![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yeah, I'm posting a lot. It'll stop probably after a while.
So this is the part that's actually history. There are parts of this I am not sure of. But the general trend of things is about right.
So young man stories don't come out of any print genre. They come out of online textfiles stories. You can still find these archives that I believe popped up soon after the internet happened. These textfiles came in a lot of varieties, but the short erotic story was a pretty common type. I think these first appeared in bulletin boards and early newsgroups (there are a lot of dead story-oriented newsgroups out there). These stories were generally fairly short and simple. Most of them were simply stroke stories. When I say this I am not derogating them for being what they were. Some of them were very good at what they were.
There were multipart stories either at or near the beginning of this. But the multipart stories couldn't really be called serials or novels, I think, because of the trajectory of the stories. These stories -- which still are being written, and are often called "series" -- remind me of myths and folktales of the Bobo or the Hercules sort. I mean that the stories are connected by a general sensibility, not by a story arc. The changes from part to part are not character development or plot: they're additions of new sexy bits. Often the stories start with two guys meeting and having sex. In the next part they meet again and have more sex. In the third part they have some kind of breakthrough sex -- though it's hard, since these stories tend to claim that the sex is the best in the world to begin with. Sometimes what is added is more sexual partners, so that at some point what you get is an orgy. It would be stupid to complain that these stories are not literarily rich or complex enough: that would be like complaining that a haiku has no chorus.
One of the largest and oldest archives is The Nifty Archive (which used to be called the Nifty Library of Erotic Stories, and which has or had some kind of relationship with a subscription site called Gay Cafe to which I can't provide a link because googling provides a whole raft of gay cafes none of which seem to be the site I'm thinking of). It has been around since 1992, but its stories go back further because many of the early stories were posted from earlier BBS and newsgroup sources. It has the stories categorized by orientation, gender, age group, situation, and some fetishes. In some ways this can be unfortunate because some fine stories have been written that belong to disturbing categories. I mean they are stories which if you read them without the category label you think, "That was disturbing. But what a nice story, and what interesting characters!" But with the category label you're kind of scared to even go there. I mean, they can photograph your computer screen through your window blinds from a mile away. They can capture the image of where you've been online after you've wiped your drive six ways from Sunday. And dang, just what are you going to find in those categories, anyway? Will you want to run your brain through the sani-wash cycle of the dishwasher to get rid of what you read?
There was a time when I read everything, everything at all. The whole situation of reading fiction online was so novel, and the naughtiness of reading batshit crazy weirdness was sort of exciting in a whee-I'm-on-the-Wild-Mouse-ride kind of way. So when I say things about the more problematic categories, well, I've seen some of it, and I'm not embarrassed by the fact of seeing it, but I am embarrassed by much of what I saw.
Anyway. If I knew more about picaresque literature and the early novel, I would be able to compare and contrast the way the young many story developed out of the stroke story with all that. The series stroke story spawned series romance, and that spawned the young man story, which is a fully developed serial literature of its own.
Clearly, there are other interesting genres developing out of the online fiction sharing tradition, but this is the one I know and love and have something to say about.
I know I said there'd be history here, and that implies much more information than I have to give. Next part will be better. Oh, and soon I will be giving links to the stories I'm talking about.
So this is the part that's actually history. There are parts of this I am not sure of. But the general trend of things is about right.
So young man stories don't come out of any print genre. They come out of online textfiles stories. You can still find these archives that I believe popped up soon after the internet happened. These textfiles came in a lot of varieties, but the short erotic story was a pretty common type. I think these first appeared in bulletin boards and early newsgroups (there are a lot of dead story-oriented newsgroups out there). These stories were generally fairly short and simple. Most of them were simply stroke stories. When I say this I am not derogating them for being what they were. Some of them were very good at what they were.
There were multipart stories either at or near the beginning of this. But the multipart stories couldn't really be called serials or novels, I think, because of the trajectory of the stories. These stories -- which still are being written, and are often called "series" -- remind me of myths and folktales of the Bobo or the Hercules sort. I mean that the stories are connected by a general sensibility, not by a story arc. The changes from part to part are not character development or plot: they're additions of new sexy bits. Often the stories start with two guys meeting and having sex. In the next part they meet again and have more sex. In the third part they have some kind of breakthrough sex -- though it's hard, since these stories tend to claim that the sex is the best in the world to begin with. Sometimes what is added is more sexual partners, so that at some point what you get is an orgy. It would be stupid to complain that these stories are not literarily rich or complex enough: that would be like complaining that a haiku has no chorus.
One of the largest and oldest archives is The Nifty Archive (which used to be called the Nifty Library of Erotic Stories, and which has or had some kind of relationship with a subscription site called Gay Cafe to which I can't provide a link because googling provides a whole raft of gay cafes none of which seem to be the site I'm thinking of). It has been around since 1992, but its stories go back further because many of the early stories were posted from earlier BBS and newsgroup sources. It has the stories categorized by orientation, gender, age group, situation, and some fetishes. In some ways this can be unfortunate because some fine stories have been written that belong to disturbing categories. I mean they are stories which if you read them without the category label you think, "That was disturbing. But what a nice story, and what interesting characters!" But with the category label you're kind of scared to even go there. I mean, they can photograph your computer screen through your window blinds from a mile away. They can capture the image of where you've been online after you've wiped your drive six ways from Sunday. And dang, just what are you going to find in those categories, anyway? Will you want to run your brain through the sani-wash cycle of the dishwasher to get rid of what you read?
There was a time when I read everything, everything at all. The whole situation of reading fiction online was so novel, and the naughtiness of reading batshit crazy weirdness was sort of exciting in a whee-I'm-on-the-Wild-Mouse-ride kind of way. So when I say things about the more problematic categories, well, I've seen some of it, and I'm not embarrassed by the fact of seeing it, but I am embarrassed by much of what I saw.
Anyway. If I knew more about picaresque literature and the early novel, I would be able to compare and contrast the way the young many story developed out of the stroke story with all that. The series stroke story spawned series romance, and that spawned the young man story, which is a fully developed serial literature of its own.
Clearly, there are other interesting genres developing out of the online fiction sharing tradition, but this is the one I know and love and have something to say about.
I know I said there'd be history here, and that implies much more information than I have to give. Next part will be better. Oh, and soon I will be giving links to the stories I'm talking about.
Tags: