azaleecalypso:

onesidewonder:

hattedhedgehog:

ceallaig1:

pixelatey:

Me anytime a sex scene takes place in a show/movie: This is literally the most unnecessary thing can we not

And yet, somehow, fanfic without sex scenes is considered blah, why is that?

It’s quite a disservice to fanfic readers to assume that the majority of them discard fics that have no sex. It’s not necessarily the sex itself that makes fanfiction so appealing, it’s the emotion and enjoyment we are given by the characters. We get their thoughts and feelings and emotional intimacy. Besides, the fanfic rating and tagging system lets people know what kind of fic they’ll be getting into, so it’s not like readers in general comment on g-rated fics and complain about the lack of banging.

Sex in fanfiction is so appealing because it’s part of a bigger story that already exists. In fanfic you KNOW who the characters are already, the story has been told, you know what the plot is. Because of that, fanfic can AFFORD to have sex scenes that don’t advance the story. The whole POINT of the fanfic is to deter from the story as we know it, to explore moments that weren’t focused on, or to add more substance. In general with a movie, the story is still being told, and sex scenes bring the plot to a halt.

Fanfictions serves for people to explore sexuality safely. For young women and queer people especially, fanfic is a way to find good sexy stories that are not catered to the straight male gaze (like sex often is in other forms of media) and are still about characters you’ve formed emotional attachment to. When it’s written you can use your own imagination, and it often feels more personal and less invasive than watching sex acted out. 

In written media, even badly written sex serves more than on screen since you actually focus on the character’s thoughts and emotions. Sex scenes in movies mostly only serve to drive home the point of “they’re together now” because they don’t know how to show emotional intimacy any other way. From a storytelling perspective, if movie sex doesn’t explain anything but ‘those two are together’ (or more often ‘look how badass this guy is, having so much sex with female characters’) then it’s not necessary.

Truuu

Also, a huge proportion of sex scenes, if not most of them, end up in fanfic because they are nooooooot onscreen. It’s the the secondary couple that doesn’t get focus, it’s the people of colour, it’s the non-canon but preferred couple, it’s queer couples, polyamorous groups, the people with disabilities or mental health issues. Or it’s about the particular unusual dynamics of this pair or moresome, about gender roles, about a kink you’ll never seen onscreen outside of gross porn (if even that).

One more long sex scene between a white heterosexual couple in the missionary position with male gaze happening out of nowhere in the middle of my epic scifi movie whose complicated plot I’m really invested in ≠≠≠ a sex scene part of a 50k long story about people working out their complicated relationship with a lot more attention to detail that any 2-hour movie could ever give me, usually written to cater specifically to me, PLUS the fact that fanfic tends to add or develop on queerness, gender, gender roles, disability, mental illness, and/or kink.

This being said, yeah, a lot of amazing fanfic aren’t about sex or even shipping at all and it’d be nice if people started valuing that/stopped assuming people only write or read fanfic for sex.