Identity

Back in July 2025, the Online Safety Act came into force in the UK, with the stated purpose of protecting children from adult content on the Internet. Age verification sounds like a good thing, of course… if for some reason parents aren’t able to act as parents.

Thing is, though, authoritarians will always tell you to think of the children. (“See? This is a noble goal… so you have to surrender some of your freedoms. You don’t want children to be harmed, do you?”) It all sounds so very reasonable.

It always does.

I’ve pursued something very close to anonymity for over thirty years, now. We were taught to: don’t send anything over the Internet that you wouldn’t write on a postcard, they said in the early days of the Internet. There were scammers; there were spammers; there were freaks, weirdoes and Nigerian princes who needed some help clearing funds through your bank account…

Back when ‘online crime’ meant people getting scammed, governments weren’t particularly bothered. If individuals were foolish enough to lose their money, that was on them: authorities were slow to respond, ineffectual and often disinterested.

There’s another form of crime in cyberspace, though, and that’s the thoughtcrime. It must have occurred to legislators that “age verification” actually means identity verification. All those pesky citizens who gave themselves names like ‘ItsMeBob’ will be pinned down; put under the microscope… and in many cases silenced because we know that people who write ‘hurty words’ in an online forum can be arrested.

This, of course, comes at a time when so many notable public figures are being discussed in connection with the fun times and other dealings they may have had with convicted child sex offender and dodgy financier Jeffrey Epstein. The people in positions of power have shown themselves to be entirely incapable of protecting children – and many of them have clearly done the opposite.

But they – tech billionnaires and politicians prominent among them – want you to supply your identification papers.

To protect the children.

Obviously, I’m not the right person to campaign against this. I’m a liar, at least to the extent that Bryony Marsh doesn’t exist. Also, I’m a pervert – at least, to the extent that during my life I’ve sometimes worn the clothing more commonly associated with the opposite gender. (Transgender people make such a handy scapegoat for the world’s ills, don’t they?)

And now, little by little, the freedom that I found through online anonymity is being eroded. The story plays out like this:

• It’s determined that a website I visit contains “adult content” according to some process that isn’t transparent.
• The company that runs the website is instructed that age verification will be required.
• The owners of the website either comply, or they get slapped with a series of fines by The Office of Communications (Ofcom). If they ignore this process, Ofcom takes action to block access to the website, UK-wide.
• If the website owners take the path of least resistance, they introduce age verification. Simplest to do it worldwide – but as we established above, age verification is actually identity verification.

What we’re seeing is the end of a freedom that many of us grew up taking for granted: the idea that ‘cyberspace’ offered escapism and a chance to be somebody else. That it was a place where you could make mistakes; push boundaries; stay safe. Whistleblowers, dissidents, people wanted to take the piss out of the Scientology UFO cult… they had a degree of separation that kept them safe.

That’s going away, now. Authoritarian politicians want a return to the “good old days” where culture was handed down by the state broadcaster. Where, if you had an opinion, you had to write a letter to the editor of your newspaper and hope they approved of it.

Good luck calling out corruption in local government, in a world where your identity has been verified and messages are uniquely associated with you – and good luck exploring a non-conformist lifestyle.

Maybe they can make trans people sew a pink triangle on their clothing? The symbol’s been freed up, seeing as being gay doesn’t attract the stigma it once did. Maybe the Starmtroopers are already on their way for me, because I wrote some things about how the ‘elites’ that own everything and run everything seem to be the least fit to rule.

People being persecuted for their sexuality is nothing new.

I’ve worked for the government. I’ve worked in the defence industry. I’ve done… things. I signed the Official Secrets Act as soon as I left school: I know how to keep secrets. When you discover, in childhood, that you’re a trannie, you more-or-less have to. That’s fine: I came to terms with that a long time ago. Don’t ask, don’t tell… but my online life (conducted with a certain amount of care and circumspection) was my own. I never thought I’d see things come to a point where I might have to start worrying about what the H.R. Department could learn about what I read and write in my free time.

