Review - Boys of Blue Creek by Paolo

[Cainanite (imported)]

I simply have to write my praise of Paolo's Boys of Blue Creek. (Now on its Fifth chapter.)

This historic fantasy hits close to home for me in a great many ways.

Firstly, The subject of circumcision and castration has been a great interest of mine. How it was regarded historically and how it is treated today are of great fascination for me. Paolo gets each and every detail exactly right.

I am reminded of my maternal grandmother, and a nursing home neighbor of hers. My grandmother was exceedingly proper and Catholic, and preferred to keep relationships civil, but distant. When she arrived at the nursing home an old gentleman took interest in befriending her. They both spoke fluent french and he took great joy in being able to converse with her in his preferred language. My grandmother thought he was being too forward for her liking and told him there was no chance of a relationship between them. The old man took it in stride and told her he only wanted her friendship, and nothing more. Anything more, he told her, was impossible as when he was a child he had been castrated in the boy's home he had been sent to.

Sadly, my grandmother found this information to be too much. She immediately cut off talking to the old gentleman completely. Though it didn't stop her from relating the story to my mother, and the two of them had a good laugh at the old man's expense.

Boys of Blue Creek captures a reality that actually DID EXIST for many poor children that found themselves in state care. The caregivers did not see what they were doing as an atrocity, or a violation of the children who came to them. They saw it as a civic duty to protect society from "defective" children growing up to breed and make more defective children. At the time there was no worse defect to be born with than to be poor. Poverty was viewed as a genetic disease. After all, Poor children were so often born to poor parents. Caregivers saw what they did to the boys as "improving" them. Making them safe and productive members of society.

Children were viewed not as complete humans but as a resource, much like livestock. The rising thought of the day was that science was the new god. Science was inviolable. And if science said some genes were more worthy than others, then it was completely acceptable, and in fact imperative that some children never be allowed to breed.

That time in history was also the odd intersection of Faith, Pseudoscience, and Surgery being elevated from the task of the local barber to the sacred duty of the physician that caused the popularity of such surgeries like circumcision to take root in America. The Bible stated that masturbation was a sin, and to spill the seed of the male was akin to murder. Pseudoscience said that if a male masturbated too much he would go insane from the loss of vital life-force. The doctors of the day (less trained in the human body than your average CPR instructor today) were only too happy to claim the magic of their scalpels could make children "better." And so the trend of cutting off foreskins became slowly more and more popular. Anything that made sex difficult or less pleasurable was considered "cleaner" only because sex and lust made a person "dirty."

Paolo gets this oddly mixed logic of the day exactly correct.

Just as history shows us, circumcision became truly popular with the advent of the World Wars. Soldiers who visited the camp follower's tents and returned with STDs were summarily punished with circumcision. Not because it cured their symptoms, but because it punished the offending organ, and sent a strong message to any other soldiers that might think to stray from the battlefield for some carnal comforts. Freshly cut soldiers returning from battle to their hometown sweethearts would spin tales of "trench infections" of their foreskins, rather than admit the truth of the punishment for their indiscretions. And so soon circumcision went from something only a few religious nuts would perform to something doctors would recommend for ALL boys, and parents would even request it for their sons to prevent future "infections."

Paolo shows with a deft hand how all this reasoning seemed perfectly normal and acceptable to the people of the day. He wonderfully demonstrates, through the character of Doctor Carver, how those in the medical field truly believed that what they were doing was for the betterment of the children they "treated." In their minds, mutilating the sex organs of little boys was a kindness. It was an act carried out with love, and with civic pride.

Paolo's Boys of Blue Creek could very easily have been a non-fiction story, exploring the actual institutions that did these sorts of things. The authors Paolo quotes in the story and the texts that influence Doctor Carver's beliefs are REAL texts, books and papers that were popular during the time in which the story is set.

Paolo's story shows how easily sterilization, castration and circumcision were adopted by well meaning and otherwise loving people. These were not acts perpetrated by monsters with no regard for children. These were people who truly believed they were doing what was best.

And, it is that part of the story that is the most compelling. That Doctor Carver is such a caring and compassionate man is what drives the entire narrative. We are painted a portrait, not of a monster preying on the vulnerability of the innocent, but of a father-like figure wanting only the best for the boys he loves so much.

Boy's of Blue Creek is something that everyone needs to read to understand a very real part of our own history. We need to read it to see how easily humanity can be drawn down the wrong path, and how our past has led us to horrific acts we are still trying to justify to ourselves to this very day.

Boys of Blue Creek gets my highest recommendation.

Boys of Blue Creek - Chapter I (https://eunuchworld.co/s14277)

Boys of Blue Creek - Chapter II (https://eunuchworld.co/s14294)

Boys of Blue Creek - Chapter III (https://eunuchworld.co/s14300)

Boys of Blue Creek - Chapter IV (https://eunuchworld.co/s14306)

Boys of Blue Creek - Chapter V (https://eunuchworld.co/s14316)

[JesusA (imported)]

I want to second Cainanite's review of Paolo's incredible Boys of Blue Creek. While set in a parallel universe to our own, it's much closer to real U.S. history than most would want to admit. For a full century (at least) between the 1880s and the 1980s, boys in public institutions were castrated "for their own good." Thirty-three states had laws authorizing castration and thousands were carried out.

Much of what we know about eunuch physiology comes from research conducted in the 1950s and 60s on men who had been castrated as boys in Kansas state institutions. (Kansas seems to have kept better records than other states.)

