Monday is for shitpollsting about sex in fanfic

[lunabee34]

I was just commenting in china_shop's journal that I don't write much explicit fanfic anymore and that I don't really read it much now either. When I first got into fanfic, the porn aspect was novel for me, and almost everything I read was explicit. Now if I do read explicit fanfic, I'm just as likely to skip all the sex scenes so I can get to the good parts: Draco crying in the bathroom because Harry hates him or Tony crying in the workshop because Steve hates him or, you know, some other people crying and misunderstanding each other egregiously (like in ways that stretch the limits of credulity).

And that got me to wondering about what the rest of you think about sex in fanfic. Please discuss any and all points in comments! Tangents welcome.

Poll #22479 And then the taller man licked into the tallest man's mouth

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 36

View Respondents

I often skip the sex scenes in explicit fanfic.

View Answers

yes, and I'm going to tell you why in comments
9 (25.7%)

no
12 (34.3%)

how much is often?
14 (40.0%)

Never thought I'd be reading fic that features __________, but here I am. Reading it.

View Answers

OT3's

View Answers

do not solve love triangles, sheesh.
8 (25.0%)

are the best way to resolve love triangles, sheesh.
24 (75.0%)

Effective sex scenes are really hard to write.

View Answers

yes; I mean you can't just write, "she tasted like strawberries, and sugar, and something uniquely her," TWO times in a single fic
14 (42.4%)

no; you get the right combo of elements (say, spanking, some egg custard, and a little light bondage) and *somebody* out there's going to find it hot
5 (15.2%)

sometimes
14 (42.4%)

Comments

[timespirt]

I can say that if I have read a fic like a bunch of times, sometimes I might skip the sex in order to get on with the story if it's a very long story. Which most of the time they are long stories. Because I've read it so many times I can skip it. LOL

"HUGS"

[lunabee34]

Yes! If it's an old favorite, I might just kinda skim through to the parts that resonate the most with me instead of reading every word.

[james]

Sex is boring! In real life as well as in fic, so why would I read it. The only time I do read it is if it is some kind of heavily-emotioned sex, like you sometimes find in heavy kink fic, where someone is being pushed into admitting what they really feel.

But mostly it's all been there, read that, don't care.

It can be more fun if they're talking during sex, more than just 'yes, harder' And someone kill me if I ever read another 'we are having/about to have sex' dialogue exchange where person A asks 'what do you want' and person B is unable to say anything specific and says 'Just you' which is usually a euphemism for 'fuck me please.' Like, buddy, if you can't say it you aren't ready to do it.

Background facts: I've been writing fic, including slash and porn fic, since 1993. I am also on the Ace spectrum (shocker, I know!) Also I am wandering through my Network and apparently I have OPINIONS about this. ;-)

[lunabee34]

Welcome, network wanderer!! (Were you in Buffy fandom, perchance?)

I have some of the same feelings you do. I think for me, at this point the emotional stuff of a story is what I'm really getting off on (hence my disturbing delight when everyone cries LOL) rather than the sexy parts. I think the sex scenes all just feel like variations on a theme (oh, they're kissing; well I've read that before; oh, they're boning; I've read that before) which is a TOTALLy unfair thing to think because when one has read twenty fics of Draco crying in despair what else is one doing but indulging in variations on a theme? LOL Sometimes I come across a fic that does something in a sex scene that is new to me or that grabs me, but those are few and far between.

[tabaqui]

I enjoy reading sex scenes, but i find that a higher percentage of them are really *boring*. Not because I'm bored of sex, but because a) they're just going through the numbers (one finger, two finger, scissor, omg, stop), b) they're using way too much of the sex scene to natter on about consent, boundaries, and 'are you okay?' stuff, even when it's not BDSM/kink, or c) it's just really *bad*.

Good sex scenes do take a little work, and, of course, you have to find your audience/find your author. Some people will love what i loathe, and vice-versa, so it's all pretty subjective. But if i'm reading an explicit scene and rolling my eyes or skimming, well.... They're not the author for me.