On a smaller and more personal scale, I fell foul of the whole “age verification” shemozzle yesterday. While I was working on the Matilda Hale stories, one resource that I found tremendously useful was the H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast. They’ve long since finished discussing Lovecraft’s body of work, but they’ve moved on to discussing other stories in the ‘weird fiction’ category and after all they’ve done for me, I thought that perhaps I should subscribe to their Patreon.

Here’s the thing, though: they use Discord for their members’ discussion area. The very same Discord that’s announced they’re doing the age verification thing, beginning next month. All users must upload photo ID, or use live video of their face as proof of age. In other words, anonymity won’t be tolerated.

Remember, that’s the company that suffered a massive data breach just a few months ago, with some 70,000 users’ identifiction documents being stolen.

Here’s your pink triangle, Ms. Marsh…

Needless to say, I won’t be signing up. Just one example of how we’re being herded into an increasingly small digital reservation – by the people who tell us it’s to protect the children. While trying as hard as they can to keep us from discussing why they were on the passenger list for a certain private jet, to a certain secretive island location.

But don’t listen to me: I’m a danger to society.

To Tush, or Not to Tush?

That is the question.

“Hey nonny-nonny. Thou art a poltroon, forsooth!”

Or something. Lord save us from bad dialogue.

Tushery is defined as:

Writing of poor quality distinguished especially by the presence of affectedly archaic diction.

A definition from Merriam-Webster. And incidentally, if you’re wondering what a poltroon is, it’s a person who is pusillanimous. I can go on all day here… but I won’t because that’s basically part of the problem: flowery language.

Tushery is something that authors – particularly in the “golden age” of science fiction felt obliged to salt their dialogue with, in order to show that it was a genuine ye-olde knights-and-maidens-fest.

Egad. Zounds!

Et cetera. Ouch. Trouble is, it’s quite hard to break the mould, and not do it. If you set a story in the year 1,600 CE (that’s politically correct for ‘AD’) you rapidly find yourself agonising over whether to use bumpkinspeak, or modern English. That time, during the reign of Elizabeth I, really is the pivot point – when ‘goeth’ became ‘goes’ and ‘shoon’ became ‘shoes’ and so on… although ‘shoon’ is a little too authentic for our purposes. It goes beyond scene-setting and into the realm of putting obstacles in the way of the story, for the purpose of being clever.

Despite the Merriam-Webster definition, great literature is sometimes prone to bouts of something very much like tushery:

“Well, den, dis is de way it look to me, Huck. Ef it wuz HIM dat ’uz bein’ sot free, en one er de boys wuz to git shot, would he say, ‘Go on en save me, nemmine ’bout a doctor f’r to save dis one?’ Is dat like Mars Tom Sawyer? Would he say dat? You BET he wouldn’t! WELL, den, is JIM gywne to say it? No, sah—I doan’ budge a step out’n dis place ’dout a DOCTOR, not if it’s forty year!”

– Samuel Clemens’ Huckleberry Finn, of course.

That dialogue might – might – be authentic, but it’s as near to impenetrable as makes no difference, for somebody in another country, a century later.

Somewhere, there exists a sweet spot where we remind the reader that our characters have a distinctive accent or speech pattern, but we don’t let it spoil the narrative. One one end of the scale, Roger Zelazny gave his fantasy characters modern American speech patterns… but his world(s) were also salted with anachronisms like cigarettes. In a multiverse with ‘leakage’ what gets through? English (probably the best language yet devised for conveying important abstract concepts like science)… and cigarettes. Maybe condoms, too.

T.H. White did something weird with Arthurian legend and anachronisms such as guns, too. But I’m more interested in the idea of modern English in conversations among characters in a historical setting. Because something inside me shrivels if I have to write “for he chooseth and he obtaineth that which he doth seek…”

Awfulness. Or am I mistaken? Leave a comment.

