Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Filth Foreshadowed

Men's Adventure Magazines (Pop Pulp Art found here!)


A few months ago, I started a project involving the random selection of a story from the collected Brothers Grimm, followed by rewriting the selected story as an erotic spanking tale. I got through one story, sort of. I wrote the entire thing except the actual spanking scene. Still, excited by the project, I used a random number generator to select the next page number: page 826. The story, "The Aged Mother."

This is a one paragraph story about an old woman who is lonely because everyone she knows, including her own two sons, has died. In the middle of her lamentations one night, she hears the church bells ring, so she goes down to the church, only to find its pews packed full of her dearly departed. Her dead aunt comes to her and says:

"Look there beside the altar, and you will see your sons." The old woman looked there, and saw her two children, one hanging on the gallows, the other bound to the wheel. Then said the aunt, "Behold, so would it have been with them if they had lived, and if the good God had not taken them to himself when they were innocent children."

A sexy spanking story this does not make. So, back in January, I became stuck. For one thing, the story is one paragraph long. Secondly, the sons would have to be made into daughters, because I, at this point in my life, have not yet ventured into writing men into submissive roles. Thirdly, even at it's mildest, turning this story into an erotic spanking story is the equivalent of torture porn. So I gave up. I didn't want to say "Pass" and pull a new random story to retell because that felt like cheating, and and I didn't want to write this story. So: nothing.

Five months later, I have remembered that I like torture. I've always been fascinated by it, in fact. Torture in the classic sense, that is. Scold's bridles, pears, whipping posts. None of this water torture nonsense, or Hostel films, or prejudicial inhumanity. No, I'm talking medieval, sexualized, wood-engraved, Andrei Codrescu's The Blood Countess-style torture. I even own sword-swallower Daniel P. Mannix's History of Torture, romanticized and devoid of references though it may be. My favorite fairy tale retelling is Anne Bishop's "Match Girl" as it appears in one of Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling's fairy tale collections, Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears. Per that retelling, poor little match girl, indeed.

This morning when I got into work, I realized I didn't care much about my work day, and in between moments of productivity, I worked on a list of both stories and blog posts that have fallen by the wayside. The Grimm project was on the top of the list. Then I started taking notes... and notes... and notes... and while I do not have an actual story to present to you now, I am finally writing again. The aged mother has been turned into a farmer, the sons into wives, the gallows and wheel into... well... you're just going to have to wait on that, but there are whipping posts and stocks in the future, as well as a second wife's skirt lifted well over her waist while she is, shall we say, retained.

You may have noticed I changed the header image and subtitle of the blog. I want to write more about the writing process. And yes, the filming process, which may or may not begin again this weekend, depending on the mood of the household. For the writing, I just need to sit down and write. For the filming, well, I've gained thirty pounds since I last filmed, and I wasn't exactly slender then, so it's all a matter of deciding whether to bare myself to that degree or not. More bottom to spank, right? Well, I'd like to think that's the case.

So, to round out the blog entry, I'm going a bit mad with desire. Wanting to write spanking stories at work, wanting to make spanking films whilst I'm actually only walking the dog and going with Mr. W to the grocery store. I'm going to write a story of depravity, filth, and torture. And spanking. And then, with any luck, I'll have a chance to reenact some of it on film. And then it's on to zombies. You don't even want to know about the spanking Antarctic zombies...