The Terrors of Tarragina (addendum)

[sythyry]

Mirrored from Sythyry.

A copy of The Terrors of Tarragina was duly procured (from Vind — I refuse to allow more teasing of Alzagonde until she does something else horrible). The crudely-imagined and crudely-drawn cover shows a nearly-naked, voluptuous, and quite aroused Herethroy woman, holding a crowbar in a midhand, staring at it as if it were a serpent about to bite her. Beside her are four very full washbasins, one overflowing, and a Cani man with a hammer in one hand and a tremendous erection visible under his skirt.

I, sacrifically, read the cursed thing, since I have plenty of time on my paws when I want it.

Tarragina is the sixth daughter of a countess of Barency. She has a single passion in life: “rejoicining in elegant circumstances”. Through a sequence of misfortunes too implausible to mention, her family loses fortune and title in chapter two. (OK, I’ll mention the guntry race. They’ve got a prize running-guntry that always wins every race. They bet their last village on the guntry in a race against a stranger — who turns out to be a wizard, whose guntry is a transformed air elemental, and wins in a whoosh. Somehow they neglect to mention that this may be considered cheating.)

Anyhow, by chapter 3, Tarragina is condemned to wander the city and country in a life of toil, a thing which she finds utterly abhorrent. She picks up odd jobs here and there — helping a Cani family demolishing a shed in chapter five (hence the crowbar), and washing clothes for some Herethroy farmers in chapter eight (hence the basins). In each case, she attempts the job briefly throws up her hands and hand-feet at how horrid and vulgar it is, and, um, renegotiates the arrangement to be one in which she performs bodily pleasures upon her employers rather than having to do the work. Then, for reasons unspecified, she is off at a different employer the next chapter, evidently the next day.

For a bit of socioprosody of my own: the description of the chapter’s circumstances take 1-3 paragraphs. The attempts at performing the job, and Tarragina’s abhorrence thereof, take another 3-5. The seduction of the employer takes a single paragraph more. The rest of each chapter — five to fifteen pages — is a description of the encounter.

For what it’s worth: About half the time she’s involved with Herethroy, and half with other species. Nobody seems to find this the least bit noteworthy — not that there is much actual conversation involved.

Also, a half-page of action from chapter 5 appears again, word for word, in chapter 21. Perhaps the author did not think anyone would read that far. In any case, it was dull the first time, and extra-dull the second.

I cannot recommend the book, either as literature, pornography, or a source of threats.

Comments

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Oh, and most of the fiction in Barency that involves transaffection is pornography, from what I hear. That goes for most cities. A couple of my clients have written love stories that stop somewhat short of pornography, but that's Vheshrame.

[shurhaian.livejournal.com]

The problem with using it as a resource of any kind is that it is, in fact, fiction.

Also, it wouldn't entirely surprise me if the lack of non-explicit traff-positive work elsewhere is in part a vicious circle. Mainstream publishers won't touch it, so the only way traff anything gets published is in those circles that are less picky, so people get the impression that all traff-folk are degenerate and immoral, and around the circle goes.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Mump claims to have scientific ways to extract sociological truth out of a corpus of primary texts: fiction or even poetry. Such sources convey the spirit of a people, he says, thinly disguised under a veneer of fiction.

You're right about the vicious circle.

[shurhaian.livejournal.com]

I'd say "Right back at him: What does the body of cisaffectionate porn say about that element of society?" except that a rational argument with such people is generally pointless. Whether for moral reasons or otherwise, any researcher who has his conclusions alread framed before he does the research is nigh impossible to dissuade, no matter how flimsy the evidence supporting his position or how compelling that against it.

Changing one's worldview is never an easy thing, of course - I'm sure you, yourself, know about that - but academia ought not to have room for personal crusades.

[foomf.livejournal.com]

Actually, I have seen evidence of actual attempted objective thought in Mump once or twice.

I would like to see his methods subjected to the usual review and replication processes and that includes determining whether other researchers with different theoretical biases would come to the same conclusions. If sufficient numbers of other researcher with different biases came to the same conclusion then we could say his methods are repeatable, and then we could attempt to determine the noise-to-data ratio for his methods.

That might involve finding a way to analyze the societies for sociological truth using other methodologies and comparing the results.

In the case of Mump's search for truth about transaffection, my own opinion is that he must either be using a very abstruse form of magical analysis on the traces of Spiridor and Mentador found in the literature, or that he's in desperate need of peer review.

