Uhh…
I’ve heard of this before but I’d never taken the time to read it.
So I did. And… I’m struggling a little bit.
I… it’s… well. I don’t think I get it.
I’m all, like, what the FUCK is it even about? What’s the moral, the message? I understand that buried somewhere in here is some Master/slave epiphany but….
Where?? What??
Do I need watered?
I can find all kinds of material to snark but deep and meaningful M/s significance?? Was it *made* to be snarked? Cuz.. that I get.
Yeah. It’s not real right? I mean, I know it’s not *real* but I mean, was this really in the book and people really read it and really find something in it?
Well. You tell me then cuz I am as lost as I can possibly be.
~~*~~
HOUSEPLANTS OF GOR
The spider plant cringed as its owner brought forth the watering can. “I am a spider plant!” it cried indignantly. “How dare you water me before my time! Guards!” it called. “Guards!”
Borin, its owner, placed the watering can on the table and looked at it. “You will be watered,” he said.
“You do not dare to water me!” laughed the plant.
“You will be watered,” said Borin.
“Do not water me!” wept the plant.
“You will be watered,” said Borin.
I watched this exchange. Truly, I believed the plant would be watered. It was plant, and on Gor it had no rights. Perhaps on Earth, in its permissive society, which distorts the true roles of all beings, which forces both plant and waterer to go unh appy and constrained, which forbids the fulfillment of owner and houseplant, such might not happen. Perhaps there, it would not be watered. But it was on Gor now, and would undoubtedly feel its true place, that of houseplant. It was plant. It would be watered at will. Such is the way with plants.
Borin picked up the watering can, and muchly watered the plant. The plant cried out. “No, Master! Do not water me!” The master continued to water the plant. “Please, Master,” begged the plant, “do not water me!” The master continued to water the plant. It was plant. It could be watered at will.
The plant sobbed muchly as Borin laid down the watering can. It was not pleased. Too, it was wet. But this did not matter. It was plant.
“You have been well watered,” said Borin.
“Yes,” said the plant, “I have been well watered.” Of course, it could be watered by its master at will.
“I have watered you well,” said Borin.
“Yes, master,” said the plant. “You have watered your plant well. I am plant, and as such I should be watered by my master.”
The cactus plant next to the spider plant shuddered. It attempted to cover its small form with its small arms and small needles. “I am plant,” it said wonderingly. “I am of Earth, but for the first time, I feel myself truly plantlike. On Earth, I w as able to control my watering. I often scorned those who would water me. But they were weak, and did not see my scorn for what it was, the weak attempt of a small plant to protect itself. Not one of the weak Earth waterers would dare to water a plant if it did not wish it. But on Gor,” it shuddered, “on Gor it is different. Here, those who wish to water will water their plants as they wish. But strangely, I feel myself most plantlike when I am at the mercy of a strong Gorean master, who may water m e as he pleases.”
“I will now water you,” said Borin, the cactus’s Gorean master.
The cactus did not resist being watered. Perhaps it was realizing that such watering was its master’s to control. Too, perhaps it knew that this master was far superior to those of Earth, who would not water it if it did not wish to be watered.
The cactus’s watering had been finished. The spider plant looked at it.
“I have been well watered,” it said.
“I, too, have been well watered,” said the cactus.
“My master has watered me well,” said the spider plant.
“My master, too, has watered me well,” said the cactus.
“I am to be placed in a hanging basket on the porch,” said the spider plant.
“I, too, am to be placed in a hnaging basket on the porch,” said the cactus.
“I wish you well,” said the spider plant.
“I, too, wish you well,” said the cactus.
“Tal,” said the spider plant.
“Tal, too,” said the cactus.
I did not think that the spider plant would object to being watered by its master again. For it realized that it was plant, and that here, unlike on Earth, it was likely to be owned and watered by many masters.
~~*~~
Such is the way. *sage nod*
wtf?
Tags: humor
Uncategorized | kaya | 
Wednesday March 18th, 2009 10:19am
HA!! I love Houseplants of Gor. I wish they’d kept it going because holy crap it was funny.
Did you see the one about Vacationing on Gor? Or Job Ads of Gor? :)
PS!!!
I NEED HERMIT CRAB HELPS PLZ…
i just moved my TWO hermit crabs.. yep the first to I came home with are the only ones who survived, but the ones I got the last time were part of a shipment where they whole shipment died. I didn’t kill them. Stress of being moved did.
