MSTie-eyed and fancy-free

by Giselle Renarde

My girlfriend has changed my life for the better in oh-so-many ways. For instance, she introduced me to a show I like to call Mystery Science Theater 3000. I call it that because that's its name. We were at HMV before it closed its doors forever when she held up a DVD box set and asked "Have you ever seen this?"

She had, but not on TV. I have no idea whether Mystery Science Theater 3000 aired in Canada. I never got any 'a them fancy networks. Sweet said she used to rent it on VHS from the video store.

In case you've gone your whole life without ever hearing about MST3K (like me until a couple years ago), here's what all the hubbub's about:



A human test subject—first Joel Robinson (Joel Hodgson), then Mike Nelson (Michael J. Nelson), and most recently Jonah Heston (Jonah Ray)—has been imprisoned aboard the spacecraft Satellite of Love by mad scientists and their henchmen (collectively called "the Mads") and is forced to watch a series of bad movies in order to find one that will drive the test subject insane.

To keep his sanity, Joel built himself a series of sentient robots (the "'bots") from parts aboard the Satellite, and who subsequently remain aboard with the other test subjects. The 'bots include Tom Servo, Crow T. Robot, Gypsy and Cambot. Crow and Servo join the human as they watch the film in the Satellite's theater. The trio frequently comment and wisecrack atop it, a process known as "riffing". At regular intervals throughout the movie, the hosts leave the theater and return to the bridge of the Satellite to perform sketches ("host segments") that satirize the film being watched.

Mystery Science Theater 3000 couldn't have come into my life at a more perfect time. I was hit by a bad bout of depression (which tends to happen when you're chronically depressed), and one thing I've learned about myself is that comedy helps.

Big-time helps.

Helps more than anything else I can think of.

At least, it helps for me personally. My girlfriend tells me that, when she's down, comedy is the last thing she wants. She feels like it's mocking her, or making light of everything that's bad in the world.

But comedy is my go-to, so I'm immensely grateful that my girlfriend introduced it to me at just the right time.

MST3K is silly and smart. I thought that's why I loved it. (I don't think any one human could get all the jokes. One minute they're making references to Michel Foucault, the next they're referring to some regional Minnesota cable commercial. It helps if you watch with pop-up video style annotations on their YouTube channel.) But, upon reflection, I realize the reason I watched 3-4 hours of MST3k every day when I was really depressed is the sense of community it fosters. I guess anything with a cult following makes you feel sort of special (yay! I'm part of a cult), but more than that...

Oh god I'm going to sound like such a loser...

Am I really going to say this out loud?

Yes, I am.

When I watched all those hours of MST3K, I felt like I had friends.

Robot friends.

And Joel.

Do I sound like a lonely, miserable person or what? But that's what depression does to me. Makes me not want to reach out. Not to real people. But to robots? Yes, that's acceptable. If I could pal around with Servo and Crow (and also Data because every comedy team needs a straight man or an android), I would be in heaven.

The riffing also reminds me of watching "Mom Shows" with my siblings (and my mom, of course, otherwise we'd be watching something else).

Mom Shows are terrible dramas, usually CanCon about FBI agents or any show where a couple of the characters are angels. Not Charlie's Angels--the heavenly variety. Whenever my mom watched her Mom Shows, my siblings and I would rip those fuckers to shreds.

Those were the days! Sitting around the TV riffing on Mom Shows with my sibs. You know, my mom didn't even tell us to stop making fun. She'd join in! Her jokes were... not the greatest... but it's the effort that counts. I think she just loved that all her kids were in one room, all focused on the same activity: riffing on Touched by an Angel.

Reading over everything I've just written, I can sort of imagine people wondering why I don't just go out and buy some real friends, or at least spend more time with my family. All possibilities. And maybe one day I will. But at two in the morning, when I'm alone with my cats, there will always be Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Reading for Reviews -- #Reviews #Commitments #Community

By Lisabet Sarai

Since our last “what are you reading?” cycle, I’ve finished all but one the books I discussed. Most of my new reading has focused on titles I plan to or have promised to review. Accordingly, they tend to be in the romance or erotica genres.

I have a pretty significant backlog of to-be-reviewed books on my tablet. They come from two sources. First, I’m a host for an author promotion company that offers review blog tours as one of their products. For these tours, the blog host commits not only to posting cover, blurb and excerpt but also to reading and reviewing the book being featured. I am quite selective about the review tours I accept, but usually I have one or two on my calendar.

Second, I receive many review copies of books from my fellow authors. In some cases, I request them; in others, the writer offers. (I generally ignore unsolicited review copies.)

I have a semi-regular Review Tuesday feature on my blog, for posting the latter reviews. About a week later, I will also put them on Goodreads, Amazon and BN.