Approaching the problem from Monster Universe psychological and sociological methods, one finds the following questions to be either unasked or unanswered:
0) Given a large sample randomly taken from primes of all socio-economic groups and from all prime species,
1) what do the members of the group say that their preference is in gender of sexual partner
2) what is their gender
3) In the case of multi-gendered races, have they ever had consensual sex with members of the same gender of their species
4) have they ever had consensual sex with members of other genders (the 'biologically appropriate' gender(s) and/or the 'biologically inappropriate' genders)
[ The reader can see where this goes. It continues to ask about friendship, about partnership without sexual involvement, about partnership with sexual involvement, about exclusivity, and so forth, and may or may not ask if they consider themselves to have been 'in love' with members of the various sets. ]

ONLY once that information has been gathered in a way that ensures minimal fraudulence, can the researcher even begin to examine results and determine what the inhabitants of the World Tree actually DO, and only then can they even begin to say what the actual phenomena ARE.

My suspicion is that the "shape" of minds and spirits are similar across Primes (and some Monsters) to the extent that they can fall in love with any sufficiently compatible mind and spirit, but the physical structure of their bodies and the social structure of their various species and cities is much much more likely to dictate what is considered to be acceptable and what is not.

Most speculatively: the fact that they have so many different Prime species means that their gods may have designed them in such a way that they won't end up competing among themselves rather than cooperating, and I further suspect that the capacity for mutual affection is as strong as it is, in order to further this. I also suspect that the general danger provided by the monsters (many of whom are designed deliberately to provide a sentient and implacable challenge to Primes) is there to ensure that Primes will have a driving need to cooperate to defend themselves.

This creates a tension: the stronger the "cooperating" urge, the greater the likelihood of mutual affection extending to the point of excluding regular bonding with other members of the same species for reproduction; the need for reproduction to replenish the species tends to weaken the bonds between species.

[brynndragon.livejournal.com]

Erm, maybe if the people in question are the ones writing the fiction/poetry, but how does he presume to know if the author is actually traff themselves? In my world, there is a subgenre of fiction written almost entirely by females about male-male love - the authors are neither male nor interested in lovers of the same gender, nor do they necessarily even know any male same-gender lovers (on our iron ball of a world, same-gender affection is considered much like transaffection on the World Tree). So making conclusions about male-male love from such stories would be poor scholarship; making conclusions about how some non-same-gender-lovers view such pairings is the only possible rigorous examination.

[shurhaian.livejournal.com]

...this too is true. Though I fear that Mump is not much concerned with scholastic rigour so much as with his own viewpoint and agenda.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

The details of Mump's methods are beyond me, so I have asked Vind, who looked somewhat worried at the concern. Vind once asked Mump the same question, and had it answered to Vind's satisfaction at the time, but Vind is unable to recreate the answer.

[zeeth_kyrah]

This is because of Mumps inveterate bloviation skills. Were he an adventurer, he could convince scawn that their weapons were diseased and killing them.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

How mighty! He's certainly defeated a wizard once or twice...

[shurhaian.livejournal.com]

Oh. It's worth noting, though, that women who aren't interested in other women, but are interested in men, can find a good deal to interest themselves in fiction involving male lovers. This is much less the case where cisaffection/transaffection are concerned. Anyone who writes transaffectionate porn - especially if their own species is not involved - can be fairly argued to have at least some traff leanings, in a manner that heterosexuals finding appeal in a one-sex couple of the opposite sex to them cannot.

[brynndragon.livejournal.com]

I don't know if you are on the same world as me or not, but I am not sure we can make that conclusion that different-species porn would not be so titillating on a world with many sentient species as same-sex porn is for us. There's certainly enough taboo and exoticism to fuel such interest, assuming the psychology is sufficiently similar.

[shurhaian.livejournal.com]

Thing is, where the same-sex porn features the opposite sex to the person writing it, they could be well argued to have plain opposite sex interest in it - if one guy is hot, two guys together are better, right? The same-sex element need not be relevant save that it excludes the sex which the writer or reader isn't interested in. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't; but there's a plausible argument that it's all about putting in more of the desirable sex and nothing more.

The same does not apply to transaffectionate literature. Anyone who is making such probably does have some interest in transaffection, be it positive or negative, practical or academic. And if it's just trashy porn, the odds of it being academic interest are pretty slim - how can you be exploring the attached issues through the work if the work doesn't touch on those issues at all?

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Through the miracle of socio-prosody?

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Meh, I don't think that follows. Most of the primes (except maybe zi ri and herethoy and khtsoyis) have all the same bits, and having things done to those bits can be titillating even if the bits in question aren't ones that you personally would actually mess with.

