ANNE RICE'S FILTHY DISGUSTING INEXCUSABLE PORNO BOOKS

A couple of years ago, I wrote a throwaway update about the Sleeping Beauty series of porno novels by Anne Rice (writing under her nom de filthybook, A. N. Roquelaure, a name which is roughly half as gay as most of the books' content). It had very little substance and basically revolved around me drawing a moustache on a picture of Anne Rice, pointing at it, and saying things like "Seriously. She's loony."

Now, having grown older and wiser, and having recently re-read the series because I was bored and I'd finished Zelda Wind Waker twice, I've decided to write a slightly more in-depth assessment. Grit your teeth, and take the plunge, because we're about to go on a journey of discovery. And buggery. Dis-buggery? Yesterday I was browsing the titles at the annual Brisbane book fair, and I couldn't help noticing that someone had actually written a 'companion guide' to the Beauty trilogy. I will ask you now what I asked my girlfriend then. What the hell for? They're not THAT complicated. Sleeping Beauty is woken up by a sex freak and then gets spanked a lot. Look not for hidden meanings in Beauty's ravaged maidenhood - we're here to read about fucking, not subtle references to Social Darwinism. Let's briefly summarise each book.

1. 'The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty'

Sleeping Beauty, in a version of the story you're not likely to find in any of Disney's early script drafts, is rescued from her century-long slumber by a handsome prince. The handsome prince then strips her naked, rapes her, rapes her again, spanks her, rapes her some more for good measure, and announces his intention to walk her completely starkers to his own kingdom, where he will continue to rape her until her vagina resembles the Channel Tunnel. Beauty's parents make a suspiciously small number of objections to this action plan, and fondly wave her goodbye as the entire population of the kingdom get a good look at her sweaty tits.

Arriving back at the prince's home palace, Beauty is introduced to the court, and it turns out all this time the prince was just responding to peer pressure - every single fucking member of the court has a naked man or lady following them around. Seriously, they're like Tamagotchis in 1996. These nudies have been brought to the palace to learn patience and wisdom, because in Anne Rice's fevered imagination, being forced into non-consensual sex with everyone and their cat while being brutally beaten morning, noon and night doesn't cause as many mental fuck-ups as it does in a sensible reality.

Anyway, after an awful lot of arseholes get buggered and an awful lot of buttocks get spanked, Beauty learns that disobedient slaves get carted off to the local village to have many demeaning things done to them, which are apparently way worse than all the demeaning things already being done to them. Apparently it's a lot worse to be seriously abused by commoners than nobles, which just goes to show, you can be stripped naked and used as a penis insertion port 24-7 and still be a fucking snob. Beauty decides that non-stop rapes and beatings just aren't enough punishment for her, so she does a half-hearted runner and gets carted off.

2. 'Beauty's Punishment'

Arriving at the village, Beauty is forced into back-breaking labour, and realises that this might not have been the whizzo idea it seemed like at the time. The action this time around switches between Beauty's adventures as a serving maid at an inn (where this time she gets fucked by literally everyone and their cat) and the sorry tale of some other naked slave called Tristan, who has this weird condition wherein everyone he encounters becomes obsessed with forcing everything they can find up his rectum. Even when he is given a brief moment of respite with Beauty, she feels an inexplicable urge to make use of a nearby candle. I dread to think what would be found if this guy were ever subjected to a full cavity search. The Lost Golden City of El Dorado, probably, and the corpse of Jimmy Hoffa.

Alarm bells ring for the captured slaves when they arrive at the Sultan's palace and find a million naked slaves up against the walls arranged in tasteful, statuesque poses, but it turns out they needn't have worried, because they, being the most beautiful slaves, don't have to succumb to such an ignoble position. No, they get to be raped and beaten instead. On reflection, I don't think there's a single instance of heterosexual sex in this entire book. The male love slaves roll around with their male keeper, and Beauty gets lesbianed up the wazoo in the harem. We learn from this book that women who have undergone the 'cutting of the rose' (the excision of the clitoris and vaginal lips, practised in ancient patriarchal societies to put a dampener on female sexuality) can still have orgasms if they try really hard.

