Story Discussion: 13th June 2008 "Brigit" by oggbashan

[oggbashan]

Brigit is the first of three stories, Brigit, Brigit Too and Brigit's Babies about a Celtic Earth Goddess and her interaction with one man and then with his partner.

They are in the SciFi/Fantasy Category but have a femdom slant.

My intention was to show how a Goddess might work in the late 20th/early 21st century to achieve her objectives.

I intend to continue with the series but would like some critical analysis of the story/stories so far..

Og

 

[Pure]

some notes:

Thanks for contributing, ogg.!

The theme is a goddess' interventions, first on behalf of another Brigit and then to help the man who'd helped Brigit. The writing is clear and grammatical. The story flows well, and has no 'fat.'

It reminds me a bit of the 'touched by an angel' series on tv, where an angel intervenes to help someone. In the present case, the woman is apparently starving, and the narrator helps her.

I'm not sure why it's revealed she wasn't actually starving, nor was her house clean. But in any case, the intervention is without bumps.
Indeed there are no 'bad guys'. There is a curious absence of tension.

As to the second intervention, i find it a bit stretched and at times pornographic. I recognize she's a pagan goddess and thus a great lay, but the detail would seem a bit excessive. The pussy worship seems more for the kinky male reader than anything. It's femdom, but a bad [male oriented] cliche that in 'serving', the paying male client gets to chow down on good pussy, rather than have his balls kicked and get turned out.

Essentially it's a kind of 'feel good' story, so the narrator could be fixed (have his probs solved by the goddess) in more a romance-novel way that a lit-porn way.

Again the second intervention is without a hitch and somewhat flat.
Personally I find the quid pro quo at bit offputting, i.e. 'You fixed things for [human]Brigit, now i'll fix your cock.' The reward could have taken longer and been more intangible.

I think you have to decide your genre. The degree of simplicity is like a child's story of this century. Easy fixes for hardship; happy ending.

If it's written for adults, the rudiments of 'unfolding' have to be in place; the reader needs to learn things and be surprised, not just see a problem fixed in steps A, B, and C. If it were essentially a romance novel, the porno detail would have to be curbed; but even here an element of surprise and unexpected would be needed. It's too obvious and predictable that the narrator is going to get properly laid by the goddess. Better that he fall in love with a human and have his powers restored.

In many ways well told, but lacking in dramatic turns and basic story structure (tension, resolution; task, obstacles, success). I would rather have had the narrator find out, with the next lover that his cock works, than have to earth goddess stand and talk to him about his newly induced erection.

 

[manyeyedhydra]

Hi, cheers for putting the story up.

I wanted to comment earlier, but was a bit stuck for what to say.

I liked it, but it didn't stand out for me. Unfortunately I wasn't exactly sure why, which isn't exactly helpful I know and partly the reason I didn't comment sooner.

I think Pure might be right about a lack of conflict. I like the idea - a modern day goddess intervenes in little ways to improve people's lives - but it was possibly a little too straightforward. She gets him to help someone and she in turn helps him. To the girl he helps he's almost godlike in his own right in the way he effortlessly cuts through bureaucratic red tape to resolve the situation. Maybe that's part of the problem, I don't know. Maybe it should have been more difficult (and you could also have some good old black-humoured fun pointing out how ridiculous these situations can be sometimes).

I'm not sure how else to introduce conflict. Maybe make the girl he rescues a little more grating, but then its hard to give her the sympathy she warrants.

I'm always a bit wary of introducing conflict. I don't watch much TV nowadays because it seems that most drama writers are told the way to introduce conflict is to put a bunch of shouty people in a room together and see who can be the loudest.

Maybe Brigit could be more cryptic. She's a goddess. What's perfectly clear to her could be completely incomprehensible to our tiny human minds.

Gah! I wish I could be more helpful.

I'll try and get to the other stories later.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

It's so refreshing to see an Ogg story here, though I must confess, this one's not real successful for me. Ogg's stated purpose is to show how a Celtic goddess might work in contemporary society to achieve her objectives, and he does this in a delightfully clever way, lampooning modern bureaucracy. The problem is, in the course of the lampoon, the goddess Brigit becomes a Goddess of Bureaucracy herself, and a Goddess of Bureaucracy is a contradiction in terms, and thus sweeps away any of the fairy-tale joy we associate with the fairy tales and magic of gods and goddesses in tales of this kind. What we're left with is a kind of Soviet style morality play which is singularly flat, joyless, and, for all its happy endings, dissapointingly glum.

This is actually two stories and they're not really related. The first in a social drama concerning the poverty-stricken Brigit and the way Raymond helps her get her life straightened out and in so doing brings about some much-needed changes in the way things are done in his part of town. There's some interesting stuff in here about how social policy is set and how it's designed to fail, but this is more social engineering than it is fiction and it's not enough to carry a story. It doesn't really concern the motives and desires of characters we care about and how they interact with each other. It isn't fiction.

With that taken care of we move on to the second part, which is about Raymond getting his reward for helping Brigit (both the Goddess and the person) by having his sexual potency restored to him. This is pretty straightforward sex and kind of sweet. Once again, though, the action occurs to lone characters. There's sexual contact of a very casual nature between the Goddess Brigit and Raymond, but nothing of any emotional nature, no suspense or tension.

