This topic contains 10 replies, has 0 voices, and was last updated by 
-
Posts
-
Seeing another graphic novel update go up, and remembering a couple of previous stories go by, I am wondering, how many people here are interested in bondage stories?
This covers quite a range, from movies with a plot, through photo stories, via stories with the occasional illustration, to purely text stories with no pictures at all.
If you like stories of one form or another then which forms? Do you encounter many? Do you have much interest in them?
A good written story can explore ideas and situations that would be expensive and difficult to produce pictures and video of, and also add depth and interest to the pictures, by giving a back story that is otherwise missing.
Some of Hywel’s longer pieces of text on the updates are a good example of this.
Personally I really like a good text story. When done properly it allows you to get inside the characters minds, their emotions, to feel the experiences from their point of view, to really savour the experience.
This can be quite hard to do, I know I have encountered any number of stories that don’t really do it very well, but when done well, it can be a wonderful experience.
I’m interested enough that I’ve written two novels and a bunch of short stories. OTOH, I’ve found very few stories of the sort I like. In fact that’s a major motivator of my own writing.
Partly it’s that photos are more ambigious – you can imagine different scenarios, to taste, for a given photo or photoset. Another part is that drawings and stories tend to be darker than photos “because they can” – you can do things to a drawing or story-character that you can’t do to a live model. And my own tasts run heavily toward the light and romantic end, with SM and even D/s being minimized.
From my point of view, there are a lot of well-done D/s and SM stories out there, but very few actual bondage stories. And most of the bondage that does exist is a means to D/s and SM ends. Even here on RE, the stories seem much more directed toward the D/s and SM end of things than the photosets. Which is why I prefer the photosets to the stories I’ve seen here so far.
*memory stirs* *searches the forum* yes, it was you who produced the recent thread about Gor novels, and your own writing.
I did not reply to that since I have never read enough of the Gor books to have any real views on the subject. I recall reading and rather liking the very first book, but I never got beyond that.
I did start looking at the link you posted, but I did not get very far into it. I did not comment since I have been “burnt” before. In my experience authors can be “funny” about comments on their work.
Your tastes in stories sound similar to my tastes. There are a lot of overly dark and unpleasent stories out there, which I do my best to avoid.
Out of interest what do you make of this story:
http://www.grometsplaza.net/boundstories/storiessz/thank_you.html
It is what I would call a nice bondage centred story.
Well, no author likes hearing that his brainchild is a deformed idiot. My philosophy, though, is that raving about it is unprofessional. It won’t help people see what a Great Masterpiece of Literatureâ„¢ you’ve created, but will only help you look like a brain-damaged idiot yourself.
The beginning of _Agent of Cern_ is a weak point, and remains so despite my attempts to fix it. So I’ll mildly suggest that you might try pushing on. The story might start to click for you after the first chapter or so.
Then again, it might not.
It might be like the story you linked to: My reaction was “OK, but bland.” It didn’t click for me.
Part of why it didn’t click was that it was female-female, and while that doesn’t trigger my “ew, ick!” reaction, it does leave me cold. (Personal taste, I know.)
I’ll also note that the story you linked to seems to be an example of the sub-genre “protagonist gets seduced into real-life bondage-for-pleasure activities, and ends up really liking it.” I recall seeing one or two good stories along those lines over [mumble] years, along with a number of bad ones.
But it does seem to be the only sub-genre that does avoid (at least part of the time) the descent into D/s and SM darkness.
Greetings from Texas,
As you folks know I can’t say anything in a paragrap if a chapter will do. I enjoy good bondage stories but you have to dig through a lot of garbage to find them.
I’ve been a writer and storyteller most of my life. Most of my writting is firearms,(big surprise I’m sure) historic and back to the land stuff. I have done some bondage fiction for my own ammusment but there isn’t much market for it and it doesn’t pay much if at all. Being self employed I have to be somewhat greedy about this. For the most part these days I embellish Hywels storylines in my mind or come up with my own. Were there to be the occassional bondage story here I would be quite pleased.Interesting ideas.
Hmmm, do you think it is a potential problem that different tastes lead to it being difficult to please all with a given story?
I think that’s a big danger. As lurker alluded to above, one of the great benefits of still photos is that they lend themselves to many more interpretations than either stories or videos do.
I think that’s why people with many different takes on bondage can all enjoy the same photoset, because the tied-up girl is the “common denominator” in a lot of fantasies.
My own tend to be pretty S&M or very heavily dom/sub, which would mean that lurker and I probably imagine totally different scenarios when looking at the same photos.
I’ve heard other webmasters say that this is why they shoot bondage videos which are just five minutes of a girl struggling… it is an attempt to leave the scene as context-free as possible in order to let people construct their own fantasies around it. Fair enough I guess (although I have to say it never worked for me, I just found the lack of storyline or dynamic utterly unconvincing and ultimately rather lazy).
