by Lore Sjöberg

Okay, kiddies! Turn in your permission slips and pin your name to your shirt, because we're going on a little field trip to one of the more amusingly disturbing sections of this all-night boulangerie we call the Internet.

I'm sure we've all heard plenty about porn on the Internet. Porn porn porn. It's old hat now, and I don't think it was ever really new hat. Before scanners there was pornographic ASCII art pouring out of line printers, and in the future there will be pornographic sub-space personality transfers. But what you may not have hooked into is cartoon porn.

Now, by "cartoon porn," I don't mean mere pornographic cartoons, although there are enough of those to choke a deacon. No, I'm talking about your favorite animated stars of movies, television, and cheap straight-to-video followups, in situations and positions that you'll never see on collectible cups. Near as I can tell, there's a veritable cadre of people -- I'm imagining 13-year-old "Magic the Gathering" players, but you never know -- who take it upon themselves to answer such weighty questions as "What would it look like if Spritle got it on with Chim-Chim?"

The answer is generally "pretty freaky."

So they create these images, either drawing them by hand or taking the easier route of scanning in a picture of Ariel and removing the seashells with Photoshop, and they post them to the alt.binaries.pictures.erotica newsgroups. I especially like the "erotica" bit. I associate the word "erotica" with soft-porn story collections where people describe their lovers' hands a lot, so the idea of someone saying "And here's my collection of erotica. Look! Hong Kong Phooey!" is pretty amusing.

Disney, for obvious psycho-social reasons, is a particularly popular subject; Belle, Ariel, Snow White and the Seven Extremely Short Studs, the list goes on and on. But no sordid corner of Toontown is ignored. Batman! Animaniacs! ("How," you may ask, "Do you make porn about characters with no secondary sexual characteristics?" They manage.) The Flintstones! My Little Pony, for God's sake! I like to think that the main purpose of this display of eerie imagery is more giggly shenanigans than actual full-blown arousal, but you never know.

Even more unnerving, though, is the following, which I saw in a picture newsgroup, and which amply demonstrates the First Principle of Usenet: "No matter how twisted you think you are, there's someone who makes you look like a Von Trapp by comparison."

   Subject: HELP NEEDED "Hot Dog on a Stick Girl Image"