I see reviewing other authors’ work as part of our community ecosystem. It’s a way of paying things forward. Hopefully, writers I know will review my books. (I’m always happy to provide copies, by the way. Just ask!)

Reviews also offer the possibility that I’ll expand my own network of readers due to cross-promotion. This doesn’t mean I will post a dishonest review, though. Once a reviewer begins to give every book five stars, she loses her credibility.

Reviewing gets me reading things I might otherwise not encounter. However, knowing I’m committed to a review changes my reading experience. I read more slowly, more consciously, and more critically. I’m less likely to lose myself in a book, because my intellect trumps my emotions. (If a book I plan to review does sweep me away, that’s a really positive sign.)

Anyway in this post, I thought I’d talk about a few recent review books.

Rescuing Prince Charming by Edward Hoornaert

I met Ed (aka “Mr. Valentine”) through our joint participation in the Marketing for Romance Writers group. I was really impressed by his intelligent, humorous blog posts, so when he put out a call for advance readers for his science fiction romance, I volunteered.

I found that his novel was as delightful as his blog posts, written in a sprightly, tongue-in-cheek style but still conveying genuine emotion. I have a love/hate relationship with the romance genre, because so many romances are utterly predictable. This book held my interest and kept me smiling from beginning to end.

If you’re interested, you can read my full review here.

One Too by Sherrie Cronin

I’m more than halfway through this nearly 600 page book, which I’m scheduled to review on February 12^th. The genre is a bit difficult to assign (always a recommendation, in my opinion!), but I guess the closest category would be science fiction. Most of the important characters have various super-normal capabilities: telepathy, astral body travel, precognition, the ability to manipulate the flow of time. These powers are treated scientifically rather than as magic. The powers have clear limits. Exercising these powers is physically draining. Also individuals differ in their native abilities, and these abilities can be strengthened through training.

At the core of the book is a conflict between two groups of telepaths with very different values and views of the world. The novel is highly political; although it is set in 2012-2013, the references to the current world situation and media trends are quite transparent. Indeed, this is one of my criticisms so far, that the author wears her politics too much on her sleeve.

The heroine is a break from tradition, a middle-aged mother of three adult children, a scientist and a telepath, married to a high school physics teacher. I like this as well.

The book also has elements of an adventure tale, with kidnappings and daring escapes. At the moment, the main characters are on a tourist cruise ship headed to Antarctica, fleeing the evil telepaths of Enteletechy.

I’m enjoying this read, despite the knowledge that I’ll have to review it. Stop by my blog on the 12^th of February to get my final verdict.

No Title Provided...

There’s one dilemma occasioned by accepting review copies from authors whom I know—what if I hate the book? About a month ago, a colleague who publishes with the same co-op I do offered me a copy of her latest novella. I’d read a review by another author whom I generally trust, so I happily accepted. Alas, I really did not like the book at all. The tale is set in a world of extreme lifestyle BDSM, which should interest me, but overall it felt stiff and fake. The main premise and conflict struck me as implausible. The characters, most especially the focus character, had a cardboard quality. I could not identify with any of them. The final straw was a long kink scene between secondary characters that did not advance the plot at all.

What do I do? As I said above, I try to be scrupulously honest in my reviews. If I review a book with flaws, I will try to first highlight the positive aspects. In this case, though, the negative so outweighs the positive that I’ve decided to simply let the book sink into obscurity. Fortunately I didn’t add it to my books on Goodreads before I read it, so there’s no record I ever even opened the file.

I’m not entirely comfortable with this compromise solution, but I guess it’s what I’d prefer if some reader hated one of my books.

And coming up...

The next book I’m scheduled to read for review is called Grinder’s Corner by Ferris H. Craig and Charlene Keel. I was attracted to this because of its unusual setting in the early sixties, in a taxi dance hall. It’s also billed as a romantic comedy, a genre I enjoy but really can’t pull off myself.

Check my blog on February 27^th, to find out what I thought.

Meanwhile, in late November, my DH and I visited the semi-annual book sale at a private library near us. These sales feature hundreds of great titles, at rock bottom prices. We spent about twenty five dollars for more than dozen books. Some are by authors new to us, but there are also volumes by T.C. Boyle, William Boyd, Jane Smiley, and Joanne Harris. I’m looking forward to diving into this pool of literary riches.

Tune in next time for my comments!

Hurt Me, but Don't Tell Me What to Do

by Annabeth Leong

The more I think about it, the more I’m uncertain about why the acronym BDSM is strung together this way, as if all the activities it describes are related. There’s a constellation of kinky stuff that’s treated as if it always goes hand in hand, but that doesn’t really make sense.