Stories are even less ambiguous than videos, especially those written with access to the thoughts of the characters. There’s nowehere to run and very little room to manufacture your own dynamic if the story is telling you exactly what is happening and what the characters are thinking and feeling while it happens. So the sort of story that might appeal to me leaves lurker cold (and vice versa). Nothing wrong with that, but does make it more challenging to incoporate the stories into the site. I always try to make my storylines with the sets kinda optional. If they enhance your pleasure by all means read’em, but if you just want the pics you can totally imagine your own story around them.
Stories on the other hand leave you free to create your own imagery around them. (I completely disregard the descriptions of the way the girls are dressed in The Story of O, in favour of my own personal tastes, for example).
I’m open to the idea of a story section of the site, but don’t have the free time to actually write any (all my time and inspiration goes into the sets and videos already)!
The Leona story was not well received (and I’ve discontinued its run as a result). We’d have to experiment with what sorts of stories people actually bothered to read, let alone read and enjoy.
I was considering a new graphic novel series, but most of the artists I worked with weren’t really able to commit to the work involved sadly. I would love to continue Sigrid’s Saga if and when Brian can make some time to draw it, I’ve really enjoyed it so far.
Cheers, Hywel.
Yes, exactly. Hywel and I agree on a lot of things WRT what makes a good photoset, but not so much on what makes a good story. With a photoset, we can imagine different stories [1], but given an actual story we can’t do that.
I’m happy with the way Hywel handles the storylines for his photosets, making them optional. Sometimes I like the storyline he gives, but at least as often I’m glad that I can ignore them.
I’ve commented before that I considered the Leona series to be a well done D/s story, but lacking in actual bondage. Since what I was looking for was a bondage story, and personally find a heavy emphasis on D/s annoying, I didn’t care for it. Likewise with the Sigrid series: The last installment made me go “ugh” because it looked like a hard turn into being a D/s and SM sort of story with only just the amount of bondage needed to support the D/s and SM.
I would have preferred the Sigrid storyline to go along the lines of “the captive women were carried off the ship, nude and bound hand & foot. In the hall they were shackled and tied in various ways, and found themselves not at all displeased with their new situation. But Sigrid was furious, and struggled wildly in her bonds. And the pleasures she felt as Thorvald teased her helpless body only served to increase her anger.” But that’s just me.
I also have to admit that it’s easier to write D/s and SM rather than a story that’s pure or mostly bondage, even if you want to write bondage with minimized D/s and SM. That’s been my experience, at least.
[1] A half-baked idea: Maybe Hywel could post a photoset and invite RE members to write various stories to go with it, posting them here on the site. But this shouldn’t be a contest with a winner, unless it’s a random drawing to give a free month’s membership to one of the contributors, or some such minor prize. The point is to show the variety of different takes that RE members have, rather than to emphasize which takes are the most popular & therefor the most “worthy.”
Stories and bondage stories, one thing I have noticed over the years is that a lot of “bad” (in my personal and opinionated judgement 🙂 ) bondage stories fall into one of two common traps:
a) they contain no bondage. Sometimes they do contain some bondage, but you have to read so much story to find it that I give up long before discovering any bondage. Something of a flaw when the story is put forward as a bondage story.
b) they don’t contain anything other than bondage. Bondage is good, lots of bondage is good, but when the plot, the point, the characters, everything else is missing and there is just some bondage… this can work, but normally it does not.
Stepping beyond this, there is a rather interesting question of what makes a bondage story popular. This seems to be quite different to good.
I have seem some really good bondage stories, full of bondage, character, plot, human interest, sexy descriptions, get ignored by the “masses”. I have also seen relatively poor quality stories get a load of attention and interest simply because they happen to focus on a scene / idea that is popular, and the general failings of the story don’t seem to bother people.
Much as I do love a good bondage story, I am not sure if they are a good fit for RE.
Picture stories, where half of the “content” is the pictures, and they are just wrapped in a bit of text, these might work a lot better.
Some of the RE sets already lean in this direction, where you can put Hywel’s words together with the images and a story emerges.
lurker this might be a “A half-baked idea” but it is still interesting 🙂
I suspect it would generate very little though, it can take quite a lot of work and effort to write even a short story.
How about a “caption” though? Something between a couple of words and a few lines of text, something that sums up the pictures and adds something to them?
Really alternative text to go where Hywel’s words normally go. That might get enough people interested to produce some suggestions and entries.
As an example, look at the sample pictures of Ariel in the snow that Hywel has just posted. The caption:
“We are sure to catch an abominable snowman with this bait”
might work well for the pictures of a naked Ariel all tied up in the snow 😀
Greetings from Texas,
I love felines idea about Ariel being ‘snowman bait’ but my caption would be “Easy field assignment he said! No effort on your part he said! I hate being the new hire in the zoology department!”LOL, I like that.
How about:
“I have changed my mind, I don’t want to be the winter princess any more! I want to be the summer princess instead!”
The forum ‘General Chat’ is closed to new topics and replies.