Gorean Tropes

GOREAN TROPES

 

I put this together recently as a bit of fun, and to hand out to people who asked to play in my Tales of Gor RPG on Tavern Keeper, on the occasions when they aren’t necessarily familiar with the common themes of John Norman’s books (for better or worse). A lot of people who roleplay Gor often have only a basic understanding of the writing style and view the setting as simply ‘Conan style’ BDSM. While the BDSM is definitely there, the approach to it is rather unique, so far as other forms of BDSM writing is concerned. 

 

This then is my take on many of the common themes, as they seem to appear to me, in the official books. The tropes are important to me, not just for a pattern to follow to imitate Norman’s writing, but also as a standard to deviate from at times in subversive ways, to approach Gor from a different angle. It’s safe to say that, although I’m a fan of the books, I don’t take them at all seriously, the way Mr Norman does, and many of the hard core fans do. I don’t, for example, view them as a template for some ‘better society’.

 

The following tropes tell you pretty much what you can expect from both the original novels, and my own stories and games. Be warned - my tongue is firmly in my cheek when it comes to some of the entries… ;)

 

Gor: a savage, natural, unspoilt, warlike and dystopian world, heavily geared around the institution of slavery, with cultures that mirror ancient Earth cultures (to the point of unoriginality in the creative process) where God like alien beings limit technological expansion, whilst lurking unseen in the background as aloof, incomprehensible beings. The lack of any ‘levelling up’ technology prevents women from attaining any significant form of equality with men, in a society where brute strength will always be dominant. 

 

Honour: Men and women follow an elaborate and crippling code of honour that is often contradictory and repressive, not to mention hypocritical in the extreme.  

 

Gorean Men: Broadly speaking, misogynistic, viewing women as either Madonnas or whores. A woman is to be respected, cherished and protected, so long as she remains an impossible paragon of frigid virtue. Men will reluctantly put up with the most rude and arrogant behaviour from such a woman, provided she doesn’t step outside the narrow and crippling confines of what is expected of her sex. Men will always uphold the wishes of a woman when it comes to kajirae. Men are overwhelmingly strict with kajirae, except in long standing relationships when they may show a rather more emotional relationship in private. There is little evidence of ‘sadism’ in the conventional sense (inflicting pain and humiliation for fun) but only as a regrettable punishment. Men are terrified that other men might think they ‘love’ their kajira.  

 

Free Women: Deeply repressed, sexually, and almost always frustrated virgins who try to pretend to their peers that they have no sexual feelings whatsoever. In actual fact they nearly always have secret fantasies of bondage and domination by men, but assume other women don’t, and so are terrified that they alone might be ‘natural slaves’ and condemned by their own sex if they gave away even the merest hint. They loathe and despise kajirae out of a mixture of sexual frustration and jealousy that their men desire kajirae so openly. Free women tend to have sharp tongues and will often challenge and provoke men, knowing the men will generally back down as a courtesy. In fact the women do so, wanting and taunting the men to dominate them, though if any man tried, the woman would lash him verbally and secretly sneer at him for being weak when he backs down. Free women are indoctrinated from childhood to cover their bodies and faces and refuse the touch of men.  

 

Kajirae: Sexually very happy, and mostly suffering from Stockholm syndrome. Terrified of free women, and always very happy when a free woman loses her power and/or is reduced to slavery. Kajirae will unite en-masse against a ‘fallen’ free woman, to torment her for a while, but otherwise will be bitter rivals with one another, especially when it comes to the attention of men. The toughest girls generally form small bands within the pens and rule as gang leaders. Kajirae have an unrealistic love of candy and are highly competitive. They despise male slaves and will taunt and tease them, again, secretly hoping to provoke a response that might make them more dominant. A kajira might long for freedom, but if she was given it, she would swiftly become frustrated and might flirt with danger in the secret hope of having a collar again.

