The most monumental internet event since that one kid got hit in the head with a soccer ball

Caitlin Arabesque has just released the continuation of "The Awesome Sexy Machine" or whatever it was called (I only remember the important details).

Now if you'll excuse me, something has just overcome all the orgies and bacon chilli casseroles and everything else on my list of things to do before the world ends on Friday.

Modest Sexuality 2: The Empire Strikes the Chamber of the Electric Boogatwo Towers of Khan Reloaded

On the tails of my recent rant on modest sexuality and how I’m all by my lonesome and everyone is against me, and inspired by another load pulled out of my Rant Well (which is about as deep as every 20-something poetry student at a liberal arts college thinks they are combined), I realized I have more to say on the subject of modest sexuality, or rather, a better way of describing the concept and its status in the world of TG media: That is, by describing the horse feces I have to wade through to find what I look for.

So picture a rainbow. This is a spectrum of storytelling. On either side, on the extreme ends of the spectrum, the rainbow ends in puddles of shit. But in the center of the rainbow is, like, another rainbow. Red Ochre’s ideal story of modest sexuality used to the best of its potential. I spent my last article talking about this nexus of rainbowy, skittle-flavored goodness, now I’m going to talk about the shit.

And they say there's a pot of gold there.

So the first pile of ass is what I called the antithesis of modest sexuality in my last entry, and what I will describe here as the GNHS philosophy of TG literature (stands for Get Naked Have Sex). This half of the rainbow is the slut stories. They’re the ones where people treat the real world like a sexual roleplaying session. The outfits are skimpy, the boobs are huge, and chastity is a delicate wisp of a string that couldn’t hold its own against a moderately aggressive fart. That’s right, one fart and an orgy breaks out. There’s probably a pornographic film on the internet somewhere that depicts this, actually. For the sake of your soul, don’t go looking for it.

I’ve mentioned before that, this type of media being sexual in nature, it’s the expected order of things that the stories also be based on or involve sex. I guess that makes me the odd man out, but on the other hand, I’m trying to apply logic to this kind of thing. I really need to stop doing that.

The second half of the rainbow, something I didn’t really mention last time, represents what I call ‘indulgence’. As opposed to the GNHS half, which keeps fetishistic material to a minimum in favor of generic sex, the indulgent half prefers to load up on the fetishes and erotic interests until the real world seems to matter less than actual politics does to people arguing about politics.

Apart from being unrealistic, if the kink is too dense it doesn’t really have much of a favorable effect. I remember a (thank the good lord) discontinued flavor of Pepsi called Pepsi Blue, or something that was out around my middle school years. I recall describing it as tasting something like the result of asking a little kid everything he thought was yummy, from pixy sticks to chicken McNuggets, and throwing them in a blender. It tasted like cough syrup. Don’t make your TG story taste like cough syrup.

Innihoo, let’s take a look at potential examples. I’m too lazy to find stories that illustrate each end of the spectrum (though I’m sure I will come across several of each before I find another good story) so I’m just going to make some up. Let’s take a few variations on a story in which a man becomes a high school girl.

In an extreme variant of GNHS, the character, post-TF, will be 18 years old (nobody dares tread on the underside of that threshold), probably blonde, D cup breasts or bigger (maaaayybe C). He’ll be transformed into this by his vengeful girlfriend/wife/interchangeable significant other to punish him for his sexist views of gender roles that nobody has any more except for him because of his one-dimensional character design (character design? Pffffffft, bring on the SECKS!). He probably won’t go back to school after becoming school-aged (unless he was going to school in the first place), because that’s not necessary for sex.

Along with his change, his libido rises to uncontrollable heights and his higher mental capacities dissolve into his comically ridiculous sluttiness. He may or may not lose his knowledge of the entire English language save for the word “fuck”. He spends the rest of his days wearing short skirts with no underwear and crop tops, fucking and sucking every guy he can find. He may or may not be pimped out by his former girlfriend as a prostitute, and be too stupid or sex-obsessed to know or care that she’s keeping all the money he makes. The story will probably end with a line like, “but as Titty McFucksuck happily went to give her 1,538^th blowjob of the day, somewhere inside her, Douchebag McAsshole, the man she had once been, screamed in despair.”

