Zenobia, Conan's Slave Girl Chained and Censored!

Censorship rears its ugly head, I guess. Image source: Marketing photo for slavegirl Zenobia from Age of Conan.
Censorship rears its ugly head again, this time in the marketplace. The above statue is being sold in stores everywhere, well not EVERYWHERE because it's not cheap: it runs $58.00 on Amazon.

A blogger whose post I can no longer find points out that this statue is censored. If you'll take a careful look at the figure above, you'll see a painted-on bra and panties underneath the barbaric loincloth and halter-ish thingie.

Naturally, I'm appalled. If I were to buy a $55 slave girl statue, I wouldn't want painted-on underwear! Frankly, I would kind of expect sculpted nipples and at least a fold of flesh to represent the vagina, too! But since the big-money retailers presumably are afraid that kids will buy these statues who will show them to Mom, who will see them and fear the prospect of junior peeking under the skirts and getting chubbies from simulated doll parts.

And the thing is, it would probably happen somewhere. I'm not even sure how I feel about that. In Japan they have dolls that are made to be masturbated with ... not Real Dolls like we have in the states... real dolls! They also have a significant portion of adolescent males who say that they have no interest in or even are disgusted by sex, and they have negative population growth.

Now granted, I don't know if the sex dolls are linked to the negative population growth and the negative feelings about sex (as an adolescent, I considered getting laid the Holy Grail of life, a feeling most of my male friends seemed to share). European countries have negative population growth too, and they're not nearly as freaky as Japan (who is, really?).

So, basically ... I'm confused. I hate censorship. But ... doll parts censorship? It's so hard to care! Especially since this particular form of censorship can be put an end to with a brushful of pink paint.

World of Warcraft and Hyborea and Gor Evolved, Oh My!

Combat ... the common coin of the World of Warcraft, Hyperborea and Gor Evolved.

A fellow showed up on the Gorums saying that he was working with a well-heeled company that was interested in developing a pay-for-play virtual world (think World of Warcraft) that would include adult content (think Second Life, thought it is a freebie world, not pay for play). He asked for suggestions, which sparked some thinking on my part, which I'll share with you, because I'm such a nice guy.

You should really look at Gor Evolved (which you apparently did not do) if you want to really assess the potential of Gor for helping populate your virtual world. One of the advantages you cite would be HUGELY popular for Gor Extended players, who typically engage in the dreaded combat thing much more often than BtB players, which is ... no lag. SL Gor fights between huge groups with dozens of players participating typically result in arrows hanging in the air in rows. If your lag solution fixes that, and I'm pretty sure it would, you'd have a huge advantage over SL Gor right there alone.

The ablity to have 1000 avatars on a single sim would be good too. Right now we don't KNOW how big battles in Gor Extended might be because sims typically can't handle more than 60 players at a swat (as the BtB guys how often their battles ... hell, their ANYTHINGS ... bump up against sim limits on the number of players). I can see battles with hundreds of players that last for hours. Tremendous fun for me and the despised "pew-pewers" I think.

And because of its greater emphasis on combat, and on it's better range of roles for women (i.e., female warriors, not permitted in the more tradional Gorean sims) Gor evolved is likely a more productive source of new players from outside Gor. I'm thinking about World of Warcraft (WoW) here. It has eleven million players I understand. I imagine that every months tens of thousands of WoW players think, "Damn, I'm getting bored with WoW and all the other games out there ... I mean, I still like the fighting, but I wish there was more to it."


Sexy slavegirls, the common coin of Hyperborea and SL Gor. That would amount to "more to it," wouldn't it?

Well, what they are thinking about is what Gor Evolved IS. If you can communicate that to WoW players somehow, you might have a conduit that could pump thousands of new players to your world every month, and there's nothing WoW can do about it, because they have to keep that youth market. Your world could sort of "harvest" the WoW players as they mature.

Now an original thought. Why do Gor? Why not do something like the Hyborean world described in the "Savage Sword of Conan" comics? Slavery is rampant in that world, Goreans slavegirls, Masters, Mistresses and such would fit quite naturally into it. I wrote a long article about the Hyborean Age's Gorlike aspects at one time, and came to following conclusion:

The thing about Savage Sword of Conan other than being damn good in and of itself, is that all the elements were there to make it a Gorean-in-everything-but-name comic (as it is, it's damn close to being that). All it would have taken is a little more focus on bondage where the slavegirls are concerned.

My point is, Goreans could live very easily in the Hypborean Age, taking roles as slavegirls, warriors, free women and such that are pretty much the same as their roles in Gor, and you wouldn't have to fight all the prejudice against Gor that now exists. Frankly I think Goreans have a better feel for roleplaying barbarians than anyone else, because they alone have dared to play roles that run counter to modern ideas concerning egalitarianism, sexism, slavery, etc.

