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Subject: {ASSM} {REVIEW} The Annex Reviews, 1/4/03
Date: Sat,  4 Jan 2003 21:10:21 -0500
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The Annex Reviews, 1/4/03
by Lady Cyrrh (ladycyrrh@aol.com)
Website: http://members.aol.com/ladycyrrh 


This posting:

The 2002 Cyrrheal Awards

The Blue Pill (Scott): M/M, SF, rom
One on One (Courtney Sweet): M+/F, cons, anal, male
    stripper
Violet (Toran): M/F, bondage
Suzy's Honeymoon (Glaucus, Ted E. Bear): F/F, M/F, tg,
    rape, humil, exhib, bond, toys, first, wife

Movie notes: The Fluffer




Here are my awards for best neterotica of 2002. Keep in 
mind not all these stories are A+, and not every A+ 
story got an award; these are just the stories that 
impressed me, for better or for worse, in the year of 
2002. As usual, I pick the story and then tailor the 
award to it, not the other way around. If the awards 
seem freighted towards BDSM, fantasy, and slash it is 
just an indication of my reading interests for that year 
and not that I didn't find regular erotica or porn 
lacking in merit. It's also because I hate wasting a 
read, even a recreational one! 

So, on with the awards.


Best Victorian Mystery/Rubber Fetish story: 
The Revenant of Hargreave Manor, by Bill Lemieux 
(4/25/02)

This story impressed me deeply with its tone of gothic 
mystery and descriptions of rubber and latex bondage 
gear... and sinister bondage devices, as well. Much was 
left deliciously to the imagination.


The Sweet Kisses Award for Most Promising Teen Slash 
    Writer: 
My Sweet Prince, Nina Inherz
(4/25/02)

Not the best yaoi/slash story out there, but the 
funniest and wackiest. From the now-tame Fanfiction.net 
self-posting archive, it serves as a reminder of how 
wild and freewheeling this community of young fanfic 
writers once was.


Most Extreme Slave: 
Christopher Enslaved, Joshua Ryan
(5/26/02)

The cruelest, most eerily plausible, and best-detailed 
slave story I have ever read, gay or straight.


Best Mind Control Writer for 2002 (tie): 
Farleven, Trilby Else
(5/30/02; 7/20/02)

I've read many stories from both these writers. Trilby 
impresses me with his handling of plot and character in 
his SF/fantasy tales, even if the stories don't always 
end happily. Farleven writes more traditional porn and 
it's comparatively less fine, and more stereotyped, but 
still very hot reads in the slave/mind control vein. Two 
very different authors, both worth reading.


Best Short-short(s): 
Seven Flashes, Selena Jardine
(6/20/02)

Seven stories under 500 words, each different and sexy 
in its own way


The Fuck Dodgers Award for Best Science Fiction Spoof:
Lance Storm and the Slaves of the Hypnotron, by Wersgor
(6/30/02)

A humorous gay parody that winks knowingly at science 
fiction movie serials and 1950s space opera shows.


Best Historical: 
Red Revenge, by Frances LeGatta
(6/30/02)

Imagine Daniel DeFoe crossed with a bodice-ripper. A 
lush erotic encounter with an Indian brave.


Best Original Slash: 
Titos' Adventures, by Paladin
(7/20/02)

Not the best edited or proofread slash fantasy out 
there, but one author's unique, almost British voice, 
sexy and sweet and very imaginative.


Best Tolkien BDSM Writer: 
Tyellas
(8/2/02)

This author perfectly captures the Tolkien tone and adds 
her own unique twist to Middle-Earth canon, with 
impeccable research and elegant prose.


The Bung Gusher Award for Most Gratuitous Use of Blood 
    and Gore: 
Untitled, Abby
(8/2/02)

This LotR bloodfic was about unfettered assault and 
little else. Read only if you like to fantasize about 
characters beaten to bloody pulps.


Best Humor: 
Outback, Dingo Jay
(9/2/02)

There were other humor stories, but this Aussie 
bestiality tale took the cake. Serious or not? You 
decide.


The Wiggy Marsdust Award for Gender Ambiguity: 
The Question, by Rev. Cotton Mather
(7/10/02)

I wasn't sure whether to award this story or not, but 
realized it had stuck in my head for a long time after I 
read it, taking on new meanings the more I thought about 
it. That, and I liked the rhythmic nature of the prose.


Best Superhero: 
Wonder Woman, the Conquest of Paradise by Knight; 
American Dream, by Krazy Kat
(10/13/02)

Of all the superhero fics I've read these two were the 
best, combining adventure, spandex, sexual mishaps, and 
a sense of humor.


Best Family BDSM: 
Family Shoot 2000, Herman
{10/26/02)

If three female generations of one family got together 
to pose for bondage photographs this is exactly what 
would happen.