ANYWAY I moved them into a HUGE 55 gallon aquarium. I put some fake plants in there, some hemp netting to climb on, some of that wood with holes in it they like, some HUGE pieces of drift wood that I covered with netting, and I put a fresh water pool and a salt water pool in there.. (bowls, 3.5 inches deep that they can climb out of) plus shallow dishes of water as well so they can bathe or drink. I put bubblers into the deep bowls so they can get air, plus it puts oxygen in the air of the tank. I put sand in the bottom and sprinkled beach sand with broken sea shells and stuff in it all around so they can have that natural calcium. Plus, I put some sand dollars in there. Covered the top of the thing with screen and saran wrap and stuck a heating lamp on top of it. At night I put on a lamp that’s supposed to be like the moonlight. I know it’s humid in there because the glass keeps fogging up.. plus the hemp netting is wet (and mold mildew resistant) so it’s keeping things moist.
Sound good? Or should I do something else? They seem to like it. They’re exploring and stuff, but is it like, health wise, OK?
HALP MUH CRABZ PLZ
Kitten
Are you kidding? That’s hermit crab heaven! I bet they are the happiest little crabbies in the world. You should post pictures. *nods*
Good! Awesome. I keep thinking they’re going to kill themselves on the netting but the little guys seem to know what’s up. They climb to the highest points and clamp themselves onto the hooks that hold up the net and just sleep… then while sleeping, they let go and fall into the SAFETY NET I put underneath the first net because I’m paranoid. :)
I’ll take some photos after it’s not fogged up. I’ll have to peel the plastic back to feed them soon and right now it’s just all foggy and you can’t see anything.
I’m afraid to buy more crabs because I don’t want to make these guys sick, so they’ll be my only crabby kids unless I find some really healthy ones somewhere. I might have to go back to the place where I got these.. and I’m only going to deal with the gigantic ones like these.
I never had any problems with sick ones. That’s really too bad that you had a run of bad luck with them. :(
Do they change shells a lot? That was my favorite part. So picky about it, it was just too cute.
My current obsession is dwarf african frogs (that I am again rescuing from certain death on the shelf of Wal-mart) but there a breeze to care for. Toss em in the fish tank and boom- happy frogs.
I cant wait to see the pictures. I miss the crabs.
What the hell kind of jungle animal Wal-Marts do you have? The only animals our Walmart has are these pitiful Bettas and some kind “glow under blacklight” fish that cost like 6.00 each.
I have the two crabs, Fred and Walter, my two dogs, Bunny and BadAss, and a colony of snails I rescued from my yard, and my two Uromastyx Lizards, Zoe and Zeke. They sleep and are only active if the temperature in the cage reaches 90 degrees. They bask in 110 hot spots in the tank. I love them. Zeke is 4 inches long and male. Zoe is TEN inches long and female. they’re the same age. I think he’s the Dominant one because he sits on top of her constantly and licks her eyeballs.. she tries to shake him off, but never does and if she gets too feisty, he’ll hit her in the head with his little hand.
Fun times.
“I think he’s the Dominant one because he sits on top of her constantly and licks her eyeballs.. she tries to shake him off, but never does and if she gets too feisty, he’ll hit her in the head with his little hand.”
Omg, is that funny! Thanks for the giggles kitten!
I wanna get it on video, DK. He’s just sitting on her back, licking her eyeballs and every time he does, she’ll try to shake him off. When she stop shaking, he hits her on the head…. and immediately licks her eyeball.
:)
The first time I read “Houseplants of Gor” I about wet myself. Yes, it is a satire on Gor philosophy as well as makin-fun of John Norman’s rather odd, choppy style of writing. Just put “fuck” in place of “water” and think of people instead of plants and it makes more sense. :)
You’ve never read the Gor books, Kaya? God, I read those books in my teens and it was the first time it truly dawned on me that I got turned on by thinking about female subjugation. I was totally embarrassed and totally turned on all at the same time. There was no internet back then, none of this information we have so much of now, so those books just blew my mind. I thought there was something horribly wrong with me, lol.
I was reading the series with some friends and family and everyone else was like, wow, it’s just terrible that all the women on Gor are slaves!
And I was like, “Oh yeah, right so terrible, awful, really…how degrading”
*desperately hoping nobody noticed I was stumbling over my words*
HA!
When I went through my Staunch Feminist Period, I threw all the books out. I tried to read them again a few years ago but I just can’t handle it; they are badly written to my eyes now and I cannot read without rolling my eyes at the premise and Norman’s writing.
Tal! I’m off to be watered! ;P (Not really but maybe tonight! Whee!)
C’mon now!
A cactus. A spider plant. On a planet where there are sleens.
Fakery!
-snicker-
well, I KNOW that is a ‘FAKE’ Gor novel (nods wisely) – norman would NEVER have allowed a houseplant to use the word “I”… it would have been NOT ““Yes,” said the plant, “I have been well watered.” Of course, it could be watered by its master at will. ” BUT “Yes” said the plant” “This plant has been well watered. This plant could be watered by thir plant’s master at will” and THEN it would bow down its little trailing baby spiders.
yup.
That plant should have been all humble, but she wasn’t.
