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From: LadyCyrrh@aol.com
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Subject: {ASSM} {REVIEW} The Annex Reviews, 5/26/02
Date: Sun, 26 May 2002 23:10:03 -0400
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The Annex Reviews, 5/26/02
by Lady Cyrrh (ladycyrrh@aol.com)
Website: http://members.aol.com/ladycyrrh 


The stories:

Christopher Enslaved, Parts 1 - 15 (Joshua Ryan): M/M, SF, bond, humil, 
slave

A Middle Class Slave, Part 1 (Pete Brown): M/M, SF, bond, slave

Slave Girl Convict (Grim Williams and Dolcetta): MMF rape, tort, snuff, 
caution

My Brand of Slave (Anonymous): M/F, D/s, slave

Fate's Design, Parts I and II (Mariah): M/M, boyband, fantasy, slave



Christopher Enslaved, Parts 1 - 15 [A]
Where posted: ASSGM
When posted: 3/6/02
Author: Joshua Ryan
Author Address: totalreform@yahoo.com

Lord, I love a good slave story. When done well, they contain all manner 
of bondage, D/s, bodily modification, and torture situations; there is also 
considerable emotional drama, exotic settings, and hot sex. Not only that, 
since slavery doesn't exist in the modern world (mostly) they are a good 
way for authors to showcase their skills at writing SF, fantasy, or 
historical fiction. Gay, straight, poly... I love 'em all. So much I am 
dedicating this bimonthly posting of the Annex Reviews to them. 

This first story, culled from the ASSGM newsgroup, contains all the 
above elements, and more. It starts off with a bang: "The most horrible 
day I ever lived through was the day my life long friend Christopher 
Worthington was enslaved for life at the age of 22." Awww, what's not to 
love?

The story -- actually more of a long novelette --  is set in a universe 
slightly skewed from the early 2000s in which slavery has experienced 
a resurgence as a form of social control. Convicts and debtors are the 
usual fodder, but parents may enslave their children, too, on the 
flimsiest of pretexts. That's what happens to the title character. His old 
man is experiencing financial stress, so strapping young Christopher is 
yanked out of college and sold to pay the debt... with no hope of 
reprieve. What follows is an excellent, lovingly detailed fantasy of a 
new slave's processing and training, told in first person form through 
the eyes of his friend who witnesses it. 

Here the slaves are hogtied and suspended on meat hooks, moving 
slowly along an assembly line of sorts:

>>>>Human beings getting processed.  Getting lowered on  their chain, 
getting raised.  Getting dipped, clipped,  shaved, pierced, ringed, 
branded, cinched, collared,  tattooed, stapled, punched, belled, dyed, 
circumcised,  infibulatad, castrated, tagged, looped, hooked,  soldered, 
cauterized, stained, scarred.... Two hundred helpless slabs of meat-
hooked loser flesh  at the processing plant.  Getting pulled around by  
their groins by young apprentices, who were not  losers, manning 
grappling hooks.  From two hundred penises dangled laminated cards 
coded with processing  instructions. Instructions for processing two 
hundred  totally exposed and vulnerable animals who once  thought 
they were men. Who once thought they were  worthy of respect.<<<<

The tone is typical of the rest of the story and makes for compelling 
reading. Just as I thought the author couldn't top the abjection and 
humiliation that came before he does... the hapless slaves are given new 
names (Knob, Wags, Doodles, Slit) shaved and forced to wear funny hats 
("For a moment all I could do was stare at his totally shaved bald head... 
his goofy cone hat, his dazed and frightened look.  He frightened me.") 
exhibited on the internet ("A lot of gals find the regularly updated pics 
of the naked slave's burgeoning muscles to be real hot frigging 
material") greased ("Todd," he asked, "would you like to help oil up your 
friend's backside?") and even used as... well, convenient plumbing 
fixtures. Everything is narrated in frighteningly plausible and realistic 
detail, especially the reactions of the bureaucrats who staff the slave 
center. (A very sly eye for satire, there.) In fact, save for the 
overenthusiasm (and the mentions of male-male spanking and the 
ultimate belled-and-harnessed humiliation that comes at the very end) 
the story could have been pure SF. 