In a less extreme variant, a guy is transformed into a teenage girl, again, by the plot device that he’s dating because his opinions of women are also contrived plot devices. Post-TF, he’s probably also 18 (though he may be as young as 16 sometimes), also busty and probably blonde. His mental capacity is diminished to make room for incoming sluttiness, or, in some cases, his memories are entirely erased and replaced with new ones.

He will probably return to school and become a cheerleader or something (the cheerleading outfit will include a midriff-baring top, despite high school cheer uniforms not actually allowing that in the US, and a very short skirt. There will be no mention of spankies or bloomers underneath the skirts, and if he wears panties at all, it will probably be a thong). By the end of the story, he ends up with a reputation as the school slut, and something about fucking every guy on the football team will be mentioned. If you’re Zagros, she’ll end up pregnant will billiontuplets.

On the indulgent side of the spectrum, in the extreme variant, the transformed-to-be starts out as a teenager already, if not younger. One day, his mom, sister, aunt that he went to live with at the beginning of the story, etc, decides his unruly behavior will just not do. His aunt, probably senile or something, decides that dressing him as a girl will straighten him right out (depending on which definition of the word straight). Without any delay or human-like meditation on such a decision, she puts him in obscenely frilly, pink dresses (that she pulls right the blue fuck out of nowhere) that would only ever be found on the world’s unluckiest baby, and only because the baby isn’t strong enough to rip it off.  Speaking of babies, she’ll probably put him in diapers, too. Why? Because the author says so.

He’ll have to go back to school dressed as such, where all the girls in the school (only the girls, even though there should, by all logic, be guys too, but we don’t take kindly to practicality around here) who can obviously tell he’s a guy, laugh at him and tease him and flip his dress up to laugh at his stupid frilly pink underwear or diaper, either way looking like he’s wearing a sheep around his crotch. They teasingly say humiliating and, apparently unbeknownst to them, rather erotic things to him. Because the author wants it.

At the end, he either gets his normal clothes back and is left with nothing by which to remember the experience but emotional scars that he can cherish forever, or his senile aunt decides that keeping him like this is worth the ridiculous and sadistic lengths she has to go through. The story never goes on to depict her maintaining this lifestyle for him. It also never goes on to show her completely forgetting about the punishment she intended to uphold later that day, or about the protagonist entirely, or where she left her teeth, or what her name is. It also never shows social services taking her into custody and when the parents of the boy with whom she was entrusted and whom she sexually abused disown her. This is real life, people.

For our less extreme example of indulgence, let’s bring the wicked girlfriend-type-person and her inhumanly chauvinistic douchenozzle of a boyfriend back. So she uses her inexplicable magic (she’s a witch, by the way, that’s how she’s been doing this. In the TG world over 90% of genetic women are witches) to turn douchenozzle into a teenage girl. In this type of story, younger girls, usually no older than 10, are more common, but due to my lack of foresight I said I was going to write about becoming a teenage girl, and if you think I’m going to go all the way back to the top and change it, you’ve got the wrong Red Ochre.

Anyway, now that Douchenozzle the Chauvinistic Boyfriend is a girl, he is placed in the custody of his evil girlfriend, who serves as his sadistic ‘mommy’. She teases and torments him for her own satisfaction, dresses him up, sends him to school, makes him be a cheerleader (a real cheerleader who wears underwear) yadda yadda yadda, never once stopping to consider that the emotional and financial strain of supporting a child may outweigh the opportunity to watch Douchenozzle suffer in femininity.

So that’s the lowdown of what’s not modest sexuality, and why it sucks. Let’s take a look at what is and why it’s awesome.

See previous entry on modest sexuality.

The End.

Okay, fine, let’s see where we can go with this…

Since this type of story is few and far between, I can’t really discern any kind of recurring, stereotypical backstory to them (as in, how and why the protagonist becomes female). I would just stick to evil girlfriend and douchenozzle boyfriend, but that kind of thing really doesn’t work in this situation… let’s try something with a genie. So a guy rubs a magic lamp he finds one day while cleaning between his toes. The genie pops out and grants him a wish: “I wish to be young again…” twinkle twinkle abra kadabra klaatu barada nikto tingle tingle kooloo limpah POOF!

