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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

Who would you fuck?

09:41 / 28.01.02

if you could enter into the narrative of any book, what character would you seduce? and how would you get them to do it with you?

09:48 / 28.01.02

Are you serious about this topic? This seems similar to topics on video game message boards where someone asks which group of pixels the other 12 year olds want to have sex with.

09:55 / 28.01.02

Only if you make it that....
You could see it instead as how literary characters represent ideal (and non-ideal) types within the realm of the sexual and erotic imagination. Given the structure of the question, a well-put together answer would be very telling about the config of the author, or at least his fictionself....

Not sure I have an answer yet, though.

09:55 / 28.01.02

i suppose it does have that feel... i'm actually asking because of research purposes for a story i'm working on. but besides that, i think it can be a wildly interesting question...

i was thinking more in terms of classic literature than james bond books, and as such i think it's interesting to consider what qualities come through as attractive in literary characters, and how the sexual mores and seduction principles are different in each textual (/sexual) universe.

i also think that academic studies of literature tend to de-eroticise their subject completely, when in fact something like Ulysseus (see other thread) can be read as experimental pornography, or the narrator of Villette can be seen to share structural similarities with a sexy dominatrix.

i think the question is a fun approach to literature -- a literalization of Barthes' "The Pleasure of the Text" and fuck off if you can't get into it.

[ 28-01-2002: Message edited by: Mystery Gypt ]

09:55 / 28.01.02

There was a Woody Allen short story about a guy who found a way to enter into fictional realities, and began a torrid affair with Emma Bovary. Then he tried to get into Portnoy's Complaint, but mistakenly ended up trapped in a Spanish textbook instead, being eternally pursued across rocky, barren wastes by a hairy-legged intransitive verb.

09:55 / 28.01.02

interesting jack -- that's very close to the premise and twists of the joint im working on -- do you have the title and where i might find it?

09:55 / 28.01.02

It's called "The Kugelmass Episode." I believe it's in the collection entitled Side Effects.

Brief essay about the story hither.

The Return Of Rothkoid

09:55 / 28.01.02

It's also available - I think, as I remember reading it last year, and only have one Woody Allen book - in the collected prose volume that you can find (in the UK, at least) in the humour section of most bookshops. I think it's about seven quid.

[ 28-01-2002: Message edited by: The Return Of Rothkoid ]

16:43 / 28.01.02

I don't see anyone answering. The ramifications of the question itself are moot to me. I don't care if it's a juvinile question about who I would fuck. It says more about me than Mystery Gypt.

Patty from Stranger in a Strange Land, all those tattoos and snakes-pretty groovy. Why I'd become a Decon in the Church of All Worlds

Stella Maris/Mavis/Eris Illuminatus Trilogy-Because she's a goddess. I'd have to join up with Hagbard and his group.

Marla from Fight Club because she's a total fucking nut job. Become a crazy abusive nutjob myself because those chicks dig looney assholes.

Juete the albino from Steve Perry's Matador Series because of the pheremones. Apparently just be in the right place at the right time. She's a nymphomanic, its built into her DNA.

Anais Nin-her own works because I'm her daddy.

[ 28-01-2002: Message edited by: Burning Man ]

17:22 / 28.01.02

hey alright burning man -- thanks for playing!

i've always fancied Jane Eyre, but because she won't even sleep with rochester until he's proved himself with third degree burns, losing his fortune, and blindness, i'm not really sure how you could close the deal.

17:40 / 28.01.02

Quite a few Heinlein heroines. The tough ones.

Yeah, Stella Maris.

Possibly one of Octavia Butler's odd-gendered worm-aliens.

And the overanalytical chess-playing girl from Joy Luck Club. Can't remember the character's name, but loved the description of "winds" blowing across the chessboard.

I think it was Philip Jose Farmer who wrote the story about the alien who seemed sort of girlish but actually reproduced using a snake-like symbiote which lived down hir throat. One french kiss, and the snake tries to leap down your throat, pollinating you. Kinky.