 

Kur Agents: The senior ones are arrogant, beautiful women recruited from Earth. Almost always virgins, and mostly ambivalent towards men, they are invariably incompetent if they have to display any initiative, despite the fact they all have university degrees in useless subjects such as philosophy, literature, and cultural studies, but can follow basic instructions from their furry masters. Will constantly remind men that they are their equals in every respect, and will, after some time on Gor, adopt the mind set of Gorean free women when it comes to veils and the custom of not displaying any skin. The lower ranking Kur agents tend to be Gorean men who naturally resent their Earth woman superiors and are often sexually attracted to them. 

 

Earth girls brought to Gor: Often middle class, or trust fund debutantes from estranged wealthy families, always incredibly beautiful, and yet strangely ignorant of sex, despite vivid sexual fantasies involving bondage and domination since puberty. Often expensively educated and well spoken, and in the past, cruel and dismissive towards men who had tried to court them with any respect and kindness. Will struggle against their slavery when brought to Gor, and will think of themselves as different and better than their Gorean sisters in bondage. May feel it is acceptable for Gorean women to be slaves, but certainly not acceptable for Earth women to be treated that way. Goreans on the other hand will consider Earth women to be natural slaves and the most slave-like of natural slaves. Earth girls will cling for quite some time to the futile notion that of course they will be freed eventually, once they have the chance to have a reasonable conversation with the man who now owns them. Preferably after he has apologised for his beastly behaviour and given them something decent to wear.  

 

Men of Earth: The majority are, on the surface at least, politically correct ‘Woke’ individuals who make a big show of respecting and understanding the complex needs of women. They cultivate platonic and intellectual friendships with beautiful, sexually confused women (often virgins) and reassure these women that they view them as ‘persons’ and not ‘objects’. They are quick to disparage the uncouth sort of man who would try and have sex with a girl, and will reassure the women that they themselves pose ‘no threat’. Despite this, the men are secretly in love with the women they reassure, and they harbour deep set fantasies of those women kneeling before them in collars and silk. The men of course feel ashamed for thinking such things! When they arrive on Gor, for whatever plot reason, they are initially shocked by the barbaric practice of slavery, before slowly adjusting to it. In the end they invariably encounter the object of their unrequited love on Earth – now a slave girl - who at first responds to the man as she would have done back on Earth. Frustrated by this refusal of the girl to see him as a knight in shining armour and leaping into his loving arms, the man invariably decides to keep her as a slave. 

 

Alternatively, a few men of Earth (usually stocky, balding, possibly bearded) are confident, alpha-males who are used to dominating their women, and probably work on Earth for the Kurii slave trade. They do not feel threatened by female equality, for the simple reason they have never accepted it in anything they do or say. They make no concessions to feminism and are reasonably ruthless and amoral.

 

Panther Girls: savage and very cat-like in their behaviour, living in small packs that fight one another, under the authority of the strongest girl. Almost always Gorean women – Earth girls are rarely strong enough to become panthers. Hunt men, and are hunted in return, though usually the panthers come out best in the encounters as they know their terrain and the men who come after them are often stupid and overconfident. Panther girls have a love hate relationship with men, particularly when the moon becomes full and their panther heat surfaces, during which time they will need to stake out men and rape them. This keeps their sexual feelings under control for another cycle of the lunar month. The practice of hunting and dominating men keeps the panther girls from feeling submissive in any significant way. Same sex relationships when men aren’t available, aren’t necessarily the norm, but they do occur far more frequently than the books might suggest. This is not so much lesbianism, but bi-sexuality, from living in a single sex society. Same principle as single sex prisons. Good fighters, especially with knives, bare hands and spears. Generally good shots with short bows, but they lack the strength to draw a long bow. Physically weaker than their male counterparts, but they make up for this with excellent skirmish tactics, making prime use of the terrain and fighting in well-rehearsed groups. A captured panther girl, separated from her pride, and subjected to the attention of men, will often revert over a long period of time to become a superb and responsive kajira.  