He finds himself a girl of about 14 to 15 years old. He’s pretty, but more slim than curvy, and is not proportioned like Marylin Monroe in his early teens. He is in the custody of a family who does not know he is actually male, and treats him like parents treat their kids. They’re not sadistic (unlike the evil significant other) or into cruel and unusual punishment (unlike the evil senile aunt). They love him as their daughter, but they’re still parents and their relationship reflects that (unlike the fucking vomit-inducing angelic perfection in every story under the ‘sweet/sentimental’ tag). Though his memories haven’t changed, he finds he has a tendency toward more juvenile and/or feminine mannerisms that match his current form than he used to be.

He goes on to, reluctantly, experience high school as a female. Nobody teases him or forces him to wear anything beyond what is expected of a girl his age (or, for example, a school uniform), and he tends not to be coerced him to join or do any particularly feminine activity (like cheerleading, unless the girl he is now was a cheerleader before). He goes to school, finding the experience both nostalgic and more difficult than he recalled, never has sex throughout the entire story but does endure some unwilling schoolgirl crushes, and ultimately finds he doesn’t like being a young girl. He finds it demeaning, and mourns his lost adult privileges. He sets out to find a way to turn back, and the story goes from there. Maybe he gets to go back at the end, learning a lesson. Maybe he comes to appreciate his second chance at life, or at least come to terms with it.

Seems simple, right? Right? Then WHY THE FUCK AREN’T THERE MORE STORIES LIKE THIS ON FICTIONMANIA!!!!??? I mean, holy Christ in heaven, with all the convoluted tales involving succubi, war stories, magic universes, not to mention all the shit I complained about earlier on this entry, the ridiculous slut stories and the ones smothered in frills, you would think the ones that actually attempt to capture the experience of femininity and womanhood without burying it under a mountain of sex would at least show up more often than one out of every fifty or so. Excuse me, Red Ochre’s going to go feel sorry for himself in that corner over there.

Bimbos and Tanning Salons

You know what I've realized? Tanning salons are the perfect place to find bimbos.

Let me explain. First of all, I work at a fast food restaurant across the street from a tanning salon, and thus, the people who work there come over fairly often (and order some kind of ultra-specific, contrived 'healthy' thing that one should not find naturally occurring in a fast food place, just because we give them a discount).

I've come to notice that pretty much every girl working there is more or less the same (they're the kind of people that stand out in a hamburger place, even from my perspective, and for me it's gotten to the point that 90% of customers who can't keep their fat asses out of there all just look like Jabba the Hutt), and they share their appearance with practically everyone I see go in there: bimbos.

And it actually makes sense. Tanning is one of the most indulgent cosmetic practices there is. Fancy clothes? Well, you need clothes, why not. Makeup? You can fit it into a morning routine, just like shaving, cutting your nails, and picking zits out of your nose. Hairstyling? If you want to give an evil old lady a ride into your tower at the expense of your scalp, be my guest, but otherwise you gotta get it cut anyway. But tanning? You're taking time out of your waking life to sit naked in an oven for something you could just wait a few months and get by being outside for any extended period of time? Sorry, but biiiiiiiiimmboooooooooo....

Furthermore, you aren't going to see many apparent brunettes going in there, unless you count their roots, but they don't want you to notice, and we want them to feel god about themselves so shhhhhhhh. Not only do tanners tend to go for the blonde beach bunny look, via hairspray or maybe the tanning oven just singes their hair blonde, I don't know, but also the tanning demographic tends to encompass the fair skinned, and therefore fair headed, far more than people who are melanin-inclined.

Anyway, just an observation.

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Modest Sexuality

The internet is for porn.

Grab yor dick and dubble click FOHR PORN PORN PORN!

