    		Frequently Asked Questions
    			about
    		ABBREVIATED STORY CODES IN A.S.S.
    			v 1.7 - Sept. 22nd 1996

    	******  CHANGES FROM v.1.6  ******

    Due to problems for archivers who wants to take advantage of the capability
    of archiving the files as their subject-lines, some of the delimiters have
    been changed to avoid conflicting with pathnames etc.:

    The format for the subject-line has thus been changed from:

    	Archive:"Title"<Author>[ codes ](number/number)

    to

    	Archive;'Title'{Author}[ codes ](number!number)

    	******  CHANGES FROM v.1.5  ******

    slow		This applies to multipart stories where the sex doesn't occur in
    			the first part.

    I have recieved this question and would like some comments on my proposed
    guide-line. Is it OK? Do you have a better suggestion? By all means let me
    hear it then:

    >    I think there needs to be guidance on the question of whether we use
    >these labels for stories or for installments.  If I have a five-parter in
    >which Jennifer gets her cherry plucked in the first, learns oral sex in the
    >second, gets it on with her brother in the third, gets it in the ass in the
    >fourth, and is introduced to a donkey in the fifth:  Do all the labels go
    >on all the segments?
    >    Maybe "Jennifer.03" [ fM inc ** 1st anal best ]  ?????
    >
    Hmmm. I see what you mean.

    Personally I dislike reading fractured stories, so if I the action in, say
    part 3 of 5, caught my interest, I'd download all 5 parts anyway, simply to
    be able to read the "interesting" part in the proper context. Also, I
    frequently find that the presentation of the characters and the "build-up"
    to the "main-event" is an important part of making it work.

    How about this for a guide: Basically leave it to the author/poster to
    decide, but encourage that:

    Postings that are parts of one continous story that should be read as a
    whole:   Use all codes on all the sections.

    Postings that form sequential parts of a series of stories with a common
    theme or common characters, but are written as stand-alone stories which can
    be read independently of each other:   	On each section, use only the codes
    belonging to that part/sequel.

    I'm awaiting feedback on this one before including it in the FAQ.

    	******  CHANGES FROM v.1.4  ******

    cbt			Cock & ball torture
    interr		Interracial
    BF			(with interr) Black Female
    BM   		(with interr) Black Male
    BC			(with interr) Black Couple
    WM		(with interr) White Male
    WF			(with interr) White Female
    WC			(with interr) White Couple

    	******  CHANGES FROM v.1.3  ******

    Clarification of the difference between fM and Mf (initiator in first place)

    pett		has been "reinstated" since it (quite correctly) has been
    		pointed out that the suggested alternative (mast) doesn't cover
    		the same activity: Petting is usually one person caressing
    		another, while in  masturbation the person caresses him/her-self
    reluc	Reluctant. "At first I didn't want to, but I changed my mind".
    rape	Has been "reinstated" due to a desire to distinguish it from nc.

    Several has indicated a desire for a code for "initially non-consentual sex,
    but after a while eager participant".
    	While I have no doubts whatsoever that this would be considered a clear
    case of rape in any court of Law in the real world, (no means no, ladies and
    gentlemen!), then we deal in the world of fantasy here in a.s.s. And it is a
    very popular fantasy that "although he/she acts totally uninterested in my
    advances right now, he/she would obviously come around and enjoy sex with me
    tremendously, once he/she gets a sample of my incredible skills as a lover".
    	Since it is such a frequent theme, it seemed reasonable that there
    should be some way to distinguish it from nc (non-consentual: he/she didn't
    "come around" but the dominant person doesn't really care one way or the
    other anyway) and rape (much more brutal and the rapist usually doesn't WANT
    the victim to enjoy it)

    A large portion of my mail has touched upon the use of caps versus small
    letters in gender-designations. In the bondage/S&M/D&S community there is a
    time-honoured tradition that "Fm" means "Female dominating male", while in
    groups outside this community it means "Adult female with young male".
    	In the previous story-code FAQ's the latter version has been advocated,
    with "FM Fdom" used for "Adult female and adult male with female dominatrix"
    instead of "Fm".
    	Not unexpectedly, this caused some dissatisfaction among the
    dominant/submissive fans, and several alternatives has been suggested. The
    most frequent has been:
    1.	Let us keep the dominant/submissive which is fairly exclusively used in
    alt.sex.bondage, and let the a.s.s. posters find some other code, like for
    instance "Mg" instead of "Mf" for "adult male and young girl"
    2.	Use "/" to tell them apart: M/f = dominant/submissive and Mf =
    Adult/teen.

