Wanting To Be Happy: Desire, Porn, and Romance in Slash Fanfiction

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Title:	Wanting To Be Happy: Desire, Porn, and Romance in Slash Fanfiction
Creator:	regan v
Date(s):	September 28, 2006
Medium:	LiveJournal post
Fandom:
Topic:
External Links:	Wanting To Be Happy: Desire, Porn, and Romance in Slash Fanfiction; archive link page 1; archive link page 2
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Wanting To Be Happy: Desire, Porn, and Romance in Slash Fanfiction is a 2006 post by regan v.

It was written as a gift for meri oddities.

The essay has 95 comments.

For additional context, see Timeline of Slash Meta and Slash Meta.

Some Topics Discussed

• sex positivity (though this phrase is never used)
• Harry Potter
• is slash provocative?
• exploring "the other"
• porn addressing desire, desire addressing porn

Excerpts from the Essay

The more I immerse myself in fandom, the further it feels like I’ve gone through the looking glass, into a delightfully different world. Day becomes night, black turns into white, gender is inverted, and sexuality is played with and twisted round as easily as molding clay.

One of the many ways in which RL rules get turned on their heads is the fashion in which porn is valued, inside fandom. The best porn writers are much loved and admired. And are given awards, and sent dozens (or hundreds) of friendly, even gushing emails or comments. Adoring fans toss (virtual) roses on to their userid pages, on occasion.

There’s something odd about all this, seen from the outside, you know.

You may have heard or read somewhere that in theory porn is stigmatized, out there in many parts of the world. And I can assure you that this is, in fact, the case.

Porn is actually something to be ashamed about for many people in many cultures. And we won’t even talk about writing it. Or at least it’s something to conceal carefully. And a real social evil, according to our fearless leaders. And some copyright owners.

It’s true that some members of my flist tell me that they live in such enlightened places that they could tell their entire world about their fandom writing. They apparently could stand on the street corner and pass out copies of autographed NC 17 slash to all their colleagues and relatives, and there would be no consequences.

Hmm. That’s not my own personal world, alas. And it’s not the world of many of my closest friends, who must carefully separate their slash writing from their RL.

But in fandom, it’s a different story. Smut is valued. Desire is valued. Celebrated. Stimulated. Along with (very often) a hunger for love and a happy ending.

I like that about fandom. Indeed, I’ve come to see it as a source of grace. Yes, smut as a mitzvah. I’ll explain.

Perhaps we have too much desire at some points, when we’re young. But later in life, you miss it if you’re going through a downswing. Or if desire itself has become a painful topic in your own life, and sex has dropped out of your life for a while. Appetites give spice and relish to all of life’s pleasures, and if you lose that appetite, you’ve lost something precious.

Which is where porn comes in. Smut. Erotica. It provides a world where we can----even if only in the privacy of our own minds---safely express desire. Reading porn we can experience, vicariously, feeling desired. Being desirable.

Fanfic is often a world of perfect desire, in fact. Everyone in slash stories seems to have the libido of a 17 year old boy. Characters usually climax easily, and often. Everyone deeply desires his partner. The sex is almost always not just good, but marvelous. Such perfect desire acts as a stimulant, rekindling appetites in the readers that might otherwise slowly atrophy.

I think that’s a good thing, myself.

Fanfic also gives you a window into how other people experience desire and sex, as well. I’m not so naïve as to assume that how a writer depicts sexuality is in fact how she herself experiences it. But the fact that someone could even imagine sex in that way . . . has often opened windows in my own mind. Has suggested ways of thinking about desire and sex that were new to me. Erotica like that allows you (at a distance, and through the lens of a particular character) to imagine how sex feels for someone else.

Even a well-written PWP can do all those things, and we haven’t even yet gotten to the subject of long, upbeat NC 17 romances. But I’ve gone so far through the looking glass now that I sometimes flounder, trying to remember why so many people I know in RL condemn porn. Trying to remind myself that to much of the world, this is something shameful. And even creepy, because it’s porn about characters from a children’s series.

At this point, I have gone so far that I just don’t get it. Why condemn someone who makes me relish sex even more, who shows me something about desire or ways of experiencing sexuality that I didn’t know before?

It’s like condemning a world-class chef, because she made your mouth water, and showed you that you could, in fact, enjoy eating something you’d never liked before.

Writing good smut is a mitzvah. That’s how I’ve come to see it, deluded inhabitant of the looking glass world that I now am.

And happy endings? Oh, they are even better than smut, sometimes. Because such stories allow you to experience not only perfect desire, but also perfect love. After an idealized fashion, I mean. If they’re well-written and persuasive, happy-ending stories simply make you feel good.

