Ketrin

"It took me years to write it, won't you take a look?"

- John Lennon / Paul McCartney, "Paperback Writer"

Ketrin is an ongoing erotic Web Serial Novel by Leem, alias Troper Lee M, which he has been writing sporadically since 1999. The story currently comprises ten novella-length instalments, with an eleventh pending. The story combines his interest in Rudyard Kipling's original Jungle Books with his fetish for petrification and immobility.

To quote the story's listing on Web Fiction Guide: "Raised by wolf-like telepathic lupinoids in the jungle, the wild youth Ketrin finds both love and hate when he attempts to re-enter human society. Meanwhile, lurking in the shadows is an evil that threatens to destroy not only the jungle and all of its human and lupinoid inhabitants, but perhaps the entire world."

That listing is accompanied by an extremely lukewarm Editor's Note and an equally lukewarm review. An earlier review on the now-defunct Pages Unbound site praised the story's prose but found it overly preachy.

Ketrin (together with three related stories) can be found on the Ketrin's World website. Comments and trope suggestions welcomed.

Tropes Present in Ketrin (there are undoubtedly many more, but these are all I could think of at the moment):


 * Alien Sky: Silvermoon and Goldmoon.
 * And I Must Scream: Subverted, insofar as being paralysed doesn't drive victims insane, though some of them have occasion to wish they could scream with ecstasy.
 * Big Badass Wolf: The lupinoids.
 * Everyone Is Bi
 * Evil Sorcerer: The sorcerer. Duh.
 * Good People Have Good Sex
 * "It's Not Rape If You Enjoyed It": Sort of. Ketrin is worshipped as a god while paralysed and this includes both men and women having sex with him. They don't consider it rape, and he's having lots of orgasms, so...
 * Naked on Arrival: Ketrin.
 * Non-Human Sidekick: Almost all of the good guys end up with lupinoid companions.
 * No Ontological Inertia: Paralysing crystals (slightly fudged for plot purposes).
 * No Periods, Period
 * Plot Tumour: More than half the characters and situations in recent instalments weren't even conceived of at the beginning.
 * Purple Eyes: Anybody possessing lupinoid telepathy and ancestral memories. I.E., lupinoids, Ketrin,, and anybody who drinks lupinoid milk or mixes their blood with anyone belonging to the aforesaid categories.
 * The Quest: After Ketrin goes missing Sherinel goes looking for him accompanied by some lupinoids of his pack.
 * Romancing the Widow: Mavrida successfully manages to avoid relationships for years after her husband's apparent death. Then before she knows it, she manages to end up in a threesome. (And then, just as she thinks her new relationship has brought closure to her mourning, she discovers that her long-vanished husband is (almost but) Not Quite Dead.
 * Rope Bridge: Semi-subverted. It's an unstable wooden bridge.
 * Taken for Granite: Paralysing crystals keep people alive indefinitely in a doll-like state. Also, the mysterious Maiden claims to be a statue.
 * Wild Child
 * You No Take Candle: Ketrin, but only briefly, because the author got fed up writing it.