Erotic voiceover and the art of the helpless maiden / noble monster fantasy

So next up is a story I wrote when I was working with a client who ran an erotic story site where he posted his own stuff (The Story Mill). Peter also liked to feature erotic art alongside his stories, and of course to have his stories recorded for people to enjoy. He also encouraged other authors to submit their own work to his site.

Peter and I have worked together to record his stories, and you can hear the results in stories like Plunder, an exciting and filthy little romp that is very well-written. Not for everyone, but definitely arousing for the open-minded listener, I enjoyed performing this with Peter, and of course, if you click my "Contact me" link you'll see I'm open to performing more erotic stories for other clients, if you're interested!

Anyhoo, when Peter and I first got to know each other, I was much younger, and eager to learn and practice my writing craft. He asked authors to be inspired by the erotic art on his site, and one such image I am not sure I even have a copy of any more (I'll hunt to see if so and post it later), but an artist crafted a dark and powerful image of a fairly demonic looking creature with a split brow, huge body, dark skin, in possession of a maiden of some sort. I was instantly turned on. I think most people are, when they see the quintessential image of "beauty and beast," particularly when the beast is humanoid and powerfully represented as something virile and hungry for sex.

No tentacles, please

I'm not going to lie, when I see images like tentacles and machine parts invading a woman in Japanese hentai, I'm really not moved, particularly if the woman is crying or suffering or being abused. That sort of suffering doesn't turn me on and I don't condone it.

But the awareness the beast-image tickled into life at the back of my mind was that yes - if a powerful, noble, virile creature that was not quite human powerfully persuaded me into saying yes, even if at first I didn't think I wanted to - I'd probably succumb.

Tako to ama, an erotic ukiyo-e by the Japanese artist Hokusai.

There is a very very fine line here. It's a fine line women and men have been walking for thousands of years. Men who hear "no" and think they hear "yes," and who then take what they want and overpower and harm a woman - this is criminal, and not cool, and I don't condone it.

The issue is that lovers who are in doubt are always having to be persuaded. The art of the persuasion is an impressive skill that some can wield with great intelligence and finesse, and some not at all. Of course those who lack this skill entirely may attempt to just take or demand and those, of course, are the ones who don't have any business having a lover in the first place until they learn some manners.

Back to the point: if you read on the sexual psychology of women, back to Freud and Jung and Nancy Friday, and beyond, there is the classic story of the rape fantasy. Remember that it is a fantasy - therefore, in the experience of it, women are not actually being harmed. They are fantasizing about being harmed, and unless of course they are into some other types of activities, they are generally fantasizing about experiencing pleasure at the hands of a stranger who comes along and takes advantage of them against their will. The woman is in truth willing, because she has created and controlled the fantasy.

What happens, then, when a woman begins in a situation she doesn't want to be in, afraid and captive to a being that is powerful, virile, seething with the possibility of sex, danger, and violence, whom she can't control, and can't predict? This is the fine line - the classic recall to the Dominant / submissive role, in many senses, and to traditional expectations of the male / female role. (These roles are changing, and of course, there are more than male/female genders, I speak of traditional societal expectations.)

Surrendering your inner beast

The primal arousal, for me as a woman, lies I think in surrendering the animal within you. Women are historically required to play a very restricted role where she belongs to a man/set of men, and must be whatever they expect her to be. She must control her sex, give it only in marriage and motherhood, and enjoy her body only in those terms. She must use her pre-frontal cortex, and surrender her body to the will of society and its expectations of her.

But we are mammals, and before we learn to talk and eat and discourse and survive, we learn to feel and experience and satisfy our urges.

Men must also limit their interaction with women to societal restraints, and yet, when they lose patience with this over time, they are seen again and again to rape, pillage, and barter women away for power, prestige, or personal pleasure. Society pressures them to not do this, but what happens when that pressure mounts and they are suddenly alone with something soft and sweet that can pleasure them?

In hentai I see it as men getting to invade and defile every orifice of a woman for their own sadistic pleasure - the woman is utterly helpless, and becomes nothing but holes. This is hot for me only when the woman enjoys it; offensive if not.

Peel away another layer, away from scenes of what I basically consider torture (bad juju), there are stories of pleasure - where a woman surrenders her human self to a beast, or a group of men, or a woman, or whatever, after resisting. And when she finally surrenders, she surrenders wholly - the age old story of seduction and permission to become the animal you really are.

It is not, of course, as if women never do this to men, as well. But the story that keeps getting told is that of a woman who protects and locks away her sexual self, and is forced to expose it and surrender it to someone who overpowers her.

The demon from the film "Legend." I had the hots for him as a little girl.

And the erotic part is when the woman begins to want to surrender, enjoys her surrender, and gets hot and bothered and finally demands her own invasion by her captor.

Women play these sex games all the time with lovers. There's the little hunt and hunter, the little dance in day to day. But in our fantasies, we get to go farther, harder, darker - to the Dominant who enslaves and humiliates and trains his lover to exist only for him, like a pony or a dog, to the supernatural beast who is sentient and arouses pure animal lust in his target.

Next up: Womb of the new world

So my next story, titled Womb of the New World was based on this darkly erotic illustration on a website. It was a fantasy, of a woman in a primal post-apocalyptic world who has appetites that don't line up with the strict rules and simple life of her family and community. Captured by a sentient beast who is intent on his own race's survival, she is basically a breeding slave. Terrified and trapped, our smart but outmanned heroine must deal with the raw virility of her captor, and a very scary biological reaction to him - the both of them seem to have a genetic predispostion to violent, wet, gratuitous arousal with one another.

So begins our tale, which is rife with lots of sex, but also, lots of other things to think about ...

I'm working on getting the cover designed - tricky, because good illustrators who can handle something like this can be hard to find and expensive! But I think it's worth it, and can't wait to share the work!

- Mira