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letterbladeRandom observations, in no particular order. And, yes, I seem to have smut on the brain.
My first exposure to the concept of sex in fanfic was a female on male rapefic dropped under my nose by the then twelve-year-old...eh, LJ named omitted to protect the innocent. I was fourteen. When I was fifteen I started writing slash, and by sixteen I was beginning to figure out how to write good slash. This was around the same time that I was being introduced to the concept of BDSM by SETI (my friend-amoeba in the high school years; don't ask). It was nice to find an explanation for why I'd been fantasizing about bondage since a young age. At any rate, that was a rather radical jolt to a then very sexually innocent Tory.
I find it quite hard to write vanilla sex. This is not to say I can't, but...looking back on the fics I've actually finished and published, I can't think of a major, in-depth vanilla scene. Even in my unpublished work a touch of bondage or hold-you-down-and-ravish-you or oh-that-hurts-so-good usually sneaks in. (Where is that elusive vanilla/kink boundary anyway? But that's another issue.) On the other hand, my primary OTP is pretty much vanilla--or at least I personally think it takes a bit of going out on a limb to write kinky Shinji/Kaworu [Evangelion]. I've written smut with them, just never finished, and it was all very sweet awkward "here this is how a blowjob works" first-time fluff. They just kinda make me warm inside. So do a number of other pairings...the reason I call them my official primary OTP is that I actually do have, if only slightly, wibbles if I see either of them paired with another character. (Although this is partially because Shinji's female prospects are rather therapy-inducing. The woman ten years his senior and falling to pieces? The woman he tries to strangle about as often as he tries to kiss? The woman who's a clone of his mom? Yeegh.) So, yeah, that's very OTPish behavior.
On the other hand again, my secondary OTP is kinky as fuck. Tuvok/Suder [Star Trek: Voyager]: their-love-is-so-violently-telepathic!
And of the two pairings I can immediately recall that I've considered a tertiary OTP, one current--Endymion/Zoisite [Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon]--and one on hold until I see more of their show--Garak/Bashir [Star Trek: Deep Space Nine]...well, they're pretty kinky too. More's been said, I'm sure, about Garak/Bashir than I can. As for Endymion/Zoisite...well, Zoisite goes about being all protective and caring and calling him Master incessantly. I take a very loving, very D/s relationship as only about one level of subtext away from canon there. Mushiness *and* kink in one. (It doesn't help that Zoisite is one of the prettiest men on the face of the earth. This is live-action; I can say that. Endymion ain't bad either.) But really, when you get down to it, my OTP is Endymion/ALLtheShitennou. I'm thinking of doing multiplication tables and writing a mini-fic for each combination someday.
Must finish what I'm currently writing, though, which is of course Endymion/Zoisite. (Or, more accurately, Endymion's other name, but that's a spoiler.) It's been a while since I let myself be even faintly mushy in fic. The kink quotient makes up for it, and enables me to write it. But...
I've noticed something else about that fic and my other recent and less complete Sailor Moon noodlings as well. At this point, compared to a year ago, my sexual experience has about doubled, and my kink experience more than that. I now know what it feels like to be properly spanked, paddled (with or without studs--ow!), and cropped. Hell, I've come from the above. And flogged, though only with one of those rubber koosh-ball affairs. (They make *fantastic* noises though!) I now know what a dick smells and tastes like, the peculiar sensation of having sex while wearing a blindfold and earplugs, and what it's like to be extensively dominated by somebody who actually *wants* me in subspace and *likes* how I act there. (Let's not go into ex-girlfriend issues.) I've been spanked for the camera and for a room full of strangers. And being tied up naked under someone who's coming at you with a riding crop is a rather different sensation than with someone who's coming at you with a kiss.
And yet what do I find myself doing? Yet again writing outside of my range of experience. I've done some penetration? I write fisting. I've done some S&M? I write a single-tail. I've done some D/s? I write it from the *top's* POV, first person. I've given a blowjob? Receiver's POV. Oyyyyyyy.
I suppose, as always, I'm using writing as a way to explore emotions and sensations I *haven't* experienced. I have perpetually loathed the "write what you know" maxim. Not that this is the only reason that I write, or even the primary one--I write because I enjoy it (often very masochistically) and because I have to. But it is something I find myself doing. I like pushing my characters to their limits. And, too, seeing just how interesting I can make things. If a sex act is mundane, why write it? We can imagine it well enough. Give it some emotional impact that runs deeper or further. It's nice enough to see a handsome fellow up against the wall getting whipped...but the interest in writing it comes from the fact that he's expiating his past life's sins against the man holding the whip, who incidentally he usually tops, not the other way around? Sure, everyone with a decent imagination could picture a particular character coming. So I'll write him coming tied tightly to a bed, with his partner's sword lying across his chest and his own gun between his teeth. Consensually.