And yet. Despite its detail and inventiveness, and its wish to be an actual 
story with character development and not an extended fantasy, the 
piece failed on some level for me. The problem was with the narrator, 
who seemed to be in the story only for purposes of detailing what 
happens to the victim. Although the author was careful to explain he 
tagged along in order to comfort his friend, not leer and jeer as the 
victim's hostile brothers do (another pair of plot devices) I didn't buy it. 
Seriously, if *I* was going to be enslaved, I wouldn't want witnesses, 
and especially not my best friend. It would have made way more sense 
for the narrator to have been dragged along out of parental threat: See 
Sonny, this is what happens if you piss me off. 

Along similar lines it would have been more dramatic for the victim's 
enslavement to be punishment; I could see both him and the narrator 
being involved in antislave activities, giving what transpires an ugly, 
ironic twist. The narrator's later change of heart towards his friend 
rings all the more hollow for lack of a grand scheme of this sort, though 
it genuinely surprised me. But since the narrator had no strong 
feelings about the practice of slavery beforehand, his realization 
seemed to have been thrown in there merely to give a tidy conclusion to 
things. Some drama was gained in the middle when the slave begs the 
narrator to help him escape, but overall, I think the author seriously 
fumbled the ball.

Quibbles aside though, this was really an excellent read, with some 
unforgettable visual images that stayed with me long after the story was 
finished. I especially recommend it for slash fans who are turned on by 
kinky stuff. 



A Middle Class Slave [A]
Where posted: ASSGM
When posted: 4/23/02
Author: Pete Brown
Author Address: p.b.@pobox.com
Author Website: 
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/petebrownseroticstories

This story, the first chapter of a longer series, deals with the same 
themes, but with more spontaneity. American society has crashed 
because of rampant inflation and unemployment, so President Shelley 
has reinstituted the practice of slavery for the 15% of the population 
with "no jobs, no income, and no hope." The young (again, a 22-year-
old) narrator is our window into the social changes wrought by this 
development, especially when he takes a trip to the south and befriends 
a slave tennis partner at an upscale hotel:

>>>> But  this is what  really brought home to me how different the life as 
a  slave was from my own - the guy was just a couple of years older than  
me but had been a slave since his parents were first enslaved as they  
were long-term unemployed at the start of President Shelley's  reforms.  
He'd been a slave for almost all of his 23 years,  therefore, and he told 
me that he was glad to be working here in the  hotel rather than in one 
of the field gangs.  Playing tennis all day  with guests like me was, he 
thought, much better than being condemned  to being a labourer for 
his entire life.  And he had high hopes of  finding a sympathetic new 
owner who would be attracted to his body... Never the less, seeing the 
hotel's logo tattooed above his right  nipple, and his slave number 
standing out blackly from his upper arm  was a bit of a shock for me - it 
really had not occurred to me before  that slaves really were "property", 
and, as such, needed registration  marks just as much as automobiles 
did.<<<

Foreshadowing, no? But this time it's the narrator who's enslaved rather 
than his friend... in a time of strict sexual morality he knocks up a 
cheerleader, and pays the price when he goes on trial for sexual assault. 
As in the previous story the sentence of slavery is lifelong and without 
reprieve, the slaves sold and re-sold under a series of registration 
numbers so their real identities are forever lost.

This is a very good start for a longer series told in a colloquial and 
personal tone. It didn't have the awesome level of detail of the story 
above, but promised more adventure and less contrivance.



Slave Girl Convict [A]
Where posted: ASSM
When posted: 4/25/02
Author: Grim Williams and Dolcetta
Author Address: gw@grim_williams.co.uk; dolcetta@grim_williams.co.uk
Author Website: http://asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/grim_williams/www/sgc  

Females receive the slave treatment in this story, which was much more 
cruel and brutal than the previous two... no piquant shave-and-oil 
humiliations here. (I guess it's because it's traditional for women to be 
terrorized, or something.) Again, it's a near-future world skewed from 
our own. Female criminals are enslaved, chained, sexually assaulted, and 
sentenced to judgment on national TV... where they must perform 
(think strip club/sleazy peep show) for the viewers' pleasure, their 
lives literally depending on the quality of the act. If viewers judge them 
lacking, they are executed on-camera in creative ways:

>>>>"First our beautiful he-men will aim for the breasts," Linda Luscious 
explained for the benefit of those at home.  "Watch carefully as the nails 
penetrate the skin, producing the perfect pin cushion.  There are forty 
nails in each cartridge, and we'll be firing three cartridges at each of 
Shannon's pretty young breasts.  That's one hundred and twenty half 
inch nails penetrating each breast. <<<<

There's sly satire in this piece too, considering the show is sponsored by 
Magic Moments vibrators. 

