an inobtrusive detective’s bird-watching field-notes on Open Sauce’s editorial backstage conversation…
Revisions of Open Sauce have elicited a gamut of responses (often remarkably far from delight and inspiration) in fellow pornographers on the wiki’s revision log. Whilst some have contented themselves with peremptory mission summaries which are verifiable in the lump text – “removed the comedy innuendos” etc – others have purported merely to be “simplifying the grammar” when in fact their edit has amounted to full-blown reinvention. One writer switched the Mills & Boon heterosexual pairing to a lesbian one – “in my opinion, now, it’s hotter” – only to find that a subsequent editor had reinstated a normative straight orientation ... “as it was slightly confusing”, they said.
One editor clearly hopes for a gradual unfolding of kinkiness into the “mainstream storyline” – s/he’s introducing the “living doll concept” with obvious intentions for the phasing out of so-called mainstream eroticism as Open Sauce moves forward. But the next editor is more interested in plausibility. And the next thinks s/he is most interested in simplicity of style. Then someone reflects at greater length in her revision log about the sense that retaining tropes and chunks of the preceding edition is necessary for this “game” to work. She upbraids editors for even accentuating ‘Mills and Boon’ ideology “since version#1” and self-consciously – perhaps even smugly – inserts crudely obvious genderqueer elements: now Nic’s in the dress. The subsequent editor waves a wand and declares “now I am in receipt of Julie’s passion”.
But soon someone else came and disrupted this enjoyment with “a storm of swearing” and the postmodern idea that “the characters can hear the stage directions ... hysterical woman, the womb, the woman which must be healed by the man”. This certainly turns on editor number 13, who writes “swearing turns me on, so much I cannot deal with, I cannot stop swearing”. A sharp turn towards what is termed “sentimental blah blah” thereafter characterises the morphing story. Swearing is slashed, a “sad ending” comes and goes, and the “allusion to the not caring” causes controversy. “Flowery language needs toning down”, opines editor 17. Open Sauce stagnates for days, eventually provoking the startlingly vulnerable confession: “it feels like lots of things need to be changed, but i feel attached to them. Damn attachment. Could anyone else do it please?” The emotional echo of the plea fades away, and an editor of the same name has to take direct action to dispel ‘attachment’ herself – “added a paragraph in the hope that this will start changing! help!”
Dark days for Open Sauce, in the aftermath of a swearing vs sentimentality war: but soon enough, the pace picks up, albeit not without the sneering aggression of editor 19 – “Xerox is a proper noun spelled with an X not a z”. (This gets wryly patted down with the placid remark by editor 20 – “actually, photocopier is hotter”.
Editor 21 declares out loud that her relationship to the editing process feels psychologically cathected to her father’s habit of wielding his vicious red pen over her childhood writings. She concludes she has been “faithful to you, author of the last Revision, and completely arrogant as well. Love”. Next someone ‘emits’ (or perhaps wishes to ‘omit’?) “some commas and arched backs and chevaliers and landscapes”.
Someone else somewhat banally comments that they are interested in “metaphor and analogy” and innuendo. This triggers another saying “I want this to be more matter-of-fact”. Bang: apocalypse once more. “Want to get rid of everything and start again”. And again: “boys banished! Just lots of lovely cunts everywhere, just for me.” But the voice of reason emends this orgiastic development: “all those cunts did not make sense to me.” Not because they came from nowhere, though, but because they clearly were not acting upon anything: “are they lazy? are they stupid?” Editor 24: “Yuk. I hate all-caps and shouting.” Editor 25: “yes well sometimes you cannot quite say the thing quite right – hell yeah, I love you too”. Suddenly love is sujet du jour: here’s something in edit 26 about “investment – you know, the love kind”.
By April 20th, one new editor was writing about their personal vision of a “posthuman that has been created for the pleasure of humans. It brings up ideas of multigenderedness, free will and fucked up filthy sex for me”. Somewhat enigmatically, the first respondent to this requests that we “please remember to mind the pieces of the more acceptable”. Our last revision log on record is conceivably another melancholic reflection on the editing process from Open Sauce’s most assiduous anonymous editor, the name ‘eirini’. “This is the hard bit, when everyone is gone, what am I supposed to do; just play with myself until someone appears. So, I just decide to do something else on my own. To have different episodes and to suppose I will never do it again.”
