Dannsar

Someone lumped Lugh with the Lazies We think he's one of the crazies His death was quite quick Presto ... knifety flick And now he's just kicking up daisies

Well, I'm a bit bemused by this B1ue. (First of all, let me thank you for a pretty well written input, which, like Cia's which followed, attempts some clarity and reason). Firstly, I have re-read my polemic post, and nowhere within it do I appear to say anything which could be construed as my having said it ai all crap. In fact what I did say was that GA authors at least have a breadth of styles, which is my way of saying that there is clearly other stuff out there, but it is just not frequent enough. Read my reviews ... I say that some stuff is great. My contributions speak for themselves. An ill informed opinion of my stance helps nobody. Secondly, an accusation(for that is how it feels to me, as someone who likes to think and articulate in sustainable ways) that I have backpedaled [sic] is way wide of the mark. I have not backpeddaled one single iota, believe me. Thirdly, I see you are in South California, so USA. I don't know if you have the ... well, let's call it the phenomenon! ... of Mills and Boon in the US. Mills and Boon are a series of formulaic romance novels, much derided in the UK. And, while I, myself, do not particularly care for them, they are what they are. Madly, truly madly, successful. There are no easily found figures, but they have been going for over 100 years and sell one book every three seconds! The writers do not pretend to anything other than the formula - they're not allowed to. The publishers don't. And the market doesn't. It's all pretty clear, and there is no gainsaying it. There are times when the head needs to be shut off and some pulp fiction is necessary. And I accept that. Being an adult learning tutor and having some background in getting boys to read, it has to be acknowledged that any reading is good reading if the alternative is that there is going to be no reading at all. Several people above have made the point that the head needs shutting off sometimes. Several have said that some escapism is required. I accept both of those things, even though my little autistic brain (which cannot be switched off, ever - unfortunately, and is entirely logical ) finds it hard to come to terms with. Mills and Boon is pulp, but it clearly fills some need, so that's fine. However, one has to ask what is going on if the proportion of a fiction area is dominated by a narrow tropic set. Mills and Boon is just a very small part of what we might call 'ordinary' culture writing (I know that is a problematic term, but hey ho for the mo). It is nowhere near the proportional equivalent that the trope I mentioned in my first post constitutes in 'gay fiction'. Fourthly, I'd be fascinated to hear how I, as a member of society equal to everybody else, am supposed to change the world for (what I see as) the better if I am to be admonished to keep my opinions to myself, for that seems the logical conclusion of your statement - people are usually expected to keep unreasonable opinions to themselves, are they not? I mean, how on earth would I have known how you feel about this subject if you had not disagreed with me on this forum, rather than shaking your head and walking away? Indeed, it seems to me that this sort of approach is entirely capable of being misconstrued as an exhortation to have the ability to review and participate in forum debate removed from this site. Ummm... [irony Alert] I think this v v was very humble of me, at the end of my first post! lol [/irony Alert] Fifthly, I have had two or three run ins with Dolores Esteban. I think she thinks I hate her writing. I don't. I think it is easily the most challenging writing on here. I do think that she fails to connect at time, but her statements to me indicate that she is at least as fed up of the 'boy meets boy and all if fine with the world forever' trope. Her writing challenges. It explores. It seeks. For me she is a pioneer worthy of applause because she is at least trying to find an alternative way forward and is not afraid to experiment in public and fail in public sometimes. That's truly heroic IMHO. She posted a piece of Flarf poetry the other night. It was a fabulous commentary on the genesis and making of meaning in the modern world. It dealt with the same subject as her previous posting which I thought just failed miserably, basically because she failed to develop the reader sufficently in line with her own developments, so that she could take them onwards with her possible new direction. The point here is that she is trying to make the literature deeper and more useful. 'Boy meets boy for ever after' has a use and a place for sure. But transitory and fleeting happiness is a bit like drinking to forget. The problems remain. Lastly, I can do no more than refer you to Mark Arbour's post which was a direct lift of an input to another site by Nick Archer. Not only did Nick Archer seem to be saying entirely what I was saying, he was actually broadening it out dramatically. If my few lines were a rant (and how is a set of comments such as mine (which were not meant as a rant) not capable of being represented as a rant, when that term is liberally abused by people to devalue opinions contrary to their own), then Nick Archer is quite clearly capable of being characterised as a demented madman running around baying at the moon, accusing it of being the cause of entirely every faulty star in the sky. But I do value your position that there is something out there for everyone, and that breadth needs to be maintained. I suppose what I want is a bit more depth. I feel I can do no better than to leave this with Cia's statement. But it doesn't mean that I will give up looking for different, more challenging, writing.

In this part you are clearly mistaken, or if you aren't, then the entire system of education globally is. Developing writers is what is done here at GA, to one extent or another with all writers. It may be through general support of positive commentary. It may be through the rep system (albeit incidentally). It may may be by reviewing. It may be by editing or betaing. It may just be by the simple act of reading a story through to the end. All writers take in ideas through discussion of one form or another, so they all change. While it may be true to say that it is very unlikely one person is going to have a developmental effect on all, this should not prevent us from having some effect locally. That is really the only way that society moves on. Your second sentence is purely patronising and extemely demoralising. But as I said earlier. Welcome to GA.

