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


Prompted by a couple of requests in the autumn of '95 as to the meaning of
some of the more esoteric abbreviations, there were a couple of postings
trying to explain them, including some by myself. This led (surprisingly for
me) to a lively e-mail discussion with a number of people, all concluding
that it would be nice if "somebody would help out a little" with a FAQ,
detailing the what and why of story-codes.

Since then, not much has happened, so as one who has read a great many
stories, I've finally taken the plunge myself and decided to try if I might
do it. Not because I consider myself more qualified than so many others,
(I've never done anything like this before), but because no-one else has
started, and I think there are good reasons on all sides to use codes more
than is frequently done.

The following has been shamelessly "lifted", edited, elaborated and
generally worked over from material received from countless contributors,
too many to list here, but the contributions of "Dik McLellan"
[email protected]>, [email protected] (Samuel Laker) and
Derek Foster have been a great help.

Constructive criticism and suggestions to improvements received gratefully.
Flames will be cheerfully (and totally) ignored.


Story Codes - Why bother?

The story-codes are a micro-description of the content of a story. They're
written by the poster on the Subject-line as a courtesy to the readers of
the newsgroup and are very helpful in deciding whether or not to read a
particular story. But they also help to ensure that all the people who are
expected to have an interest in reading that particular story, become aware
of it and its contents. After all, if the writer/poster wasn't interested in
reaching as many of his potential readers as possible, then why post it in
a.s.s. in the first place?

Unlabeled stories can, (and often will),  go unread due to unsure content -
particularly by those paying per-minute connect charges and due to the large
traffic in this group. Frequently there are days with over a hundred
postings a day. Admittedly, a goodly number of these can be from that sad
(an highly annoying) phenomenon on the Net; the generally infantile flamers,
spammers and indiscriminate crossposters that occasionally clutters up the
groups, but usually there's still such a large volume of stories left, that
most readers are forced to apply some sort of "selection" on what they have
time to read.

Obviously, a reader will pick those stories first that are directly flagged
with codes for his/her particular interest. Next will probably be stories
with codes at least related to their interest or interesting titles and at
the very bottom, the "unspecified" stories.

The result is, that sometimes very good stories are left largely unread.
Unread stories means no feed-back, and no feed-back can mean discouraged
writers, who might eventually stop posting, because they feel they're just
dumping their stories in a big black hole.

This would be a pity for all concerned. So even though it is not the general
topic of this FAQ I'd like to make a little plug on behalf of the
contributors to a.s.s. If you'd read a story and liked it, drop the writer a
line telling him/her so. It doesn't have to be a doctoral thesis or a
Ruduyard Kipling novella. Although most authors don't mind if you also,
(even if very briefly), mention WHY you liked their story, even a one- or
two-liner is usually appreciated. You might be surprised at how many writers
even appreciate negative criticism (if it is CONSTRUCTIVE) since they can
(and very frequently DO) use it to improve their writing by learning what
works and what doesn't for their readers. Eventually this makes for better
stories, which ultimately benefits YOU, the reader. So start using the
"Reply to:" function, but don't forget: Address them to a.s.s.d. or e-mail
direct to the poster, but NOT to the a.s.s news-group!

Enough said about that. As for the codes, there exists a more-or-less
de-facto (but unofficial) standard today, based on what is most frequently
used. I have tried to remain faithful to that. There is, however, a
considerable overlap, especially of the less frequently used codes, which is
unfortunate, since especially these will tend to confuse due to their
rarity.

I have split the codes in 3 sections, each in alphabetical order:
1: Frequently used
2: Less frequently used
3: Overlaps, that I'd suggest were NOT used.
   Use one in sections 1 or 2 instead.

All applicable keywords could (and should) be used to describe the story,
regardless of the level of their inclusion. It would be a politeness though,
if the code for the essential theme in the story appears as one of the
first. 

I would also like to encourage the use of the standard for Subject headers.

For the reasons explained below, I'd like to suggest the following format,
which is slightly different that the previously used:

	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,

	      'My first time'(1!1)

or	      TG ARCHIVES;'The thing'[ tv mff ](1!3)

or	      MNA;'Sarah'{Joe schmoe}[ mc mf ](1!1)

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 it would be nice if the stories were posted as plain ASCII-files.
Please do not encrypt or compress them in any way. Do not tar, gz or zip
them! Do not uuencode them! Do not BinHex them! Unmentioned compression or
encryption schemes should definitely not be used either. HTML and MIME are
likewise undesirable. Use plain text, formatted to 72, 75, or at most 80
columns. Do not use files saved in formats other than plain text. No
MS-Word, no ClarisWorks, not Adobe Acrobat.

There are Service Providers out there which, for reasons best known to
themselves, (and very few others), refuses to handle larger postings. A
posting of for instance a 2900-line story is rejected, while the same story,
split in 3 separate postings of 1000 lines each (including extra headers and
such), is perfectly acceptable. To avoid such problems it is generally a
good idea to keep posts under approximately 1500 lines, but do not break
posts into many, many pieces, since parts are easily (and frequently!) lost
during network transfers.