Hmmm.
Most of the above has dealt almost entirely with m/m slash. I haven't written nearly as much of other gender combinations, but...
Het first. I spent a goodly portion of my life loathing het, because so many canon het pairings, or popular fanon pairings, fall into what I've begun to think of as the Two Protagonists Fallacy. We've got two protagonists (or in some cases secondary protagonists), one male, one female. They must be together, right? 'Cause that's what protagonists do, right? As far as I can tell, this is the logic behind, say, Spike/Faye [Cowboy Bebop, fanon], Allen/Millerna [Escaflowne, canon], Harry/Hermione [Harry Potter, fanon], Ed/Winry [Fullmetal Alchemist, fanon (assuming series continuity; I admit there's a lot more going for this pairing in the manga)] and, to drop the bad het pairing bomb, Tamahome/Miaka [Fushigi Yugi, canon].
On the other hand, there are Two Protagonists pairings I've found tolerable (Spike/Julia [Cowboy Bebop], Van/Hitomi [Escaflowne]), interesting (Kaoru/Kenshin [Rurouni Kenshin], Mamoru/Usagi [Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon]), or even loved with all my little wibbly heart (Tidus/Yuna [Final Fantasy X], Will/Lyra [His Dark Materials]--that one makes me cryyyy!) What's the difference? Developing the characters seperately. Making each of them interesting entirely in their own right. Having a viable, compelling arc of their coming together. And judging from the two I love the most, a tragic ending doesn't hurt. (And neither does the sizable injection of D/s in Kaoru/Kenshin, 'cause yeah, there's a reason I listed them that way. Kinky het pairings seem to be harder to find than kinky slash pairings, which is odd, seeing as women seem to be kinkier than men.)
I don't usually go out of my way to think of and look for non-protagonist het pairings. I have a weakness for well-portrayed married couples (see Hughes/Gracia [Fullmetal Alchemist]), but not to write, just to look at and think "aww, that's sweet." Very rarely a het pairing rife with some possibility or another will rear up out of a fandom and grab me by the lapels. Van/Celena [Escaflowne], for example, which I love, and can't even begin to go into why it's so deliciously sweet yet fucky for spoiler reasons. Or, more recently, Ed/Roze [Fullmetal Alchemist] and all their adorable angst and religious arguments. (YES I LIKE ED/ROZE. YES I KNOW I'M THE ONLY ONE IN THE WORLD. PLZ GET OVER THIS. XP)
And, more recently, Jadeite/Beryl [Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon]. That pairing and all its attendant issues of betrayal and redemption and power and loyalty *fascinates* me. And, dude, that's canon! And not two protagonists, but two "villains"! (Neither of them is, actually, but who is really the villain in that series becomes clear only in the last ten episodes or so.)
Femmeslash. Mrr. When I first started writing femmeslash, it was one side pairing in a much bigger and more complicated fic (the post-Escaflowne soap opera I never finished, with had more than a bit of Millerna/Celena fooling around on the sidelines), and I made the mistake that a lot of people seem to make with f/f. They're *girls*! They're going to be all sweet and sheep-dancy and act like fifteen-year-olds fondling each other in their pajamas! Flowers and hearts! Flowers and hearts!
*snore*
I'm not going to say that I'm not a romantic. Love is an interesting emotion. Characters in love can be very sweet and very stupid, and it can often bring out the best or the worst in them. (And I currently have a particular fondness for BDSM that is not just consensual but *loving,* which is quite rare in fic, as a lot of people seem to have the subliminal assumption that you don't have kinky sex with The One You Really Love. Hell, I'm currently writing it--Endymion/Zoisite for the winz!) But, y'know, lust is pretty damn interesting too. And hate. And the will to dominate or to submit. There are some pairings that do make me go all mushy, but if any section of the fic could be conceivably animated with hearts in the background...PASSU.
Digression.