More than that, Brigit the person from the first part doesn't show up. (I really thought she would.) So all the action that happens in this story happens to isolated, individual people. No connections are made, no emotions shared, no interactions occur. Everyone's isolated from everyone else. For me, this gives the story a very bleak and lonely feeling, almost tragic. We're left with Raymond getting erections for his dead wife, and Brigit (the woman) living her dismal, single life, and Brigit (the Goddess) going back to hanging around by the side of the road, doing whatever little good it is she manages to do in the world, letting mortal men drink of her breast milk so they don't get colds. Raymond has affected these bureaucratic changes. Other than that, what's different in the world? (Oh. He gets erections now)

This is a story that, to me, is in serious need of magic and joy, of ups and downs. I think it's a great premise—Brigit coming back and intervening on behalf of the way some poor woman in forced to live—but at the same time, I think that to be a goddess of women is to care about a lot more than just their lifestyles. What does it mean to be a "Goddess of Women"? Surely more than that! I think a Goddess of Women is capable of proving who she is by more than just setting some wood on fire like a stage magician. I think she would rip things up when she came to town, turn lives upside down, shake things up.

The writing is intentionally flat and affectless as a way of playing coy with the appearance of the goddess, but in a story in which there's so little other drama, I think this backfires. Raymond is too quick to believe Brigit is who she says she is and there's too little concrete detail throughout. The setting has the reality of a legoland. If you're going to bring in the fantastic, you want to make sure the commonplace is nailed down firmly.

I have to comment too on the pathos of Raymond's dead wife, which casts a sad pall over the entire piece, towards what end I'm not sure. It kept on making me feel that his death was immanent too, and that bothered me.

 

[oggbashan]

Thank you.

I was slightly concerned about exposing my work in the Story Discussion Circle because I have rarely visited this forum. I became more worried when nothing happened for the first couple of days.

I am delighted with the detailed criticism so far. Brigit is one of my highest rated stories but I wasn't wholly convinced that I had done justice to the characters. I have some more Brigit stories in outline and early draft form that I had intended to use to develop her character. Now I think I should have done some development sooner. Perhaps I can correct that by stories taking place with Brigit at the same time as the existing ones. After all a Goddess can be in several places at once.

So far you have given me considerable food for thought, not just about the Brigit series, but about some pending stories that are being written.

I don't think Brigit is going to let me stop at three stories.

Og

 

[oggbashan]

A small response to this -

I have to comment too on the pathos of Raymond's dead wife, which casts a sad pall over the entire piece, towards what end I'm not sure. It kept on making me feel that his death was immanent too, and that bothered me.

It was my intention that Raymond was actually depressed in the first story, as well as physically unfit and impotent.

Brigit's intervention was intended to restore his potency but also to give him a purpose in life. That could give light at the end of the tunnel of his depression. The second story includes his physical improvement as well as sexual satisfaction. However his depression is still latent even in story three. He has to be kick-started into action whereas he should be capable of finding challenges by himself. I didn't intend Raymond to become wholly clear of depression until story five...

Og

 

[dr_mabeuse]

A small response to this -



It was my intention that Raymond was actually depressed in the first story, as well as physically unfit and impotent.

Brigit's intervention was intended to restore his potency but also to give him a purpose in life. That could give light at the end of the tunnel of his depression. The second story includes his physical improvement as well as sexual satisfaction. However his depression is still latent even in story three. He has to be kick-started into action whereas he should be capable of finding challenges by himself. I didn't intend Raymond to become wholly clear of depression until story five...

Og

That makes some difference then, if he's going to be a recurring character. But I still think, if both of them are going to be recurring characters, Brigit's going to have to make a splashier entrance.

I'd hate to see you waste a lot of time on the "I can't believe this" incredulity of a goddess-comes-to-earth story, but surely there must be some other goddess-ish qualities she could have that would impress him and also serve to flesh out her character and give her more presence and interest. As it is, she seems like such a lumpen-goddess in this episode.

But you say that these are some of your highest-rated stories, so you must be doing something right. I'm kind of loathe to give advice, therefore. I do like your idea of having several contemporaneous stories going on at the same time. That could be great fun, and fleshing out Brigit will only help.

 

[Penelope Street]

Hi Og,

Thanks for sharing your story with us!

Call me simple and sentimental, but I enjoyed your little feel-good tale even though there were a few areas where a little change my have heightened my enjoyment.

Foremost among things I'd have liked a little different would be the pace. After the opening scene, it all seemed to move so fast; I never got a chance to feel really involved, if that makes sense. One moment there's poor Brigit the mortal with a baby and no food and several paragraphs later Raymond has seen to the needs of every downtrodden woman in town. It's all just a little too easy and a little too fast. When characters don't appear to struggle or suffer a bit of angst on the way to overcoming their obstacles, the result can be a little less than satisfying.

A distant second for me is the erotic scene, which felt a bit gratuitous- as if it was included simply because the story appears on an erotic site? I could have done without the scene entirely. I think I might have enjoyed the tale even more had Brigit the goddess not reappeared at all.

I had mixed feelings about the narrator's voice: On the one hand, there is a blasé air to it all, like Raymond really isn't all that excited about telling his own story. On the other hand, the frank style feels so appropriately British, so I can't really say it's a weakness.

I'm not sure what 'femdom slant' means, but I didn't find Brigit particularly domineering, especially for a goddess. Of course, everyone has their own ideas when it comes to a dominant persona, but to me Brigit seems more like a supernatural social worker and less like a Celtic deity. For instance, hitch-hiking is rather passive act; it's really a form of begging, isn't it? Is that any way for a dominant goddess to make her appearance? Why not appear in the road in directly in front of Raymond's car and expect, or even demand, that he stop? Of course, this might go against the apparent rule that she needs to be a welcome guess, but since when do deities need an invitation?

Ok, those are my quibbles and they really are on the minor side. It's a well-written and touching tale, and I can see why it's a favorite with readers. Even though I might have preferred the story with the ingredients altered just a pinch, I still gave it a five and was curious enough to begin reading the sequel too- and that's what one really wants for in an opening chapter, isn't it?