - thinking, for example, that there is something unseemly in the idea of an 11-year-old girl gazing at and touching the newly circumcised penis of a 6-year-old boy. That would be the perception of a person with a filthy mind; most readers of this story will easily see that this is simply an example of a lower-order member of the species offering his genitalia as an educational tool for a young member of the Super Race. For, as every British schoolgirl knows (with apologies to Thomas Babington Macaulay), "The battle of the sexes is lost before it even begins. Ladies just happen to enjoy being reminded of this fact." Like most of Estragon's writing, this story is a fictionalized version of a feminist philosophical tract. Some readers will find the ideas a bit exaggerated or even bizarre. "Who could ever believe crap like this?" they'll say. Well, my old Aunt Emma, for one. I escaped from her clutches long ago (I think). She's dead now and can no longer reach me (I hope). But she had these weird ideas about religion that ran exactly parallel to Aunt Paula's sexual theories. Aunt Emma's books did not emphasize physical circumcision or sexual humiliation - just spiritual versions of the same themes. I haven't looked at the "Imitation of Christ" lately - and I doubt that it's high on the reading list of most a.s.s. readers - but my recollection is that it seriously argues that humans become more perfect by becoming better slaves of God. My point is that if otherwise sensible people have been known to apply this dominance/slavery theory to the relationship between God and humankind, it should hardly be surprising to see it applied to the relationship between men and women. Estragon writes extremely well, and this is another good story. Every time I sit down at my computer to review one of Estragon's stories, I say to myself, "This female dominance stuff is nonsense. I want men to be my equals, not my slaves." Then, as I read the outlandish but interesting events in the story, I find myself realizing that there's a huge kernel of truth behind what Estragon is saying. Ratings for "Travels with Aunt Paula" Athena (technical quality): 10 Venus (plot & character): 10 Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 10 GRAMMAR TIP OF THE WEEK: THE FRENCH CONNECTI0N. The French language sometimes differentiates between males and females by adding an e to the end of the feminine version of words. In a few cases English words derived from the French follow this same custom. Here are two that I have seen this week. FIANCE, FIANCEE. If a guy is having sex with his fiance, he's engaging in homosexual behavior. A woman is a fiancee. The two words are pronounced exactly alike, but the woman gets the extra e. {Actually, there should be an acute accent mark above the final e in the male version and above the penultimate e in the female version, but ASCII doesn't do accents.} BLOND, BLONDE. When used as a noun, females often get the extra e. However, current usage seems to permit "blond" for either males or females. When used as an adjective directly modifying a noun, the e is considered to be incorrect. Thus, a blonde has blond hair. When the adjective is a predicate adjective, the extra e is acceptable: "She looked blonde to me." In short, if your only concern is to be grammatically correct, you can safely use "blond" all the time. On the other hand, if you want to be clear about the gender of the person you're having sex with or if you want to accentuate her feminine qualities, you may want to add an e to the description of the lady's hair color. Probably the most important consideration is to be consistent: if you start with blondes, stick with blondes throughout your story. My unabridged dictionary does not comment on whether one can actually identify a "true blonde" by the color of her pussy hair. : I AM POSTING THIS ISSUE ON APRIL 4. THEN I AM TAKING A SHORT BREAK. THE NEXT ISSUE OF CELESTIAL REVIEWS WILL APPEAR ON APRIL 10.