Rants, Tantrums, and Hissy Fits
Complete with pictures of self-abuse! (All
the girls are doin' that too!)
More Rants
Actually, I have some strange self-reviews to post and I'm not exactly sure what they mean, but I had fun doing them. I'm still trying to find my real rants, but as I've always said - my best rants are in my stories anyway. See? I told you I don't understand why anyone would enjoy this sort of thing. Maybe they don't and they're only teasing me! That would be a cruel joke, wouldn't it? Or maybe I just need to get off my lazy butt and start writing something, but my mind has been such a complete blank lately.
Blah...Let me post this stuff, just so I can say I did something today!
T.S. Reviews rache...Just because
2008-11-02Like all authors, I'm a repressed critic, and since I don't have my own reviewership and Andrew Johns doesn't take personal checks, I'm going to review my Siamese twin sister...Or she reviewed herself and is just too lazy to leave my blog and edit hers. Either way...
Everyone always says, "I'm my own harshest critic." or something to that effect. I don't say it, because I'm kind of biased usually. But the good thing about critiquing my own work is that unlike my harshest critics, I sorta know what I'm talking about.
I critique myself all the time. And not just me, but my stories too! While I write, after I write, when I proof, after I proof, after I post, when I answer emails, later when I'm having a rhum and coke and trying to slip my wedding ring off my toe as nonchalantly as possible…I'm always thinking about the story and wondering what I should have done and why. A story can always be better. Don't forget that.
For some odd reason my best ideas always come too late.
Eventually, however, I forget about that story and write a new one, and then a dozen new ones, and after two years I pretty much forget what the hell it was even about! That's the best time to open a story up and proof it! Not right away! Wait until you think it's someone else's story. The mistakes will jump out at you like drunken Irishmen on St. Patty's Day, believe me. Everyone's Irish when you're spread eagle on the pool table. Its weird.
That makes it the perfect time to do a little review as well…
"Dogsmith" was written by Lisa Pavageau in early 2006 for nevermindwho.com and posted to SOL sometime after the exclusivity rights expired, under the pen name rache. The title is a word I made up for a working title and a better one never occurred to me. I hadn't looked at it since posting and I largely forgot it even existed until the other day when I got an email telling me how good it is.
"Dogsmith?" I wondered. "What the hell is that?"
So I opened it up tonight and started reading, got two paragraphs into it and saw three silly things to be fixed and promptly opened my editor to fix it while I was reading. I'm amazed Bc didn't ask for their money back! So now, at the risk of being a total ass, here's my review of Dogsmith…
===================
Dogsmith by rache // 10,846 Words // Story#50238 // Posted: 2006-10-23
Synopsis: Lisa wants to join a sorority and all she has to do is complete one last challenge, to get one of her sorority sisters laid. But that could be harder than it sounds, especially since the girl in question is a 5 year old black lab named Sophie.
Codes: MF FF rom 1st coll cons toys beast
QScore: 7.29
Dogsmith
Ahhhh…Bestiality. If it isn't your thing, turn around right now and find something else to entertain you. "Dogsmith" is all about Dog Sex and when it comes to canine love, there are a mere handful of authors who are any good at it. Thankfully, rache is one of them and this story is a little known star in the constellation of Canis Major. It isn't Sirius (the brightest star in the sky) or even serious (a dull star indeed!) but it is a lot of fun and good escapist entertainment for the whole family.
rache begins the story with one of her favorite vehicles, a narrator who is rife with personal problems. Lisa is a college girl trying to get into a sorority and with a wonderful economy of words we understand immediately that she's smart, funny, cynical, jaded, and not just a little bored with life in general. A typical 19 year old, away from home for the first time, but somehow still plugged into her adolescence through an emotional umbilical that she detests. Sound familiar?
The obvious conflict in the story is announced with the first words out of her mouth, as Lisa wonders if she'll be accepted into the sorority or not. But we know rache and if there's one thing she loves, it's misdirection, and so we won't be surprised later when other issues arise to complicate the situation and push the plot towards an unexpected resolution.
What is the plot? In a nutshell, Lisa is challenged to get the sorority mascot, a five year old black lab named Sophie, laid by a member of the Alpha-Omega Fraternity. She has to get it on video for viewing at her initiation and therein lies the rub. How does she talk a college boy into not only fucking a dog, but letting Lisa make a movie of it?
Hmmm…That's a toughie.
The Lisa character is like most of rache's narrators, well developed and likable and living in a universe just half a step off from ours. Everything she says and does may not be completely believable if taken separately, but in context Lisa works wonderfully. The dialogue and Lisa's narration into her thoughts and emotions are smooth and deceptively simple, and by the time the first (and very unlikely) sex scene rolls around we're there. We see the world through her eyes and it somehow makes sense.
