Oh no I got a bunch of “what the fuck are goreans” comments and I thought they were more well known and now I’m forced to explain them.
“Gor” is a fantasy setting in which the men are all buff shirtless warriors and almost all women are their willing slaves so it’s like Fifty Shades of Gray meets Conan the Barbarian and it actually has this massive BDSM roleplaying fandom of people who sometimes consider themselves “goreans” on like an otherkin sort of level.
I don’t even know what the books are like, just that the fandom used to be a popular trolling target in the 90′s internet, that it still exists primarily on Second Life and that the average person into it as a fetish lifestyle is over 50.
All I do know about the books, because this is obviously the kind of information I would know at a minimum, is that the planet Gor is secretly controlled by giantgenderless golden ant monsters who manipulate the humans into having these strict gender roles and class systems specifically to keep them from inventing guns and eventually nuclear weapons. They’re particularly afraid of the intelligence of human women, which explains basically everything.
I don’t know what the author was trying to say here because from what I know he detailed Gorean culture like it was his ultimate dream world.
Maybe a shadow government of bugs is just one of his political ideals. I can understand that, but I think the real bug government would be a lot cooler and nicer than that.
My intense Study of Fetish Lifestyles when I was like, 17, never told me about the Golden Bug Overlords and I feel cheated
Yeah I think Goreans clearly aren’t doing it right if there isn’t at least one person roleplaying a bee guy who isn’t there for any of the sex stuff but peeks in on them to make sure there aren’t any guns and nods approvingly
The story I’ve heard was that the earlier books were fantasy adventure with a light bondage element, but the latter was what readers responded to, so the publishers ordered Norman to bump it up.
Mooncustafer 