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I totally understand and support people who prefer to not have explicit sex in their media, who are made uncomfortable by it or simply don’t like it, but if you think explicit sex is always unnecessary to the plot you don’t understand sex or sex scenes or plots.
And I’m not talking about genres that are built on explicit sex, like erotica. I’m talking about plots in any genre.
You can explore character in sex in a way you cannot in any other kind of scene.
You can explore character in sex in a way you cannot in any other kind of scene.
Because sex is intensely personal. Sex is psychological. Who is this person? What do they value? What do they fear? What do they want from human connections? What is their relationship with their bodies? What is their relationship with the bodies of others?
What feels good to them? Why does it feel good? How do they understand power and power dynamics? How do they understand gender? What does their personal history say about all of this?
It’s endless, what you can do in a sex scene. It’s absolutely endless.
Sex scenes should never need to justify themselves, they’re awesome and they don’t need a “reason” for being there, but they can *have* a reason, and if you don’t think so you don’t fucking get it.
Sex scenes should never need to justify themselves, they’re awesome and they don’t need a “reason” for being there, but they can *have* a reason, and if you don’t think so you don’t fucking get it.
Again, if you don’t like them, if you prefer to skip or avoid them, that is 100% valid and I support it.
But they can do *work*, in plot and in character.
(They can also reveal a LOT of stuff about the author, which authors should probably be attentive to.)
But they can do *work*, in plot and in character.
(They can also reveal a LOT of stuff about the author, which authors should probably be attentive to.)
(That is also 100% fine, imo, if you read smut that I’ve written you are safe in assuming that I wrote it because I think it’s fucking hot, but authors should just be conscious of what they’re revealing.)
Here, example: in the book I’m editing currently, there’s an explicit scene early on where the main character gets drunk and laid.
It’s explicit because I needed to get across the viscera of just how desperate and numb she is, just how much she’s trying to feel something.
It’s explicit because I needed to get across the viscera of just how desperate and numb she is, just how much she’s trying to feel something.
I also tried to make it kinda hot, if grimy and emotionally sort of miserable. But it was there for a reason beyond that. I needed to inhabit her body because the physicality of it was vital to what I was trying to get across.
Could I have conveyed that state of mind another way? Probably, but I don’t think as effectively, and sure as hell *not in the way I wanted to*.
And the sexual politics in the context of the politics of the book are important, even in one scene.
And the sexual politics in the context of the politics of the book are important, even in one scene.
But that’s just an example of a sex scene that’s doing a job. THEY CAN DO A JOB JUST BY BEING THERE AND BEING HOT. And if they’re also deep in the character’s head, and I feel like a lot of the best ones are, they’re still telling you valuable stuff about that character.
So I have no patience at all for “oh, it never needs to be there”, “it’s never serving the plot”, or even “well I GUESS it can be there but it shouldn’t be Gratuitous”.
Fuck off with that boring-ass shit.
Fuck off with that boring-ass shit.
You don’t have to write them, you don’t have to read them, but you better fucking respect em.
It's weird and largely unsurprising how more than one response to this thread appears to be taking issue with stuff I did not say and did not intend to say, shrug emoji
Didn't say they're always great
Didn't say they're always unproblematic
Didn't say you should always have them
Didn't say they're not subject to criticism like everything fucking else
Didn't say they're always unproblematic
Didn't say you should always have them
Didn't say they're not subject to criticism like everything fucking else
Didn't say you have to like them or everything about them, several times I said the exact opposite of that
Literally what I said is that they are as legitimate in their way as any other kind of plot/character work, that they do not need to justify their own existence, that they can be as necessary to telling a story as anything. I'm really not sure how else to be clear.
By the way some of this is not so much a direct response to anything anyone said as it is me anticipating some of what I imagine might be said because this is Twitter