[lunabee34]

*nods*

It's all subjective. I do tend to think that *somebody* out there is going to find it hot regardless even if that's not me.

I find as a writer that writing something that isn't perfunctory and formulaic is really hard. I think it's because I am drawn to dialogue and other aspects of story, and it's hard for me to think of ways to write sex scenes that aren't really familiar already.

[sholio]

Hee. XD

I typically range from mostly uninterested in, to actively put off by sex scenes, and skip or skim them 99% of the time unless they're the point of the fic (as is often true of, say, sex pollen, sex comedy, etc). I mean, I can read sex scenes and sometimes I really enjoy it, but at heart I'm pretty much a gen fan.

But I also feel like, when I first got into reading fic with pairings (circa middle 2000s; I was almost exclusively a gen reader up 'til then) there was an expectation of obligatory sex scenes, especially in slash, that's not quite as much of a thing now. In SGA, for example, I don't think you really ever saw a get-together fic over 10K that didn't include a sex scene. The Obligatory Consummation Scene was as much of an expectation in fic as it still is in genre romance. And I feel like that's less true now, or at least there's more variety and less of an unspoken expectation that romantic fic has to follow a certain basic template. Which means the sex scenes are more likely to only be included if they're relevant to plot or character, as opposed to just kind of being there, and they can also hit at different plot beats in the story than pretty consistently happening at the 90% consummation-of-relationship point as in so many fics in the past. All of which makes them more interesting to me, and less like the sex scene is just shoved in there because it's supposed to be there.

... but to be fair, I don't know if my impressions on this are actual trends or just a matter of which fandoms I've been in lately. I've also gotten a lot more analytical about the way romance is put together since I started writing it, so I notice more of that sort of thing than I used to, as well.

[lunabee34]

Oooh, this is a really good and interesting point.

I know exactly what you mean about the Obligatory Consummation Scene. *dies*

I'm going to pay more attention to that because I hadn't thought of it in that way.

I mostly only read HP and MCU now with occasional forays into LotR and random things on the flist. I feel like the OCS shows up less frequently in the HP than the MCU; the HP stuff still tends to have sex, but it's not positioned in the last chapter as the moment the whole fic is leading up to.

[executrix]

I ask, has this fic been written by someone with some insight into human behavior, sexual and otherwise, obtained from some source other than bad fanfic?

I'm working on a B7 fic where Blake muses that only Avon would consider "peculiar" to be the description for a sexual act. I don't think he's wrong, but it's taking forever to write that scene.

[lunabee34]

Yeah, it does start to become obvious when the sex scenes are written by someone who has no, ah, intimate knowledge of the act. LOL

I am cheering for you! I hope you've made progress on the scene since you posted this comment.

Unhelpful comment is unhelpful

[umadoshi]

My fic reading has been so erratic for SO long that I don't even know that I have strong preferences--Guardian is my first fandom in forever with enough fic that I can actually pick and choose based on anything but "are the characterization and actual writing strong enough that I don't bounce out within two paragraphs?"

I guess I'd say I'm pretty happy to read whatever level of content, if it's about characters I love enough to actively seek out decent fic for; I've never been in a position where there was so much I was gonna get burned out on any particular aspect.

Most of the fanfic I've read over the last many years has been chosen much more based on "written by a friend whose writing I enjoy in a canon I like", and even at that, I haven't gotten to most of it because I save links so much more often than I actually manage to get back to and read them. (As with basically every other aspect of my media-consumption and/or online life. ^^;)

It's hard to pin down any obvious trends as a fic writer for the same kind of reasons--no way to know if I wrote more smut for Newsflesh than anything else because I was in a smut-writing phase or because I specifically like writing it for those characters.

Re: Unhelpful comment is unhelpful

[lunabee34]

This is a perfectly cromulent answer!

