Let's Talk About Sex (and Fandom)

[bewize]

So, in reading prompts over at LGBT_fest, I ran across this comment:

Every other day in fandom is a day for meaningless, happy, fluffy slash fic. This is the one fest where it is okay to explore the full realm of the LGBT experience and [not] just the happy, consequence-free fucking that fandom ignorantly pushes down our throats the rest of the year.

Now, I'm inserting the [not] because that is the only way that sentence makes sense to me. But then, I started thinking.

While I understand that this is a comment about the "reality" v. "the slash," I'm not sure that most fandom fics ever explore the "real" consequences of fics. I mean, in my life - and in the not to distant past - I can think of complications that range from awkward working situations to awkward friendships to very bad/awkward day after sort of moments, etc.

And I've been lucky! I mean, in other examples - NOT all from my own life - there are the hurts that come from misunderstandings (one partner thinks sex is more meaningful than the other), STDs, pregnancy (wanted or not), etc.

(There are also things that come from the fact that sex is just awkward - falling off the bed, ticklish spots, clothes that won't come off, bodily functions that either amuse or offend, or just flat out failure to "get there.")

The overwhelming majority of consensual het sex in fics never address these problems at all. I don't really want to get pulled into the slash/LGBT debate, but I do think that fandom tends to make sex a much more idealized experience than it usually is, whether it be het/slash/femmeslash/threesome/foursome/moresome/kink/anything else that I can't think of right now.

I also think it's very important to say that I'm not criticizing. I think it's natural to want to romanticize things - especially sex. While falling off the bed in reality might funny, I'm not sure that it's an easy thing to translate to the written word and it flat out breaks the mood (trust me), so I get why people don't write about it. Even more so, I understand why someone wouldn't write a fic about a condom that breaks and an unwanted pregnancy. Or an STD. Or the complications of bi-racial dating or dating across a generational divide.

Anyway, sorry to think aloud at you guys, but the thoughts were swirling around in my mind. So, if anyone has any recs (for any fandom) that do explore the consequences of CONSENSUAL het sex, please leave them for me.

Thanks!

Comments

[branchandroot]

*thoughtful* I've seen fic that focuses on consequences, but I don't believe that has ever been the same fic that focuses on sex. I mean, on sex as a major event and action, as opposed to a weighty plot point. When there are consequences... well, fic-time is used to focus on /those/, on the days and weeks and months of action that comprise them, not on the twenty minutes of awkward action that may have prompted part of them. I especially recall Moon Momma's collection of Sailor Moon fic focusing on Nephrite and Naru (http://www.angelfire.com/anime2/nephandnaru/library.html). Her own work, in particular, dealt a lot with cross-gen and cross-class issues, and romance all over, but very little time on the actual sexual athletics.

When a fic focuses on sex acts themselves, it's usually erotic, and erotic equals idealized for whatever the value of sex is in that story.

Actually, what I've always had more of an issue with in slash writing is the way that Real Gay Issues (tm) tend to get deployed in a shallow and casual way by writers with no experience of them; kind of the way drug abuse, unwanted pregnancy, rape, and abuse of all kinds are. Shallow angst is more of a story turn-off for me than shallow fluff. *shrugs* Milage will vary.