At some point while I was spurting fic madly in the FMA fandom, I came to the sudden realization that wait, dude, femmeslash can be kinky, dirty, hot, rough, smutty, and so forth. Girls are not delicate flowers. Girls are, in fact, on average, in my own perception, kinkier and more prone to experimenting than boys, if culturally free enough to do so. Girls have multiple frickin' orgasms, yo! Of course, it didn't help that most of the FMA femmeslash I was writing at the time involved the Sins and Dante, and was in fact some of the kinkiest and headfuckiest stuff I've ever written. (And, yes, the Sloth/Envy piece I really should finish someday *is* femmeslash. XP) But, y'know, I was working on some pretty bloody kinky Hawkeye/Ross at one point too...
(Prospects in my current fandom of interest? Rei/Minako *could* be dirty and kinky, but for some reason I really prefer to read them as platonic best enemies. Why? Dunno. Rei/Ami I consider pseudo-canon, and D/s-ish, but not particularly smutty. On the other hand, they *are* all fifteen-year-old sheep-dancing Japanese girls.)
I still write considerably less m/f or f/f than m/m. Even my gen usually focuses on male characters. Why? Dunno. Maybe, just as so many male poets claim the Feminine as their Divine Muse And Inspiration Yadda Yadda, I do so with the masculine. Maybe I'm just trying to compensate for the fact that men are rare in my social life and nonexistent in my sex life. Maybe it's just--in fanfic, this is, and my original fic tends to be more equal--a symptom of the media fallacy of making male characters more frequent, interesting, and/or sexual.
Well, I *know* why I tend no to write much het--it's usually Been Done. I also, depending upon the fandom, avoid or lose interest in the most common m/m pairings for exactly that reason. (For example, I only wrote Snape/Harry [Harry Potter] once, and only because I got struck with a really weird and trippy idea.
Mrr. This wound up being much longer and more rambly than I'd intended, and I have the sneaking suspicion there were several points that I'd thought of when I sat down to write this post but didn't get to. Y'see, I initially intended this to be just a list of quick one-sentence notes. Sigh. Bloody rambly tendences.
Off to contemplate Shitennou multiplication tables. (Yes, concept stolen from Gundam Wing; no, these characters aren't numbered, but they have a pretty codified pecking order, so I'll number 'em anyway. XP)
My first exposure to the concept of sex in fanfic was a female on male rapefic dropped under my nose by the then twelve-year-old...eh, LJ named omitted to protect the innocent. I was fourteen. When I was fifteen I started writing slash, and by sixteen I was beginning to figure out how to write good slash. This was around the same time that I was being introduced to the concept of BDSM by SETI (my friend-amoeba in the high school years; don't ask). It was nice to find an explanation for why I'd been fantasizing about bondage since a young age. At any rate, that was a rather radical jolt to a then very sexually innocent Tory.
I find it quite hard to write vanilla sex. This is not to say I can't, but...looking back on the fics I've actually finished and published, I can't think of a major, in-depth vanilla scene. Even in my unpublished work a touch of bondage or hold-you-down-and-ravish-you or oh-that-hurts-so-good usually sneaks in. (Where is that elusive vanilla/kink boundary anyway? But that's another issue.) On the other hand, my primary OTP is pretty much vanilla--or at least I personally think it takes a bit of going out on a limb to write kinky Shinji/Kaworu [Evangelion]. I've written smut with them, just never finished, and it was all very sweet awkward "here this is how a blowjob works" first-time fluff. They just kinda make me warm inside. So do a number of other pairings...the reason I call them my official primary OTP is that I actually do have, if only slightly, wibbles if I see either of them paired with another character. (Although this is partially because Shinji's female prospects are rather therapy-inducing. The woman ten years his senior and falling to pieces? The woman he tries to strangle about as often as he tries to kiss? The woman who's a clone of his mom? Yeegh.) So, yeah, that's very OTPish behavior.
On the other hand again, my secondary OTP is kinky as fuck. Tuvok/Suder [Star Trek: Voyager]: their-love-is-so-violently-telepathic!
And of the two pairings I can immediately recall that I've considered a tertiary OTP, one current--Endymion/Zoisite [Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon]--and one on hold until I see more of their show--Garak/Bashir [Star Trek: Deep Space Nine]...well, they're pretty kinky too. More's been said, I'm sure, about Garak/Bashir than I can. As for Endymion/Zoisite...well, Zoisite goes about being all protective and caring and calling him Master incessantly. I take a very loving, very D/s relationship as only about one level of subtext away from canon there. Mushiness *and* kink in one. (It doesn't help that Zoisite is one of the prettiest men on the face of the earth. This is live-action; I can say that. Endymion ain't bad either.) But really, when you get down to it, my OTP is Endymion/ALLtheShitennou. I'm thinking of doing multiplication tables and writing a mini-fic for each combination someday.