    It's a fairly thorny issue, and no matter what the outcome, some will
    inevitably feel offended. In an attempt to be fair I have collected (and
    kept) over 6 months worth of postings, lock stock and barrel, (almost
    completely cluttering up 2 1,2-GigaByte harddisks in the process) and
    looking at the postings in a.s.s. this is the picture that emerges:
    	A depressingly large percentage still doesn't use codes at all.
    	Of those that do use codes, most use either all caps or all small
    letters, irrespective of age or dominant/submissive content of the stories.
    	Of those that do uses both caps and small letters, both varieties are
    definitely in use, but there DOES seem to be a clear preference for the
    age-version (sorry d/s-fans) at least in a.s.s. I simply haven't had the
    capacity, hardware- or time-wise to follow the specialty-groups like
    alt.sex.bondage etc the same way, but I'll take your word for it that the
    trend is otherwise there.
    	As for the "/" version, that one seems to be used totally
    indiscriminately with no preference at all either way. Apparently even most
    frequently just as an extra separator without any significance at all.

    So I'm staying with the age-distinction for small/caps for the following
    reasons:
    	It IS in widespread use in a.s.s., which IS the group the FAQ is
    primarily directed at.
    	I don't see it as such a hardship for the d/s-fans to interpret FDom or
    MDom for resp. Female and Male dominator, especially not compared to trying
    to introduce a completely new set of Mg and bg etc combinations. (I have at
    least never seen these combinations in actual use.)

    As for the "/" option, I'd like to suggest another solution, since I'd like
    to see the slash disappear from the codes completely. The reason is the
    rapidly expanding use of Win95, and consequently, (finally!) the ever
    spreading release from the 8-char-straightjacket of the old DOS-filenames.
    	Instead of curious (and frequently highly cryptic and utterly
    incomprehensible) 8-character-combinations) it is now easy simply to use the
    name of the story as the filename. And with 255 characters to play with, why
    not just tack the story-codes on as well? That way you never has to guess
    the real name of the story, or the content, when you make a file-listing.
    	Except of course both "/" and "\" are reserved characters also in Win95!
    So if the code involves slashes, it can't be incorporated in any filename.

    I therefore suggest the following replacements:
    ^	instead of 	/	signifying dominance, i.e. F^m for "Female dominating
    	male"
    ~	instead of	/	signifying "with", i.e. M~dog for "male with dog".

    Please Note: The recommended format for the Subject-line:

    	Name: Title - number/number [codes]

    has been changed to this format:

    	Archive:"Title"<Author>[ codes ](number/number)

    for the following reasons:

    Since the title section is delimited by nothing in particular, it is
    difficult to killfile stories by title. (you take the chance that the text
    will appear somewhere else as part of something else.  For instance, if
    "Jenny" was the name of a story, and you killfile it, you will also have
    killfiled "Jenny goes to the park" and all articles written by authors whose
    first name is Jenny.

    Also, it is hard to killfile abbreviations without taking the chance that
    they might appear as part of a word in the author or title. "mc" might
    appear as part of "mcdonald's" for instance.

    As a solution to the above problems, the subject line format is suggested
    changed to this format:

    	Archive:"Title"<Author>[ codes ](number/number)

    with the <Author> and Archive: and [ codes ] portions optional, but
    encouraged. (Note the extra spaces between the codes and the square
    brackets. And note that all the brackets SHOULD be included). For instance,

    	      MNA:"Sarah"<Joe schmoe>[ mc mf ](1/1)
    or	      "My first time"(1/1)
    or	      TG ARCHIVES:"The thing"[ tv mff ](1/3)

    This would allow a person to killfile the author by killfiling the text
    /<Joe schmoe>/, or to killfile this particular story title by killfiling the
    text /"Sarah"/, or killfile all mind control stories by killfiling the text
    / mc / (note the spaces around either side, which only kill it if it appears
    as a complete word.)