Hello and welcome! I think you might find, if you read the entirety of the thread, or even just the intial post I put up, that neither I nor anybody else have said anything that contradicts what you have said. Firstly, only one or two people have restricted this to teenagers. I certainly didn't and neither did many of the other posters. Secondly, this is not a rant-post. It is a clear attempt to raise the issue in a forum for debate and to try to raise awareness of it as a trope within this wider genre which is perhaps a little tired. Or to put it another way, intellectual debate. Thirdly, I am not aware of many teenagers who post lengthy stories of such a nature. Most do not have the time or inclination to do so. It's not that they can't, as some clearly do. It's just that most of these stories are written by older people. So your opening comment isn't really addressing a statement that anybody has made.

Nah, sorry ... I was a good boy and sat away from the back of the bus on the way home from school

Hmmmmm ... that's some interesting remarks. Thanks.

Sorry, I don't think I made myself clear enough. Thanks Arpeggio. My closing section alluded to people being in ignorance. The trouble us that in a situation (such as mostly rural and povertous) India, where there is no access to information, or at least to unmediated information about social taboos, then it is almost impossible to get the ideas across. There would be every point in people on the ground jumping up and down ... but for the most part we are not on 'that' ground. And it would appear that here is little point in addressing the doctors, here. Clearly the medical culture is such that common medical sense is completely ignored. The doctors are educated people ... if they can't understand ... I know a thirty five year old guy in Scotland who did not understand that fascist parties were heavily anti-gay, that the British National Party is heavily anti non-white, and that they are all very Hitleresque. Incredibly he had no idea that Hitler had attacked gays as well as Jews. It's not that the information isn't out there. It is. But if people choose not to look at information, if their 'authorities' and community leaders choose to subvert it and maintain their own practices in that way, or if the means does not exist to get the message transmitted and communicated effectively, then little will change. It will take the phenomenon of people talking amongst themselves about tragedies to change things. In the twenty year scenario I mentioned there is quite likely to be a collision of that and a wider media culture with greater media plurality. Spot on

Akisar ... the chorus ... jigging in the rigging jigging in the rigging jigging in the rigging cos there's jig all else to do

Well, now, this was a story! Really good, not too schmaltzy, pretty good plot line, and believable characters. If anything, I thin it was perhaps a bit too long. I think it could have been condensed into 40 - 45 chapters. You are very good at the descriptive part of writing, scene setting, backfill. But this can get a tad ... um, tedious, at times as the story doesn't move along just quickly enough. There is always a point in a story where it has reached a crisis and there is a lot of scene setting which needs doing to move it on to the climax, or at lest to the next false resolution. I have a feeling you need to work on that. There were several things I liked in this story. One was the way you dealt with the psychological effects of hate crime. You didn't ease up and just let Peter get out of bed and get over it. And you didn't make him instantly hateful either. I don't think I would have believed that of his character, and I was glad you didn't fall into that trap. Someone described Peter as a douche bag a few days ago. I have to say that having now been through the whole story, I think it relfects a real understanding of PTSD and how it can change a person ... temporarily or permanently. I thought you handled that really well. The thing that most struck me was how you dealt with the coma period and the immediate aftermath of the wakeup. It was astonishingly accurate in its tempo ... forced tolerance of banality of everyday life in a very false and upturned situation in the coma period, then a euphoric scattery approach as fretfulness makes way for relief and expression of pent up emotions. The plot line, and the pacing of the language really hit home in this part. Sex Right. Now, why did you go graphic? The allusion all the way through, the simple skipping over, the leaving the private stuff to a pair of pretty private guys, and then wham bam let's go jam! Sex in a story is one of the great dividers of opinion. Too much, too little, too graphic, too nice, too romantic, too shmaltzy, too horny, too ... whatever. I really felt that your approach was really brilliant in the first three quarters, and then we had to get down to descriptive sex. And it's not like you can't write this stuff. Just that, I dunno, for me, it seemed out of character by that point and for these two characters. Perhaps you will explain why you felt there was a reason to go there ... perhaps you'll just tell me to take a ruddy hike! Anyway, I thought this was an 'average type genre plot' made special by taking the structure and filling it up with stuff that most people might not really understand at first glance, and writing it with engaging and believable characters. Really enjoyed it. I think you've said there is a courtroom scenario you want to do to tie it all up. I'd like to see that, but I kinda wonder if it's necessary. As watchers we have the privileged view. We know the gang was guilty, so I'm not sure there is anything to be gained from this, except, perhaps, the witnessing of an awful lot of pain for Jason and Peter. But, you have an even more privileged position ... go on ... surprise us!