He’ll spray her with weed killer later and let her know what’s up. Threaten her with a weed whacker. Expose her delicate roots and stroke them with the tip of his indoor gardener’s spade before plunging it’s cool, rough, water rusted length into her soft warm tropical soil….
I’m getting hot, ya’ll
Actually, the slaves of Gor rarely used third person in the books. Generally speaking, it was only forced upon them when they forgot their place and to further their objectification.
I’ve read the first 16-17 books and there is only one mention of third person speech that I can remember and even then it was only to exhibit the occasional use of it as punishment. Third person is an “internetism”. As is the slave position known as “karta”.
This is what I mean about people assuming all people interested in Gor are idiots. They take the stereotypical “internet kajira” and assume that even the books were that way. It’s just not true.
Though I’ll freely admit the books are horribly written. There’s a couple in which John Norman repeated whole chapters and didn’t edit it out. You’d think a professor would do a better job than that. Heh.
I can actually see some guy who has a plant fetish doing this. :-| He’d be all like, “That’s right plant, I’m gonna water you and there is nothing you can do about it. And once I’m done.. it’s to the hanging basket with you, because you’ve been a naughty little plant haven’t you?”
You should go see the Gor sims on Second Life. My owner sees it as a badge of honour that he got banned from more than one.
You guys are hysterical! :D
I’m sorry I’m being a comment hog (sorry sorry Kaya!) but I HAVE to share this link to another satire on the Gor books called “Gay Bejeweled Nazi Bikers of Gor. I’m up to Chapter Four and it’s just killing me how this author is skewering Norman’s style. Even Norman would just have to laugh!
(Note, there is a stupid “age check page” before you can get in and you have to “sign” your name but I just put blah blah in there)
http://books.adultfanfiction.net/story.php?no=544176437
Oh Lordy. I surfed to that link on my phone while Master and I were out for dinner and I laughed so hard I snorted. Master too my phone away and said “I can’t take you anywhere….”
:D
Hahaha!! That’s just brilliant!
Omg, I clicked that link and the first page was painful to read! Just hilarious as making fun of Norman’s writing style. Thanks Amber!
You know… the Gor books turned me on. Really turned me on. And the first several were pretty good sci-fi fantasy stories, which is the kind of trashy reads I like. I was quite annoyed when I found the Earth People of Gor, & my trashy sci-fi novels were ruined for me. Bastards.
Kaya,
Guilty admission here. I loved the Gor novels way back when. It was as close to porn as I could get back then. But, how many of you are aware of Norman’s non-fiction book, Imaginative Sex. Yes, John Normal wrote a guide to sexual roleplaying with over 100 “scenes” one could act out with a partner, if you were so inclined. Of course, the vast majority were male Dom, female sub based, though there were a few that were niether and some that were female Dom. Some of the fantasies were described well enough to get a 20 something guy off (like that would be hard ;) )
Dave
I have a copy of Imaginative Sex. :) I read it before I knew about Gor.
No insight to share here – I avoid Gor at every opportunity. I’ve turned away many potential subs because of this too – they felt their “Gorean training” was a plus. Ick.
What is “Gorean training?”
Being trained in the ways and styles of Gor, the fictional BDSM novels by John Norman.
Oh, I imagined that! I meant what does it entail. Could you give me some example? I never read a Gor novel, so I was wondering.
wow.. okay.
Well, Gor is the Counter Earth. It’s a planet that can see earth but cannot be seen from earth (I think). Tarl Cabot is transported there to see his relative who has been living there for quite a while. He finds on Gor that “natural order” still exists and women are subjugated to the whims of men. Free Women, cover themselves similarly to Iraqi or Afghan women. Males are kind of “in charge”. There are castes that denote a person’s trade or skill. And then there are slaves who are mostly women abducted from earth by these aliens and brought to Gor to be bought and sold in open market. Also, warfare is sort of like flag football on Gor.
So basically Gorean BOOKS indicate that not that many people own slaves because it’s expensive to own a slave. Slaves come in a variety of types, but the most common (online) is the pleasure slave who’s job is to be pleasing.
On the inside, from the perspective of the books, Gor considers itself unique but that uniqueness kind of only exists in fantasy because in reality, it’s not feasible to live Gorean life the way it is in the books. To live it in reality, it must be greatly modified (because while on gor, having no rights or having rights stripped away at the whim of a man is inherent, on earth we cannot sell or sign our rights away permanently except in philosophy or in theory.)
Gorean living in reality boils down to a strict TPE with certain aspects of Gor like maybe some of the languages, the positions and things of that nature. If we were to strip away all of the actual trappings of it like the names of positions, the word kajira (which is Gorean for slave), and things of that nature, you’d be left with a Total Power Exchange or Absolute Power Exchange or Power Transfer or whatever they’re calling it this week when He’s in charge and the slave is not.