I have always been in mega-fandoms like Gateverse or SPN or HP, so pairing fatigue, trope fatigue, and plot fatigue are all very familiar parts of the fannish experience to me. But weighed against the longing for more in a small fandom, I do feel like my diamond slippers are a bit too tight when feeling said fatigue.

[misbegotten]

I tend to write CHARACTERS HAVE FEELINGS + THEN THEY HAVE SEX ABOUT IT + THEN FADE OUT. I feel bad about that sometimes, because obviously "and then they done sex" isn't the be all and end all of fanfic. I feel like I should aspire to more. But I genuinely like both bits, the poking at characters to get them to feel things and act in character (hopefully), and the writing the sex act in a way that is still in character. Does that make sense? Generic sex isn't interesting to me as a writer. I want the sex to make sense for the characters in some way.

As a reader, though, I like all kinds of sex scenes. Sure, I may point and laugh in my head at some of them, but I frequently read them like reference material for my own writing as well as to gain some insight into my own particular kinks. Who says fanfic isn't educational? ;) So I'll read just about anything.

Except goddamn, "scissoring" just makes me wince because it sounds so damned painful.

[misbegotten]

Re-reading the above, I sound like I actually write good sex scenes. That's highly debatable. :\

[mecurtin]

Whether I read sex scenes or not goes in cycles.

Sometimes I won't even start a fic if it's G-rated, or I'll search to make sure the word "kiss" appears.

Other times I get to the sex scene and page down ... page down ... page down.

It depends on my mood a LOT more than it depends on the fandom or pairing.

[lunabee34]

*nods nods*

That makes total sense to me also.

[china_shop]

If I'm skipping/skimming the sex scene, it's almost always a sign that I'm skimming the rest of the fic too (probably just reading the dialogue, at that stage).

Atm I feel like effective sex scenes are really hard to write for some pairings. Or maybe "in some moods." Idk, but I'm pretty sure there's a qualifier in there somewhere. ;-)

I love OT3s!!! But only if they all love each other (whether or not that's platonic love for two of them).

[lunabee34]

Edit away, my friend. I always find something to tweak after I've posted a comment. :)

That is not true for me re: skimming. I'll be reading a HP fic that has truly excellent world building (all this cool stuff about the way magic works) and be extremely impatient for Snape and Harry to stop fucking already so Neville can get back to explaining the magical properties of roses or whatever. LOL

Oh, yeah. I agree re: OT3s. If they're not all into each other, then it's a weird power imbalance.

[goss]

IDK but lately I've been finding sex scenes in fic kinda perfunctory, repetitive/soulless, or with a particular phrasing that just takes me out of the fic.

Once in a while an explicit sex scene will make me sit up and pay attention, will ping me in just the right way, or completely hit me in the feels, but for the most part I tend to skip/skim unless it's a trusted writer, or the author's included something relevant to the characters and plot within those couple paragraphs.

[lunabee34]

Yep. These are my thoughts pretty much exactly as I'm reading.

And I'm afraid I'm pretty guilty of the perfunctory, soulless sex scene myself. I have very rarely felt like I wrote a sex scene that's more than just adequate.

[nyctanthes]

My opinion: That when I skim a sex scene in a well written fic (let's set aside the shitty fics); it's very often not the sex that's boring, it's the relationship. Or rather, that the sex is boring because it reflects the relationship. If there's no tension in the relationship (if everyone wants the same thing and the fic is going through the motions of getting them to the inevitable HEA); or if there is tension in a relationship but the problems are easily solved (e.g., through talking and/or magical OT3), I find that I am not particularly interested in the sex.

In some ways I see it as equivalent to (but far less problematic than) the listening lamp problem. Can you replace the sex scene with AND THEN THEY FUCKED and move on to the next section and it makes no difference to the story? Then maybe it doesn't need to be there.