    Note that killfiling the story title /"Sarah"/ can be done without
    killfiling authors whose name happens to be Sarah, and vice versa because of
    the use of the limiters ()""[]<>. This was not possible with the previously
    recommended format.

    One of the advantages of having a "correct" subject line format for articles
    posted to this group is that at some future date, this group could be
    automatically moderated (by a perl script or other program) to discard all
    posted articles which do not have a subject line in the correct format.
    This would definitely cut down on the spamming and unrelated conversations
    that appear in this group.  When the program discarded a posting, it could
    send back a message which included a mini-FAQ explaining why the posting
    were refused. Such a program could also automatically discard uudecoded
    postings, etc.

    Finally, I got a request which got me stumped, as well as the poster:
    Anybody have a clue?

    >What does cbt stand for in...

    >>Subject: HoT TG: Mindy's Revenge 2/3 (forced fem,humil,cbt,bdsm,castr)
    >>Subject: 2-HoT TG: Mindy's Revenge 1/3 (forced fem,humil,cbt,bdsm,castr)

    Remember: Comments welcome, but please - direct e-mail or in a.s.d. NOT in
    a.s.s. which should be reserved for stories and nothing else  8-).

    Dr. Bob - Denmark
    drbob@datashopper.dk

    	******  CHANGES FROM v.1.2  ******

    Added codes:

    tort		Torture. Severe non-consentual spilling of blood-'n-guts
    sad		For "just" inflicting pain. Can be used with 'nc' or 'cons'.

    Comments:
    I know it's discussable whether torture overlaps with 'nc sm' ... but I
    don't think the sm-people want to be identified with the non-consentual
    world.  hence ... (The term 'masochism' implies consent)

    Examples of torture stories - typically envolving interrogation-like scenes
    -  are the 'Agony in Pink' and 'Witchmaster' stories.

    	******  CHANGES SINCE v.1.1  ******

    ws		Water sport has been clarified (less Latin, more English 8-).
    scat	Scatology has been corrected back to its (literal) meaning and
    		the more colloquial meaning (shitty language) has gotten a new
    		code:
    va		Verbal abuse

    There has been some discussion as to whether the distinction M/m and F/f for
    resp. adult male/young male<18 y.o and adult female/young female<18 y.o. is
    the best possible, since it might seem constricting for those who have
    previously used them in the sense: Dominant versus submissive, instead of
    Adult versus non-adult.

    It has been suggested that b/g (for boy/girl) could be used instead to
    indicate non-adult.

    Unfortunately others have suggested the b/g codes should be used for stories
    involving very young boys/girls, so readers interested in stories about
    boys/girls in their teens, downloading stories with e.g. Mf- and Mm-codes,
    won't have to download stories about adult men having sex with 4-year-old
    girls and boys which is apparently is a definite turn-off for readers who
    doesn't happen to be specifically into that kind of stories.

    I have decided until further notice to go with the latter point of view,
    that is keeping the b/g-codes for very young boys and girls, and asking
    people to use the Fdom/Mdom-codes instead to indicate who is who in a
    dominant/submissive story.

    If you think that is the wrong decision, feel free to mail me. The code-FAQ
    is a suggestion/compilation, meant to be used as a guide-line to help us
    all. It is not, and has never been intended portrayed as, carved in stone
    tablets by dictation of some stern deity who can be depended upon to hurl
    thunderbolts at the hard-disks of presumptuous heretics who post stories
    with unauthorized (or even worse, missing) codes.

    I promise I'll read and consider any and all responses as they deserve, i.e.
    serious consideration to serious response, totally ignoring childish and
    abusive flames.

    Comments, suggestions etc. welcome

    Dr. Bob - Denmark
    drbob@datashopper.dk