So guess watt? I recently came across a rather decent
mainstream TG: Goosebumps Series 2000 #11: Attack of the Graveyard Ghouls. And
if I can tell what you’re thinking it’s “The fuck, Red!? Goosebumps? I’ve lost
all my respect for you,” well, join the club, but in actuality, I wasn’t reading Goosebumps when I came across
this. I haven’t read the series since… since not my Sophomore year of high school. Far before that, I assure
you. Anyway, I became aware of the ending courtesy of one of the targets of my
leech-like creativity: Troy Steele's Goosebumps Blog: Blogger Beware. The full text of the book
is also online, for the time being at least, right here (very last page), which
is great for us but not too great for R.L. Stine, but fuck other people,
amirite?
So yeah, this TG, despite being a bodyswap and shorter than
Mick Taylor’s stay in the Rolling Stones (only one Mick per band, it’s a law),
is pretty decent. The way it focuses on the femininity of the former guy and
details his new clothes strikes me in a positive way. In fact it’s almost too
good, leaving me with the suspicion that R.L. Stine is actually covertly a TG
Author. I’m going to guess Jennifer White. Kind of like my theory that Jodie
Anderson is secretly Stephen King.
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| Look at that smug bastard. How is that not the face of a pervert? Hell, you don’t even need to see him, just read two pages of any of his books. |
Of course, ultimately, this begs the question: what is it
with us underground fetish enthusiasts and our fascination with the mainstream
whenever it brushes across our area of interest? Hell, there’s enough TG
material online to turn us from productive members of society (relatively
speaking) into unhygienic home-bound perverts who only crawl outside in the
dark of night to murder unsuspecting passers-by with our overgrown fingernails
and loot their corpses to pay our internet bills. That is, if you’re willing to
pick through all the crossdressing shit.
Well, first, let’s take a philosophical look at this: What
is the mainstream?
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| If you avidly study philosophy, chances are it’s not something you’re especially fond of |
Is it “everything that’s published in print?” No. There’s
tons of erotica that’s published in print and gets about as much of an audience
as a typical comic on SmackJeeves (What? Exactly). Is it, then, “anything that
becomes relatively popular amongst your typical population?” Take a look at
what I just called mainstream: Goosebumps Series 2000. No one has read
Goosebumps past the original series. Not even if you read them all the way
until your Sophomore year of high school, which you’d have to be a total
pathetic loser to do. By the way, my self-esteem is very low right now for unrelated reasons.
So, ultimately, in my opinion, although there are a number
of things that define the mainstream, when it comes to something like this,
it’s pretty much: “anything that’s not perverted”. Why? Because people fucking
hate us. Of course, everyone’s a pervert deep down inside, but that doesn’t
mean they hate themselves, they just hate everyone else for the same reason
everyone else hates them. It’s a wacky fucking world we live in.
So, yeah. Everybody’s secretly perverted. They would just
rather not admit to it, and one of the ways in which this manifests is that
authors tend not to let their fetishes permeate any written work that has their
name attached to it. Of course, this isn’t always the case. Sometimes they
can’t help slipping a hint of wtf in there, and sometimes they just go all out.
There are more than a few professional fetish authors, and people eat up their
stories like delicious girl scout cookies. Don’t get me wrong, fetish media is
incredibly popular, so what prevents it from being mainstream?
Well, have you ever heard someone openly critiquing and analyzing
smut?
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| What? What are you doing? Stop looking at me! |
Just like the authors don’t want to be associated with their
fetishistic halves, neither do audiences. Even when there is fetish fuel, most
people tend to focus on the “literary significance” of the book/movie/thing
they are desperately trying to get people to take seriously. The reason why
there are no forums of wild mass guessing and halls of fanfiction is that
nobody, even most people hiding behind internet pseudonyms, wants to openly make
the declaration that they like this kind of thing. Probably, nothing’s going to
happen even if they do, (and don’t get me wrong, although it’s a minority,
there’s no shortage of people who come out like this) but there’s always the
chance that some stupid troll in his mom’s basement (and, often, his mom’s
underwear) says something like “o mai god ur so grosss y dont u go kill urslef I
cnatn belieb ppl akshully r into dis shit fuck shit assss fuck shit im so matur
becuz im swaring shit hell poopybutt!!!11!11!11” before going back to
masturbating to pictures of octopus porn or whatever equally trollable crap
floats his boat.
But, you know, also because depth of potential for fan-theory
material in erotica is generally no more present than in classics such as “Clifford
the Big Red Dog”, “See Spot Run”, or “The Great Gatsby”. And the reason there's no fanfiction is because fanfiction writers can't really apply their philosophy of "improvement" to something that's already porn.
Anyhooters, it’s also worth noting that only a minority of
people are interested in the TG fetish, or anything generally classified as a
fetish, so the author appeal that tends to leak through in a typical mainstream
story isn’t really the kind of thing that strokes the interest of the online
fetish communities. In fact, it more often than not tends to be your run-of-the-mill “get nekked have secks”, no matter how perverted
the author is,
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| I’m not going to mention any names. Especially not Stephen King’s name. I’m just going to show his picture. |
So why is it that while the surging torrents of sexy-awesome
TG internet media are going “AWESOMEGENDERCHANGEHEREANDTHEREANDEVERYWHEREAMOOMOOGENDERCHANGESEXYAWESOMEREADSOMEFICKINGFUCTIONMANIA”
we pop boners the size of Baja California whenever the mainstream says “la dee
da butterflies and monkeys and purple Snapple and TG and now for something
completely different…”?
Is it because we think: “Yay! I am accepted now!”
No, I don’t think any of us is so deluded.
Is it because it’s so rare? Like encountering a shiny
Pikachu in Viridian forest on Pokemon Fire Red when you’re supposed to be
studying Chinese because you have a test tomorrow that’s a greater percentage
of your grade than the Chinese are of the world population and being like “Ohhhhhh
shhhhhhnappp!!!!!”
Honestly, I think it’s a little of the latter combined with
the fact that we genuinely aren’t expecting it.
Figure it this way: You’re standing there and I walk up to
you and say “’sup blog reader, to show my appreciation for you enduring my
ramblings, I’m going to punch you in the stomach as hard as I can”, and you’re
all like “oh well that sucks, but whatever, it’s not like I can do anything
like move in space to prevent it” and I punch you in the stomach and you go “owwy
ow ow ow!”.
Now compare this scenario: You’re standing there and I walk
up behind you and punch you in the
stomach without warning. From behind somehow. And this time you’re all like “…”
because you’re dead.
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| It happens to the best of us |
The second scenario would probably hurt a lot more. Don’t
believe me? By all means, try it yourself! Go find some unsuspecting person on
the street and experiment on them. I recommend a cop. I hear they have a great sense
of scientific curiosity.
BUT ANNEEHOO! To this day, there is very little TG in the mainstream.
I’m actually kind of surprised since it seems like such an available topic even
from a nonsexual perspective. But oh well, until we can convince the general
public that everyone is just as perverted as everyone else, we’ll have to
resort to Jack Chalker for mainstream TG’s (alternate definition of mainstream: Has a Wikipedia article).
But while I’m at it: BEGIN THE REVOLUTION, CREATORS AND
PATRONS OF LITERATURE! THROW OFF THE SHACKLES OF ANTI-SEXUAL SOCIETAL
CONSTRAINTS AND- ah, fuck it. When has a blog ever changed the world? I have a
Chinese final to study for.
