In Defense of PG-13 Slash
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| Title: | In Defense of PG-13 Slash |
| Creator: | Kadorienne |
| Date(s): | October 1, 2002 |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom: | |
| Topic: | Fan Fiction, Slash |
| External Links: | In Defense of PG-13 Slash, Archived version |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
In Defense of PG-13 Slash is an essay by Kadorienne.
It is part of the Fanfic Symposium series.
Another fan wrote meta in response a month later: In Defense of NC-17 Slash.
Excerpts
When I wrote my first slash fic, I posted an announcement on a relevant fanlist, and added, "This story is PG-13. No porn."The response was swift: "Slash without porn? What is the POINT, woman?!?"
And that's been a recurring theme in my slash career ever since.
This debate never seems to stop, no matter how often I go through it. In private emails, people will ask me, often more curious than judgmental, why on earth I don't write sex. Occasionally someone on a list will complain (usually mildly) about the lack of explicit sex in my stories, and other readers invariably leap to my defense. Offlist they send me assurances that I shouldn't let it bother me, I should write the way I want to, etc. Onlist, they'll point out that there are already plenty of explicit writers out there, and it's nice to have one or two demure writers providing sweet old-fashioned romance, and so forth. Only days after one such list skirmish ended, I received an email from someone I had never heard from before, who wasn't on the lists I am and was unaware of the arguments. "Nice stories," she said, "now all you need is some lemon." Even some of my most loyal readers, who consistently read and enjoy my stories, will tell me, "I think your stories are great, and if you would put some sex in them they would be perfect." It never stops.
So I thought I would state my case for PG-13 slash once and for all. Standard disclaimers: This is not intended to be in any way critical of those who do like to write or read graphic sex scenes, nor am I attempting to state that My Way Is The One True Path. This is just about why I personally am sticking to my PG-13 guns.
Sex is subjective. Much more so than other story elements. We all have different squicks and turn-ons. Occasionally I'll be reading a nice hot sex scene, my toes are curling, I'm enjoying myself, and then - Eeeew! He did what?!? Yuck, how could he? Ick! Ick!It's also subjective on a more subtle level. On a few occasions, I've asked other readers what their favorite sex scenes in our shared fandoms are. One friend mentioned what I personally consider the hottest scene in that fandom, and said, "That read like a 'how-to' manual." She then mentioned a couple of scenes that I found dull and slightly icky as examples of really good sex scenes. And this is not an isolated case, but a pattern I see repeated over and over. Personally, I'd rather the writer just faded to black and let me use my imagination rather than shattering my vision of the story with something that doesn't float my personal boat.
There are some cases where less is more, and I believe that this is one of them. I'd rather fill in the blanks myself, most of the time. Usually the scenes leading up to the sex are much hotter than the sex itself, the scenes where the characters are giving each other looks, driving each other up the wall just by being near each other, each trying to get up the nerve to make the first move, gradually leading up to the moment that they'll actually touch.... In my opinion, the sexiest scene in any movie ever was in The Age of Innocence, when Daniel Day-Lewis unbuttoned Michelle Pfeiffer's glove and kissed the skin of her wrist. That scene still makes me melt.
Sex scenes seem to have more logistical problems, more continuity errors than any other kind of scene. In one of my own favorite stories, the author specifically states that our heroes start the act lying on their sides. Then she gives us the sentence, "His lover cried out beneath him." Beneath him? How did he get beneath him? I thought they were on their sides! A careful scrutiny of the scene does not mention any change of position. The scene contains at least two more difficult-to-visualize changes of position. Puzzling these out necessarily detracted from the otherwise very sexy chemistry of the scene. In another favorite fic of mine, while one of the characters is caressing the other's genitals, the rest of the caressee seems to vanish into thin air. A few paragraphs later when the owner of the temporarily disembodied genitals speaks, the feeling is, Where has he been all this time? This is a frequent problem - I often find myself wondering, what's the other guy thinking at this moment? What's the expression on his face? Is he making noise? Most of him seems to have evaporated.
And these are the good writers. The first-rate, most stellar writers. If they make confusing statements like these, what about lesser writers? Well, I recently read an otherwise fairly good Xena fic that included an anatomically impossible f/f scene. I skimmed it first as I usually do with sex scenes, but an illogical phrase caught my eye and I backtracked. I reread it three times to be sure it actually said what I thought it said. It did. (Is sex without a penis really that hard to imagine?) I'd link it, but I deliberately lost the link in an attempt to erase the traumatic memory. This is definitely a story which would have been better off fading to black and leaving us to imagine what went on behind the closed doors. Many of us would have imagined something that two women can actually do.
I have heard many slash readers state in no uncertain terms that they read slash to get to the sex scenes. Plot and characterization, they say, are there to make the sex scenes more enjoyable. These readers feel cheated if they don't get their "smut payoff".On the other hand, I steadfastly refuse to write graphic sex scenes, and my personal ficlist has 70 subscribers as of this writing, so evidently there is a readership for PG-13 slash.
I'll admit that I occasionally enjoy reading sex scenes, but they're not what I read a slash fic for. And when I do read them, I feel somewhat naughty. And that's part of the fun. It makes me feel like a teenager in a less permissive era than ours hiding a novel from her parents because it has scenes which are quite daring in her limited experience. But you can only get that thrill of doing the forbidden from something you don't do very often. It has to be a rare treat.
Some people interpret a desire for sexual restraint as a belief that sex is "dirty". Well, I don't believe that sex is dirty. I think it's wonderful (under the right circumstances, yada yada). Treating sex as something daring is respectful to sex. Believing that it shouldn't be indulged in lightly, even on paper (er, onscreen), simply means that it is important. It keeps it special. And if sex became unimportant, if it were easily available in any flavor at any time, it wouldn't be much fun anymore. It wouldn't be special.
When I was fifteen or so, sex scenes in novels and movies were fascinating to me, because at that age, sex was something new and different. But the novelty has worn off long ago. At some point, I started going out for popcorn during the sex scenes, because I already knew what was going to happen.