The Herschell Gordon Lewis Blood Feast Award for Best 
    Vore Writer: 
Neuralmancer
(10/26/02)

This author impressed me with his (?) dark sense of 
cruelty and out-there scenarios involving cannibalism, 
slave farming, and snuff.


Author Honorable Mentions: 
Allison, The Purple Herald, Cyan, Spline Duck, David 
Shaw, Souvie.



The Blue Pill [A] 
Where posted: ASSM 
When posted: 12/28/02 
Author: Scott 
Author address: Scottturnitred@hotmail.com 
Type: M/M, SF, rom

This story begins in adventurous SF mode, setting the 
tension: a man and his commanding officer, a woman, have 
experienced an accident in space, and they're running 
out of oxygen. Their ship is crippled and they're moving 
only slowly into range where they can set out a distress 
call. Their crewmates are dead. Things look hopeless 
when the narrator finds the hallucinogenic drug of the 
title:

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
These little blue pills were called dreamers because of 
the intense sexual fantasy illusions they were said to 
produce. The word was this pill was so powerful it often 
so scrambled the users brain with phenomenally powerful 
fantasies that a person just couldn't go back to a 
regular life.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The two want to go out with a bang, so they take the 
pill and have a shared-mind sex encounter in a virtual 
cabana on a beach. Later they are rescued, the drug 
having slowed their metabolism so they can stretch out 
the air that's left.

This was a very good story both in its plot (there is a 
plot for once), setting, and characterization. I thought 
the sexual fantasy was kinda tame considering the pill 
had unlimited power (it was romantic hetsex with a bit 
of light bondage) but then, I'm used to stronger stuff. 
I also thought too much was made of the fact that the 
female commander needed to let her hair down and let 
herself be a "real woman" in such a yuppie Pottery Barn 
scenario. Still, the interplay between the two 
characters was good, and it was a suspenseful, touching 
story.




One by One [B+] 
Where posted: ASSM 
When posted: 12/28/02 
Author: Courtney Sweet 
Author address: courtney_sweet@yahoo.co.uk
Author website: http://erotic.stories.by.courtney-sweet.com/
Type: M+/F, cons, male stripper

Courtney Sweet has been writing unapologetic porn for a 
while now, raunchy female fantasies designed to get the 
reader hot without any pretense of plot or character. I 
read her slave girl auction ones a while ago (not 
reviewed) and now this one, about one woman's encounter 
with a group of horny male strippers:

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
"She's ready Scott" Adam murmured and Fiona felt herself 
being held steady as Adam buried his wedge of man meat 
deep inside her hot swollen pussy.  She gasped and 
moaned loudly as the hard rod of man muscle invaded her 
silky depths, she was so horny his entry into her fuck 
hole almost made her cum on the spot.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I'm puzzled on how to deal with pure porn. I know it's 
silly to criticize it on literary terms because it's 
more advertisement than story, with magic phrases like 
"abused cum filled mouth" and "orgasm-swollen cunt" and 
"hot spurts of sperm."  It would have been very easy for 
me to be snide with this story. But I read it to the 
end, and enjoyed it, even though the descriptions of 
tanned, oiled, hairless male stripper bodies didn't 
really turn me on -- I like real men who sweat and have 
hair and muscles that don't look like they've been 
injection-molded. Stripper men, and most men in recent 
porn films, actually, look gelded to me, like steers or 
action figures. Though I'm often tempted to touch one, 
just to see what it feels like.

Nonetheless the writer did a good job for a strictly 
porny fantasy, the only improvement being perhaps a 
willingness to be more individual in the subject matter 
and writing style.




Violet [A] 
Where posted: ASSM 
When posted: 12/29/02 
Author: Toran 
Author address: toran29@insightbb.com 
Type: M/F, bondage

Toran impressed me with his gothic horror/sex tale "Do 
You Want to Continue?" in the Gromet's Self-Bondage 
website I reviewed a while back. This is a new bondage 
tale from him, shorter and more lyrical. An unnamed 
woman is sleeping soundly in bed dreaming of a "muscular 
black stallion" carrying her to some unnamed doom. She 
wakes up to find a real intruder has broken in, who 
begins to tie her up in silk cords:

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Around and around he bound her and only when he had her 
elbows tied together did he stop to reach into his 
pocket for the second coil.  By now, she was shrieking 
and that would have to be stopped but, catlike, he sat 
up and turned so that that he could capture her flailing 
ankles with his rope.  Like a maypole being bound on 
mayday, her legs gradually lost their freedom and were 
motionless as his bindings went from ankle to thigh.  A 
quick tie-off between her pinned wrists and a delicate 
rope about her big toes, and she was captured in a snug 
hog-tie.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The story ends on a tense note: "Thunder boomed outside 
her bedchamber and briefly illuminated the silk bag that 
she was being slid into.  She would never see her bed 
again, nor would she ever be free of his ropes again. "

A short, well-executed bondage fantasy, lovingly told, 
and you can tell the author *means* it, to whoever he's 
telling it to. 