You could follow Alice's idea of creating a new land that didnt have any copyright entanglements very easily in such a situation, because much of what Howard laid down in his Conan stories has become generic. Wouldn't be hard to create a Hyperborea-in-another-name because there are a huge number of such places already.

In fact, you might want to consider creating a Gor continent and linking it to a Hyperborean continent. The distance between Cimmeria and Torvaldsland is just not that great, just as the distance between Aquilonia and Ar is not that great.

From the guy's response to my post, he's not interested. Tsk, tsk. I have a tendency to be right about these things.

Savage Sword of Conan Volumes 1-6 Are OK

OK, I've read "Savage Sword of Conan 1-6" (I believe more volumes are due out) and I was happy with all of them, more or less. You can sense Conan being cleaned up a bit when they went from Howard's source material to deCamp's, but they are still pretty good stories for the most part, filled with treachery, adventure and action. However, long about volumes 5 and 6 some real comic book writers produced their own stories, and god, they were bad. The sort of brain-damaged rot that gives the whole field a bad name. I remember one story with Conan going through an interstellar portal where flying people enslaved others and made them turn a mill wheel. It was badly drawn, badly done, and an embarrassment to all and sundry, or should have been at any rate. I hate to think what was left out if that and similar pieces of crap were included.

Still, these stories have SO FAR been relatively few and far between. I remain encouraged enough to buy Volume 7 if and when it appears (I have no idea how long the series will be). I guess I like Savage Sword of Conan because it answers the question: "What if John Norman had been a really good writer who didn't focus on the sexual bondage so much but portrayed a society where manly men enjoyed the favors of slavegirls without question?"

Picture O’ Doom

“Hope you ladies don‘t mind if I butt in …”
Image source: could NOT find the image I originally posted here anywhere, so here's a pretty good damsel in distress scene from the series, featuring actress Julie St. Clair and some guy in a leather mask. Oopsies! 
Here’s an image of a damsel in distress scene from the short-lived “Conan” TV series that I think explains in part why the series folded.

First and foremost, there’s the man-butt shot that dominates the image. Instead of focusing on the damsels in distress, we get a shot of the rescuer. And his butt. If you are seeking a straight male audience, this is a mistake. The fact that you made it means you are either gay or dumb. Neither condition augurs well for a person heading a TV show about Conan the Barbarian.

Second, if you’re gonna send Conan around in a leather diaper and nothing else, how about baring some female flesh as well? The women are well dressed, the rescuer is pretty much naked. Once again, gay or dumb.

Third, check out the damsel to the left. The one that’s farthest away from the camera focus. What a great rack she has! She’s the person a regular guy wants to see in this scene, especially with her hands tied behind her back so those enormous tatas of hers right out there. What the fuck is she doing way in the back there? Put her in the front, put Slab McLargehuge in the back. Doing otherwise is just dumb.

My feeling is, if you fuck up a DiD scene this badly, your chances of doing the rest of the show right are pretty much nonexistent.

Every picture tells a story, indeed.

Why I Love the 70s

From the cover of Savage Sword of Conan volume 1. An accurate depiction of how slavegirls are depicted throughout the series. Excellent work.

Savage Sword of Conan 3 was a disappointment in terms of damsels in distress. One story at the very end had a nice nude spreadeagle for a damsel who spent a lot of time in the story naked, or nearly so. But it’s pretty skimpy farings compared to the spread of damsels in Volumes 1 and 2. Fortunately, Volume 3 still has plenty of rip-roaring, beautifully illustrated tales that are sure to put hair on your chest, full of intrigue and danger and fighting and demon-infested ruins.

I’m still working on Savage Sword of Conan 4, but it’s already well ahead of Savage Sword of Conan 3 in terms of damsels in distress and hot wenches generally. The stories are still very good, but a couple are based on L. Sprague deCamp’s version of Conan, and Mr. DeCamp … well, he clearly thought Conan as created by Howard was a bit uncouth, a bit raw, a bit uncivilized, and couldn’t resist the impulse to clean Conan’s character up a bit. It’s done subtly enough that it’s not a problem, but I prefer the rogue who’s as sneaky as the people he deals with. The one who won’t kill women, but will order a slave girl to his tent or buy the services of a tavern wench without a thought for her feelings on the matter, assuming simply that she will like whatever he does. And him being Conan, she probably will, whoever she is..

Fortunately, the Conan I like makes several appearances in Volume 4. Along with the hotties (see above). Sadly, the hottie seen above is not in a story but is on one of the bumper pages between the stories. Still, nude elbow bondage. Damn!