flemmings | (no subject)

Well, we have this entry, summarizing why het stories may turn women off. But me, I was struck by the first quote:

No matter how great the author is in bed, her idea of what sex should be like is just different enough from my idea to make me uncomfortable. The interaction, the emotion, and the atmosphere are just twisted enough to wig me out.

...because I have the same problem with a lot of slash sex. And occasionally with yaoi sex, but not nearly as often, because yaoi writers generally don't see their characters as, y'know, real men. The bizarre and improbable sex of much yaoi doesn't bother me particularly, since it takes place between bizarre and improbable characters to start with. With silver hair and purple eyes often as not. However I've pretty much stopped reading slash writers entirely, even- or should I say, especially- when they write in Japanese fandoms, because their common tropes give me the creeps. (No, not the fantods, for once. The fantods are too subtle for this kind of saltpetre prose.) As examples:

Those fics where one guy tells the other (conflicted about m/m) guy, with ineffable smugness 'You know you want me. You can't deny it' and the other character doesn't punch him in the nose even though if he were *in* character (Klaus, Bodie) he would, without thinking. But he doesn't, because being in helpless panting lust and not noticing what an insensitive git the lust-object is, is somehow seen as hot by the writer.

Teasing anythings. 'Teasing kiss' 'teasing touch' 'teasing finger.' Teasing conveys nothing to me except the desire to tease. Which I find a turn-off in literature and life alike. Give me prolonged kisses and grabbing hands and stuff that speaks of passion; that's my preferance.

I'm not overly fond of 'stroking hands' either. Stroking *is* neat as a RL sensation, but as words on the page I find it going into Penthouse Letter style. Actually, far too many sex scenes read like Penthouse to me, or a desperate attempt to avoid Penthouse. You lose either way.

(At this point I should insert the standard song and dance routine about the sad lack of a respectable erotic vocabulary in English and the sad way the vocabulary that does exist has been tainted by the culture's attitude to sex, which is (90%) that sex is a smutty activity conducted by the inner 12 year old or (10%) that sex is Uplifting Enlightening Mind-blowing Archetypal and Biblical. Take it as read.)

Oh, you know- 'How do you like *this*?' 'Hey, how's that feel? Good, huh, that's really good, huh?' 'Feel *that*? Yeah, ya feel *that*?? Ya like that, right? Ohhh yeah!' I'm sure there are people who get turned on by this sort of stuff, though I can't quite see how. Me, I think if you've got nothing intelligent to say, keep your flipping mouth shut and, y'know, get on with it.

Also- IME it's extremely difficult to be witty during sex. Characters that try to generally end up sounding like twelve year olds. Sex between twelve year olds turns me off, especially when they're twenty-some twelve year olds. I'm all for a decent silence. Well, unless you're following the yaoi trope in which the seme chatters away about everything on his mind, including a deep and err penetrating analysis of the uke's state of mind, while the uke of course is reduced to wordless groans and blushes and repeated orgasms. But that's because female me *of course* can think non-stop during sex about matters utterly unrelated to the activity at hand, so the thinking-out-loud seme seems not merely natural but congenial.

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Bad erotic writing really is excrutiating, isn't it. Most of what I've liked best in the past has been in slash fics, but there's certainly a wealth of disasterous writing out there regardless of the writers' backgrounds.

*chuckling under breath* Am I the only one who reads horrible, painful fanfics for fun?

It's funny, because het fics never bothered me. But that might be because I don't like men. Could the "Ew, het!" have something to do with uncomfortable feelings young het women and girls have (or are taught to have?) towards men and sex? I'll bet you it does.

Bad writing is what bothers me. Dizamn.

(sorry, I couldn't resist).

I hate men because men are asses, but I'm bi so het sex scenes don't bother me on a fundamental basis. I'm just picky about what I like in real life, and so I'm picky about what I like in fiction.

My favourite sex scenes in fanfic are the nasty hard (un)emotional screws (a la

flemmings' Papuwa schtuffs), or the scenes that just leave the majority of the action to my imagination -- because what's in my head is better than what most people are going to write out anyway. I had my fill of Harlequin het scenes when I was twelve.

And, uh, talking during sex... anyone who has the clarity of mind to keep up a conversation during sex isn't getting enough out of it, and IMO that includes cartoon characters; which would make the scene, you know, less fun for me-the-reader. I like it better when there's lots of vowels and grunting and very few actual words. Feels more like real sex and allows me to feel Involved. Which a story should. IMO.

See, the thing- which

fanficrants demonstrates every time someone rants about sexual vocabulary- is that bad erotic writing is very much eye of the beholder stuff. I really do find the slash style a turn-off, the way I find pornographic photographs a turn off. There's just... nothing erotic to me about the picture of a cock. But you know some people love it. Equally that slash trope of 'drive the guy wild' with teasing kisses or teasing hands or 'a firm grasp slid up his muscled frame and teasing fingers walked down his spine.' I say ick. Others say Yowza.

I know my erotic preferences go in the direction of the baroque and the bizarre, leavened by humour, which is probably why the yaoi tropes that drive so many ranters mad- starting with the very existence of seme and uke- strike me as neat. It'd never have occrred to me to classify doing and done in such a fashion, and I think it charming. A seme who talks about his brothers while screwing his uke seems hot to me. Others want to read about him deep-kissing and his wet tongue invading the uke's mouth. To which I say ick.

'Why not het' is is as big a MMV arena as 'why yaoi', but I'll go with the line that it gets too close to some people's reality and thus makes for bad fantasy. OTOH the other thing it references is several thousand years of male-written male-oriented het writing, and that's going to squick the sensitive big time. Never mind the emotional baggage that goes with het; the flipping vocabulary is all against you, as I discovered when I was writing het. (The problem is doubled for yuri, natch.)

To write good het you have to dump everything you've instinctively picked up about how het is written, and most people don't or can't. If explicit, it's Penthouse; if non-, it's romance novels. Thus the instinctive Ick response, by me.

Talking during sex- there's the MMV thing again. I like it precisely because it's so unlikely (though not for me personally because yeah, I never did get that much out of sex: most people really don't know what they're doing in bed. And if they do know there's a reason why they know, and they'll be doing your friend tomorrow and possibly giving you an STD on the side. Just to mention.)

As I say, I like things baroque, like being able to talk while screwing. (Beats the Scientologist 'being silent during labour', I say.) Trust the Japanese to provide the baroque. You'll notice a common Japanese het trope, the yakuza who can talk business with his subordinates while screwing his girlfriend into moaning ecstasy. The Japanese just find the idea hot, I assume.

They must; but the girls I know who sleep with/have slept with Japanese guys have all been unnerved by the dead silence that accompanies the act. I admit I don't know a lot (half-dozen, maybe) but apparently a great deal of concentration is necessary, 'cos these guys don't make a sound (and tend to be unnerved themselves when the girls aren't maguro during sex).

Granted, I don't know anyone who's slept with yakuza. Maybe it's a requirement, to be able to focus on two things at once, or something =D

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