In two projects that I have going on at the moment, I have chosen to use modern English. Not a single “forsooth” has escaped my keyboard. (Except that one, and the one at the start of this article… which is two too many, in the 21st Century, I think.)

Let’s get tough on tushery; tough on the causes of tushery.

How many stories?

I read a lot of tranny fiction, I write some of my own, and I discuss it with other enthusiasts as well. Some of my friends despair that the stories are so formulaic: that we’re saturated with re-tellings of the same basic plots, over and over again. In particular, the sissification story as the biggest offender. That’s part of the reason why I wrote ‘Summer with Aunt Ashley’, a facetious poke at all the stories that begin with a boy going to stay with an evil-intentioned aunt who plans to get him in panties. More on that story in a later blog, perhaps.

Meanwhile, how many stories are there, really?

Christopher Booker tells us that there are just seven. No surprises there, given the title of his book, ‘The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories’. If you persevere beyond the front cover, you will discover that these are:

• Overcoming the Monster
• Rags to Riches
• The Quest
• Voyage and Return
• Comedy
• Tragedy
• Rebirth

Ronald B. Tobias, author of ‘20 Master Plots: And How to Build Them’ clearly disagrees, in that he claims there are (spoilers…) twenty. Deep breath:

Quest, adventure, pursuit, rescue, escape, revenge, the riddle, rivalry, underdog, temptation, metamorphosis, transformation, maturation, love, forbidden love, sacrifice, discovery, wretched excess, ascension and descension.

Georges Polti topped Tobias with his list of thirty-six dramatic situations: ranging from “rivalry of kinsmen” to “falling prey to cruelty of misfortune”. (If you want the full list, fuck off: go and read his book.) This was a doubly impressive feat since Polti was a Frenchman, and as you know the French have no word for genre. (Indeed, the French language has had to borrow from us a number of essential words and phrases: camisole, raison d’être, cuisine, parachute, carte blanche, bayonet, culottes… One wonders how they will get on vis-à-vis Brexit. Probably an endless series of faux pas. Anyway, back to today’s theme. How many stories?)

Tobias’ twenty master plots could substitute directly for Fictionmania’s system of categories, and nobody would be greatly inconvenienced. I suspect the most common categories would be revenge, temptation, metamorphosis, transformation, forbidden love, discovery and descension. If you decide to go with Polti instead, you get juicy categories such as “obstacles to love”, “erroneous judgment”, and “all sacrificed for passion”. It’s a bit flowery, but there’s something for everyone in Polti’s dirty three dozen.

So are there really only at most thirty-six basic stories? Consulting my (mainstream) library, that means I own each one, on average, 14.7 times. For Fictionmania’s 29,970 stories, that’s an average of 833 versions of each story. Some readers, despairing at the apparently endless production of sissy stories might well believe this.

We all use the Mark 1 human brain, though. We are, to some extent, hardwired or conditioned to expect certain narrative patterns. That a story should take place in three acts; that a person on a quest should have a sidekick; that a person who comes to your central character’s aid should previously have been introduced. It’s probably a mistake to break these ‘rules’… but complying with them ensures that you are firmly pigeonholed in Booker’s seven, Tobias’ twenty, or Polti’s thirty-six plots.

And, so what? There’s not necessarily anything wrong with a retelling. In the world of film, Stargate (1994) was lots of fun, despite having a great deal in common with The Man Who Would Be King (1975) – and if there really are only so many stories, you’re going to have to reinvent.

One of the best meals I ever had was in a restaurant in New Zealand. (I won’t bother recommending the place as it doesn’t exist anymore.) I had roast lamb. I’ve had that meal quite a few times, before and since, but something about that particular meal made it special. Was it the naturally good living conditions for farm animals in New Zealand? The wine? The herbs? Some secret ingredient? I’ll never know… but roast lamb dishes are not created equal, and neither are stories.