Think of tentacle porn (esp. if their own species *is* involved), or the strange prevelance of mating scenes on animal planet.

[rowyn]

I'm with Terrycloth here. Plenty of people on my world enjoy fantasies about non-existant creatures, or even real animals, without having any real-world interest in anyone but members of their own species.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

I must say that "enjoying fantasies about thus-and-so" counts as prima facie evidence in "interest in thus-and-so". It may not count as any desire to participate in thus-and-so in person, say.

[rowyn]

Well, Shurahian's original comment was 'you'd have to have traff leanings to enjoy traff writings', which is what I disagree with. You can fantasize about things that you have no intention whatsoever of doing anything like. You have to be *interested* in the sense of "find it interesting" but not in the sense of "interested in experimenting with it".

A better and more extreme example -- a lot of women of my world have rape fantasies, which is in no way remotely indicative of an actual interest in *being raped*. Or in raping anyone. And people don't generally regard those who enjoy horror movies as proto-victims, or proto-serial killers.

[shurhaian.livejournal.com]

No, my original comment was not that "you'd have to" anything. Only that it is a more compelling argument, in that there isn't the same easy explanation that a heterosexual being interested in same-sex porn of the opposite sex could simply be indulging in their heterosexuality to its fullest and not be homosexual themselves.

One could certainly write traff pornography as a literary excersize or a social statement, say, but I'd think it less likely to come off as trashy porn in that case, simply because there'd be more focus on either the craft or the social aspects. It could just be done badly, to be sure, but the simplest explanation for horrible and indulgent porn of the type described is that the author had a prurient interest in the subject matter, which would indicate some traff sensibilities even if the author would never act on them personally.

[rowyn]

Well, your exact words were:

Anyone who writes transaffectionate porn - especially if their own species is not involved - can be fairly argued to have at least some traff leanings.

If by "traff leanings" you mean "prurient interest in fantasizing about traff behavior", I will grant you the likelihood of it. If by "traff leanings" you mean "must be interested in engaging in traff behavior, even if they're too timid/repressed/etc to actually do so", then I can't agree.

[shurhaian.livejournal.com]

I meant neither of those things, since I would also include "sympathizes with the transaffectionate" or "intellectual curiosity on the matter" in what I was getting at.

For that matter, someone who has a distinctly anti-transaffectionate agenda could also write traff-involving porn to demonize it, but again, that sort of agenda does not seem present here.

I will rephrase my statement as: Anyone who writes transaffectionate porn, especially that which does not involve their own species, can be generally assumed to have some personal interest on the topic. Note that "personal interest" covers a lot of ground, supportive and otherwise, and note also the key word "generally". I am not speaking of absolutes here, and I get very irritated, very fast, when people set up a strawman by assuming that I am.

[shurhaian.livejournal.com]

Missing the point. A heterosexual female can enjoy male-male porn because she is heterosexual, not because she has any latent homosexuality, above or below the threshold of actually acting on it in the real world. In fact, a homosexual female would be much less likely to have any interest in male-male porn. The heterosexual male vs homosexual-female porn counterpart, ditto. The same can't be said of traff pornography, because sameness is the norm in that case, not the exception.

[foomf.livejournal.com]

That does not necessarily follow. I know at least two lesbians who are connoisseurs of yaoi AND bara of the most blatant form, as well as enjoying heterosexual porn. Sometimes it's simply the IDEA of sex that piques the interest.

[shurhaian.livejournal.com]

MISSING. THE. POINT.

How many times do I have to say I am not talking about absolutes? Of course it doesn't necessarily follow. But it frequently does.

[foomf.livejournal.com]

Not missing the point and don't shout.

It's really meaningless unless you can say HOW frequently, and I don't believe that data has been gathered.

Your implication is that it's frequent enough to be predominant and that anything else is abnormal; my response is a counter that suggests it's far from abnormal and may in fact be frequent. I used the following technique: 1)I know several hundred people, set estimate at 250 women for estimation; 2) set of known lesbians is counted at at least 5 where probability suggests at least 25 of the women I have met are lesbian based on lowest interpretation of Kinsey, and given that selection of 5 women, 2 having said that they enjoy males in erotica, 2 having expressed no opinion or not discussed the topic, one having said she dislikes it, then we have a sufficient random sample to estimate that the hypothesis that porn preference strongly matches one's own sexual orientation (OR that it's OK only if the participants are one's own target sexual group) is not a true hypothesis.

This is of course subject to small sample bias, but it's just an estimate, just as your own claim was at best an estimate.