SOMEHOW I forgot to share this AMAZING commission I received from artist Kotsu. You can find their twitter at twitter.com/k_tsumagari
I just love how the colors are both soft and bold and the dress sparkles and flows… ahhh, it’s such a great image! What a babe! XD
For the Prompt Bang over at @spideypoolfanfic
Prompt #39: The no 1 song on the day you were born
Cutting Crew’s “(I just) died in your arms tonight”
What a great artwork to a great but tragic song! Thank you so much!
they have joined forces.
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also today May 29th is Tony Stark birthday, happy birthday Tony! <3
There is a trend I’ve noticed that smut fics tend to be much more popular than anything else and honestly I just want to have something to look at to remind myself and that writing doesn’t have to have sex to be worth putting out into the community.
This has been the state of affairs as long as I have been writing fanfiction (about 8 years now).
No matter.
Fiction has its own demands.
Write what moves you.
If there is anything that I’m known for in my fandom excursions, it’s the sex I write. The ships, the build, the steamy sex scenes. I bill it, I sell it, I write it. It’s my first and last stop on fandom trains. It’s what I Do.
It is also completely unnecessary for fic to be good.
I do it cause I’m interested in sex. My sex drive is high and the intellectual side of sex is fascinating to me. As is the side of humanity that comes out through sex.
If someone isnt interested in sex, if it’s boring, uncomfortable, awkward, overdone, or otherwise a disagreeable subject then they should write things that are not disagreeable to them.
Just cause the crowd’s doing it doesn’t mean it’s good, right, best, or required.
I, personally, mostly prefer fics with fewer sex scenes (or without them at all). Erotica/porn does little to me (except when I’m in the mood for it, which doesn’t happen too often), and when I’m not in the mood, reading them is more or less like reading lengthy descriptions of nature by Tolstoy in “War and peace”. I quit reading some fics because there was just too much sex in them; skipping those scenes felt unfair to the authors who put time and effort into writing them, but reading them was just too boring to me.
I like all the sexual tension and flirting that might or might not lead up to the sex scene, but I usually skip the scenes themselves. I mean, I like food and I enjoy eating, but a fic that described a meal and the diners’ sensations while eating it in intimate detail would also be tedious to me.
Well, at the heart of it, a sex scene is just another scene, right? It can be written as an emotionally charged character moment, or an action scene, or whatever. Whether or not it’s two characters getting it on shouldn’t have any bearing on whether or not the scene works.
I mean, if the author relies too much on sex being titillating on its own, chances are it is going to be boring, because there are only so many ways you can describe the hydraulics (to use @jbaillier‘s favorite turn of phrase). But if the sex scene is crafted with the same care and effort as the rest of the story, and actually plays a part in the whole, why should that be any different than, say, a big fight scene or a major reveal?
Honestly, I’m curious. I do realize there’s a whole lot of subjective (and possibly subconscious) thought processes and attitudes and preferences that goes into this, because sex ooh aah. I suppose what I’m rambling on about here is personal preferences vs. the quality of a scene. The subjective vs. the objective. There has to be people who skip fight scenes, too, no matter how well they are written.
But as to the OP’s point: no, a story doesn’t need sex to be good. It’s just another tool in the writer’s toolbox. It may be the perfect fit for some stories, but it’s not going to work for everything.
Nope, doesn’t need sex to be good. And sex doesn’t necessarily make it good, if the porns feel very detached from the rest of it. Good sex can elevate a good fic but it ain’t gonna save a bad one. It’s so nice, though, when high-quality pining culminates in hot sexytimes. I really liked @twocatstailoring’s comment.
I can write fluff, I can write angst, I can write hurt/comfort scenes, all of them blindfolded. Writing explicit sex scenes is something that’s almost forced, and it really detracts my writing mood. Sometimes to the point that I no longer feel like writing, and I have to take a long hard look at where the story has come from and where it’s going. Building up to, or even outright implying, the sexy times is a blast, ironically enough, but actually writing sexy times? Not quite my forte. It’s been a hard lesson to accept as I’ve ventured back into fan-fic writing, and I’m sure my therapist would have a blast helping me figure out why exactly that is.
One of my favorite authors has always said sex scenes are like any other action scenes - if they don’t further the plot, they don’t need to be in the story. You should read her most recent post on it - might help. http://arghink.com/2017/08/crusie-theory-sex-scenes/
