Porn I like
Jan. 25th, 2007 12:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsSince I've been spending so much time griping about porn I can't stand, I figured I should write something sorta nice about porn I like. In the literary field, let me give a weak recommendation to Raquel Taylor's Cambion's Kiss, which is a nice pseudo-BDSM story full of kink and and miscellany.
The basics are this: a high-class prostitute, recently dismissed from service to the Prince of the Kingdom, learns that he has a brother hidden away somewhere, and that one of the Prince's associates, the evil Duke Uriel, has been assigned to kill the long-lost heir. She learns of the brother's hiding place, saves him, falls madly in love with him and struggles to help him learn how to be royalty, and you can probably guess the coming conflicts and resolutions. Totally by the numbers.
Except that our high-class prostitute is, in fact, a Succubus from the Realm of Oea, as is our Prince (okay, Incubus). As is everyone of note within this story. The lost prince lives in Malibu, California where he makes his living as a cover model for romance novels (you'd never guess that by the horrible PoserPorn[?] cover for this book). Oea is a land of Typical BDSM Fantasies, where everyone is "master or slave," and the kingdom is One Neverending Kinky Party. There's all sorts of miscellaneous handwaving and extruded fantasy product in service of the sex.
If I had my filters turned up, a lot of this book would have stopped me. Where does the food come from, and who builds all these marvelous palaces? What drives the economy? Is there reproductive sex? Where are the children raised? If "the psychic energy leaking from Oea into the outer world" is the source of all frightening, enticing, overwhelming sexual dreamery among humans, then does Oea have a place in any theology, or is it subject to investigation by methodological naturalism? Oea has evolved from a more primitive state, as there's an "old Oean tongue, and the modern tongue, which are very different," so what was that primitive state like? Are there Oean archeologists and anthropologists interested in the question? Are there different races of succubae and incubae, or is everyone a stock Californian caucasion with nifty tattoos and black wings, as seems to be the case?
All sort-of pointless: answering any of those questions would give rise to Elf Sternberg Syndrome ("Too much sex for mainstream presses, too much thinking for porn.").
The sex writing is hot, involving whips and chains and fucking and exchanges of power, which is pretty much why I finished the thing. On the other hand, the sex itself is disconnected: the characters are so superhuman that their tearing, anxious, violent sex scenes don't match with human experiences and so become a kind of performance art. A second reading through any scene, after this realization, left me kinda cold and I hurried through the predictable but well-written ending.
If this is the sort of thing that you like, you'll like this sort of thing. (Which is more than anything I could say about Gaby Reese's work.)
The basics are this: a high-class prostitute, recently dismissed from service to the Prince of the Kingdom, learns that he has a brother hidden away somewhere, and that one of the Prince's associates, the evil Duke Uriel, has been assigned to kill the long-lost heir. She learns of the brother's hiding place, saves him, falls madly in love with him and struggles to help him learn how to be royalty, and you can probably guess the coming conflicts and resolutions. Totally by the numbers.
Except that our high-class prostitute is, in fact, a Succubus from the Realm of Oea, as is our Prince (okay, Incubus). As is everyone of note within this story. The lost prince lives in Malibu, California where he makes his living as a cover model for romance novels (you'd never guess that by the horrible PoserPorn[?] cover for this book). Oea is a land of Typical BDSM Fantasies, where everyone is "master or slave," and the kingdom is One Neverending Kinky Party. There's all sorts of miscellaneous handwaving and extruded fantasy product in service of the sex.
If I had my filters turned up, a lot of this book would have stopped me. Where does the food come from, and who builds all these marvelous palaces? What drives the economy? Is there reproductive sex? Where are the children raised? If "the psychic energy leaking from Oea into the outer world" is the source of all frightening, enticing, overwhelming sexual dreamery among humans, then does Oea have a place in any theology, or is it subject to investigation by methodological naturalism? Oea has evolved from a more primitive state, as there's an "old Oean tongue, and the modern tongue, which are very different," so what was that primitive state like? Are there Oean archeologists and anthropologists interested in the question? Are there different races of succubae and incubae, or is everyone a stock Californian caucasion with nifty tattoos and black wings, as seems to be the case?
All sort-of pointless: answering any of those questions would give rise to Elf Sternberg Syndrome ("Too much sex for mainstream presses, too much thinking for porn.").
The sex writing is hot, involving whips and chains and fucking and exchanges of power, which is pretty much why I finished the thing. On the other hand, the sex itself is disconnected: the characters are so superhuman that their tearing, anxious, violent sex scenes don't match with human experiences and so become a kind of performance art. A second reading through any scene, after this realization, left me kinda cold and I hurried through the predictable but well-written ending.
If this is the sort of thing that you like, you'll like this sort of thing. (Which is more than anything I could say about Gaby Reese's work.)