I love how she does that and I wish I knew the secret.
The other main character, a young man named Michael, is not nearly so well developed and it's with him that I have to raise my only real issue with the story. As Lisa plans to seduce the boy into having sex with Sophie, she begins to fall in love with him, and while that's made clear, we don't get enough of the character to understand the attraction, in my opinion. I think one more good dialogue scene would have added a lot to Michael's character, but that might just be some knit-picking on my part…He does read her two poems, after all, and while it isn't Shakespeare, even the worst prose given from the heart is a pretty big kick for a closet romantic like Lisa.
The sex. This is good stuff if you're into bestiality, because we get some hot scenes with more than the usual male dog slipping the bone to a girl ho-hum doggy style.
Dogmsith gives us a lesbian threesome involving Lisa, her roommate, and Sophie. Another scene with a large male dog spoiling Lisa completely. And finally Michael with Sophie while Lisa watches. That's a lot of sex in a small package, but who's complaining?
The scenes aren't terribly long and not entirely written for stroke, but even so, they are stimulating and very enjoyable. The scene between Lisa and Michael's dog, Stein, is an over the top fun fest, but we can forgive Lisa for that as she was doubtless recalling her experience through the rosy lens of orgasmic ecstasy. It's great sex and combined with the other elements, it's the reason this story is a standout in the bestiality genre.
Technically…Spelling and grammar in the updated version are as well done as we're likely to find in an amateur online story. The characters are well crafted; the narration is absorbing and full of rache's quirky humor. The plot is over-the-top, or so it seems, but with a small twist at the end which so many readers have commented on in the past. "Why didn't I think of that?" being the most common response and it's simple…We don't think of it because Lisa didn't think of it and that's proof of immersion, suspension of belief, and rache should take it as a compliment.
It isn't her best story, but rache has given us something far better than a lot of the mundane bestiality we come across on the internet and if you love dogs like I do…Yeah, this one is for you, baby!
My ratings?
Technical: 9 Plot: 9 Appeal: 10 Stroke: 8
Reasons why it's my best story ever!!!
2008-10-22Reasons Until After: Ashley is sixteen and when the quarterback of the football team falls in love with him, everyone assumes the boy is gay. This would be bad if it didn't suddenly bring Ashley to the attention of the three hottest girls in school, cheerleaders determined to teach him all about life, love, and a little thing they like to call "girl fun"…What could possibly be wrong with that?
Story Codes: fff/m, teen, romance, reluctant, oral, cd, cheerleaders, and angst, lots and lots of angst
Romance/Some Sex
Sounds innocent, doesn't it?
I'm posting my subversive novel "Reasons Until After" and yeah, it's one of the very best stories I've ever written about anything. Convincing people to read it is of course problematic, but I'm used to that. This story does get spanked, as do I, for having the gall not to regurgitate what most readers are looking for. Spank me all you want, I'm not going away and I'm not going to change. I have no fear of anyone around here.
Sorry if that frightens you. (oops…that'll get me another 1-1-1) Thankfully, I do not suffer from a lack of self-confidence and I trust my own judgment far more than I trust the scoring system on SOL.
Luckily for me, I'm also blessed with my fair share of attention. A lot of people like this story quite a bit. A lot of people who presumably know what they're talking about, probably more than I do, and I like that. I always learn a lot and try to pay attention. Some of the feedback I've received has been over-the-top cool, like this one…
San Francisco GYM (Gay Youth Movement) has included this little note in the reviews section of its newsletter which is very flattering. Among other things, they said:
"…Unsurprisingly, recent fiction has included a number of female authors exploring male sexuality; among these…Rachael Ross [has] given us stories which are at once familiar and fresh in their scope and appeal. 'Reasons Until After' stands out as an exploration of sexual identity crises and revels in a romantic, non-prejudicial world-view…"
That was pretty nice of them and their email was very generous, as was a note from the Advisor of the Akron Pride Center Youth Group in Ohio. He asked me for permission to distribute the story in print form, to make it available "...as an example of a story of love and self-acceptance." That's a sweet thought and it made me smile, as you can imagine.
Getting letters and feedback like that is very nice and gratifying, considering I wrote the story with little more intent than to entertain myself for a few hours. I received another note, from someone familiar with publishing stories a similar themes, suggesting I clean it up a bit, meaning tone down the sexual content and rework the relationship between Ashley and the three girls to be less explicit, and market the story as a novel.
