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A basic cast list with some information on the setting has been added to the head of both Moral Drift and The Humbler, following an earlier request from another author. The Moral Drift intro also contains an expanded background, detailing political developments before Moral Drift's start, which expands on information contained in the Moral Drift Universe description.
The documents are intended as reference for readers who may have lost track of who is who, given the size of Moral Drift and The Humbler's cast lists. They may also be of help for those returning at a later date.
Both documents may contain nuggets of spoiler information which pre-empt their natural revelation within the stories.
This author’s next posting (ch 16 of The Humbler) will have to be it before another pause of unknown length. I do / kind of do not know how this story will develop in the pending ending. I wrote a full first draft of the whole thing at the start of '23, then heavily revised what I thought would be the first half on release of those first 8 chapters. In the interim I have dipped back in to the project now and then, added new chapters interlaced with others in the successive chapters, but have had to pause again at chapter 16. The remainder - the actual event to which the thing has been building - The Humbler of the title - is now fully set up. But virtually all of the 1st draft of that final section has been filed in the bin - a few sub-chapters here and there excepted.
Where the first story - Moral Drift - was set domestically, with a family watching bizarre political and entertainment developments on television - with just the odd scene set in the lead girl’s school or on the way to it - this one is the reverse of that: it is mostly school-based, with far less viewed-on-tv content. The in-school setting is something I’d hoped to see in another author, Amanda Serve’s work (her many stories now withdrawn from this site), but while she wrote copious tales set in trailer parks and new-build housing estates, visiting well-known restaurant chains for some out-of-context raucous sex scenes, the school thing she dropped in on here and there never developed in any detail. So this is my take on that, I suppose - building, reworking, expanding an idea that I'd come across and been inspired by elsewhere.
I have now introduced everyone who’s due to be at the humbler itself. Too many, perhaps, for readers to keep track of - thirteen girls, eleven men, one older woman and one teenage boy. Shrimp - the woman - has surprised me by pushing her nose in all over. My lead girl has persisted in resisting her fate. That said, there are probably too many weak / overwhelmed / unfairly entrapped girls with corrupt, unpleasant parents and psychopaths for teachers in the story. I hope the few strong characters with a different suite of morals balance them out, to some degree.
When I finished the last tranche (up to chapter 8), I had expected this second upload campaign to get to the story’s end. Apologies to any silent, genuinely interested readers - I have appreciated your kind up-tick marks - that I haven't got up to the conculsion this time. Next time, hopefully - whenever that may be.
Thats' going to have to be it for a bit - apologies to the tiny number who may have been keeping up with my postings. Revisions and rewrites took more time than I'd allowed for. At half way, The Humbler goes on pause at a natural break-point, before other schedules fall off a cliff.
A humble partial offering, embedded in a hopefully interestingly different world, which one of my correspondents labelled, "Likely to be offensive to most women." That may certainly be true true. But, in defence, it's not written for that audience.
Beadies - BDSMites - are people with a variant sexuality. We seek each other out in the real world - at, for instance, friendly clubs which support our shared kinks and quirks - us pluses and minuses of dom and sub polarity. In that world, we interact consensually. As we must - as we should - as the real world should and must.
My story is not presented to encourage duplication. It's an imagining - a construct - written as a joyful little holiday (for the deviant, sexual inner play-me) from other states of being that I commonly inhabit.
My story contains dubious practices - for sure. But to try to balance the scales, my heroine insists that she doesn't consent - her choice, not mine. She and her friends are up against some wicked forces - some shockingly self-serving forces - most of them male. My girl may get swept up in their machinations, but she's not entirely victim either - won't allow herself to be, or allow me to let her. She resists. She insists. But it's not a safe world for her - in here, as in the real world (though they're more enabled here) there are bastards at large, some of whom have real power. But good people exist here, too - a couple of against-the-odds modern moral thinkers teach her how to think for herself. Plus, my fantasy girl finds feisty friends to be her allies.
The site allows votes on a scale of one to ten, and my effort has gathered a 5.14. Another correspondent (or was it the same?) claimed that he'd never read a story with a score of less than 7.5 worth reading. I just can't see that that can be true.
I thank those of the 33 who voted their appreciation. I acknowledge the others, with an understanding nod, who considered my subject matter to be puerile, offensive, or some other shade of ugly.
I hope you may forgive my all-too-common proofreading errors, my occasional car crash revision glitches, my often too-long sentences and other such annoyances. Most of my down-votes came near the start, when the first chapter opened with a too-long talking-head diatribe. I clicked in on that opening myself a few days later, tried to read it and quickly gave up. I hope it's slightly less off-putting now.
But I have this observation on down-voted stories. If a story reads as reasonably competent English (uncorrected glitches aside); tells a tale inhabited by characters with somewhat distinct personalities, of whom at least a few have some non-one-dimensionality; who live in a world which, however transgressive, at least seems to have some truth to its psychology; which has the odd plot twist let in by tensions between what different characters seem to want or need
- then to find such a story has been down-voted, in part, for subject transgression
- may be, in a funny way, a recommendation. The low score then must indicate transgressive reward, and signal built-in kicks for target readers. The more tut-tutable for the wrist-slap voters, perhaps the punchier for you, should you happen to be wired with a complementary fetish map. That low vote becomes a recommendation by negative measure. Their It's Wrong I Don't Like That may be your Ooer, I Never Thought Of That.
Thanks particularly to Eddie Davidson for being such a welcome correspondent - as I suspect Eddie is for many an author - I'm still reading your stories, one chapter per day, and enjoying their inventiveness, their welcome compaction, their clear joy in the telling. I look forward to you getting on your pushbike when its tyres are pumped up and ready for a ride-out!
I'm not sure when this brain-state will demand its next outing. Till then, I hope that you few who have read my offering have, at least, found yourselves reasonably entertained.
After a hiatus doing a bunch of other things, a second Moral Drift story - The Humbler - is posting. It won't be to most peoples' taste, I'm pretty much certain. It's primarily a vehicle for BDSM. It's detailed, present tense and Bwitish with a capital W - all things, I've been told, which put lots of readers off. Plus there's hardly any bonking, with trouser-nestling meat and two veg being conspicuously absent. Though there's lots of other male-dom action and female-humbling going on. Porn Theatre, where men keep covered while women aren't allowed to. Most will likely hate it, but a few of you may touch tongues to lips. If that's you, and you can cope with the story's other quirks - enjoy!
One of my emailers who pinged me after the last blogal entry said my thing was Very British. Well it is. So British, it's actually vewy, vewy Bwitish. So British that it's set in Doggerland - in the story, tweaked to Dogaland. Go on, give it a goggle, why not? When Bwitain was connected to th'Incontinent - back in the day when the Bison still roamed (European - nose in air - none of your rifle-from-a-choo-choo crowd) there was a sand spit in the middle of what we Bwits call the North Sea. The Incontinents call it other things. At one time it had hills and rivers and trees. Not that many thousand years in the past, as it happens.
It's a quirk of the story, but the Dogaland-Britain in the story is THAT Doggerland - and its nearby Shipping Forecast surrounds. It references the well-known phrase (well known if you happen to be British, anyway): "Dogger, Fisher, German Bight". If my story has a theme tune, it's the tune that traditionally precedes the Shipping Forecast - a weird abberation, repeated every night for many tens of year - Sailing By. You could always - friendly shrug - do a goggle for that too. It'll possibly come across as terribly ironic. But, not if you happen to be actually Bwitish.
And it's Dogaland's National Anthem. So there.
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