Let’s look at how to create a Gorean Style hero. For this first we’ll examine how Norman created his heroes (or rather anti-heroes), and from there the essential components to a successful and compelling Gorean main POV character.
The ‘Competent Man’
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
— Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love
A popular trope of early 20th century science fiction that still resonates, is that of the "competent man." The competent man is more than just a character who is competent; he is essentially superhuman. There is nothing he can't do, be it in a fight, solving a science problem, or coming up with needed trickery to overcome a numerically superior but arrogant foe. They tend to have world-changing ability that other characters in the setting somehow lack, either being nameless cannon fodder, or becoming supporting cast. John Carter of Mars, Flash Gordon, and Conan the barbarian are early examples.
Competent man Flash Gordon with supporting cast character, Dale Arden.
Compare these characters with the powerlessness of Wells’s unnamed protagonist in The War of the Worlds, and even Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit being distressed by just the idea of life without enough spare hankies. The "competent man" has changed little in the last hundred or so years - shirtless, impetuous Captain Kirk has resonates even today, and every first-person game revisits this powerful storytelling tool. There's nothing quite like having a single point of view character who the author can throw pretty much any crisis at, and who can be relied on to change the world by the end of the book.
Gor’s Tarl Cabot is very much a competent man hero. City states, powerful nobles, and even alien leaders are subject to his involvement in their affairs.
Is this then, a compulsory trope? Does a Gorean hero have to be a character whose exploits stress the reader's suspension of disbelief, or worse, their patience? Must he so suspiciously unrelatable? Must he even be a man?
I would argue no. All that matters in a Gorean story is that the world changes between the beginning and its end, and that someone hot is sexually dominated.
Personally, I like competent men characters. They are useful; appropriate to the "planetary romance" genre; and if you get into their heads and lay them bare for the reader they stop being cardboard cutouts. My competent men are all heterosexual men enjoying heterosexual and bisexual slave girls, but this is in no way important to the Gorean hero. John Norman would disagree with me, but that's because Gor means one thing to him (a serious prescription for how people should live), and something else entirely to the rest of us (sexy slave porn, yo!).
I am not interested (and do not support) a world where one group of people barbarizes another. However, violent, barbaric, adventure sex slave stories are hot as hell, and I can't get enough of them. To write like a Gorean, this is what you must be true to. As such, the gender of your "competent man," and the gender of his prey, are irrelevant. All that really matters is that he hunt, enslave, and sexually dominate his prey.
In coming years, we should expect to see Gay Gorean stories, gender fluid heroes, female Goreans with their own slave girls - and slave men - and other explorations as we wink at and beckon to our gender buddies across the spectrum to see what we have in our brown paper bag.
Anti-Heroism
The Gorean hero is no boy scout. Conan, more than Tarl Cabot, is the archetype here. Our hero needs to be more than happy to do full-on bad things - remember, he (or she) is a sex slaver. You cannot have a boy scout turn around and steal a a girl and keep her in a cage. It’s not compelling.
Connected with this is the general appeal of any anti-hero character: an exploration of being evil. Through the anti-hero’s actions, the reader can take vicarious delight in things they could never, or would never, do. It is the appeal of the Joker over Batman (screw Batman).
The trick to using an anti-hero and having the reader root for them, is quite simple. You have them stand against the "true" evil of the story or setting. For example, in The Pool of the Black One, Conan challenges and kills a pirate captain for no other reason than to become one in his stead. However, he still fights to save the rest of the crew from the monsters on the island. Accordingly, Tarl Cabot joins Ivar Forkbeard in in Tovarsland and enjoys the man's slave girls, but he risks all to joins the stand against the Kurii menace.
Contrasted against alien invaders who would see humanity exterminated, collaring, branding, and breeding captives becomes an act of humanism. The anti-hero’s actions can be condoned as part of the setting’s ‘Wheel of Life,’ underlined by the chattels own acceptance of their situation.
An Outsider
The hero of the Gorean tale is always a proxy for the reader. A Gorean world is always an interesting one. Here again is the influence of classical science fiction: the wonderful world of Barsoom, of Pellucidar, and other planetary romances. As an outsider, the Gorean protagonist can ask whatever questions he likes and go down any alley. Whatever wonders are mundane to the rest of that world, can be as interesting to him as they are to the reader.