And then there are the other issues. Does it seem like sex real people would have or is it porn sex? Does it go on for too long? Does it get too anatomical and explicit (I don't need a description of someone's asshole, sorry.) Is it presented in context/character or can it be cut and pasted from another fic? And I find that the more formal BDSM/kinky it gets, the more I tend to skim. It requires too much description and discussion and explicit consent? it takes me out of the story?

in terms of my own (limited) writing...as I said recently, when I do write fic with explicit sex scenes (and the majority of my stories don't have more than a passing mention of sex; or are totally gen), I love to write sex that's kind of awkward, that makes the reader feel like they've intruded on a private moment. And I tend to narrate what people are thinking as it's happening more than what's happening. What's the emotional state they're in? How is the sex changing/reflecting it? I also tend to replace relationship conversations with sex.

Er...I have so many thoughts on this. This is one of those metas I wrote but never posted. :P

[lunabee34]

I am loving your thoughts!

I completely agree with you re: the purpose of the sex scene; as I said somewhere else in comments, all scenes should be in service of the story or characters, and sex scenes are no exception.

I do like the awkward sex scenes! I've read several of those and always really like them because it seems like real people rather than the ideal that shows up in porn where everything is hot and athletic and works perfectly at all times. LOL

[slightweasel]

I happily read sex scenes, but in longer fics I need it to seem like THIS version of the characters doing the dirty (and even in pwp, the characters should sound like themselves). The kind of sex scene that makes me roll my eyes the most is the scene in any longfic where the characters stop seeming like the version of themselves the author has been writing this whole time, and instead seem to have been cast in PWP #4729462. Just, no. The sex scene should be tailored to the fic and the characters, and should both be informed by what came before, and add to what comes next. And sometimes, frankly, there are fics (chiefly on the plottier side, as opposed to the kind where the UST is the main event and the plot, if any, is more backgrounded) where any sex scene really is going to feel shoehorned in.

ETA: I also think the sex scenes in some plotty fics are TOO LONG. If what came before is 60k of UST, then maybe you need a 10k sex scene. If it's a longish PWP, then sure, make it any length you want. But if the romance has heretofore been the B plot, do things really need to screech to a halt for 10k? Probably not!

[musesfool]

Yes to all of this! Also sometimes I read long plotty fic that features a pairing I don't care about in the background, and if I don't ship them, I'll skip the sex because I don't really care and it's getting in the way of plot or character interactions I do care about. I find it rare that the sex scenes in these long stories really move the story forward or do much to illumine character, which are 2 of the main reasons for a sex scene to appear in a longer story.

(I admit, I also skim long paragraphs of description and introspection, and sometimes lengthy action scenes, because I only really care about characters talking to each other, so unless there's dialogue, I get bored easily.)

I don't write long plotty stories, so I don't generally have this particular issue, but I do find sex scenes difficult to write because there's the logistical angle (how many hands and where are they all???) and the emotional angle and the "I've written this pairing 20 times, how can I make this sound new and interesting?" angle. I find that nowadays, I write a lot less sex, but sometimes will still bang out (pun intended) a PWP when the imagery or words strike me.

[notasupervillain]

OT3s can work, but I think they need to be character based, not as a solution to a writer's problem.

In my mind, there are three kinds of sex in fan fic.

1. IKEA sex. Tab A goes into slot B. I could not be more bored when I read or write this.

2. Erotica about your faves! There was a neat bit of spoken word poetry going around Tumblr about this (I can try to find it if you're curious?), where the poet said she hated porn because it presented sex as body parts and not as whole people. So she loved slash fic, because it was a real person with a full personality and desires having sex, not a collection of parts.

3. Feelings sex. This is what I write. The characters have a lot of feelings towards each other, and they use (or don't use) their bodies to express this. You think Draco crying in the bathroom because Harry doesn't love him is intense? What about Draco, cock buried inside Harry, body purposefully positioned behind Harry so Draco doesn't have to look Harry in the eye and know that Harry doesn't love him. Sex can be a vehicle to intensify the emotions in a dynamic. I love reading those. And writing them.

[jackandahat]

Came here to say this about OT3s - for me it's not about love triangles, it's about a specific dynamic between those three character (or the dynamics between them as pairs).

