As a BDSM practitioner, I do take a healthy interest in a lot of other aspects related to human sexuality. One of the major things that intrigues me is that a lot of people are aroused and stimulated by porn, but I am yet to find an equal number of erotica readers in India. It also intrigues and almost amuses me, when people classify my articles published on In Plainspeak as erotica. Perhaps the reason is that we do not have much contextualised erotica available to read in India.
Apart from ‘Savita Bhabhi’, ‘Mast Ram’, the legendary ‘Kamasutra’ and contemporary works by Paromita Vohra, who I really admire, and some work by Devdutt Pattnaik, who I am a fangirl of, there is so little that we can read. And in any case, most of the work by these two contemporary authors is written for purposes of insight and education, and not to incite or ignite human passion. To add to this, whatever Indian websites for stories there are, have extremely poorly written pieces. Most are confessions, sleazy, cheap incidents of incest and taboo. None of them are great stories to read. Hence, the need to resort to erotica being written by people overseas. It is in this context that I am going to review the work of Ellie, one of the writers who I follow on Literotica.com.
Ellie’s writings are mostly BDSM-centric. Some set in an imaginary world, others in our world with fictitious characters, and some even in a supernatural world. However, almost as a rule, all these stories include elements of BDSM, fantasies, fetishes and even some mildly taboo subjects.
For instance, the ‘Bella’ series is about an older Dominant and a younger submissive. The young girl is nurtured into the lifestyle and then gets married to the Dominant who dies in a revenge attack. Bella grieves, learns the ropes of life and finally finds the love of her life, a rich career, and a life of success, support, and love. Pretty real-world in terms of the characters, but fictional in terms of how complicated the lives of the characters are.
On the other hand, the ‘Twins of Trallis’ and some of her stand-alone stories (there are not many), are based in the supernatural world of dancers, supernatural characters, and so on, where you get fascinated by the plot and how intricately BDSM, humiliation, control and other fetishes get woven into the dynamic.
Most of her work is elaborate, usually a series and then sequels and then a set of spin-off series that spawn off the main series and then they merge into each other. The characters are very detailed, the scenes hot and steamy, and the circumstances that lead to those scenes and others, quite intricate.
While a lot of her stories do touch upon the Male Dominant-female submissive dynamic, each of her female characters is quite strong in their own way. There are women in her work who are rescued princesses and evolve into goddesses. There are other women who are strong to begin with and grow and eventually start embracing their “feminine” side without feeling threatened by their vulnerability. Then there are also women, who are on egoistical power trips and go downhill eventually.
Similarly, she has male characters that are douchebags and evolve into mature, respectful and yet Dominant men. She also sketches other men who are douchebags and are eliminated as characters because they won’t change their ways. There are also the tentative men who make mistakes, see their folly and then evolve slowly, while treading with caution.
She builds an entire world of people. There are intricately related families in her stories. There are friends, ‘frenemies’ and then of course, there are enemies as well. There is passionately demonstrated joy, sorrow, solidarity, love, sex, and a whole range of human emotions that Ellie brings out through her work.
One of the reasons her work may inspire a lot of readers is that in the end, it always gives some hope. There’s a story of redemption, a story of growth, a story of how you can be better, a winner. Every character that remains by the end of the story has something to win and feel happy about. There are no loose ends, though she’s very crafty about bringing to life again a supposedly dead character in some other series, or a sequel.
The kind of language Ellie uses is easy to understand, gracefully flowing, arousing and filthy at the right places and in right proportions. She is an enigmatic writer who uses crisp as well as elaborate sentences together and yet manages to keep your interest.
If only something as elaborate as this could be written in an Indian context or in a vernacular language, I guess I’d be really proud of whoever wrote it. However, the dilemma of how to use Hindi in sexual discourse is a subject for discussion for another time. Till then, have fun reading erotica on literotica.com
Cover Imahge: CC BY-NC 2.0