17:45 / 28.01.02

But... but... that would ruin the story!

Who would steal Captain Wentworth from poor Anne Elliot? Oh, heartless!

18:57 / 28.01.02

In no particular order:

Angel Archer (from the Transmigration of Timothy Archer). Smart, turned on, and she'll never tell you she doesn't believe what you're telling her. No matter what you say.

Lady Brett Ashly (from the Sun Also Rises). Because she's mean, sexy, wears a man's hat, and Jake would want me do it.

Doc Savage. Just because it would be such a ball telling people how I bagged the Man of Bronze.

--gridley

09:17 / 29.01.02

The feminine aspect of God that turns up in the end of The Divine Invasion.
Rae Toei, the digital AI idoru in the Gibson novel of the same name.
Lucifer, Paradise Lost
Ylla, The Martian Chronicles

All of the above represent the allure of the ephemeral, the powerful, the alien, the unknowable (?) yet distinctly erotic/sexual. Would sex be sex in these cases, or something more transcendental, or just something radically different, beyond description?

Carlo Guercio, Corelli's Mandolin because I understand where he's coming from, and on some ultimate level want to make him feel better.

Natasha and Hella, in The Master and Margarita. Both little more than a walk-on parts, but somehow intriguing/endearing libertine spirits.

Zeenat Vakil, The Satanic Verses. Again, small part, nice little sketch of a tough, opinionated woman with a good head.

Helen of Troy, just because I wager she wasn't half of what she was cracked up to be.

And I would never, ever have sex with anyone from a Marquis de Sade novel.

[ 29-01-2002: Message edited by: [infinite monkeys] ]

09:19 / 29.01.02

but how would you do it? how would you seduce these characters away from anyone else in the text? wouldn't you just be another smoe trying to get character to notice you?

09:21 / 29.01.02

Good point. I'll write back with that answer after some more consideration....

09:21 / 29.01.02

You know the hardest part is this...I'm never the main character in the story. I'm always the spear carrier. I just don't have the literary Chareeeeeesma.

With the exception of Anais Nin, perhaps I can be the lusty boot black.

I self-published a where I got to bag the dame, but I had to put myself/character almost through literal hell to do it. And the main gal was my wife. Muhahahahahah, but it's true.

Burning Man

09:21 / 29.01.02

it turns out to be even harder to pull someone in fiction than in real life, doesn't it?

14:01 / 29.01.02

damn, there's no way to seduce Doc Savage. He never responds to anyone's charms (well... except for Tarzan's charms, but that's only in Philip Jose Farmer's fiction).

Scoring Angel Archer would be fairly easy if I went into the record store after everyone she knew committed suicide. She would need someone to listen to her quoting.

Lady Brett Ashley. Well, I'd have to throw myself back into a style of being drunk every hour of every day that I thought I ditched when I got too old for it. Plus, I'd have to go bullfights. Hmmmm.....

Haus about we all give each other a big lovely huggle?

15:43 / 29.01.02

Am I being very dim? Who are these people?

As for me, Chrestomanci from the Diana Wynne Jones series. And how? During a lengthy conversation about the comparative advantages of three and two-button suits.

And right in the ear.

[ 29-01-2002: Message edited by: The Haus of Hairbraids and Knitting ]

17:36 / 29.01.02

quote:Originally posted by The Haus of Hairbraids and Knitting:
As for me, Chrestomanci from the Diana Wynne Jones series.

and i thought for sure you'd be the one to say Dido.

Haus about we all give each other a big lovely huggle?

17:49 / 29.01.02

Oh, fuck *off*.

Athena, yes. Helen, yes. Medea - hmmm-mmmm. But Dido?

She's such a wussy...

18:40 / 29.01.02

a wussy? hell hath no fury like a woman scorned fer chrissakes.

anyway, check the french medieval version sometime, she -- and all the other women -- are way amped up, it's like a xena warrior princess convention.

18:48 / 29.01.02

Catherine from Wuthering Heights.

