Amanuensis's Journal

So, if you were writing a fic that contained necrophilia, and contained chan, would you even bother coming up with a clever title for it or would you just call it "That necrochan fic" and have done?

I keep looking at the trailers for the recent rash of women-in-elaborate-peril horror films such as Hostel II and Captivity and thinking, "Wow. If only that were porn!" I mean, that'd be right up my alley, with the kidnapping and the bondage and the elaborate dungeon scenes, except that I would like some BDSM sex to occur instead of all the, you know, maiming and death.

What's going on with these "horror porn" films--am I just not the audience for this, not much liking horror in general, nor having a sexual fetish for fantasy maiming and killing? If so, fine, fine, to each his/her own. Or is this someone's way of sneaking porn into the mainstream? Because if it's the latter, that bugs me. I don't want my porn metaphored for me in a sex=death analogy, just because our culture can show killing and call it horror, but can't show sex because then we'd have to call it porn and everyone knows porn is, ooh, shameful. Don't metaphor my kinky sex. I'd like the damned kinky sex served up as is, please.

For this week's beloved_enemies (Harry/Lucius) Dictionary Drabble word of Performance.

Title: Refined Tastes
Author: Amanuensis
Pairing: Harry/Lucius
NC-17, 332 words, non-con/dub-con, conditioning.

("The third time is usually even more satisfying, I find," Lucius murmured.)

Three items for a Monday.

1. Because everyone else is talking about Laurell K. Hamilton, I will too. The only books of hers I've read are the first two Merry Gentry books, and the only reason I picked up the second was the hot men in the first book were kind of nice and that maybe the author would abandon the set-up stuff she'd begun with and just write porn from that point, though I admit I was muttering, "S**t, I write better porn than this." And then in the second book, the author was still trying to pretend that there had to be a plot, and that the protagonist's existence as The Least Credible Private Detective Ever had to figure in. Whaa? So I was left griping that this author just didn't know how to write her erotica, darnit.

Which I understand is at odds with how many (most?) of her readers perceive her books--they see them, I guess?, as sexy action/adventure/mystery that has gone way off into the porn direction, to their dismay. I dunno, possibly because it's not good porn either? In any case, she's lost me, trying to make me believe the private detective stuff, and I'm not inclined to move into any of her other series as a result either. There's that Romany saying, "With one set of buttocks, you cannot ride two horses," and I think that applies both to Merry Gentry and Laurell K. Hamilton. Pick a genre, woman.

2. Had my faith in film renewed again this weekend. I read Perfume by Patrick Suskind years 'n' years ago, loved it. Went apoplectic with joy/terror when I heard it was going to be a film at last. Saw it this weekend. LOVED. IT. Perfect adaptation, just perfect. From my very limited dialogue with those who've seen the film, I think that if you've loved the book you are likely to love the film for its faithfulness to the book, but that if you haven't read the book it's chancy. The film may not sell its concept if you don't know what to expect; put simply, you might not buy it. I think a lot of people will go in expecting a period costume murder mystery; I think it will help if you go in to the film understanding that this is a Supervillain Movie. It just happens to be set in eighteenth-century France.

I like how Roger Ebert's review of it raves about how much he's always loved the book, and then goes on to review both book and film as one, so that you can hardly tell which he's praising. And if you're put off by the just-below-fresh rating to which the Rotten Tomatoes collective averages, this efilmcritic review is supposedly one of the "rotten" ones, but it's actually glowing, calling it lurid and excessive in the most enjoyable of ways. (By the way, that's very much how I've described the films Flash Gordon and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, and why I've always called them terrific movies, for doing exactly what they intended.)

3. alskjdf;lasdjfalsjdf lfaslfsldfal;sjf YOU GUYS. I haven't closed that thread window since the post was pointed out to me. Just keep...reading and sniffling and looking around to see who the hell you could be talking about. Oh, you guys. &hearts &hearts &hearts &hearts &hearts

Some meta thoughts for Hero Worship:

An element I noted I was using in this story is the ( Spoilers for the story )

So, I don't really want to be writing Doctor Who fanfiction; I like reading the occasional bit but I'm not seized to go off from the Potterverse for anything extended, but the non-vanilla Doctor Whofest sponsored by rainyd made me grin at the concept (Who fanfiction suffers, it seems, from a plethora of nice vanilla porn and not nearly enough kinky filth) and bunnied me a little, so, I figure if I share the idea here it will get the concept off my chest. I imagine this broad snapshot of what is a TARDIS-housed orgy, full of crosstime-fetched companions and a Doctor incarnation or six, plus some good villains, all of them accoutred and moaning and chasing each other about in horny glee, and we learn from the Doctor's (interrupted) verbal observations that the TARDIS's Platonia Drive has failed temporarily; this is the safety feature that insures that all non-Time Lords who travel in the TARDIS are completely uninclined to act on any romantic urges while in the company of the TARDIS's operator, because, y'know, you can't have the Time Lords spreading their offspring through the cosmos and messing with natural genetic drift. And the Doctor estimates it'll be at least eighteen hours before the Drive repairs itself, and there'd be some last line in the story about how he hopes it hurries, because the last time this happened he ended up saddled with a granddaughter (who's probably currently having it off with a Cyberman in gold handcuffs, don't ask).

There, I feel better!

Dear Mr. Verdugo,

If pornography is a crime in which women are the victims, does this mean that gay male porn is okay? Oh, that's a relief.

Love,
Amanuensis