Even in the TG enthusiasts’ little corner of the internet, it all comes back to porn. No matter the focus on gender transformations, it almost always eventually comes to revolve around sex of some sort. Though, I guess, this is a fetish, and fetishes are bred from sex, and the appeal attached to them are sexual in nature, so I suppose it’s only natural that would be the focus. As such, I would be the impractical one here, but like fuck is that going to keep me from complaining.

I’ve been wanting to write an entry about this topic for some time, because I believe this aspect, which I have come to call Modest Sexuality (after the great psychosexologist, Modest Mouse), is what distinguishes me from most other people who share my interests, and who share my internet haunts. It’s the reason why, no matter how adept I become at navigating the primal jungles of Fictionmania by fine tuning my searches and keeping a discriminating eye on story descriptions I still can’t get no satisfaction I can’t get no satisfaction ‘cause I try and I try and I try and I try I can’t get no I can’t get no!

Stones mouth: one of the most prevalent symptoms of can’t get no satisfactioning (along with Jagger Hair)

Seeing how the Olympics are currently in progress in London (or on the moon, depending on how long I take to finish up this entry and publish it), I’m going to use that as an example. Now we all know what the Olympics are for: bringing together the nations of the world in the spirit of love and unity and squeezing international nubile hotties in perfect shape into tiny volleyball shorts. Observe the aforementioned example:

For those of you whose attention hasn't drifted, I think just about everybody can agree that the beach volleyball “uniform”, being just a bikini, is the single sexiest sport uniform ever. Hell, it’s probably the only reason beach volleyball exists. The only thing that would make it sexier is if it were even skimpier! And, of course, the best uniform of all would be complete nekkedness, of course! In fact, fuck clothes! In a perfect world, every hot female would be naked at all times. And, of course, this is a universal ideal for all heterosexual men. If anybody disagrees, raise your hand so I can shoot you lest you impede our progress toward a bare-boobed world.

I am currently raising my hand, by the way. Maybe I’ll shoot myself later, once I’m done ranting.

Ever since I saw my first Olympics in 2004 at the age of 13, I acquired a profound enticement with one of the female uniforms that lasts to this day. But what? There’s nothing in the Olympics that shows more skin than the beach volleyball bikinis, and therefore, by definition, nothing could possibly be sexier!

It was the gymnastics leotards that enamored me. And even, though it shows some serious leg (and I do love me some gymnast leg), that wasn’t the only thing to which I paid attention. It was the outfit itself, the colors, the texture, the way in which it clung to the girls’ contours. Then, it hit me. In a world where so many people equate nudity to arousal, where everybody can’t get boobies and vajayjays off their minds: I have a fetish for femininity.

Unlike my sissy friends, (psych, I don't have any friends) my poison isn’t the hyper pink excessively frilly kind of stuff (although I do have a thing for sweet Lolita fashion), but rather, real femininity. The type of femininity that I’ve observed expressed. That which is common in my everyday life. And, of course, the female body is incredibly feminine too, and I’d be lying if I said I had no attraction to it, not to mention sex as a woman must be a very feminine experience. Honestly, though, with the nigh-exclusive focus on it, I think it’s a little old.

Okay, exercise 2: compare these two schoolgirl outfits. Which one would everybody in the world, apart from me, find more attractive? The skimpy one or the frumpy one?

As for me, the outfit on the left offers me just about no sexual attraction. It's too skimpy, so much so that it's comical.It just looks stupid to me. The one on the right, though, that's something I would actually see. Something a real schoolgirl would wear, and that can get my mind running.

 Now don’t get me wrong, I like to indulge myself sometimes. I’m not above fantasizing about being a harem slave girl or a French maid in a ridiculous costume forced to serve, but my primary appetite is just being a normal female. Albeit without the identity death or tainted memories, and while maintaining the nonconsent factor. The kind of girls I dream about being are the ones I see in my everyday life.

Boring? To me, even though these archetypes are commonplace, the actual existence of them unleashes a heavy realism quality onto my fantasies, not to mention the behind-the-scenes enigmas of femininity, and the mystery of what it would be like if it was mine. I think what draws me to it most strongly is external opinion. Not only are you now this girl, but people now see you as her, the same way you saw girls of the like before. It’s even better if the transformee once had a condescending attitude towards the girls whose ranks he’s been forced to join, like airheaded bimbos or teenyboppers.