My main OT3 is Leverage, Eliot/Hardison/Parker. (For clarification - M/M/F). Hardison and Parker are a canon couple. At no point is there any indication Eliot is trying to date Parker, take her away from Hardison, or any other love triangle trope. But they work for me as a unit and as combinations in between that.

(An argument could be made that they're a canon OT3 based on finale/word of god, but I was shipping them way before that.)

Sometimes it is love triangles - I've written Wolverine/Jean Grey/Cyclops before, but it's not about resolving the triangle so much as me looking at Cyclops fighting Wolverine and going "Are you mad because 'your girl' wants to shag him, or because you do?"

[chelseagirl]

So, in my none-of-you-even-know-the-source-material fandom, I fairly recently wrote two stories with sexually explicit scenes, my first of those in literally several decades. I'm old-fashioned enough that there was a main story, and then there were "adult" stories for two of the main characters, a remnant of the time when there were separate zines and websites for slash & het adult stories, in days of yore. (AKA, the 90s.)

But yeah, in both stories, the sex was very much connected to what was going on in the larger narrative -- in one case, a character reaching out to her partner in need of connection after a traumatic experience and in the other, casual sex helping someone with a broken heart beginning to move past it. And apparently I can only write sex scenes when there are Reasons. I don't think I could have written it had it been obligatory.

[lunabee34]

I remember those stories! Sometimes it would be a link to just the sex scene so you could read it if you wanted to or just leave it out entirely.

I want to write sex that is in service of the story, and I think sometimes I do that, but mostly I'm just trying to think of sexy things for my characters to say and do, and largely either plagiarizing myself (so much licking of hips and clavicles OMG) or failing to think of new ways to describe our oldest pastime. LOL

[solo]

I love the title of your poll SO MUCH!

[lunabee34]

It is a crime of which I am so guilty. Pretty sure every SGA fic I wrote contains that line. LOL

[tamoline]

I'm ace of the variety where I'm not sex-repulsed, just not particularly interested in sex unless there's something else there. Sex with emotions *can* be interesting, but it's very hit or miss. And, ugh, writing sex scenes is something I've done, technically, though not very well. It's, like, I really have no idea about what people who find sex interesting are into, and I seem to always come up with metaphors about what the sex is really about. Frex, that Southern Reach post fic that you edited, where sex was literally a stand in for human connection. (Though apparently I managed a hand massage that some people found hot, so apparently I can accidentally stumble on something that works.)

Edit: Actually, thinking about it, before I figured a lot of stuff out, I was almost aggressively uninterested in sex scenes. This was before I was into fanfic, before I figured that I just wasn’t into het sex scenes for reasons that are a little more obvious in retrospect, but I was really, really good at skimming at basically subliminal speeds through sex scenes in books to the exact point where the non-sex plot picked up again, to the point where I basically had to fight to read that sex scenes if I wanted to for some reason. This made certain books... really quick to read.

[lunabee34]

I really like that fic so much and the other one you wrote as well. You do such a good job retaining the atmospheric quality of the original, which I realize is not a comment on the sex scene LOL, but is true.

I think I have to acknowledge that part of my disinterest in sex scenes can be attributed to a decreased interest in sex in RL. All my autoimmune disorders and this testosterone deficiency or whatever you want to call it and getting older have all conspired over the last decade to kinda torpedo my libido. I always tell myself a story as I'm in bed trying to go to sleep, and when that story changed from "Lorraine accidentally falls through a portal into Sunnydale and becomes a Slayer and starts sleeping her way through the Scoobies" to "Lorraine accidentally falls through a portal into Sunnydale and becomes a Slayer and starts making sandwiches for the baby Slayers and bonds with Giles over Victorian novels" that should have been a clue, I guess. LOL

[author_by_night]

I've never had much interest in sex scenes in fanfic. I think part of it is that even IRL, I don't? I won't not read them, but if that's the main focus of a story, I'm not as interested. It's the same with romance in general actually. (I suspect in part for reasons I've gotten into privately on my own DW. A family member who is similar to me also said she doesn't have any interest in those things.)