Suzy's Honeymoon [C] 
Where posted: ASSM 
When posted: 12/31/03/02 
Author: Glaucus/Ted E. Bear 
Author address: tedebear690@yahoo.com 
Type: F/F, M/F, tg, rape, humil, exhib, bond, toys, 
  first, wife

Whew! This story had a shitload of categories in it. 

A virginal young couple, Suzy and Brad, go to Turkey for 
their honeymoon and are immediately deported because 
Suzy is carrying some mace (?) Until their return ticket 
home they are held in a Turkish prison. Not the dirty, 
cockroach-filled hellhole we're familiar with from the 
movies,  but a bright, clean, multinationally staffed 
facility equipped with a full honeymoon suite... the 
better to videotape the drugged, clueless lovebirds on 
their wedding night, making of that sweet time a 
perverted travesty of lust. 

I've come across a handful of stories over the years 
with this theme -- not necessarily honeymooners in 
Turkish prisons, but virginal young couples who are 
humiliated by more experienced roués -- and have always 
found them hard to swallow, because young people today 
are more sophisticated about sex, even if they're 
virgins. I could have forgiven this if the story was 
good. But it wasn't; there were many more problems with 
plausibility, from the stiff dialogue rife with 
misspellings ("I will make love to you and your wife 
Brad, in France it is called a menage au trios") to the 
lack of research regarding setting (What's a German 
prison guard doing in a Turkish prison? And why do all 
the other prison staff speak and act like they're 
Americans? It couldn't have been that hard to look up 
old Newsweek articles at the local library.) And while 
some sex scenes were good, such as a forced sex 
encounter between Suzy, a vibrator, and the 
aforementioned German matron, attempts at adding pathos 
to the couple's fate fell flat, reading like the "Oh 
Brad! Oh Lisa!" scenes of "The Rocky Horror Picture 
Show." Which I don't think the original author intended. 

However the original writer is long out of the picture, 
having abandoned this story in 1997; later chapters will 
be penned by Ted E. Bear, who reposted these first ones 
as an introduction to his own. So the quality of the 
piece may yet improve; you'll have to wait and see.




Movie Notes: The Fluffer

We got a DVD player for Christmas, so over Winter break 
I've been busy catching up the movies I've missed during 
the latter half of the year. This movie was one of them. 
Filed under GAY in my favorite indie rental place, it's 
a raunchy comedy set, like "Boogie Nights," in the porn 
industry. Unlike that film it's the gay porn world of direct-
to-video movies, a world of anonymous offices, 
indifferent actors, jerry-rigged sets, and atrocious 
dialogue. 

Sean, a naive film buff, comes to LA intent on breaking 
into movies, but the only job he can get is as gofer and 
camera boy for Janus Films, the gay video production 
house. He meets a variety of colorful characters: buffed 
straight boy Johnny Rebel, Janus Films' star, who 
does gay films for quick cash; Hector, a sweet, gay 
Mexican production assistant; a persnickety bondage 
"boy" who is actually a queen in his late 40s; a genial-
acting but nasty old-school camera man who gives the 
hero a hard time; a level-headed female exotic dancer 
upfront about her appetite for big, dumb men; and lastly 
the owner of Janus Films, Chad Cox, a fast-talking 
ex-porn star in shorts and tennis shoes played by Robert 
Wagner... scruffy but lovable ace reporter Joe Rossi in 
the old Lou Grant TV show! I admit it was a bit of a 
shock for me hearing the star of one of my favorite 
teenage shows talk enthusiastically about sucking cock, 
but I adjusted, and he, like all the actors, did star 
turns in this film. The story depicts Sean's progression 
from his first confused days on the job through his 
growing infatuation with Johnny Rebel, the dim, 
musclebound star whom he occasionally fellates to full 
erection for the camera. It shows how he becomes too 
wrapped up in this world -- in an amusing way, not the 
moralistic bad turns of "Boogie Nights" -- destroying 
his budding relationship with a nice young man as Johnny 
Rebel eventually destroys his, and they both are 
forced to flee from the law when a major crime is 
committed. But I don't want to give away too much.

As a plus, on the DVD there's production notes, deleted 
scenes, a Johnny Rebel montage (I hear some gays have 
been talking this illusory character as if he's real) 
and a hilarious gallery of the fake video boxes created 
for the film, with titles like "Citizen Cum."

Funny and touching: recommended, even if you think it 
would skeeve you out. Come on, there's only one shot of 
somebody's dick in it.

Director Richard Glatzer, Writer Wash Westmoreland



____________________________________________________
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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