There’s an amazing scene in The Katy Nightmare where Tony-now-Katy is being driven towards his new school. On the way, he sees some schoolgirls walking along the street, and he just about goes crazy when he realizes he’s now just one of them.

Gooble gobble gooble gobble!

I really don’t know how to explain this, actually, but here’s another example…

In a story I’m pretty sure was called Compulsions (which I can’t seem to find again… did it get deleted?), a man becomes a woman via punishment from his wife/girlfriend/yadda yadda yadda. As a result of this ‘curse’, he’s afflicted by certain compulsions to do feminine things like… and every time he gives in, a supernatural change is wrought over his life, making him more feminine.

Now, I started getting really into this story after a while (the age regression aspect may have had something to do with it, although the failure to notice the transformations detracted from it), as he slowly became a secretary for the company for which he was once a manager, also becoming slightly airheaded and bubbly as an added bonus. With this, her moods started shifting, things like her taste in music becoming typical for the kind of girl she was changing into. That was amazing. That’s the kind of thing I’m looking for. Someone who formerly listened to classical or something now being compelled to listen to the teeny-bopper music synonymous with airheads everywhere?

Or somewhere in between?

And then… the compulsions kept coming. One magical shift later, and she was ducking into her boss’s office every now and then to give him a blowjob or something. Another magical blink and she was the office slut. More than that, a wanton whore who strips naked without a moment’s hesitation amidst a crowd of horny men. I know it’s just a fantasy, but nobody fucking does that. It ruined the story for me.

Okay, okay, I’m aware that I’m in the minority here. This is a fetish. A sexual fantasy, so there’s nothing wrong with taking it to whatever extreme you like. You like imagining being a horny, nymphomaniacal superslut who can’t think about anything other than sex? More power to you. You like fantasizing about crossdressing in frilly sissy dresses? Have fun. I like detailed representations of all aspects of life as a girl. More power to me. In fact, all the power to me. Red Ochre desperately wants more of this.

The Katy Nightmare

I hate this story. Only because it kept me up until 5 am.

The same week I discovered the Cheerleader Transformation Machine ultimately ended up being a lucky week so far as age regression goes, because in my internet gallivanting (I’m tired of saying “stumbling”. This makes me sound more manly), I came across a story by the name of “The Katy Nightmare”.

Now right away, this differs from the Cheerleader TF Machine in one way. The name. With a title like “The Katy Nightmare”, it brings to mind the inane, grammatical mutilation-ridden fantasy ramblings of someone far too young to be on this site. But, as the categories at least seemed promising, I clicked it, half expecting some piece of shit about a thirteen year old boy being forced into diapers by his mom or something like that.

OH GOD I WAS WRONG HOW WRONG I WAS!!

Okay, so. There’s this guy named Tony Bradley. Currently 21, he’s just getting used to all the privileges of adulthood: being in charge of his own time, legally drinking alcohol, partying all night, smoking weed, soliciting prostitution (I don’t know much about England, but I’m assuming all this is legal there). Then one night, this young teenage girl shows up at his door.

I need about tree fitty.

Katy Campbell, recently turned 14, shows up inexplicably to drop off a few bags containing her school uniforms. Tony, not being a creepy perverted Otaku, does not immediately run up to his room to fap to them, but instead, rather confused about what he’s supposed to do, just drops them off in his closet, where they sit, watching… waiting…

I hope this isn't going to end up like The Secret Stash

But no, the clothes turn out to just be normal clothes. Which I probably should have expected, but in this line of media, you can never be sure.

Over the next few days, Tony awaits the return of Katy, whom he assumes will show up eventually to pick her uniforms up (presumably, when she comes down from whatever high she was on). No sign of her, and school is supposed to be back in session, so unless she decided to make a daring fashion statement and go to school nekked (This is Europe, after all. And don’t picture that, you perv) she would have needed them by now. So it doesn’t seem likely she’ll be coming back anytime soon.

