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Jan. 20th, 2008 03:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickYou people had better start laughing at what passes for humor around here or we'll go back to me whining about the localized incompetence of the greengrocers in my world instead of making with the mockery of (a) pornish Restoration poetry and (b) romance novels and (c) only be sure always to call it please "research". If those greengrocer posts of yore somehow became your halcyon days of wonder through the vaseline'd lens of memory, well, far be it from me to keep you from such happy thoughts. Go get lost in the archives. The rest of you, we're currently doing Restoration porn, romance novels, and soft-science research papers. Try to keep up and also, laugh at the jokes -- it makes me feel better about myself.
Didn't you used to have a sheep fur fetish or something? Yes. Sheep project coming along nicely, spun up a bunch more of the fluffy brown leicester wool this morning while watching Black Adder #2. From that delightful video, I have salvaged a number of gems, including the absolutely wonderful "bury her in a y-shaped coffin" one. If you're a constant reader, you'll be able to spot material from Black Adder after I've filed the serial numbers off and am trying to pass it 'round as my own work. Keep a sharp eye (PoTC) -- there will be small prizes for the kiddies! Also I am looking gently and not-at-all hurriedly into the buying of a spinning wheel, which everybody should have seen coming since two months ago when I said that there was absolutely no need whatsoever for me to go buy one of those, no need at all. My mother apparently also bought me some sheep but she hasn't sent it my way yet, not sure what is up with that. Oh, and the HoHI are going walkabout without me next week as I mail 'em off to mom so that she may show to her students what can be done with an excess of free time and a surfeit of OCD. She thinks it will be motivational. I think it'll be more like the Scared Straight of knitting, but what do I know?
But about this research paper. Dark was the sky and crisply cold the air, with snow that grated brokenly underfoot when I took the newly-forged sheet (as yet unprinted, just handwritten-forged) and approached my first victimless romance novel. Some poor paperback had to be first to submit to the battering of my blunt tool. The unlucky one was Prince of Swords by Anne Stuart, 1996. It's a historical novel, author-based, and thus in the naming scheme, it comes up as 1995AH1 (cohort, A for author or S for series, M for modern or H for historical, number in the list of books for that cohort). See? It looks scientific already! Plus then we can have references to the science-ish lables of the books within the paper. Everybody knows that it's more science-y if you've got more barriers between the reader and the actual data. More barriers are better!
So how'd my tool hold up under the stress of battle? Not too badly. There were a couple of things I discovered a need to have metrics for.
First off, I'd forgotten, having fallen out (Not the tool. The tool did not fall out. In romance novels, nobody ever, ever has too-vigorous sex with a slippery, round-two-or-three, somewhat less-stiff stiffy with attendant fallout issues. Refer to the title of the paper again: Idealized Heteronormative Sexual Experiences. All of this has got nothing to do with reality, though I assure you I'm going to mock the lack o' reality until I get tired of it, which, given my stamina for that sort of puerile humor, may be some time off.) of the reading of het romance novels, how frequently Our Hero takes Our Heroine's Hand and plops it on top of his boner. Generally this act is read as a "feel how hard I am for you!" sort of a thing, which I guess is nice. I can't help but think, though, that the effectiveness of this strategem has got to be limited to women who have never spent much time around actual men before and who might, therefore, be fooled into thinking that an erection was, y'know, hard to come by. (*snort* I was going to use the word difficult instead of the word hard but there's always that joke in my mind, rising inconvenient, unbidden, and insistent, rather like the erection of a teenaged boy. Hey, Kzin, what's the difference between "hard" and "difficult"? --- *pause* --- If it's not hard, it's more difficult! LULZ! So, I didn't opt for difficult.) Anyway, I'm going to have to add a category for "he takes her hand and plops it on his (mostly clothed-at-the-time) boner" or similar because there's enough of that going on that there needs to be a category for it. Personally, I don't see why he can't just grind it against her thigh like normal men, but what-evah. It could be he's doing the hand-plop thing because it's the only way he's ever going to get her hand on his cock, poor fellow. I think the hand-plop (That's what I'm calling it.) events should be counted differently than her actually going for his cock of her own free will. They're two different things and should be counted differently. I've made a note.
Also, in the interests of keeping things nice and scientific, I've decided to call the category for "penis circumlocutions and epithets" The Nine Billion Names of God. I think that'll work nicely.