Sequels: always number two?

I love to get reviews and comments. They’re generally either the kind that leave you walking on air (somebody said something nice about my writing: hooray!) or they’re the kind that provide food for thought: things I need to know if I’m going to get better at this.

But there’s another kind: the ones where a reader says that they’d like to see a sequel.

Further adventures with the same characters? Don’t they get it? Doesn’t the reader – who professed satisfaction with what they read, after all – recognise closure when he or she sees it? Can’t we allow the characters their happily ever after?

Sequels are something that executives in big corporations demand, because they’re pathologically risk-averse. They daren’t take risks any more: they’re successful, so they have to keep on cranking the handle on the success formula.

This strategy has given us an awful lot of sucky movies. Turning ‘The Matrix’ into a trilogy: instant awfulness. Following ‘Highlander’ with ‘Highlander II: The Quickening’ was practically a crime against humanity. There was even (shudder) ‘Basic Instinct 2’.

George Lucas managed two good Stars Wars films before they descended into drivel, so it’s sometimes the threequel that’s awful, not the sequel, but why risk it? There are tens of stories sitting half-finished on my hard drive. I’d much rather complete one of those than grind out another story with Denise and Carol (from ‘Into the Unknown’), who we left quite happily exploring their budding relationship. Some things don’t need to be spelled out. (Or do they? You can use the comments section to tell me. Consider it my market research. I’m working on a budget of zero, here.)

Never say “never”, though.

I’m working on just one thing that might be loosely described as a sequel. A reader of my time-travelling body swap story, ‘Door Candy’ suggested that we need to know more about what happens to the person who goes back to the 1950s. And you know what? That reader is probably right… but you won’t ever see a story called ‘Door Candy 2’. I’m working to expand the original instead.

Elsewhere, to the extent that I can manage, each project I’m engaged with features new characters, settings and MacGuffins. It’s the surest way I know to avoid the literary equivalent of ‘Honey I Blew Up the Kid’. (Dishonourable mentions also to ‘Grease 2’, ‘Robocop 2’, ‘Speed 2: Cruise Control’… in fact, you know what? Anything with a two in the title.)

Write to me. I’d love to hear from you: but please don’t ask for a sequel.

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Small update:

I shared ‘Three Steps’ on BigCloset yesterday: a story in which the narrator is killed off at the end. I think it’s fairly clear that the story is complete. I also ticked the little box that indicates a completed work.

And what do I get?
Well, you know what they say: always leave them wanting more…

Mission Statement

This is my very first blog post. Kindly bear with me if I click all the wrong buttons and make it look like a dog’s breakfast.

Now, you’re probably saying “but Bryony, the world needs another writer blogging about writing like it needs a new clone of Candy Crush…” Fair point: but I’m going to try really hard to resist the temptation to make this about me, me, me.

Instead, it’s more of a manifesto. You see, the thing is… an awful lot of tranny fiction is crap.

(Yes: tranny fiction. If you just surfed on in here by chance because you were online and looking for vintage traction engine collectables… tough. This is about a sexual fetish.)

Now, where were we? Ah yes… the crappy nature of literature that serves the niche category of humanity that consists of gentlemen who like to dress up (or imagine themselves) as ladies. There’s no law that says tranny fiction has to be superficial, or formulaic. While many of those who read gender-challenging stories are, ahem, operating the computer one-handed at times… does this mean that the author should be similarly handicapped?

No. I think not. For several years I’ve been trying to show that stories in this genre can be more than simply something to masturbate over (if that’s what does it for you…) but there’s a story behind the stories, too: a meta-level message. Or, at least, I think there might be. So let’s delve into the murky world of the autogynephilia kink; and all the related facets of fetish. Perhaps we’ll have some fun in the process. Including those guys who came here looking for vintage traction engine collectables. Because they stayed, and kept reading.

(Pervs.)

Bryony