This was a very intense story and hard to read in some places, but the 
narrative voice made up for it. The victim's mixture of fear, defiance, 
and turn-on by her predicament was well handled, something you don't 
see too often in fiction of this sort. 



My Brand of Slave [B+]
Where posted: ASSB
When posted: 4/15/02
Poster: Jarrod Jones
Poster Address: jarrod@storyarchive.org
Poster Website: http://www.storyarchive.org

This was one of those abbreviated "you" stories where the reader role-
plays the part of the narrator's love object. In this case, the you-
character has been instructed to truss herself up in a hotel room with a 
suitcase full of toys as part of a mutual D/s contract with the story's Dom 
narrator. (How she does so alone is not explained.) The narrator then 
sticks a vibrator in her ass, paddles her hard and long, then brands her 
on the side as a member of his 'herd.' "You have read all the stories I 
sent you and acknowledge that I might, at anytime, do anything 
contained in those stories to you?" he warns dramatically. Boy, slave 
contracts are a bitch.

The story set out to do what it wanted to do, but was slightly too bloody 
for my taste. Ass-whoopings, yes; blood pouring down your butt, no. 



Fate's Design, Parts I and II [A-]
Author: Mariah
Author Website: http://www.lostmuse.com/mariah/FD01.html

Here we have a kinder, gentler slave fic, discovered when I was 
searching out material for my upcoming essay on boyband fanfic. I was 
going to save it for then, but it fit so neatly into this months' theme, I 
couldn't resist.

The story is about the members of N'Sync, rising stars in the current 
fanfic scene. Hundreds of websites and thousands of stories are out 
there, most dealing with the members' struggles with fame and fortune, 
their sexual relationships with each other, or dramatic events like 
kidnappings and drug and alcohol addiction. This story was unusual in 
that it featured the boyband members transported to a fantasy world, 
where three of them are slaves of the other two.

As usual for alternate universe fanfic the fantasy world is not detailed, 
though it's vaguely Middle Eastern by the name (Kismet.) In these two 
chapters Master Lance sends slave Christopher on an errand to the 
auction where he buys green slave Justin and brings him home. There 
the shy Justin meets a veritable harem of other boys, most of whom 
have little to do except lay around and bathe each other all day. Lance 
takes care to be thought of as a kind master, but he's not above using his 
charges as fuck-toys, in the sort of semi D/s fuck scene so beloved by 
fanfic writers:

>>>>"It's time for you to come. You were good today, Christopher. The 
perfect servant. Now it's time for your reward," Joshua cooed in Chris's 
ear as he continued to milk him. "Show me what a good Master I am, 
Christopher. Come for me." 

"Yes, Sir. I..." Christopher pressed back against Joshua as he tensed and 
came in the warm water of the tub. 

"Such a good boy." Joshua licked the base of Christopher's neck as he 
gave a few final thrusts and let himself go inside of Christopher. "So 
good." <<<<

The awkwardness of that last paragraph comes about as a result of the 
author's "vizzy" style (vizzy=visual) where a story is told as if watched 
on a TV screen, not experienced by one's characters. In severe cases 
this leads to epithetitis, or the practice of using multiple story tags for 
one character: Justin, younger man, blonde boy, etc, which makes it 
seem as if there are six characters in the room instead of two. Despite 
slash fans' educational outreach in writing matters the trait still 
persists, and it drives me crazy. 

That aside, I enjoyed reading the story anyway; the slightness of it was a 
nice change from more brutal fare. However, I found it hard to picture 
the members of N'Sync acting this way, or even picturing them in 
sexual situations at all. My ideals of male beauty date from the late 80s 
and early 90s -- sinewy striplings like the young Michael Hutchence 
and Chris Cornell -- or modern pop Latinos like Tommy Torres and 
Shalim. The members of N'Sync look like they should all be spinning a 
pizza somewhere... too frat-boy-pushing-30 for my taste, and at least 60 
collective pounds too heavy. Sure, they can dance. But I'd think 
younger, cuter groups like MDO and Uff would have more appeal. 

Well, to each his or her own. The story worked fine for me when I 
divorced the underdescribed characters from their real-life 
counterparts. You might want to do the same.... or not.

________________________________________________________
Comments to: ladycyrrh@aol.com
Website--->  http://members.aol.com/ladycyrrh

-- 
Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights
reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated.
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