Big Ed's Place

If you hover over the links to a chapter or story, you’ll get the story codes for that chapter. I have ambivalent feelings about story codes, largely based on wondering if they’ve outlived their original value.

Back in the usenet days, before the web, story codes were incredibly valuable. If you were reading alt.sex.stories, you had only a subject line’s worth of information to tell you if you should click and read the message. Since baud rates were slow (I was on a 1200 baud modem in 1992, which was considered good), it could be really frustrating to start reading or downloading a story to discover you really didn’t like it. So the codes evolved–MF, MM, FF let you know the general genre, and other codes let you know if there were things that might turn you off (like inc, beast, nc, etc.).

Of course, the web did come along, and story codes still serve a purpose on many sites. However, with faster data transfers and the ability to provide more “pre” story information, they’ve become less valuable. Here, for example, you have the teasers and the illustrations which provide a reasonable hint as to what the story contains. It also doesn’t take too long in reading my site to get a feel for the stories I like to write. Any ‘squick’ code will be the exception instead of the rule, which means your odds of getting a story you like while picking blind are pretty good.

So they’re not as necessary as a warning. And instead, they seem to have become advertising. For on the biggest ‘free’ sites (storiesonline, literotica, asstr), one can search by code. So if you want to read “FF group oral” you can.

It’s led to a couple of issues, in my opinion. The first is the proliferation of codes. Storiesonline now has around a hundred codes you can pick for you story. From a warning standpoint, “group,” “orgy,” and “swing” aren’t meaningfully different. From an advertising perspective, the nuances may be valuable.

In addition to the proliferation of the number of codes, the ‘advertising’ aspect also encourages stories to go ‘code collecting.’ If you want readers, put the popular codes in your story. I address this in my story “9.7.”

And finally, I think it has led to a bunch of the codes becoming meaningless. For example, “oral,” “exh,” and “voy.” Just about any story that includes full sex is going to include “oral.” So how important is it to include that code? Either as a warning or an advertisement? Similarly, my stories are so heavily exhibitionist/voyeur oriented that I’d have to include both codes on just about everything. That would just lead to numbness and a tuning out.

So, that raises the question–what are they for, these days? Would it make a difference if I didn’t include them at all?

I’m not sure it would, but I know I have enough readers who care about codes to not drop them completely. Besides, occasionally I will use a code that a ‘caution’ type code. So for now they stay.

No, this is not some philosophical comparison of art forms. It’s just a trick that helped me write.

After a week with nothing, I called a friend of mine who is a sculptor. Now, like me, his art is his side project, not his day job. That hasn’t prevented him from selling a handful of his pieces and exhibiting in a major show. However, real life has forced him to pull back on sculpting recently and he’s let his most recent project languish.

So we arranged a ‘sculpture and writing’ evening. I took my laptop over to his place, we had dinner, and afterwards adjourned to his studio where we worked on our own projects side by side. I added 670 words to Love’s Labor Found, bringing it to 2656 words in the CFD. He made improvements to the feathers on a wing in his current piece.

Now, admittedly, that’s not a lot for a dedicated evening. We ended up letting dinner stretch out, as we are wont to do, because the conversation was so good. His wife is a former ghostwriter and we had an enjoyable conversation about writing and the publishing industry. She left the industry because of the low pay and how screwed up she found it. Needless to say, I enjoyed the war stories.

So I consider it a good evening, and a reasonable amount to have written. It’s certainly in line with my recent weekly totals. So if doing it with someone else helped me get it done, great. There might be more evening like it in the future.

ZZ Top sings Blues? Absolutely! And very well, I might add.

Of their blues songs, my absolute favorite is A Fool for Your Stockings. Why should be obvious to anyone who’s read my stories or done even more than a cursory skim of the artwork on this site. The subject and title do a damn good job of describing who I am. Doing so in a funky, saucy, struttin’ blues style? I’m just a quivering mass of putty, enjoying the ride. This is one of the top songs for getting me in the mood to write, and I recommend it wholeheartedly. Five out of five stars.

If you look carefully, you’ll notice that none of my stories have the “nc” or “non-consent” code (codes can be found by hovering over the story or chapter links). There’s a reason for that. It squicks me and I won’t write it.

Ya see, I stopped counting the number of women I knew who’d been raped or sexually assaulted when I ran out of fingers and toes to count them on. I wasn’t even out of college when I passed that milestone. Several of my past lovers were included in that count and a few more would have made the list even after that milestone. Some had dealt with it and were doing fine. Others… the scars and wounds were there if you knew what to look for. And those wounds affected me and many other people in their lives.

The worst, honestly, was dating women who were daughters of mothers who’d been raped, but not gotten counseling or help for it. I could see behaviors that were consistent with having a past history, but it was second-hand. That made it much more subtle and insidious.

And based on my own experience, and in the reading I’ve done as a result of dealing with this history in many of the women I’ve loved, I’ve come to believe that the black and white line really is ‘consent.’ If someone doesn’t give consent, it’s rape.

Now, consent itself may have to be determined on a case by case basis. Most sexual encounters don’t have pre-arranged lists of acceptable activities that the parties have consented to do, like the bdsm community often does. In fact, I’ve never seen the awareness of consent/non-consent outside of that community. So the particulars become important and the miscommunication opportunities are vast.

For example, I know a woman (S) who joined a couple in bed, all nude. The guy was trying to talk the women into having a full blown threesome but S wasn’t sure and the guy’s partner wasn’t interested. So he rolled on top of S and penetrated her, before she had a chance to react or object. Was S raped? By my definition, yes. That doesn’t absolve her of some of the responsibility for getting into the situation, but she certainly hadn’t agreed to intercourse. And that’s where the miscommunication kicks in big time. If he’d said, “is this okay?” first, even though it wouldn’t have been sexy, it would have made a world of difference.

So with my experiences, I just can’t find non-consent erotic. It’s not a pleasure to read, nor to write. That fact that there are so many stories on the web that do center on rape or abuse, or blackmail is a bit disturbing to me, but my speculations on the authors who write these stories will have to be another post. Suffice it to say, I won’t be one of them.

Now I do have to throw in the caveat about the threat of rape or other violence. Discerning readers will note that there’s at least one story on this site that does have that threat. It was absolutely necessary for the plot and for the dramatic tension. I hope that it lacks eroticism, because that’s not what I was aiming for.

I did no original writing this past week. Nothing. Nada.

Now I did do a ton of editing. Bent came back from Nick, and I was able to turn it around and get it out to his reality team. I also received additional comments on One-Eyed Dick, which I’ve partially addressed. I spent more time looking for a market for it, but didn’t find anything, so it’ll be published here in a few weeks. I also did a fair amount of work on the website.

As a result, I don’t feel bad about missing my goal of doing some original writing every week. Of course, I don’t want to make missing it a pattern, even for editing. I’ve had too many experiences trying to get back in the groove to underestimate how painful that can be.

So we’ll see what the coming week brings.

For much of my early writing, I hung out in Girl Friday’s now-closed yahoo group. She announced an anniversary for the group, and asked for stories. I mused about what a non-traditional anniversary might look like, and this story was born.

When I saw the contest notice, my first reaction was, “too bad my sense of smell is so bad.” Then I realized there was a story in there.

Ruthie’s Club put out a call for submissions for Valentine’s Day flashes. This story showed up in my head instead. I found it fun, and so did they.