I don't think it's weird that the bulk of people want some sex in their fic.
Me neither. Many of my favorite novels have a romance in them. The longer and the more drawn-out and angsty, the better. *g* Sex is part of life. Stories reflect life and human pre-occupations, and that includes, necessarily, sex and romance.
Nor do I think it's weird to grow so weary of the sex for the sake of it that the real longing is for story.
Exactly. While sex is part of life, so is saving the world, remembering to pay the cable bill, and catching murderers.
That fans love sex is unsurprising: it's a primary human drive. But it's not more important, on a day-to-day level, than saving the world, catching a murderer, or even (sometimes) getting along with one's coworkers.
The constant privileging of sex in fanfiction over every other subject for storytelling, to me, both flattens the importance of sex as a tool for human connection and communication (I often skip the sex scenes because there are so many of them and so few actually say anything meaningful about the characters or their situation), and, IMO, can result in out-of-character behavior within the story. Because while love and sex are important, these are in fact people responsible for saving the world and catching murderers and taming wormholes and all that--and if they really spent as much time mooning about their love lives or fucking up against bulkheads as fanfic writers have them do-- well, the world would be a smoking cinder by now. *g*
I mean, it's not like our love-lives take place in a vacuum, either: we're always worrying about something else as well. Why can't we grant the characters that option, to be fully rounded human beings, answerable to more than just their genitals? (And I'm not arguing with YOU here, really: I'm arguing with ... some construct of fandom-at-large that doesn't really exist.)
I do my fair amount of smut-reading. But I tend to think of sex as just one dish on the table, like, oh, mashed potatoes. I can't survive on a diet of mashed potatoes (even though my ancestors did, hah!): I also need rare steak and vegetables and a nice glass of zinfandel. And pie for dessert.
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Date: 2008-02-21 01:30 am (UTC)Me neither. Many of my favorite novels have a romance in them. The longer and the more drawn-out and angsty, the better. *g* Sex is part of life. Stories reflect life and human pre-occupations, and that includes, necessarily, sex and romance.
Nor do I think it's weird to grow so weary of the sex for the sake of it that the real longing is for story.
Exactly. While sex is part of life, so is saving the world, remembering to pay the cable bill, and catching murderers.
That fans love sex is unsurprising: it's a primary human drive. But it's not more important, on a day-to-day level, than saving the world, catching a murderer, or even (sometimes) getting along with one's coworkers.
The constant privileging of sex in fanfiction over every other subject for storytelling, to me, both flattens the importance of sex as a tool for human connection and communication (I often skip the sex scenes because there are so many of them and so few actually say anything meaningful about the characters or their situation), and, IMO, can result in out-of-character behavior within the story. Because while love and sex are important, these are in fact people responsible for saving the world and catching murderers and taming wormholes and all that--and if they really spent as much time mooning about their love lives or fucking up against bulkheads as fanfic writers have them do-- well, the world would be a smoking cinder by now. *g*
I mean, it's not like our love-lives take place in a vacuum, either: we're always worrying about something else as well. Why can't we grant the characters that option, to be fully rounded human beings, answerable to more than just their genitals? (And I'm not arguing with YOU here, really: I'm arguing with ... some construct of fandom-at-large that doesn't really exist.)
I do my fair amount of smut-reading. But I tend to think of sex as just one dish on the table, like, oh, mashed potatoes. I can't survive on a diet of mashed potatoes (even though my ancestors did, hah!): I also need rare steak and vegetables and a nice glass of zinfandel. And pie for dessert.