John Kitzhaber, then governor of Oregon, issued a formal apology for state authorized castrations in 2002. One of the newspaper clippings that I have of the event includes an interview with one who was castrated in 1981 at the age of 15. The Oregon law authorizing castration of boys in state institutions was only repealed in 1983. While the Oregon records are incomplete, at least 2,600 were castrated between 1917, when the law was enacted, and 1983, when it was repealed.

The quotations from academic sources in Paolo's story are real. While the story is fiction, it hews very close to historical accuracy.

Paolo is also a brilliant writer and his characters seem real and alive, not two-dimensional cardboard cutouts.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

[bella (imported)]

I want to "third" it. Really enjoying the stories

[ylpb7508 (imported)]

I also agree that this is an outstanding series, very well written and exploring part of our history that is rarely discussed today. However, I think it's interesting that I could find myself almost agreeing with the philosophy behind the story: eugenics. But it was a terrible philosophy. The people in charge decide the reproductive rights of everyone else. It is fundamentally opposed to basic human rights and dare I say, fascist and racist. Although the stories paint a romantic picture of happy, productive eunuchs and a "better world," such societies are inevitably oppressive.

I think the underlying theme of this community is that we want the freedom to determine our own identity, to control our own bodies. Just as we don't want the medical establishment or the government to forbid us from becoming who we want to be, we should not celebrate those same organizations deciding who would be castrated.

Please don't take this rant as a criticism of the author or the stories. I think they are fascinating to read, but I hope a future chapter might explore the other side of the issue.

[Paolo]

Thank you.

As for the other side of the issue, well, we'll get there eventually. Maybe by the end of this summer. It's busy season for me now.

One hint I will drop: if you're familiar with the very common brick school buildings that popped up all over the 1920's, the town is going to get one of those. And a principal who doesn't approve of Dr Carver's methods. But that's a long way off.

Thanks again for reading.

[Paolo]

A comment from JamiePan and Valery made me think to necro-bump this old thread.

It's hard to believe I started drafting what was going to be an episodic, or serial-type, story way back in 2015. I had help from Cainanite with it, too, and I wish he were still here, too.

I also never expected it to evolve into the monster that it did. It kept me entertained, though.

Recently, I finished Book 3. That's not a typo. There's a 3rd book, and a few readers here have seen it. If you would like to read it, send me a PM or email with your email address, and I'll send you the text Winrar file. No, I didn't buy Winrar, and I have an older version! It could be cranky.

Be warned, Book 3 is 35 chapters long at about 9-10k words/chapter.

Other projects were not only the writing of the Chapter 00 Preface to all three novels, but also a careful proofing and annotating of the 3rd book by Jesus A.

We then carefully overhauled Book 1. It's not a total rewrite, but a great deal of things were retconned, things added, and a more careful head count was done. The notes files are bigger than the file size of the book. Also, Jesus A. was kind enough to insert footnotes for important points. The retconned Book 1 and Book 3 also tie into other Universes here in EA stories.

Readers will recall that in "Mystery at Grandpa's Farm", that there were group photos of boys hanging on the wall, and that the family surname was "Lawrence." BC fans will realize that Scott "Knothead" Lawrence is the (adopting) Patriarch of Aden's family in MaGF. Also, the McCreery Family mentioned in Who'd Wanna Use This Stuff is also mentioned, as the Patriarch of the McCreery Family shows up near the end of BC3.

Also integral in this project was the feedback from Valery here, and the links and data he sent me for inspiring historical photos and texts.

Yet another project is Blue Creek Beyond, which picks up where the epilogue of Book 1 leaves off. There are 2 completed chapters, but I won't have time to work on that over the summer. I also don't have the time to post the thing to EA, so if you'd like to read Version 2 of Book 1, drop me a line.

Of course, we have yet to overhaul Book 2.

Then there's the editing of The Timeline, which is a collection of events, or an encyclopedia, of real-world events that connect to the BC Universe, as well as character histories. That one is sort of buggy, still, and is an ongoing work in progress! It's very convoluted. Part of the retconning was necessitated by writing that "story".

P

[WheelyCurious]

I will enthusiastically endorse the positive reviews for the Blue Creek books (I one of those that have read all three) For my tastes, they are among the best written stories that I've seen in the EA collection, to the point where I could see them being put out by a 'mainstream' publisher on the open market. I can't think of any other stories that come close to that quality level...

Note that I don't particularly care for those tales where the 'plot' is little more than a way of stringing together the 'action' scenes... I prefer things that have a plot / story line that would STILL be interesting if all the action scenes were removed or replaced w/ some harmless alternative (instead of someone hands the 'victim' a bunch of flowers, or ???) the BC books definitely have a lot of story outside of the slicing and dicing of boy bits...

So if you are just looking for something to wank off to, the BC books probably wouldn't be a good fit, but if you want a good yarn that just happens to have some castration scenes, I can't recommend them enough...

I'd also agree that the 'real world' references are consistent with things I've read in non EA contexts... One that I did not see in BC which I have seen elsewhere, and which gets a lot of 'politically correct' folks really upset is that Margaret Sanger and the well known organization she is credited with founding, and is still operating today, originally had the purpose of promoting eugenics and helping promote planning parenthood in accordance w/ eugenic principles...

WheelyCurious

[Paolo]

I want to thank the few people who emailed and wanted the new, revised Book 1 and Book 3.