I'm not too sure about that, but I can see the appeal of my little novel. The story, when I posted it under the rache pen name, scored very low. I think a number of readers were expecting something different and so I got punished for not meeting expectations. It merely reinforced my already strong opinion that scores are meaningless. The amount of feedback was substantial and positive, without exception. Many of my emails wondered, "Why is it scoring so low? Are people idiots?" and of course, I have no answer to that.
Technically? It's a very good story, plot and character-wise. It's been edited and proofed pretty well, although only by me. I'm sure a real editor could find some things to fix, but what's the point? When I bother to do it, I'm a better editor than most of the editors around here anyway, if you'll excuse a bit of immodest honesty. Half the editors don't answer requests for editing and half of the rest can't edit their own offers of assistance. Have you seen those??? heh! Editors...Don't get me started. I have a real love-hate thing going there.
Some people wondered about the social permissiveness and ready acceptance of Dan and Ashley by their peers and my explanation for that is simple. The story is about self-awareness and growth. It isn't a me-vs-world story; most of the conflict is internalized and so there was no reason to create external conflict beyond what exists in two characters, Roger and Billy Felder. They represent non-acceptance by expectation and brute conformity, and they're overcome rather easily and in ways that reinforce or inform Ashley in his struggle with his self-identity.
It isn't really about being gay, or being transgender, it's about a teenager struggling to understand who he is, how others perceive him, and where he's going as he matures. It's a story we all live through and I chose the characters largely because they're at the extreme of acceptance. They make it easier for me to make my point. It was a decision based on what would serve the story best and not really one of personal preference or anything like that.
If I had my first choice, it would have been a lesbian story. Danielle was the new girl at school and she falls in love with Ashley, another girl, and it would have worked fine. But for whatever reason, that sort of story is so much more acceptable to the general readership. Everybody loves lesbians and sometimes I cater to that, sometimes I'd rather buck the system and push people to read something they wouldn't normally look at. That really is one of my goals as a writer, whether it's erotic or mainstream or whatever. I already know that I have the audience that will be looking for a story of a certain type, so my real aim is to grab the readers who aren't looking for it.
The emails that start out, "Normally wouldn't read a story like this, but…" those ones are among the most rewarding emails I get. I love those.
I guess that's about all I have to say about it.
T.S.Severe
My secret pedophiliac love affair with you...
2009-01-16...The reader.
I'm lumping you all together, which may be good or bad and probably a bit of both. Readers are like spoiled children, authors are probably worse, but I'm talking about you right now. Spoiled little 13 year old boys who have only just learned how to play with their pee-pees and they refuse to stop. They jerk off at the dinner table. They jerk off at school, church, and while waiting to get a lollipop from the dentist.
If they're happy, they jerk off with a smile. When they're sad, they jerk off with big alligator tears dripping onto their pink little balls. If they're angry, they jerk off anonymously onto your pillow and go to sleep jerking off while they imagine the look on your face when you find it.
That's a whole lot of jerking off, let me tell you. I know, because I'm one of the babysitters. While mom and dad are out there declaring war on Iraq, and setting the prime lending rate, and trying to figure out how to get all that flavor in one little stick of chewing gum, they leave their spoiled little brats in my loving care. Or in the care of someone like me and I have a bone to pick with them too.
I was looking through blogs, largely researching my upcoming paper on sexism in online porn, and I was continuously struck by the number of entries saying something like this:
“Please vote for me. Please. Please, oh please vote!”
Perhaps not in so many words and occasionally in precisely that many words. That is an example of a bad babysitter. She's going to end up held down, tied-up, and gang-raped by a bunch of thirteen year old boys. Not a bad thing really, considering the babysitter in question is the same age, obviously, and so no laws are broken. Nobody is hurt or traumatized for life. She's asking for it and they're giving it to her. My only real issue with the whole affair is that it makes the rest of us look bad when we don't put out for the kiddies in our care.
Much like the author's who say:
"If I don't get more email, I won't finish my story!"
Now there's a girl who has spent way too much time in Daddy's lap. She expects that twenty dollar's after every hug now, even the ones that don't involve getting a finger up her hairless snatch so Daddy can make sure his little big girl is all grown-up on the inside too. That's the problem with playing mommy in the basement: You start to believe her shoes will fit. But mommy is a busy woman and she doesn't just sit at home collecting sperm from the mailman all day, she's working 9-5 and getting the kids to school, and making sure the laundry gets done, and the bills are paid, and the dishes are clean. She's working hard and after the story is finished, Daddy spoils her with dinner, drinks, and dancing to remind her how beautiful she looks doing it.
Or he should.
Awfully hard to spoil a girl if she's demanding everything though. I myself ask for nothing, or at least I try. Everyone slips up every now and again, but even so, I very rarely ask and in that way even the little things are a surprise. That's part of my evil plan, by the way, one of the keys to being a happy and successful underachiever: Never beg! It's not only demeaning personally, but it makes all the rest of us look bad.