Must finish what I'm currently writing, though, which is of course Endymion/Zoisite. (Or, more accurately, Endymion's other name, but that's a spoiler.) It's been a while since I let myself be even faintly mushy in fic. The kink quotient makes up for it, and enables me to write it. But...
I've noticed something else about that fic and my other recent and less complete Sailor Moon noodlings as well. At this point, compared to a year ago, my sexual experience has about doubled, and my kink experience more than that. I now know what it feels like to be properly spanked, paddled (with or without studs--ow!), and cropped. Hell, I've come from the above. And flogged, though only with one of those rubber koosh-ball affairs. (They make *fantastic* noises though!) I now know what a dick smells and tastes like, the peculiar sensation of having sex while wearing a blindfold and earplugs, and what it's like to be extensively dominated by somebody who actually *wants* me in subspace and *likes* how I act there. (Let's not go into ex-girlfriend issues.) I've been spanked for the camera and for a room full of strangers. And being tied up naked under someone who's coming at you with a riding crop is a rather different sensation than with someone who's coming at you with a kiss.
And yet what do I find myself doing? Yet again writing outside of my range of experience. I've done some penetration? I write fisting. I've done some S&M? I write a single-tail. I've done some D/s? I write it from the *top's* POV, first person. I've given a blowjob? Receiver's POV. Oyyyyyyy.
I suppose, as always, I'm using writing as a way to explore emotions and sensations I *haven't* experienced. I have perpetually loathed the "write what you know" maxim. Not that this is the only reason that I write, or even the primary one--I write because I enjoy it (often very masochistically) and because I have to. But it is something I find myself doing. I like pushing my characters to their limits. And, too, seeing just how interesting I can make things. If a sex act is mundane, why write it? We can imagine it well enough. Give it some emotional impact that runs deeper or further. It's nice enough to see a handsome fellow up against the wall getting whipped...but the interest in writing it comes from the fact that he's expiating his past life's sins against the man holding the whip, who incidentally he usually tops, not the other way around? Sure, everyone with a decent imagination could picture a particular character coming. So I'll write him coming tied tightly to a bed, with his partner's sword lying across his chest and his own gun between his teeth. Consensually.
Hmmm.
Most of the above has dealt almost entirely with m/m slash. I haven't written nearly as much of other gender combinations, but...
Het first. I spent a goodly portion of my life loathing het, because so many canon het pairings, or popular fanon pairings, fall into what I've begun to think of as the Two Protagonists Fallacy. We've got two protagonists (or in some cases secondary protagonists), one male, one female. They must be together, right? 'Cause that's what protagonists do, right? As far as I can tell, this is the logic behind, say, Spike/Faye [Cowboy Bebop, fanon], Allen/Millerna [Escaflowne, canon], Harry/Hermione [Harry Potter, fanon], Ed/Winry [Fullmetal Alchemist, fanon (assuming series continuity; I admit there's a lot more going for this pairing in the manga)] and, to drop the bad het pairing bomb, Tamahome/Miaka [Fushigi Yugi, canon].
On the other hand, there are Two Protagonists pairings I've found tolerable (Spike/Julia [Cowboy Bebop], Van/Hitomi [Escaflowne]), interesting (Kaoru/Kenshin [Rurouni Kenshin], Mamoru/Usagi [Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon]), or even loved with all my little wibbly heart (Tidus/Yuna [Final Fantasy X], Will/Lyra [His Dark Materials]--that one makes me cryyyy!) What's the difference? Developing the characters seperately. Making each of them interesting entirely in their own right. Having a viable, compelling arc of their coming together. And judging from the two I love the most, a tragic ending doesn't hurt. (And neither does the sizable injection of D/s in Kaoru/Kenshin, 'cause yeah, there's a reason I listed them that way. Kinky het pairings seem to be harder to find than kinky slash pairings, which is odd, seeing as women seem to be kinkier than men.)
I don't usually go out of my way to think of and look for non-protagonist het pairings. I have a weakness for well-portrayed married couples (see Hughes/Gracia [Fullmetal Alchemist]), but not to write, just to look at and think "aww, that's sweet." Very rarely a het pairing rife with some possibility or another will rear up out of a fandom and grab me by the lapels. Van/Celena [Escaflowne], for example, which I love, and can't even begin to go into why it's so deliciously sweet yet fucky for spoiler reasons. Or, more recently, Ed/Roze [Fullmetal Alchemist] and all their adorable angst and religious arguments. (YES I LIKE ED/ROZE. YES I KNOW I'M THE ONLY ONE IN THE WORLD. PLZ GET OVER THIS. XP)
And, more recently, Jadeite/Beryl [Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon]. That pairing and all its attendant issues of betrayal and redemption and power and loyalty *fascinates* me. And, dude, that's canon! And not two protagonists, but two "villains"! (Neither of them is, actually, but who is really the villain in that series becomes clear only in the last ten episodes or so.)