But I also think I got into fanfiction less for the romantic tension between characters and more for exploring the depths of that universe. Especially as I was fairly young when I first got into it - so a lot of the explicit stuff was off limits. This has never really gone away, although that also means I don't really seek fanfic anymore. With the fandoms I was in, there were a lot of spaces where explicit stuff was allowed, but often not the focus. That was harder to find beyond those spaces, and seems even harder nowadays.

What's really interesting is that the Earth's Children fandom, of all places, had way less emphasis on romance. Granted, we also couldn't post anything over PG-13, but even so. There are ways to allude to sex in a PG-13 fashion. (It's an odd rule for a fandom community, but it wasn't really a typical fandom community.)

So I don't always skip sex scenes, but often I get a bit bored with them and wait for the other plot to come in. And if it's just about sex or romance, I generally won't finish. With some exceptions. (And it is interesting that I still read Earth's Children, given that it's 80% sex. But in the context of that series, the sex was also part of the cultural fabric, you know? I mean, it was totally fanservicey, but there was also a deeper bent to it.)

As far as OT3s solving love triangles goes... I think it can be lazy if it's posed as a last, convenient resort. But I can see it working if everyone is attracted to each other. I guess like anything, it's all about how it's written.

What could be interesting too is if a story explores the complexity of OT3s, because they can get tricky IRL if they're not truly mutual, but instead two people decide to share one person. One of the people "sharing" might grow resentful even if they were initially totally on board. I know at least one person that happened to, and it's hard because you can't really complain, but at the same time you're very hurt. However, that's less for sexy fanfics and better for romantic ones or character-driven ones. Also, I believe my friend's situation may not have been "mutual" as much as her boyfriend simply having another girlfriend, so really more polyarmoury, but I'm sure it happens in OT3s as well.

[lunabee34]

That is so surprising to me! Those books are so chock full of sex scenes; I'm really surprised that the fandom went for less explicit than the source material. I wonder how common that is. I would suspect not very.

I was mostly joking about OT3s solving love triangles, but that would be an interesting take on the trope. I'd read that story.

I think your point about what people are coming to fanfic for shaping how they respond to sex scenes is a good one, too. I'm definitely in it for the relationships; I'm into world building as well, and I also want to know what happens next after canon's over.

[princessofgeeks]

I'm such an outlier! I barely answered your questions because I was arguing with each one.

Nowadays I sometimes skip sex scenes because over the years I have become more interested in plot and less interested in the sex. But it depends on my mood and the characters. There are now a bunch more fandom characters whose sex lives don't interest me at all. Their relationships interest me, but not the actual sex. Is this menopause talking? I am not sure. Maybe it's just that I spent over a decade readinga ll the porny slash I could find, and a bunch of other kinds of porn too. In fanfic, I mean. I read a bit of pro erotica but fan writing is really good.

You know, it never occurred to me to think about OT3 as a SOLUTION to a love triangle. Am I naive? Or just experiencing tunnel vision?

Effective sex scenes were no harder to write FOR ME than any other kind of scenes, but I have often read that other writers find them hard.

Boy, that got long.

[lunabee34]

Your second paragraph--cosigned. I can't tell if I just OD'd on sex scenes or my flagging libido is to blame or what, but yeah. I'm just not as interested as I was.

I was mostly joking about OT3s solving love triangles; that accusation seems to come up in every argument I see about them.

I definitely find them hard to write. In almost fifteen years of writing, I think I can count on one hand the few that I've written that I think are really effective.