Other than that, it went well enough. This being a historical, bedding-of-the-spirited-virgin sort of book, they didn't get to anything particularly kinky and even the not-so-kinky happened largely off-screen. Looking at the body of data, though, I'm going to need a spreadsheet for tracking this.
Brother-the-younger, who is probably the most appreciative reader I have (obviously, besides myself), called today to say that he, at least, has been very amused by me of late and would I please keep it up. (Certainly. At least, certainly until I get bored. I shall have to work on my stamina.) He also mentioned that his wife had volunteered to help read for the satiric research paper. It was at that moment that I knew, for sure, that he'd married the right woman.
Didn't you used to have a sheep fur fetish or something? Yes. Sheep project coming along nicely, spun up a bunch more of the fluffy brown leicester wool this morning while watching Black Adder #2. From that delightful video, I have salvaged a number of gems, including the absolutely wonderful "bury her in a y-shaped coffin" one. If you're a constant reader, you'll be able to spot material from Black Adder after I've filed the serial numbers off and am trying to pass it 'round as my own work. Keep a sharp eye (PoTC) -- there will be small prizes for the kiddies! Also I am looking gently and not-at-all hurriedly into the buying of a spinning wheel, which everybody should have seen coming since two months ago when I said that there was absolutely no need whatsoever for me to go buy one of those, no need at all. My mother apparently also bought me some sheep but she hasn't sent it my way yet, not sure what is up with that. Oh, and the HoHI are going walkabout without me next week as I mail 'em off to mom so that she may show to her students what can be done with an excess of free time and a surfeit of OCD. She thinks it will be motivational. I think it'll be more like the Scared Straight of knitting, but what do I know?
But about this research paper. Dark was the sky and crisply cold the air, with snow that grated brokenly underfoot when I took the newly-forged sheet (as yet unprinted, just hand
So how'd my tool hold up under the stress of battle? Not too badly. There were a couple of things I discovered a need to have metrics for.
First off, I'd forgotten, having fallen out (Not the tool. The tool did not fall out. In romance novels, nobody ever, ever has too-vigorous sex with a slippery, round-two-or-three, somewhat less-stiff stiffy with attendant fallout issues. Refer to the title of the paper again: Idealized Heteronormative Sexual Experiences. All of this has got nothing to do with reality, though I assure you I'm going to mock the lack o' reality until I get tired of it, which, given my stamina for that sort of puerile humor, may be some time off.) of the reading of het romance novels, how frequently Our Hero takes Our Heroine's Hand and plops it on top of his boner. Generally this act is read as a "feel how hard I am for you!" sort of a thing, which I guess is nice. I can't help but think, though, that the effectiveness of this strategem has got to be limited to women who have never spent much time around actual men before and who might, therefore, be fooled into thinking that an erection was, y'know, hard to come by. (*snort* I was going to use the word difficult instead of the word hard but there's always that joke in my mind, rising inconvenient, unbidden, and insistent, rather like the erection of a teenaged boy. Hey, Kzin, what's the difference between "hard" and "difficult"? --- *pause* --- If it's not hard, it's more difficult! LULZ! So, I didn't opt for difficult.) Anyway, I'm going to have to add a category for "he takes her hand and plops it on his (mostly clothed-at-the-time) boner" or similar because there's enough of that going on that there needs to be a category for it. Personally, I don't see why he can't just grind it against her thigh like normal men, but what-evah. It could be he's doing the hand-plop thing because it's the only way he's ever going to get her hand on his cock, poor fellow. I think the hand-plop (That's what I'm calling it.) events should be counted differently than her actually going for his cock of her own free will. They're two different things and should be counted differently. I've made a note.
Also, in the interests of keeping things nice and scientific, I've decided to call the category for "penis circumlocutions and epithets" The Nine Billion Names of God. I think that'll work nicely.
Other than that, it went well enough. This being a historical, bedding-of-the-spirited-virgin sort of book, they didn't get to anything particularly kinky and even the not-so-kinky happened largely off-screen. Looking at the body of data, though, I'm going to need a spreadsheet for tracking this.
Brother-the-younger, who is probably the most appreciative reader I have (obviously, besides myself), called today to say that he, at least, has been very amused by me of late and would I please keep it up. (Certainly. At least, certainly until I get bored. I shall have to work on my stamina.) He also mentioned that his wife had volunteered to help read for the satiric research paper. It was at that moment that I knew, for sure, that he'd married the right woman.