The character does not need to be an outsider for this. It is nothing a first-person narrative can't do, just as well. However, what a general first-person narrative cannot accomplish unless it of is an outsider plopped into a Gorean world, is a stage-by-stage exploration of, and participation in, sex slavery. The reader, especially one who is just picking up a Gorean-style book for the first time, will want to take his or her time exploring what they can do in that world.
This could start as simply as staring at a sex slave without reservation. Imagine looking a beautiful woman up and down, as she walks past. Imagine doing so making no attempt to hide your action, from her, or anyone else. Even the idea of this is creepy and sleazy to us. However, in a Gorean world, it would be so common it wouldn’t be noteworthy to them - if they even realized they did (how often do you stop and realize that you’re breathing?).
An outsider though, would do this with the same nervousness, discomfort, and gleeful taboo interest, that the reader feels when they do it right along with him. The reader can feel the same strange sense of power the protagonist does, when he realizes that he can do it all he likes, and the slave girl expect this - and adjusts herself to better exhibit her body to him, well-trained meat that she is, when she notices his interest.
A good example of this is in Nomads of Gor where Tarl Cabot is asked to be a team player and collar Elizabeth Cardwell. Tarl is uncomfortable doing it - and yet he does it. We feel the same rush of power he does when he closes the collar around her throat. She asks him what that means between them and he says it is nothing, but it is in his power to decide. He could just as easily have told her it meant he saw her as a slave, to do with as he pleased. That he said otherwise is irrelevant. We collared her, right along with him.
Above all, a Gorean story is one where the reader may explore the taboo delight of sex slavery: something they have no access to, and if presented with it, would be horrified and not participate in (of this I'm certain. Reading teaches empathy, and incels do not read).
However, there are no hard and fast rules to writing. All that matters is that a writer understand the "rules" well enough that they know when to use or discard them to best effect.
Point of View
This is to do with how the Gorean protagonist is presented. Gorean fiction is cerebral - yes, you read that right. It is not just a man dragging a snarling and swearing beauty by a chain to the whipping post, it is also what goes through that man's head (or hers).
Leave aside the justifications and mental torture he may go through in order to excuse his own actions; he is also in a mental battle with his prey. How will he break her? Can she even be broken? They are sparring with each other in a game where he controls all the moves, but it is for her to decide if she will lose or not. What he is doing is essentially no different from breaking and taming a wild animal.
There is a lot of tension here: frankly, it is worth its own story with nothing else in the background. This story can be told from a third person perspective - which is fantastic for action scenes. However, third person is very limited when it comes to trying to get into a person's head.
I would go so far to say why bother with it for Gorean fiction, at all. That's just my opinion, though. Why don't you try this experiment and decide for yourself:
-Think of a short, one-on-one breaking scene between your Gorean protagonist, and his captive.
-Write it from first-person.
-Write it from third person.
In which do you empathize with and and root for the slaver? Is he likable? In which do you root for the slave girl? Do you find his experience vicariously hot, or do you find hers horrific?
Your reader needs to root for a character who enslaves people. Perspective is everything.
Changing the World
A good Gorean story is also a good story, period. Things need to change and people need to change. A free woman with proud aspirations ends up a degraded slave girl with expectations on par with an animal’s. Evil lords are confronted and defeated. A hero who hates himself for sleeping with a slave girl, becomes the proud cruel, and exacting owner of several. This is enough for any story.
However, I would argue that for the Gorean story, the Gorean protagonist needs to do more than change a few things around him. He also needs to change the world in some way, for the better. This can be as grand as foiling an invasion by the Kurii, or toppling an illegitimate claimant to a city’s throne. Whatever it is, it needs to have the degree of magnitude that anyone in that world would find impressive. There must be an element of Opera!
The operatic world changer is very much a competent man, and in changing the world our brutal sex slaver gets the free pass he needs to be received as an antihero, and not a villain. The reader identifies with the slaver, and you do want them to feel like monsters for it. Give them a heroic tale so they too can look upon a world changed for the better, a chained beauty kneeling obediently at their feet! She stops being a tragedy, and become a deserved trophy, instead. What is more Gorean than a beautiful slave girl as a trophy?
So there you have it. Put these elements together and you have a Gorean protagonist. Experiment with them, leaving out elements and adding new ones, to your delight and amusement. If you enjoy it, so will your readers!
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