But it seems some shit is going down when Tony finds his bed has been replaced with a small, pink one, and no one seems to acknowledge this. Even if their memories have somehow been altered, no one even seems to find it strange that a 21-year-old man has a bed more befitting of a teenage girl, seeing how nobody ever muses “You know? I just realized how gay you are” or anything of the like.

He eventually gets in contact with Katy, who finally drops the bomb on him.

 

She’s sick of being a teenage girl. She wants all the privileges of adulthood and the respect of manhood, so guess what Tony? Katy’s going to be you, and you’re going to be Katy. A teenage girl. A school kid again, but this time of the opposite gender. Kaboom.

Horrified, but constantly clinging to denial, Tony goes on to experience the gradual usurpation of his adulthood allowances by his parents, all the while awaiting actually becoming Katy, and being forced back to school as her.

So up until this point, I’ve kept my actual opinions of the story rather vague and flip-floppy at times, mostly so I can be a jackass and keep you frantically guessing until the end (especially Mikkelm, if he happens to be reading this), so bluntly, what do I really think of The Katy Nightmare?

Pros:

This can be summed up in one word.

THISISONEOFTHEGREATESTSTORIESONFICTIONMANIANOBULLSHIT!         

This is… wow… where do I even start?

The is the prime example of the preteen/early teen age category in AR stories. That’s with a “the”, not an “a”. This is the example every other inferior author should hold themselves to.

What makes this story so great? Well, there are two general areas of excellence here. The first is the amazingly unique and powerful way in which this story illustrates one of the most fundamental aspects of TG: The experience of being female.

It’s the subtleties that really make this story great. I have a theory that, if an author wants his or her audience to know what’s going on, simply describing the situation will do, but if he or she wants the audience to actually feel, to experience the situation by proxy, they need to describe things in unexpected ways. And that’s how Mikkelm does it. Instead of focusing exclusively on the big picture, he spends a lot of time pointing out tiny, seemingly insignificant things, which actually help build the image in one’s imagination.

The infantilizing (juvenillizing?) way in which his parents come to treat him is one example. The way Katy talks, writes, types, her diary entries? All compelling tools to create an image of this person he’s becoming. My favorites are probably the changes in part four: the pictures on the walls, the messy room, the skirt on the floor… It’s like a behind-the-scenes look at a girl’s life: something a guy really isn’t meant to see. Hell, even the gradual discovery of his new body in part four is done so much better here than anywhere else.

The second appealing factor of this story is something more personal: There are so many things in this story that fall right into place amongst my own interests, something exceedingly rare. It’s got age regression (not the ‘innocent child’ kind either), it sticks to a realistic portrayal of the new Katy’s life, the only slightly more indulgent thing it uses is a sort of clothing fascination. And… it just so happens one of my few universally applicable indulgent interests is feminine clothing: both the tactile sensation on the body, and the sociological implications of wearing it.

In fact, the areas of focus, the prose, everything seems like it was tailor-made to appeal to me, and people like me. It’s very possible Mikkelm is, in fact, myself from the future, sending a story back in time via Boson particles to help enrich my life. This doesn’t explain why my future self appears to be British, but as evidence of time travel it’s still fairly compelling (In other news, I was recently thrown out of Academia for this proposition).

I was also thrown out of my Eighth Grade science class for inappropriate use of Bunsen Burners.

Tony’s reactions were something I really liked, too. He always kept struggling, staying in denial, keeping the nonconsent aspect strong, but still played along, being smart enough not to pull a Sam Beckett and make everything awkward.

I first read this story fairly soon after the third part was released, which means I had to wait an entire TWO MONTHS AND FOURTEEN DAYS and four hours and thirty-six minutes and eight point two four nine three six eight four zero two seconds until the payoff from 111.8 kilobytes of elevating tension. You wouldn’t BELIEVE the Antarctic shower I had to take before settling in for the long wait until part 4.

They say you wouldn’t survive fifteen minutes in Antarctic waters. I think I caused global warming instead.