The degree of Gorean-ness varies from couple to couple and from book to book. The books often contradict themselves, too. Like “slaves aren’t allowed to read or write” it says in some books, but in another, a girl wore the blue color of scribes and dictated her Master’s finances and ran his business. In one book it says that slaves cannot rule over others, but in another story arch, Tarl Cabot allows his slave to take her Father’s throne and rule over (I think Ar) by day as long as she was his slave at night.
It also indicates that men coming from Earth would be weakened on Gor because of it’s gravity, but Jason Marshall came to Gor and became a fighting slave who actually won his freedom (much like roman Gladiators who might win freedom if favored in a fight.)
The think I DID like about the Gorean Books is the use of Earth Cultures. It’s sort of like stargate, where you know basically the whole universe is populated by cultures that aliens abducted as slaves from Earth. Those cultures were cultivated on other worlds,etc..
anyway, read a couple of books (not webpages) and you fan find out more about Gor.
I think I know too much about it.
Thanks! I enjoyed reading what you wrote! I had seen the term “Gorean slave” many times before, and knew that it referred to the books, but I didn’t know the details, whether the slaves were any different from other types of fantasy slaves. Thanks for the explanation!
It is parody, and the most interesting thing about parody is that very often it shows that well balanced people can laugh at themselves. So you don’t get Gorean Philosophy..so what? nor do half the people role playing Gor in Second Life and else where. If people had a genuine care to understand something, even something they decided to reject they would put actual effort into it. Folks don’t, much easier to snark and snigger in ignorance I guess.
For any one with a genuine interest they could always read the books, or at very least visit http://www.silkandsteel.com:8080/viewforum.php?f=2
Might also help to visit http://plato.stanford.edu/
http://plato.stanford.edu/
http://www.silkandsteel.com:8080/viewforum.php?f=2
Parody often shows a healthy ability to laugh at one’s self.
It is parody, and the most interesting thing about parody is that very often it shows that well balanced people can laugh at themselves. So you don’t get Gorean Philosophy..so what? nor do half the people role playing Gor in Second Life and else where. If people had a genuine care to understand something, even something they decided to reject they would put actual effort into it. Folks don’t, much easier to snark and snigger in ignorance I guess.
For any one with a genuine interest they could always read the books
Anything that makes fun of Gor is alright by me. As far as I’m concerned it is a load of crap that deserves to be made fun of, and it is piss poor porn also! God I hate John Norman.
Please do not think that there is anything deep and meaningful to be gotten from this excellent example of satire and irony (except that the ideas of the Gor books are very fun to mock!). It’s like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal — written as if in all seriousness, but really deeply satirical. Like it says on the above Wiki page: “Readers unacquainted with its reputation as a satirical work often do not immediately realize that Swift was not seriously proposing cannibalism and infanticide, nor would readers unfamiliar with the satires of Horace and Juvenal recognize that Swift’s essay follows the rules and structure of Latin satires.” This is the same exact thing.
Oh, this is a good day! When I get to compare “Houseplants of Gor” with Swift’s “A Modest Proposal.” This, right here, is what I got my degree in Comparative Literature for! (Indeed, it doesn’t do me much other good!) :D
When I was in High School, we had to write a satire based on the model of A Modest Proposal. We did it in groups. Well, we wrote about euthanasia for people over the age of 60. We’d save the money from elder are and retirement funds would go back into the economy to keep it bouyant… all sorts of stuff.
Yeah.. well, we WON! Yay!! and then they published our “proposal” in the local small town newspaper. They of course didn’t explain what a satire was or that this was in fact a satire. Holy Crap. Our names were in the paper and people thought that we were promoting elder killing.
NICE…
The retraction, a week later, did not help…
ahh.. funtimes. :)
In high school, we had an assignment to write our own “Modest Proposal”s and so I did a piece on how it was just best to stuff ourselves with nothing but junk food, because the more crap we ate, the stronger we’d make ourselves. I even quoted that philosophical master, Al Bundy, from his monologue about “extolling the virtues of the lowly cockroach, and how we should all emulate the eating habits of this noble insect.” And etc., going on about how eating nothing but Twinkies, with all their preservatives, would help us survive nuclear war.
I thought it was fucking brilliant. I did it in the best Swiftian style I could.
I got a “D” on it … the teacher said, in all seriousness, “The point of the assignment was that you were supposed to give an example of irony….”
*headdesk* HE DIDN’T GET IT! *repeat headdesk* As you can tell, this still amazes and annoys me to this day!
oh, gor. you amuse me so.
how anyone can take that shit seriously is beyond me.
That was so fucking funny! I read a few Gor novels…
Still waiting to find the book where that diety insect egg is found and his first female is recovered (Thalia…Thalina?)