This book ends when Beauty and some other male slave are both ordered back home, probably because their families have all suddenly re-acquired the sense they were born with. As I suspected would happen, Beauty has become a total emotional fuck-up who rejects all marriages until the former male slave turns up and makes her his slave wife. The credits roll as she is being dragged off to her new, joyful life of rape and beating within the sacred bonds of matrimony.

Recurring Themes In These Books

- Vaginas are like mouths

There are a thousand instances of vaginas being described as 'mouths' or 'hungry', or even doing things like gnashing and chomping. Now, call me a prude, but that kind of thing really puts me off. I just don't think mouths are very sexy organs. For a start, you've got teeth, which are a definite passion killer in any language, and then there's the tongue. Do something for me. Get yourself sexually aroused however you can, then go to a mirror, open your mouth wide, and watch your own tongue. Keep watching it until all connotations are lost, and you see it for what it is - a big lump of disgusting flesh dripping with slime. See how aroused you still are after a minute.

- Nobody ever seems to need food

I don't know if everyone in these books is radioactive and drinking their semen causes all the love slaves to acquire strange and terrible superpowers, but I followed the action right from the start of that first book and nobody gave Beauty anything to eat for, like, a month. Never seemed to bother her. She never complained about anything except that she wasn't allowed to flick her own bean during the moments when she was in heat. Which was all the time. Actually, that radioactive semen thing wouldn't surprise me, since pregnancy and menstruation do not exist, and buttocks can be spanked with morningstars for eight hours straight and still only get bruised. And I don't think muscle strain exists either. I know if I was chained to a wall overnight then it'd take a lot more than a blow job to stop me from spending the subsequent few weeks with a spine like a croissant.

- Everything is slightly worse than the previous thing

When Beauty was first being raped and prepped for naked slavery, all she could think about was how terrible it was to be naked in front of her family and friends. Then she was taken to a palace, and suddenly being naked in front of strange nobles was even worse. Then she went to the village, but that was even worse still, because they were being ruled by commoners instead of handsome princes. And then came the foreign adventure, which would be the worst of all because they couldn't speak the local language or something like that. It makes me wonder at what point the slave goes "Pah. Impaled rectum-first on a statue of Venus in the middle of the town square? Done that. Twice. I was upside-down the second time." There never seems to be a point where being publicly humiliated, violated and smacked about ceases to be novel.

- Anne Rice has an, at best, rudimentary understanding of the workings of a penis

I know Anne Rice must have experienced a penis at some point. I read on Wikipedia that she has children, and was married. So I'm not sure what kind of married life she had, because she is clearly no authority on the male reproductive organ. Lesson one, girls: erections are pretty difficult things to keep going, especially when the owner is being spanked into one huge man-sized welt, so demanding that male love slaves keep their members stabbing heavenwards day and night is a very unreasonable request. Lesson two: MALE. REFRACTORY. PERIOD. Do you think we're just kidding? Do you think we're just not trying? Right after ejaculation, even just touching the penis REALLY HURTS. You can barely zip it back into your trousers, let alone jam it in another orifice. It is therefore somewhat unsurprising to me that Anne Rice is a widow.

Y'know, Anne Rice has apparently forbidden anyone on fanfiction.net from writing about her characters. Now, ordinarily this is a practise I would applaud, but Anne Rice just kind of rubs me up the wrong way, so I am now going to risk litigation with a little vignette I like to call:

MONOLOGUE OF A PERSON WHO HAS HAD A SENSIBLE UPBRINGING INVITED TO THE QUEEN'S PALACE

"Boy, thanks for inviting me to your palace, your majesty! Your piss-ups have earned quite a reputation as - oh, thank you, I would like some wine! So as I was saying, I... whoa. Ha ha. You know, I must be jetlagged or something, I could have sworn that serving boy was completely stark bollock naked! Anyway, I would - oh my fucking god, he was! They're all stark bollock naked! Do you guys have a trouser shortage or something? Fuck, you could have said so! We've got tonnes of trousers at our palace you can have if you'd just ask - entertainment? what sort of entertainment? Oh shit, what is that man doi - AGH! FOR FUCK'S SAKE I'M TRYING TO EAT HERE! I don't want to see that! Please, for the love of all that is holy just pull that thing out of his - NO DON'T MAKE HIM DANCE - oh Jesus I'm going to throw up. Summon the troops. This palace BURNS TONIGHT."

The end.

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