Subject: STORY: EMMA AT SCHOOL by Rosewood - Redelurk/Commentary
From: Rosewood
Date: 1999/06/01
[First of all, a big thank you to Laura for acting as my intermediary. I've been trying for months to find a reliable way of getting back onto the newsgroup, but have had little success. However, I've been lurking around in the background and it's good to see the community still flourishing. This delurk was written before I approached Laura for help - and refers to her website; I've left my words unedited.]
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I still have a fair bit of new writing to post, but it seems from comments I've read here and there (he says, trying to sound modest and unfazed) that some of you have been waiting for the conclusion of the "Emma At School" series with mild anticipation... oh, let's cut to the chase: quite a few people have said some really nice stuff about this particular series - and I LOVE IT! Call me an unreconstructed egoist if you will, but it's great getting good feedback on your stuff, isn't it?
There are two final episodes and an epilogue.
But before I get to the story (yeah - skip ahead if you must... you can always pretend you'll come back and read this bit later), just a few words about why it's taken so long to complete.
The fact is, I got stuck when I got to the birching scene. I tried writing that episode several times way back when I first posted the story, but I didn't like any of my attempts.
The reason, I guess, is that I've no experience of this form of punishment. My adult life has been pretty much vanilla - but I was (unlucky? lucky??) enough to go to private British schools in the 1970s just before corporal punishment was finally phased out and I know what the cane, slipper, et al feel like. Not to mention my dad's hand. (Oh, and for the record, those who have read my stuff in the past will know that I'm implacably opposed to the use of corporal punishment in schools and other institutions, and would view the real life practice of ritualised familial punishment of the kind found in my stories equally repellent. I would never use any form of corporal punishment with any child in my care. This is about my fantasies and my (rather confused) sexuality... and sharing those fantasies with this glorious e-community)
However, the birch is something I know about only from the odd article and other people's stories. There tends to be something of a consensus that the cane (applied to the bare bottom) is more painful than the birch. I couldn' t possible disagree, not possessing the required personal experience. Yet I like the idea of an "ultimate" punishment, beyond the cane, to incorporate in my stories. So (whatever the reality) "my" birch is more painful than the cane. (and "yar boo sucks" to anyone who says different)
All of this made the birching episode difficult to write. People are always going on about buckets of salt water and bindings and so on... and I have not the faintest idea what all of this is about. So I've just made it up. I'm sorry if salt water doesn't really make the twigs harder (though I'd be more than happy to receive correction (!) from those in the know)... I couldn't very well just say it made them wet now, could I?
Anyway, enough of this. To the story.
I see that Laura's added a brief but thoughtful commentary on the series. She makes the point that some of the original episodes contain incest and non-consensual sex - please don't read them if you are likely to find this offensive or (worse) disturbing. Neither themes are found in the new episodes, though there is an element of non-consensual sex in the "old" episode 25. (When I first posted the series, I included markers to warn of scenes including either of these two elements so that readers could skip over them. These markers don't appear in the copies of the story on Laura's website, so you'll have to use your judgement. As a guide, episodes 11, 19 & 20 had scenes involving elements of non-consensual sex and episodes 12, 13, 14, 16, 19, 20 & 22 scenes involving elements of incest. The two marked with * are the two with scenes which, if I were writing the story now, I would probably remove because of their severity. The non-consensual sex scene in Episode 25 is denoted by the marker NCS+ at the start and NCS at then end. It's fairly mild.)
I fully understand Laura's uneasiness with these scenes, and I share it. Personally, I find most of my spanking fantasies disturbing - any of them would be sexual abuse in real life.
I will stress once again, at the risk of sounding repetitive and defensive (not your intention, I'm sure, Laura), that these stories are fantasy. Non-consensual sex and incest are often present in my fantasies and, with some misgivings, I sometimes include them in my stories - though rather less now than when I was writing Emma. Our fantasies are born, I guess, out of the real and imagined development of our sexuality on the long path from birth to adulthood - and we seem have little control over them. I share the darker aspects of mine in the trust that readers understand the apparent contradiction between fantasising about (for example) non-consensual sex, and abhorring its occurrence in real life. I recognise that some readers will find the material disturbing or offensive, and I try to warn of its presence. I am aware, of course, that we have survivors of abuse in our community... and perpetrators too. It's one of the great dilemmas of contributing to a newsgroup such as this that, on the one hand, for many of us it's the only way to reach people who share an (often important) aspect of our sexuality and, on the other, that we have no control over who has access to it.
I'll stop there. If anyone wishes to develop this theme, please feel free.
I hope the conclusion of the story brings pleasure, in one way or another, to at least some of you....