	******   The CODES   ******

1: Frequently used:

M		An adult male (over 18)
m		A young male (male not yet 18 years old)
b		Boy (age 12 or less)
F		An adult female (over 18)
f		A young female (female not yet 18 years old)
g		Girl (age 12 or less)
MF		Heterosexual adult sex
mf		Young heterosexual sex
FF		Homosexual female sex
MM		Homosexual adult male sex
ff		Homosexual, young female sex
mm		Homosexual, young male sex
Mf or Fm		Permutations of this are an adult having sex w/ a 
				minor
MMF or FFM	Permutations of this are several adults having sex at 
				once
_dom			Domination by member of sex/age "_"

(In permutations, it helps further if you put the "initiator" first, that is
[Mf inc teen 1st] would be an adult male seducing his teen-aged relative and
taking her virginity, while [fM inc teen 1st] would be the girl seducing her
father/brother/uncle.)

I would like to advocate/suggest the following replacements to facilitate
saving entire filenames WITH storycodes for Win95-users (and archivers):
^	instead of 	/	signifying dominance, i.e. F^m for Female dominating
male
~	instead of	/	signifying "with", i.e. M~dog for male with dog.


1st         	First time
anal		Anal sex
bd	       	Bondage and Discipline
best		Bestiality. Sex with an animal (see also zoo)
cons		Consensual Sexual Activity 
exhi	 		Exhibitionism 
goth		Gothic (dark) setting
group*		More than 3 people having sex
hist			Has a historical theme
inc	       	Incest
interr		Interracial
mast		Masturbation
mc		 	Mind control
nc			Non-consensual Sexual Activity
oral*		Oral sex
orgy*		Large-group sex. When group isn't good enough.
ped			Pedophilia. Participants age 12 or below. 
rape		Brutal nc, and victim should NOT enjoy it!
real			Supposedly true
reluc		Reluctant (First no, no, but later yes,yess,yesss!!)
rom			Romantic
sm			Sado-Masochism (inflicting pain)
span		Spanking, Mild S/M 
teen		Young teen-agers. Participants age 13-17 
tg			Transgendered (Transsexual)
voy			Voyeurism
ws			Water Sports (aka golden showers, that is: people who like
			getting pissed on (as opposed to pissed off 8-).
zoo			Zoophilia. Caring and consensual relationships
			between humans and animals. (See also best)

*   should only be used if it's a major theme in the story since it is
standard in most stories


2: Less frequently used:

bear		Hairy male. Usually gay. (Grizzly Adams)
BC			(with interr) Black Couple
BF			(with interr) Black Female
bi			Bisexuality of one or more characters.
bibl			Bible. Has a religious theme
BM   		(with interr) Black Male
breast*		Abnormally large breasts
cbt			Cock & ball torture
cd			Cross-dressing (Transvestite)
coll			College-theme
copr		Coprophilia (Fun with feces)
dream		Sexual activity during a dream, day or sleep.
enem		Enemas
fat			Involves fat people
feet			Foot or shoe fetish-story
fist			Fisting 
furry		Athropomorphized animals
giant		Abnormally large (tall) persons
hair			Hair fetish
hs			High School-theme
humo		Humor. Funny
inf			Infantilism
job			Place-of-work theme
lac			Lactation. Playing with milk.
nec			Necrophilia. Sex with a dead person
no sex		Off topic
pett			Heavy petting
preg		Pregnant. Sex with or making someone.
rough		Consensual, not always sm.
sad			For "just" inflicting pain. Can be used with 'nc' or 'cons'.
safe		Safe sex 
scat		Scatology: Involving feces.
ScFi		Science fiction setting
size			Overdeveloped body-parts
slow		Where the sex doesn't occur in the first part of multipart story
snuff		Killing
tort			Torture. Severe non-consentual spilling of blood-'n-guts
toys			Generally, adult toys
twink		gay male: Young and hairless-type (Tom Cruise)
va			Verbal abuse. (Abusive and "dirty" language)
veg			Vegetable. Sex with food. 
violent		Violent, not always sm	
WM		(with interr) White Male
WF			(with interr) White Female
WC			(with interr) White Couple

3: Overlaps - Alternative suggested:

bond		Bondage 				bd
disc			discipline  				span
ds			domination/submission	_dom
gay			Male homosexual		MM
humi		Humiliation				Fdom/Mdom
hyp			Hypnotism				mc
les			Lesbian					FF
sod			sodomy (anal)			anal
tv			Transvestitism			cd
yng			Characters are young	ped or teen
virg			Story involves virgins		1st


Comments, suggestions etc. welcome, but please, NOT in a.s.s. which should
be reserved for stories, not discussions. E-mail me direct, or post it in
a.s.d.  8-) 

Yours

Dr. Bob - Denmark
[email protected]

---------------------------------------------------------------------

4.  Zoophilia - Bestiality Specific  added by Stasya  Jan 17, 1996

dog		male dog
bitch		female dog
wolf		male wolf	
w-bitch	female wolf
mare		female horse or pony
stal		male horse or pony
boar		male pig
sow		female pig
cow		female bovine
bull		male bovine

fur-		prefix to use in front of any of the normal terms to indicate a furry creature
			
Please, send me your suggestions for any I haven't listed.  I could use
the help!

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