(Excuse the typos, this is off the top of my head)
This place really needs a sense of humor, I swear. With few exceptions, and you know who you are, the SOL crowd is largely a mirthless bunch. Easily confused, very nit-picky, firmly entrenched in the outdated traditions of our pornographic forefathers, and lazy to boot.
I take that back. It's not just SOL, it's anywhere online that more than a dozen people gather for mutual masturbation in the Socratic circle jerk otherwise known as erotica. SOL is actually better than some places where authors take themselves so seriously they have to give blood if they want to print a chapter for grandma. But at least those forums are fun because it's always good sport to light a man's principles on fire and watch him run around in circles. If the village is crowded enough...well, look what happened to Chicago!
That wasn't no cow, Laz...that was porn!
So me, being me and utterly bored with reading daily blog notes that say "I changed two to's to too's today; see my update..." I rather enjoy being a little non-sensical, overly dramatic, and even irrelevent in my posts. A few people get a few of my jokes, some catch the puns, some can even tell when I'm trying to be serious without looking like I'm being serious, and vice versa. I'm grateful for that much at least.
Of late I've been accused of being a racist, which is kind of funny but who knows, I suppose it could be true. I'm a minority female and I generally think all white guys are cute and all black guys have huge dicks and all those people who live in yurts smell like goats. I wouldn't deny anyone the inalienable right to play video games based on any of my stereotypical observations, but I might have a problem with sharing my toothbrush.
Anyway, back to racism and accusations thereof, which is a serious deal in this day and age...as it should be. Racism is a bad thing as a general rule, but the allegations have been made that using the interracial code and elements thereof indicates a racist story. People who enjoy reading and writing those sorts of stories are all racists and exploiting minorities. This was a very real discussion, a serious one, and I couldn't let remarks like that go by. Not in good conscience anyway, and after selling my soul for that wine cooler when I was fourteen, what else do I have left?
I won't go into all of it here, but suffice to say that it's precisely that sort of thing I hate about large sites catering to the broad spectrum of viral enthusiasms plaguing the internet. Like SOL, for example. Rather than bringing people together for the common good of all mankind, sharing our collective wisdom through the pain numbing discourse of elegant prose...We're stuck debating the callous implications of story codes and the significant threat their very existance poses to the future of humanity.
Okay, so maybe I'm exagerrating a little. Nah. Story codes are tools of nazi propaganda, used to delude the masses with a false sense of security and lull the vigilant among us to sleep and dream of a pornographic utopia free of independant thought, selfish motivation, and deliberate misrepresentation of intent, content, and manifest social value.
Or at least that's what I took away from the argument, along with a sketchy history lesson and a gift-wrapped box of chocolate covered guilt. You'll understand if I returned it unopened.
Someday, if I can be serious and try to formulate a thought brooding in the back of my admittedly small brain, I'd like to see online erotica elevated to something more than a collection of scribblings with less literary respect than Archie and Jughead. Even in the real world of published literature, the "Classics" of erotica familiar to the average adult can be tabulated on the tines of your salad fork.
So what chance does online erotica stand of rising to something at least worthy of acknowledgement if not acceptance? Pretty good, I think. Not now or in the immediate future, but someday. Online publishing is still very much in its infancy, still struggling to compete with the convenience and profitable infrastructure of paper publishing. Sooner or later though technology will allow the equivalent of well-wron paperbacks, profits will go up because trons cost less than trees, even the recycled ones from your bathroom, and once the scales tip, as they eventually must, there will be a headlong rush to define, implement, and refine the publishing business in its new and modern incarnation.
When that happens, with any amount of luck, there will be greater opportunities for those few gifted authors toiling at producing erotica for SOL and Literotica and other places to gain some foothold with mainstream markets and push the envelope of that defines popular entertainment. The niche markets that already exist, like America's Best Erotica series, will find themselves well positioned to explot the vast library of online material that exists...Not to ressurect old stories, but rather to tap into new authors who have the filthy rich history of the internet to learn from.
And I guess that's my point here. I've never really tried to sort this out before, so forgive me. We should be learning, or at least some of us. Authors, the serious ones, should be using the net to perfect their craft and obviously many of them do and in the meantime work hard to find publication with other work, other stories. Readers, the serious ones, the intelligent who read not just for titillation but for the experience a well-told story may impart, should be working just as hard to encoourage not only their favorites, but new authors as well. They should be willing to experiment, just as authors do, with themes and subject matter, and providing feedback which adds value to the future.
I think we should look at getting away from those aspects of storytelling which are unique to online erotica and find ways to conform with the mainstream. Story codes is a good example. They're unique to online erotica and when I look at wrting as a whole, stories published on and offline in their entirety, story codes are almost demeaning. It's like saying, "Don't read my story because it's good; read it because it has a lot of incestuous sex in it." I understand the necessity and even desire for that and I don't blame anyone for wanting story codes, but I'd like to see them optional. I'd like to see the day when an author can stand on a well-written synopsis and little else without drawing a lot of anger and criticism. I'd like to see the end of the perceived obligation to code every aspect and scene. Until that happens, and some other things, I think erotica will always be a suspicious shadow lurking in the dirty alleyways of public consciousness. Not because they see story codes and laugh, but because those of us who read and write are handicapping ourselves.
It's an ego thing...We're better than this and we should be thinking that way.
or...maybe I'm full of shit. I guess time will tell.
Still sleeping anon?
rache
Now that I've cleared that up...
