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

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I often skip the sex scenes in explicit fanfic.

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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.

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OT3's

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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.

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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

[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