My Cutting-Edge Cyber Romance Novel: The First Seven Drafts
ROTFLMAO: A Love Story (1994)
The Widget of Love: Mark and Pippi share steamy threads
on alt.sex.fetish.babylon-5 about Londo Mollari's five penises.
Complications: Pippi runs away and converts to Kibology.
Rhetorical question: Can Mark's creation, soc.support.lonely.come.back.pippi.come.back,
win her heart before alt.config pulls the plug?
I Less-Than-Three You (1996)
The Widget of Love: Pippi finds Mark in a chatroom. The
smileys look like Pac-Man on E, the caps are locked, and the bots
are frantic and sexy. It's like Paris in the springtime!
Complications: Pippi's friends keep warning her Mark's a
loser who obsessively collects pine cones that look like Klingon
foreheads. Also, Pippi does that thing with her pinky knuckle,
and it weirds Mark out.
Rhetorical question: A/S/L?
With This Webring, I Thee Wed (1998)
The Widget of Love: Pippi puts up a "riot trrrtle" home
page, with before-and-after pictures of the turtles she's given
punk-rock makeovers. She finds her ex-boyfriend Mark's Geocities
page about vinyl pet sweaters, and her heart melts all over again.
Complications: Mark has shacked up with a shit-hot Web designer
named Java Applet. And just as Mark becomes single again, Pippi
runs off with a Butthole Surfers roadie named Pork.
Rhetorical question: When Pippi puts up a special Web-invite
for her wedding to Pork, can Mark still win her back by filling
her guestbook with Celine Dion midi files?
No-Reserve Romance (2000)
The Widget of Love: Mark sells his Aquaman underoos on eBay: "only
worn twice, never washed." Pippi, newly divorced, puts in
a bid... for Mark's heart.
Complications: Pippi accidentally wins the underoos.
Rhetorical question: Who can decide what something is worth?
When only moments remain in your auction, who will war-bid for your
cankered old heart?
The Feed Of Love (2003)
The Widget of Love: Mark is a famous B-list blogger analyzing
the writings of Charles Krauthammer, down to their hypocrisy-filled
punctuation. Pippi comment-stalks him, and they go on a date, which
he liveblogs.
Complications: Oversharing. Trolling. Friends-locked LJ posts that are locked to the wrong set of friends. Back-channel fronting. An "anonymous" blog about Mark's smelly underoos and action-figure-masturbation attempts.
Rhetorical question: Isn't romance itself a form of propaganda, and can we at last expose the conspiracy of corporate interests and "family values" conservatives behind the propagation of the "happily ever after" mythology? More importantly, what does it say about Pippi that her best online friend is a sock puppet named ChewyChewyTuesday?
I Love You, Tube! (2005)
The Widget of Love: Mark spends weeks coming up with the perfect video to catch Pippi's interest. The result, "man hitting himself with croquet mallet," sparks a romance spanning nearly an hour of footage.
Complications: Ill-thought-out Chien Andalou homage. The Colonoscopy-cam. Trrrtle noir. Not realizing the camera isn't waterproof before trying to recreate the climax of Thunderball. Full-length Wrath of Khan edit, with Pippi spliced into Kirstie Alley's scenes.
Rhetorical question: In the unlikely event that Pippi and Mark procreate, how do they keep the kids from seeing all their ass-calligraphy videos?
Twitter My Heart (2007)
The Widget of Love: The up-to-the-second updates are almost like intimacy: Pippi is waxing her upper lip. Mark is varnishing his Klingon pine-cone collection. Love is new once again! Soon they're Dodgeball-stalking each other.
Complications: Pippi dumps Mark once and for all because he keeps making her read endless drafts of his stupid cyber-novel that nobody ever wants to publish.
Rhetorical question: Who needs Pippi? Not Mark. He doesn't need anyone but NetFlix and The Fruit Guys. Screw her anyway.
Charlie Anders blogs about science fiction and futurism at io9.com. She's actually only written three or four cyber-romance novels, and two of those were on the bathroom wall at Dipp Theria's Koffee Shak. She also wrote a novel called Choir Boy and co-edited an anthology called She's Such A Geek. Read more of her crap at McSweeneys.net, Pindeldyboz.com, ZYZZYVA, the Wall Street Journal, Mother Jones, Salon.com, Helix SF, Paraspheres, Strange Horizons, or on high-class barf bags everywhere.