COMMENTARY:
There are more than a couple things that strike me about
this story. First, there is the title. It is a little misleading.
According to the author, it is porn industry jargon. This is explained
in the course of the story, but I didn't know what it meant before I
read the story. Did that detract from my reading experience? No, not at
all. If anything, it added to the pleasure I experienced while reading
this story. How so? It added a wrinkle and it gave me something to think
about other than the sex.
Second, there is the lack of quotation marks. This forced me to read the
story a little more slowly than I otherwise might have. Sometimes I had
to re-read a sentence or a paragraph just to get it straight in my head
what was dialogue and what was not. I am not a big fan of not using
quotation marks. They serve a purpose and, in my opinion, a good one at
that. Still, given the quality of the writing I'm willing to overlook
what I usually perceive as a drawback.
Third, there is the way the story begins and ends, i.e., by focusing on
someone other than the main character. This isn't an unheard of
technique, but you don't see it very often in this sort of fiction.
Fourth, there is the main character. Honey Ryder comes off as very real.
She has her moments of doubts. She isn't all knowing. She has her
moments when she seems extremely confident, but they don't last. It
helps that she has a dilemma. Her reactions to Barbie's naïveté made her
seem much more human than she did at first glance. Choosing to trust her
feelings about Barbie opens up a whole new can of worms. I for one,
voyeur that I am, enjoyed the spectacle.
Fifth and finally. I got the impression that the author told the story
he wanted to tell. He did not pander to the masses. The characters,
Honey in particular, are not simple. It is not one long sex scene. It
doesn't read like a sexual fantasy. In these ways and possibly others it
is different from the majority of the stories that are posted to
newsgroups and web sites devoted to erotic fiction. I don't think that
it is perfect, but the fact that it is different makes it appealing to
me.
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