[independence1776]

One reason I skip the sex scenes is that I find them boring and uninteresting to read 99% of the time. I'm honestly more likely to read explicit BDSM than I am explicit vanilla because BDSM is less likely to be formulaic. My second reason-- and this is the strange one-- is that I don't want to hear about real people's sex lives and that somehow extended itself to fictional characters. Privacy is a thing. The third is that I've finally stopped (mostly) dancing around the subject this year and realized that yeah, I'm some variety of asexual. The fourth is that, as someone else in the comments mentioned, I read fic because I want more of the world and shipping/romance is largely an aside to that, and probably why I largely ship canon ships. I love long, plotty gen fic or where the romance is a side plot. Shipfic just really isn't interesting to me outside of a handful of pairings.

OT3s are the best. I hate love triangles and adore polyfic. I was reading and writing poly before m/m! But my poly needs to have at least one woman involved; my slash ships remain few.

Sex scenes… I wrote one Explicit fic as a challenge to myself. It was difficult, not just because I'd never done it before. And then someone commented (as friendly concrit) that I hadn't done the one finger-two finger etc. sequence and it was wrong to not… only for me to tell them that I'd done the research and the sequence is unnecessary. I won't say "never" but it's extremely unlikely I'll ever get that explicit again. Fade to black works fine.

[lunabee34]

Oh, man. You got to love the commenter who erroneously tells you how you're doing it all wrong.

I think it's awesome that you set yourself the challenge of writing something that is out of your comfort zone. I think that's a cool practice--write a fic about a trope you don't care for or about a character you've never understood or whatever.

I still love ship fic. I'm definitely in it for the emotional intensity (especially when it is angsty intensity). I just don't care as much for the sex part of that as I used to.

[oracne]

I often skip sex scenes even in published fiction because I am just tired of them not having characterization happening. Also, I have published a metric fuckton of erotica, and am burned out on it somewhat.

[lunabee34]

*nods nods*

I'm burned out on it as well.

[amejisuto]

I skip sex scenes when they're not very original, or if they've just been stuck in there just for the sake of having sex.

[lunabee34]

*nods*

I think (as sholio so aptly coined somewhere in the comments to this post) that the Obligatory Consummation Scene used to be really prevalent in fanfic (and maybe it still is? IDK), and so lots of people (myself included) who spent years and years reading fanfic that follows that trajectory: the slash pairing is almost always a non-canonical pairing and not infrequently composed of people who don't seem likely to get together in canon or even outright enemies sometimes; lots of time laying the ground for the couple to get together; and the fic concludes with them finally getting together and having sex. And then that pattern gets ingrained or something.

[trobadora]

Skipping sex scenes: happens mostly with longer plotty fics for ships where I'm not interested in porn. (My porn interest is very ship-dependent.)

OT3s: I can't answer this because it depends on whether I ship the OT3. *g*

[lunabee34]

I am such a multi-shipper; I don't OTP really. So I'm happy to read pretty much anything and am really happy when a writer can make me believe in a pairing that didn't occur to me.

I like OT3s, especially in the context of team!fic--like Gateverse where the Gate teams are together, etc.

[havocthecat]

I like sex scenes. If they're good, and IC, and I don't care if they're an Obligatory Consummation Scene or not, so what?

I find it interesting that so many people are kind of...disdaining the sex scenes these days.

[lunabee34]

I think there's a lot of disdain for sexual content in fandom today; the antis are everywhere. That sort of dislike is completely foreign and repugnant to me.

I don't disdain sex scenes at all; I'm just largely bored with them. IDK if that's because I'm getting old or my low hormone levels or my thyroid or what. I'd be thrilled for my joy in them to return, and maybe it will if this latest med works!

I think far more people are really into sex scenes than bored with them. I think this post is a skewed sample. :)

[spikedluv]

almost everything I read was explicit. Now if I do read explicit fanfic, I'm just as likely to skip all the sex scenes so I can get to the good parts

This is me exactly! You can very much tell (if you're looking) where I started adding to the fic I just posted because the first 3/4 has explicit smut and the last 1/4 definitely does not. I find myself skimming the sexy bits, too.

[lunabee34]

I'm glad I'm not alone. LOL I kinda expected everyone to be on the opposite side from me and was surprised when so many people also admitted to skipping the sex scenes.