A Curious Convergence

[bellatrys]

My next entry in the Slashers of Gor fanart genre, "Privacy", is up at slashersofgor - it's NSFW, with "artistic nudity" as they say, and explicit eroticism. Everything the same as for "Reunion" with the addition of Aiko 3 for Talena

Comments

[jonquil]

Reading the extract from *Time Slave* made me thwack my head in discovery.

Nobody on Gor knows how to masturbate.

Think about it. No wonder the society's so messed up. And I'm pretty sure there's no non-penetrative sex, either, which explains why slash is a necessity; any port in a storm, if you know what I mean and I'm sure you do.

The thing about Gor, speaking as a former reader, is that it was the only BDSM porn (if soft-core) available in a normal bookstore in the time period -- at least, the only stuff I was aware of. I didn't even know that was what I was looking for.

[randwolf]

"A great deal of recent US political behavior can be explained by masculinity doubts." Sometimes I wonder why more men aren't even a bit embarrassed by all this (or perhaps why it is that those voices just aren't heard). "I don't want to grow up" isn't cute in an adult, either sex.

you saw this, right?

[bellatrys]

via Digby, in Ducat's book The Wimp Factor which I haven't been able to afford yet, there's this paragraph which she posted, croggled:

By far the most compelling confirmation of the phallic meaning of the president's aircraft-carrier cakewalk was found on the hot-selling "George W. Bush Top Gun action figure" manufactured by Talking Presidents. I originally ordered one to use as part of the cover design for this book. The studly twelve-inch flyboy not only comes with a helmet and visor, goggles and oxygen mask, but underneath his flight suit is a full "basket" --- a genuine fake penis, apparently constructed with lifelike silicone.

I remember when that doll action figure came out, along with the Ann Coulter one, and was being promoted by NRO. They advertised the fact that it talked, but not that it was, um, fully equipped.

--Excuse me, I have to go get some more Bleeprin before my brain dribbles out my ears.

Re: you saw this, right?

[fledgist]

I read it and was reduced to giggles. (The thought of an Ann Coulter doll, btw, is just as alarming; but then I'm convinced that Ann Coulter belongs to the same species of alien invader as Michael Jackson.)

Maybe "Norman" is a Vogon.

[randwolf]

Well, it would explain a lot.

I did see that. But, hell, I've been writing about this for decades; I'd really like to see some progress. Maybe there has been among younger men, I don't know; many older men seem as clueless as ever. Odd business, odd business. There are men who just don't worry about this, and men for whom it's huge and central. It doesn't seem to have anything to do with, well, anything obvious. Maybe being happily married, or at least connected, I don't know.

BTW, I don't think complaining about the anatomical correctness of the Bush action figure is reasonable--liberals have been complaining about the omission of genitals in dolls for years; now we have one, and there's still complaints.

[fledgist]

Time Slave sounds evern crappier than the 'Gor' books.

I've seen the 'banning DDT caused people to die of malaria' stupidity, and I find it hard to believe that anyone of sense could take it seriously (and not only because DDT is still in use in some places -- since methods of reducing malaria by preventing mosquitoes from breeding have been in use for over a century), but then there were/are people who believed that fluoridation of water was a Communist plot (to reduce the incomes of dentists?), that there were vast armies of Communist Chinese on the US-Mexican border, that laetrile cured cancer, and that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11.

Oh, yes... the title Witness of Gor gives me an image of missionaries going door to door on Gor peddling Watchtower and Awake.

[smurasaki]

Oh, yes... the title Witness of Gor gives me an image of missionaries going door to door on Gor peddling Watchtower and Awake

I like that. Though I keep misreading that same title as "Witless of Gor."

Gee, I can't imagine why!

[bellatrys]

Though I keep misreading that same title as "Witless of Gor."

It also has one of the worst cover designs I've seen out there in a long time, and that's not just in the genre, that's compared to other semi-amateur quasi-vanity small presses or non-mainstream subgenres like Christian romance that nonetheless get into bookstores.

[fledgist]

'Witless of Gor' sums it up pretty well.

Too depressing for words

[deiseach]

The excuse that the first three weren't that bad doesn't really work because, as you have demonstrated, it was already all there from the start

Re: Too depressing for words

[bellatrys]

Still, even in the bit I read, you can see the gaping holes (An Assassin on the job can even enter an enemy city without hindrance) and you just know that the "clue" is worthless without an improbable chain of unprovable coincidental connections--it's a token for a racing faction. And if I were killing Tarl Cabot I wouldn't be leaving behind one of my faction's tokens.

Well, if I were a step or two down from the top of the faction's pole, I might. Here's the assassin, and soon enough my boss, the suspect with the wealth and power, and the obvious target, is dead.

That's the sad thing, it's so easy to supply better plot devices. The whole scene where Marlenus is out there on the plains being larl-bait to ambush Tarl Cabot makes no friggin sense at all unless either 1) Marlenus is an insane risk-taking adrenaline junkie, which goes against his description of being the most cunning strategist and politician Gor has ever produced, or 2) everything is subordinated to the authorial need to bring Tarl and Marlenus together

Re: Too depressing for words

[fledgist]

'A wet week in the Lake District'.... Hmmm, were you by any chance trying to avoid a large red squirrel with the habit of rapping Wordsworth?

That makes absolutely no sense at all

[deiseach]

Why does he need to send her back? Without telling her what it is she is supposed to do

here you go: of course it's got phallic overtones!

[bellatrys]

"Then, as swiftly as it had come, that nightmarish instant of immobility passed and I set my spear to take the jolt of the larl's attack. Perhaps my sudden appearance had disoriented the beast or shaken its marvelous instincts, because it must have uttered its killing cry an instant too soon, or perhaps my muscles and nerves responded to my will more rapidly than it had anticipated. When, twenty feet away, the great, bounding beast, fangs bared, leaped for its prey, it encountered instead only the slender needle of my spear, set like a stake in the ground, braced by the half-naked body of a warrior of Ko-ro-ba. The spearhead disappeared from sight in the furry breast of the larl, and the shaft of the spear began to sink into it as the weight of the animal forced it deeper into its body. I leaped from under the tawny, monstrous body, narrowly escaping the slashings of its clawed forefeet. The spear shaft snapped and the beast fell to the earth, rolling on its back, pawing at the air, uttering piercing, enraged shrieks, trying to bite

I think he read some old "Great White Hunter" stories

[bellatrys]

and not the ones by actual big game hunters, because those tend to be full of "we sat there for hours and never saw anything" and "ohshitohshitoshit" and "So-and-so killed the leopard, but he never could walk straight after that" etc.

No, I mean the stories that were published in the old 50's non-sf magazines which tended to feature cover art lumberjacks getting charged by killer pandas and brawny guys improbably subduing giant alligators...