And that's my real issue here - Looking bad by association.
“I'm sorry I wrote the story that way. Do you want me to change it? I can do it. I just want to please my fans. Please, just let me know.”
I saw something like that a number of times as I was back-reading the blogs. And not always by the whiny 13 year old girls with weight problems, acne, and ugly shoes. Some of them were doubtlessly (I hope) facetious, but some definitely weren't. It's those that I'm talking about, and I do not include authors looking for input on the next chapter, which is wholly reasonable. I'm talking about people who have finished a story and moved on, but just can't live with not being loved.
I can understand it coming from them, self-image is a big deal when you're that age and we all went through that one summer when we were ugly (even though we really weren't) and for a small number of otherwise beautiful young women, they never recovered. They're stuck forever in that stupid dress, with that silly hair and ugly braces. No boy will ever love them. No fully grown man with his very own car will ever want to shove his cock inside her eager womb. She can never be tall enough. Her tits will never be big enough. She'll always weigh one pound too much.
She's disgusting.
But only because she begs and whores her ass around the net like a wanton slut trading pussy for love. All I can say is “Find Jesus, sister!” He's working at a little taco place just off Sunset. He's dark and greasy, he sneers when he smiles, and rubs his crotch every time a girl walks by. Find the man, order a big enchilada with extra sauce to go, and chow down out back by the dumpster. Don't worry about your skin, or hair, or even the scale in your bathroom. Get yourself laid and walk away from the experience sore, dumb, and happy. Knocked up too. Bring some Jesus home for the folks.
Here's a clue…Thirteen year old boys will fuck anything patient enough to let them get over their fear. You don't have to bribe them. All you have to do is wait, make soft little sighing sounds, and play with your belly button. One will break away from the herd and after he's done, and survived the ordeal, they'll be all over you like Boys to Men on Mariah Carey, and then…What? A thousand words already? I'm out of time.
rache
On the question of download numbers...
2009-01-16The quality of the downloads is what's important, which sounds like a total copout coming from someone who gets less downloads than any other author in this forum, but I have to believe that.
Posting at a place like SOL, for some of us, is a lot like selling our soul to Santa Clause. What I mean is, there are a number of forums where I post bestiality stories and in proportion to the number of users, my download numbers are significant. Like 95% of all active members in most cases and feedback is also much more pronounced. Much more positive and supportive.
Same thing with other specialized forums, like TG and Snuff...But of course we expect that from those places because we are catering to a specific fetish and targeting a specific group of readers who are actively looking for those kinds of stories.
SOL, on the other hand, is just a large community of authors and readers coming together under the umbrella of "Online Erotica" whatever that is. Well, it's everything, and so the disadvantage is that writing a bestiality story will be ignored by the majority of users. A TG story even more so. The target audience is a minority and proportionally smaller than the whole. Makes sense, right? Everyone knows this.
In that way, from that singular point of view, it's not the best situation to post anything out of the mainstream to a site like SOL. The return is minimal when compared to what other, more popular authors enjoy and while we understand and try to ignore that fact, human's by nature are competitive. Our social development is based on comparative teaching and so too our self-image is based on subjective opinion of others. Being compared unfavorably for any reason is not a path to happiness.
So why do it? That's the selling part, in that I'm trading my comfort for the opportunity to reach a wider, more diverse readership. For a brief time I played with middle of the road porn, mainstream themes, and I spent a year writing trash like "Dick" and "Babysitter's First Time" and basically a lot of stories that were very popular, but I rate just below the back of my Fruit Loops box. A lot of people think that was my peak, and perhaps so.
I had to do it though as I came to understand that I couldn't walk in throwing out snuff, bestiality, and hardcore lesbian stories and gain immediate acceptance. I had to build an audience first. 2006-2007 was my throw-away year for that purpose. Now that I have a fanbase on SOL and some minor name recognition outside those forums where I'm worshipped as a goddess, I can move away from writing mainstream tripe and work on other things that are important to me. For the time being my interest is in transgender. I don't know why and doubtless it will wear off eventually, after I've exhausted my explorations, and then I'll do something else.
I'm never completely happy at SOL and I never will be. I resent a lot of what I see there, a lot of what I experience at the hands of voters and anonymous emailers. But the quality of my audience, I think, makes up for its lack of membership. The new readers who come in expecting to find my stories shocking and repulsive, and then email me with valuable comments and criticism, even praise for seducing them into trying something different...That's why I'm there and why I'm writing unpopular fiction. It's why I sold my soul to Santa and I keep asking him for an AK-47 in my stocking, but...
//rant
//rache