It was lovely. But sexy? Hmmmmm. Loving, romantic, somewhat erotic, ... if those are words for sexy, well, it was sexy. Personally, I don't see it. But there is just no telling what sexy is. If someone said in the chatroom there had to be sex for sexiness, they were either pretty immature, or just not getting any On a more technical level, this could really only be erotic, because there was no sex. This was a suspension of disbelief requiring the reader to fully inhabit the character within the dream of the character's being. The 'sex' was only a conjured amalgam of memories. Now, that entirely contradicts itself, because while there was no sex, it was sexy. For the character at least. And only in retrospect. Lots of people can write sexy without the sex. Sex is not sexy. Sex is perfunctory. It is all the stuff that goes on around it that makes it 'sexy'. I just finished Second Shot today, and there is no doubting it was sexy till it got to about Chapter 45, whereupon graphic sex appeared and sexy kinda vanished. Although, any attempt to redefine the boundaries is always welcome. Trouble is, you need to do that while leaving them the same. Nope, sorry, this wasn't sexy. It was beautiful and touchingly emotional. But not sexy, sorry.

Lassies are roundness and mounds But have not the gamut of sounds Like guys at orgasm Tight jerky and spasm Who bay at the moon like the hounds

Teen boys have good manual dexterity They need this to manage severity Of burns to the shaft Which may need a skin graft From shuffling knuckles 'in territory'

Oh I do like to ride escalator Eye level with man ass - nought's greater In faded blue jeans, the fun's Keeping yer hand off the buns And it helps with the beating off later

Bumping and grinding is fun So's the exhaustion when done It's the skin on the skin The howling and din What a fetish to dress as a nun!

Not sure of the reason to be Unconvinced he could actually see But with his hand in his nix With a right box of tricks He wasn't too bothered, tee hee

Trevor will have u for that one Cail! Damn good though!

Nope, the only censorship in the stories as far as this goes seems to be author imposed. Personally I agree with Trevor that asterisks stand out ... though I hate his analogy ... ewch dude! I actually made a bit of a study of this when I was doing some linguistics research for my PhD. Some cultures seem to swear more. I am almost certain that the Scots do so much more in the UK. A famous broadcaster here once told a story about this where a guy in the crowd at a football match shouted 'oh refe f**kin ree'. And for me that underlines it. Some sociolinguistic cultures have a greater tendency. For me it is about the feel of the shape of the expression flowing over my tongue. There is a flow and a grace and a punctuation afforded that is not by other words in the same context. It's a weird one, this, but I kinda refuse to be bullied into toning it down. There's a difference in the chatroom, though, where young people are present, and someone else is responsible for their linguistic tuition. Better not to interfere with a parents' function in there.

Wow! You can all jump and scream and bitch about this all you like. It will make not one whit of difference in a population of over a billion humans. There is a culture in the Indian society which has persisted for eons. What has changed now is that there is sufficiently easy and cheap access to the required technology to perform this ... vile, atrocious, disgusting, despicable, inhuman act. Curiously, it may also be the catalyst for change. In twenty years time when guys start hanging themselves because some idiot has decided to make their body incompatible with their brain, people may start to realise the idiocy. Until then there is nithung to be done except send in the troops if we feel it's sufficiently abhorrent to sacrifice our own lives over it. Which, of course, we won't. And which, of course, we probably shouldn't. And which, of course, we definitely couldn't. Still an absolutely disgusting thing to do to a child. See where the stupid middle classes can let themselves get led to. I wonder if the mothers who have acceded to these disgraceful acts would consent to having their own clitori and labia sewn up into a permanent poor facsimile of a dick? Nope! And neither would the dick's of fathers who hold sway in such matters, indeed hold their wives as chattels. But we ought to remember, we are probably not that far ahead of countries such as India. It's not even one hundred years since we gave up on not telling women about sex and then locking them up for life for their sin of getting pregnant off a toilet seat, but not also telling them that their sin was to have had something called sex which is what actually made the baby. Mad as it may seem, but this is probably just another example of stupidity in a society going through a sort of adolescence. Us being stunned by the horror of it won't change much in a society where there is little or no access to information. Even in the UK many Asian women can't speak any English, despite having lived here for years. The culture is male dominated and women are kept ignorant (uneducated). So there is next to no chance in the origin culture. I mean ... think how many parents /people in the UK / US still think that homosexuality can be cured ...

haha. Liked it!

ha ha very good

Well, that was weird! Good weird, but weird nevertheless I have no real belief in the concept of automatic writing, but the surrealists did have something of a point. Chomsky's generative grammar seems to provide better explanations for me. I think this poem shows that. The difference between where it set out for, and where it arrived at is amazing. But as Wayne said below, the twisted nature of the journey is what's so interesting. But perhaps its not so twisted. There is an emptiness looking for refilling in the metaphor, which is quite fun, but with a rather black tinge to it, even blackly humorous. Really good!

Oh, there's nothing like spellbinding witches Or even like sarky wee bitches But what would we do? If we didn't have Lugh To sort all the tricky wee glitches

Young Johnny was quite into spanking In fact, partial to a bloody good tanking With a slipper or cane "Oh, give me some pain!, Or maybe a bit of a planking!"

A weirdo went down the street belching His rear end was fairly well squelching The trouble, you see Was the hamster in he It's what happens if you get into felching

A woman might buy a vibrator Cos a man just can't titillate her If he's been out on the drink She'll say 'Away and rethink" You'll no be gettin titty till later