It’s amazing how this author builds up the tension. He managed to hold my interest viciously throughout the first three (transformation-barren) parts, and did so in a very unique way. By placing the transformation clearly on the horizon (unlike the Cheerleader TF Machine which, although having decent tension, doesn’t say or give the characters a heads up about what’s going to happen until very late in the tension-building), maintaining the knowledge that it’s creeping closer throughout the story, creates a gradual development that keeps me on the edge of my seat.

I also like how he managed to do this without defaulting to the way it’s generally done: via a gradual transformation. I don’t really like gradual change that much, partially for the same reason I didn’t like puberty (besides the fact that puberty didn’t turn me into a cute English schoolgirl). You can’t easily change from male to female without going through a very awkward half-and-half phase unless you go it all at once.

For the most part, though, I prefer faster transformations because they’re a more vivid experience. If you only change a little bit at a time over a few days or weeks, it gives you a chance to get at least somewhat used to every increment until you’re a complete girl, which totally takes the fun out of it. It’s like how robbing a bank is so much more fun than earning the money yourself.

The author claims he has never written anything before this story IF THAT’S TRUE YOU MUST BE THE REINCARNATION OF OSCAR FUCKING WILDE!

Ignoring the reviews that request the story include crossdressing.

Cons:

It’s British. That doesn’t sound like a flaw, but oh my God is this story British. You have no idea.

I know Mike Meyers isn’t really English, but he does make a damn fine stereotype.

I have no problem with Britain as long as it’s after 1812 (and last time I checked, it still is), and what I mean is something like this: I’ve read British stories on FictionMania and other places before. I’ve probably read a lot more than I realize, since they’re more or less identical to American ones. Usually the only tips which give it away are a mention of pounds instead of dollars, or some extra ‘u’s throuwn into a feuw wourds here and there.

Now, of course, this is a very subjective viewpoint, seeing how not everyone doesn’t not live in America like me, but it’s hard to nitpick this story, so I guess I’m clutching at straws here (just like Tony lawl!). Reading this story, though, made me realize how different England is from the US, in ways I had never witnessed before in all the Doctor Who and Monty Python I’ve ever seen. It surprised me and actually threw me off a few times. Here are some examples.

The word “bin” is used instead of “trash” or “garbage’’. I’d bin wondering what he was talking about, but then I realized it was obvious and I was stupid.

School uniforms. I actually knew school uniforms were worn in England, but I had minimal firsthand witness of (a TV screen displaying) it. Not many shows or movies from across the big-ass-shark-infested pond star school kids. But I did look up English school uniforms to get a feel for them, and there are tight skirts, and lots of tights. Hot. Or as the English would say… uh… I have no idea, nevermind.

Premature adulthood? From what I’ve gleaned from this tale of schoolgirlifying goodness, apparently English kids graduate from school at the age of 16? And they are considered adults at the same age? It’s kind of like the US's 18? Rhetorical question mark? I found this kind of odd, especially since, from what I know, pretty much every other industrial country uses the same kind of school system as the US: from age 6 or so to 18, grades 1 through 12. Some countries may separate their grades differently into elementary, middle, and high schools, but it usually has all the same grades in total. I guess I just wasn’t expecting this…

Speaking of elementary/middle/high schools, what does a “secondary” school encompass? Judging by Katy’s age, it would imply high school, but from what I’ve seen, I suppose I can’t quite apply my knowledge of the US school system here. Huh…

Also, if this were on any other website, I would mark it down for ruining the ending in the 17^th paragraph. But let’s face it, we all knew what would happen.

Two things that would make this story perfect in my eyes: Instead of being 14, Katy would be 11 or 12. She would also be Asian.

I’ve received confirmation that Mikkelm intends to continue this story, which fills me with excessive euphoric intoxicated joy. Seriously, the extent of this feeling cannot even technically exist on the internet as there is not emoticon that can express such an emotion, but I’ll try anyway.

Anywho MIKKELM YOU ARE A GOD AMONG MEN PLEASE WRITE MORE!

Fuck the Mainstream Meeeeyannn!

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.

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?

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?

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,

I’m not going to mention any names. Especially not Stephen King’s name. I’m just going to show his picture.

which, to us viciously “experienced” fetishists, is as boring as The Great Gatsby.

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.

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.