And I'd do it by just being me, which is a far cry from those other two smegheads vying for her attention in that novel.

Zoom.

The Knowledge +1

19:43 / 29.01.02

Emma, by Jane Austen.

"...for the day was waning and Emma wished to spend at least a little time beneath the sun, before it completely fell from the sky. It was with this design that Emma decided to venture forth into the garden.

Eventually she came around the furtherest flank of the hedge that contained the garden, and almost to the fountain that crowned Mr Darcy's grounds. Her path was interrupted by a stubby, dirty, podgy little gardener. He had long, black, gypsy-wild hair, and his clothes were scruffy and unkempt.

Emma stopped, waiting for the man to move, but to her great bewilderment he did not. Instead, on seeing her, he straightened his shoulders, stabbing his spade into the ground, and rested his left foot upon it. He crossed his arms and placed them on the handle of the spade.

A cleft of corn dangled from his mouth. Emma looked at it for a moment, and then chanced upon his deep, dark eyes. She felt quite strange at that moment. Silly even, but for some reason her special soft place was tingling, and she could not for the life of her imagine why!

"Excuse, excuse me sir" she said. "Do you think I might pass?"

"I'm sure you might m'lady, and I'm sure I won't stop you, if that's your will."

"And who are you to doubt my will young sir?"

"There's no double-speak in my words miss, I've no objection to your passing."

"Indeed there shouldn't be."

"Well there isn't."

"Well, good."

Emma motioned to pass him and was swiftly stopped by his grubby arm that he shot in front of her. He grabbed her suddenly, holding her with both hands, and she was so shocked that she was easily held.

"Sir, what in the devils name are you doing?"

"I've a fancy to sow my oats and you'll do fine in this task, I've a mind to know these things."

"You are quite wrong sir. I call a shovel a shovel."

"Aye, and a spade a spade too I'll wager."

And with that he ripped off Emma's skirt.

"You'll see a big fat cock before the day is out, young harlot."

"Oh fuck it give it to me GIVE IT TO ME GIVE IT TO ME!!!" She screamed.

But at that moment the young master Haus of Ealington-Share ran around the corner.

"Sir! What are you doing with my fiance? Take arms, you scallywag. I challenge you to a duel!"

Etc etc...

Haus about we all give each other a big lovely huggle?

19:49 / 29.01.02

You know, I think our frined the Knodge is getting into some really class-conscious BDSM with yours truly...

Less searchable M0rd4nt

20:29 / 29.01.02

I reckon anyone out of Iain M. Banks' Culture would be a good lay. You might have to wait a while for them to assume the gender/sex of your preference, but it would be worth it for the sense of adventure and the built-in drug glands.

Failing that, I'd try and bag off with Chrestomanci from the Diana-Wynne-Jonesverse.

02:55 / 30.01.02

Final answer on how to seduce the character you fancy:
Rather than enter the piece itself, write a piece of slash fiction on a BBS, then go into that narrative.

Barring that, since you already know the plotline, you could take the piss out something horrible out of the hunky/alluring protagonist. Make them seem much less credible.

Anyway, Lucifer in Paradise Lost would probably invert the entire fucker/fuckee dynamic. But I always thought the feminine half of God would just be game for it: I mean, if anyone would understand....

The Damned Yankee

00:56 / 02.02.02

Molly from Gibson's Neuromancer. She seems to prefer a lover who could also be a business partner, so I'm going to have to learn how to hack computers or something.

[ 02-02-2002: Message edited by: The Damned Yankee ]

Good Antlerhead

19:36 / 02.02.02

I like how everybody's picking people who aren't all the way human. Wow. I guess if you're going to go for someone fictional, best go all the way.

Anyway, my picks would be:

1) Nothing from "Lost Souls." Because he was me when the book came out.

2) Calvin's mom from "Calvin and Hobbes." Because she probably needed it.

3) Reynard from "The Invisibles"

4) And I would have to second Anais Nin and Molly from Neuromancer.