When I started showing up at kink events, I said I was submissive because I knew I wanted to bottom and receive pain. I didn’t realize there were distinctions here, and most of the events I went to elided them, too.

Over time, however, I recognized a growing anger in myself. I hated, viscerally, the experience of being treated as submissive. Of course, I met some cool people. I also encountered a lot of smarmy sneering, people talking to my dominant instead of to me (which, depending on your point of view, might have been proper protocol), jokes that irritated me, incorrect assumptions, and stuff that pissed me off in general.

I had a partner at the time who I called my dominant. Really, my partner was my sadist. We weren’t using proper vocabulary, but most people around us weren’t either. When we went to events, my partner adopted what they saw as a dominant-type persona, and I found it embarrassing and cringe-worthy.

At the same time, I truly do enjoy bottoming—as in, I love being on the receiving end of intense sensation. I love being tied up for a variety of reasons. I like it as a meditative state, I like it as a way of inducing discomfort, I like it as a decorative art, I like it as a way of experiencing the sensation of textiles on the skin, I like it as a way of drawing blood flow to certain areas to make them more sensitive, and lots more. I also love receiving pain. Impact play is a favorite for me, but I also love electricity, clamps, biting, and so on.

Over time, I realized I needed to distinguish between bottoming as a masochist and power exchange situations that framed me as submissive. These two things are so commonly associated that I’ve encountered many people who respond with disbelief or confusion when I try to explain that I want to be hurt but there’s no way in hell I want to submit.

I think a lot of kink activities boil down to being about trust. I do have to trust a top or a sadist. For me, that trust works best when I’m in the situation as an equal. It’s also easier for me to trust myself to speak up when I need to.

What’s funny about this is that I have a lot of submissive instincts. I am very, very good at service. It is easy for me to subsume my needs and focus on those of others. If you give me an order, my first reaction is to obey.

However, I don’t like that stuff about myself. I don’t want to feed it. What I’m working on in my life is to stop knee-jerk obedience. I don’t want to practice it on the weekend.

I know that many people experience submission as freeing. For me, it’s much more freeing to meet a top as an equal and figure out together how to hurt me for fun.

The more I’m around kink events, the more the dynamics around power exchange feel touchy and delicate to me.

For example, there’s a big kink con in Rhode Island called the Fetish Fair Flea Market. I go every year, and usually have a mixed experience. In some ways it’s awesome, and in some ways it infuriates me.

Early on, I went in clothing that identified me as an s-type (a sub or bottom). I didn’t always love how I was treated, but I didn’t know anything else.

One year, I went alone in these hot boots that I really loved. I didn’t think much about it at the time—I’m into feet and shoes, and these were just hot. They were thigh-high black leather boots that laced all the way up, with at least a three-inch heel. I felt gorgeous in them.

I could never have anticipated how much the boots would change my experience of the Flea. Apparently, the boots made people read me as a D-type. All of a sudden, I saw everything from a different perspective. I got more respect in the vendor halls. People answered my questions. The conference opened before me like a flower.

I still got regularly sexually harassed, don’t get me wrong. Random dudes still came up to me to share their sexual fantasies about me (I still presented female, after all), it was just that those fantasies had changed. Still, it was shocking to be freed from receiving the biases and assumptions that had come at me when people saw me as an s-type.

These days, when I go to the Flea, I struggle to find a way to dress. There’s not an obvious outfit that says masochist, at least not that I can think of. It’s hard not to wind up looking s- or D-. But really, I’d like to be able to step outside of power exchange with my kink experience.

And there are times when the distinction is subtle.

Last fall, I went with a top to a carnival. My top tormented me with unpleasant, frightening rides, laughing delightedly at my misery (I love that kind of thing, so while I was horribly uncomfortable, I was also having a great time). They pushed me to get on these things relentlessly, one after another.

I would call that a masochistic experience, not a submissive one, but I think, if we’d been in a different place, that it could have been a submissive one. In my case, the focus was on unpleasant sensations. My top was administering them, but I was receiving them because I find unpleasant sensations fun/fascinating/arousing/oddly compelling. In the submissive case, I think the focus would have been more on doing these things for the top, on being obedient despite the discomfort.

The emphasis on obedience is one of the things I really hate.

I’ve revised the way I describe myself at kinky events more times than I can count, and this probably still isn’t the final answer. However, it was really important for me to realize that what I’m interested in is sensation, not power.

And I hope this goes without saying, but I want to be very clear: I hold absolutely no disdain for those who do identify as submissive and enjoy it. It’s just not for me. Because I’ve spent time in that role, I have observed some dynamics around it in the community that I think are messed up, but I’m absolutely in support of people who want to explore the role itself.

Meanwhile, I’ll be looking for sadists who want to treat me as an equal.