 

The Game of Worlds: Despite the Kurii being a wild, savage and warlike race, famous for going berserk at the drop of an axe, they have spent the last sixty years conducting a ‘cold war’ of cautious subtlety against the Priest Kings. The Priest Kings quite obviously lost much of their previous strength in the late 1960s during the Nest War (see Priest Kings of Gor – book 3) when they slaughtered one another and nearly destroyed Gor in the process with their gravity weapons, and they have seemingly been unable to impose their will on either Gor or Earth to any significant degree since Book 3, but nevertheless the Kurii seem to think this is some cunning double bluff and continue to tread cautiously, instead of launching a full blown attack with everything they have. Being masters of intrigue, they employ only the most incompetent, but stunningly beautiful Earth women to carry out their most important assignments, and consequently the Game of Worlds has dragged on for over sixty years with little to show for it. Undeterred, the Kurii, even now, continue to recruit stunningly beautiful and arrogant Earth Women with Social Behaviour degrees from Yale University.  

 

Homosexuality: Bearing in mind that the cities of Central Gor are populated by men and women descended from those transplanted from ancient Greece and Rome, and then culturally locked due to the Priest King technology laws, homosexuality on Gor is practically a given. The idea that the boy-buggering men of ancient Sparta and Rome might have changed their minds on a planet with a lower gravity, isn’t very likely. The lack of attention to the subject (though Tarl Cabot observes an example of homosexual relationships in Ar in book 25 and is mildly amused by it, though notably not shocked) is probably just a consequence of the lack of interest by the author. Male slaves are likely to have been kept and used by other men, though like in Rome and Greece, it would have been far less prevalent than heterosexual relationships. 

 

The Priest Kings: seemingly immortal alien beings with the kind of advanced science that can fly planets through space, the Priest Kings occupy a nest in the Sardar mountain range where they dream their saffron alien dreams and look indifferently down at the ant like humans beneath their feet. They seem oblivious to mankind, except to expend considerable effort to ensure that mankind never achieves the ability to invent a flintlock pistol, which they fear might threaten an alien society able to move planets through space. By imposing strict technology laws, and flame deathing anyone who they see transgressing them, the Priest Kings have stifled human development on Gor for centuries and have perpetuated a society where women will always be inferior due to their weaker strength. For their own inscrutable reasons, they employ human agents, usually smarter than the Kurii ones, and invariably drawn from Earth. These human agents are rarely given more than cursory intelligence for their operations and despite the considerable resources of the Priest Kings, are rarely given anything more useful than a sharp sword to aid them in their essential work.  

 

The Slave Ships: It is said that one in fifty women on Gor are slaves. And since wealthy men (and/or paga taverns) might own multiple slaves, the figures suggest that less than 2% of men on Gor are likely to ever own a slave. This disparity between supply and demand means the slavers of Gor have turned to Earth to procure more stock. It is somehow economically viable for them to establish secure bases of operation on Earth, recruit Earth agents, stake out and monitor potential captives, then abduct them in an inefficient and time consuming manner that resembles a cat playing with a mouse, ship them across space to Gor and then sell them for a few copper coins each. It is never explained how this makes economic sense, but obviously it does. The market is never wrong!  

 

Earth men find themselves to be far stronger on Gor than they are on Earth, due to the difference in gravity. For reasons that are never made clear in the books, Earth women never seem to gain the same benefit. 

 

Racism: for all its faults, Gorean society shows no evidence of racism in the classic sense. The colour of a man’s skin seems irrelevant. Where there is animosity, it is through a sense of Nationalism – the people of one city state (Home Stone) at best distrust the people of another city state, and at worst, routinely try to kill them. But this has nothing to do with skin colour; rather it resembles what might happen if supporters of the Celtic and Rangers (Scottish) football teams met one another in a park, late at night, after they’d all drunk eight pints of lager.  

 

Speech/dialogue: Often overly theatrical and larger than life, where common fighters might actually say preposterous things like:

 

“An interesting and perplexing conundrum, and perhaps on reflection, one best settled through the clash of sharpened steel?” instead of, “I’m going to fucking kill you, if you don’t stand down, you cunt.”