Femmeslash. Mrr. When I first started writing femmeslash, it was one side pairing in a much bigger and more complicated fic (the post-Escaflowne soap opera I never finished, with had more than a bit of Millerna/Celena fooling around on the sidelines), and I made the mistake that a lot of people seem to make with f/f. They're *girls*! They're going to be all sweet and sheep-dancy and act like fifteen-year-olds fondling each other in their pajamas! Flowers and hearts! Flowers and hearts!
*snore*
I'm not going to say that I'm not a romantic. Love is an interesting emotion. Characters in love can be very sweet and very stupid, and it can often bring out the best or the worst in them. (And I currently have a particular fondness for BDSM that is not just consensual but *loving,* which is quite rare in fic, as a lot of people seem to have the subliminal assumption that you don't have kinky sex with The One You Really Love. Hell, I'm currently writing it--Endymion/Zoisite for the winz!) But, y'know, lust is pretty damn interesting too. And hate. And the will to dominate or to submit. There are some pairings that do make me go all mushy, but if any section of the fic could be conceivably animated with hearts in the background...PASSU.
Digression.
At some point while I was spurting fic madly in the FMA fandom, I came to the sudden realization that wait, dude, femmeslash can be kinky, dirty, hot, rough, smutty, and so forth. Girls are not delicate flowers. Girls are, in fact, on average, in my own perception, kinkier and more prone to experimenting than boys, if culturally free enough to do so. Girls have multiple frickin' orgasms, yo! Of course, it didn't help that most of the FMA femmeslash I was writing at the time involved the Sins and Dante, and was in fact some of the kinkiest and headfuckiest stuff I've ever written. (And, yes, the Sloth/Envy piece I really should finish someday *is* femmeslash. XP) But, y'know, I was working on some pretty bloody kinky Hawkeye/Ross at one point too...
(Prospects in my current fandom of interest? Rei/Minako *could* be dirty and kinky, but for some reason I really prefer to read them as platonic best enemies. Why? Dunno. Rei/Ami I consider pseudo-canon, and D/s-ish, but not particularly smutty. On the other hand, they *are* all fifteen-year-old sheep-dancing Japanese girls.)
I still write considerably less m/f or f/f than m/m. Even my gen usually focuses on male characters. Why? Dunno. Maybe, just as so many male poets claim the Feminine as their Divine Muse And Inspiration Yadda Yadda, I do so with the masculine. Maybe I'm just trying to compensate for the fact that men are rare in my social life and nonexistent in my sex life. Maybe it's just--in fanfic, this is, and my original fic tends to be more equal--a symptom of the media fallacy of making male characters more frequent, interesting, and/or sexual.
Well, I *know* why I tend no to write much het--it's usually Been Done. I also, depending upon the fandom, avoid or lose interest in the most common m/m pairings for exactly that reason. (For example, I only wrote Snape/Harry [Harry Potter] once, and only because I got struck with a really weird and trippy idea.
Mrr. This wound up being much longer and more rambly than I'd intended, and I have the sneaking suspicion there were several points that I'd thought of when I sat down to write this post but didn't get to. Y'see, I initially intended this to be just a list of quick one-sentence notes. Sigh. Bloody rambly tendences.
Off to contemplate Shitennou multiplication tables. (Yes, concept stolen from Gundam Wing; no, these characters aren't numbered, but they have a pretty codified pecking order, so I'll number 'em anyway. XP)
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Hmm.
Date: Dec. 27th, 2006 07:12 pm (UTC)Just checking. :)
Re: Hmm.
Date: Dec. 27th, 2006 07:17 pm (UTC)Admittedly it gets more personal than most of my fanfic-related musings. But, well, inevitable; and I'm trusting the one or two people who read my LJ and can't handle my sex life to avoid it.
no subject
Date: Dec. 27th, 2006 08:16 pm (UTC)Re: Hmm.
Date: Dec. 27th, 2006 08:27 pm (UTC)Interesting musings. Thanks for sharing.
no subject
Date: Dec. 30th, 2006 10:04 pm (UTC)