The problem or challenge can come when you’re hopelessly addicted attracted to “difficult” characters (like Spock or Snape) and thus to pairings where it’s harder to bring the two together. As with almost any Snape pairing.

I mean to say, anyone can make a “buddy” slash pairing like Remus/Sirius plausible. Where’s the fun in that? But getting Snape and Harry (who are carrying on a small, private war in canon) together in a fashion that really makes me buy the pairing . . . . takes real talent. But I adore stories like that. I love to see the sparks fly.

And yet, we often want the happy ending. We want to experience love, intimacy, and see them reach an understanding of sorts. How do you do that with Snape and Harry?

Comments at the Essay

parthenia14 : I think the combination of good plot and good writing about sex that you can find in fanfic is unbeatable. One of the things that I find difficult to explain is that while I might want to read and write about the libido of 17-year old boys, or 21 year olds for that matter, I don't actually expect or want a relationship like that -I just like reading about it!

florence craye: Wow, you've hit the nail on the head with this one (to use a stupid but apt cliche). This is such a wonderful expression of some powerful and beautiful ideas- they could change the world! Seriously, I wish more people in the world could view desire in this way. This totally made my lj morning. :)

dartmouthtounge: When I was really new to fandom, like super new, like in July, I was really intolerant of fluff. If I even sniffed the slightest whiff of fluffdom, I'd hit the back button before I had even started to unzip my pants. ;D Just kidding, I almost never jack-off when I read slash, though I do get low-throb erections, the ones that start on the back of your balls and work themselves up, then I watch porn or call somebody and---I wonder how many people do that. Work themselves up with slash. That'd be interesting to know. To me, at least.

Anyway, what was I saying? Right, I used to despise fluff with a passion, which is probably why it was such a mistake for me to read certain fics then that I suppose I was unjust with. I just didn't see Snape that way at all, and couldn't tolerate even the smallest amount of understanding in him. I think maybe that many people, even if they are attracted to him, have the Harry perception of Snape, which doesn't allow for any type of humanity to seep through without suspicion.

Now, however, I think I've gotten a little better at this whole fluff thing. It's not only a process that Harry and Snape go through, but a process that the Snarry reader goes through also. That slow understanding and realization that there is more to Snape that meets the eye. He wouldn't just be a great Dom, he's a person also.

I think that my education has been quicker, despite the fact that I'm a dude, because of your essays. I mean, I still want Snape to be a rock Harry has to dash his fucking brains against, but I'm a little more open to smooth river rocks now. So cool, thanks.

celandineb: Great essay -- it made me think. I don't believe in the idea of a mitzvah as I think you mean it, nor in heaven or hell, but I do approve of making people happy, and well-written porn, whether plotty or PWP, does just that. And I like the argument you make about why perhaps we like those perfect desires and happy endings.

labyrinthlace : Fantastic essay. You've covered all of the points or arguments that I have. I believe that writing smut, good smut is a good thing. I think it brings so much delight to so many that it can't possibly be a bad thing and I am like you in that I can't fathom why it's something considered shameful and wrong.

Yes, there's a romance about it but I think that's a release and an opening of possibility. In every romance there's a grain of something good. "What if?"

Thanks, I'm saving this to memories.

alchemia: I feel like a space alien.

darthmouthtongue: I think you agree with her and don't know it, yet. I mean, not necessarily on everything, but the fact that slash can make you examine your desires, examine desires that aren't really yours but that perhaps you can sympathize with, and turns everything on its head. I think writing, anyway, is an exercise in transgendering, in transeverything, really. You have to break so many limits through imagination, sympathy and the simple examination of your fellow men and women and everything in between, under and over. You can't be limited by your circumstances, not if you have strict categories for yourself. Which is why I kinda hate it when people start trying to enfranchise its outlaw state by saying slash portrays men as they should be, or people as they should be, or men as castrated or bettered through female characteristics. I want it to be much more organic than that. Ya know? So, don't feel too much like an alien. She's talking about you too.

alchemia: i really dont see it. why should slash make me examine anything more than would het or gen?

darthmouthtounge: I'm not sure if that's a trick question or what, so I'll watch my step.

Because slash, unlike gen and het, many times examines what society considers unacceptable. You know what I mean?

And then turns it on its head, and either exploits it, humanely reveals it, or turns it into a desirable thing. It's provocative in ways that het or gen doesn't pretend to be, and it brings about many echos that gen and het simply can't evoke with their respectability.

alchemia: what happened to slash being women just wanting to see 2 guys going at it? I thought the op was writing about romance and porn. if I'm going to explore issues (and I'll do that with any pairings, not just slashed ones), its not going to be fluff or a pwp.

darthmouthtongue: And of course, issues are always explored, but depending on what side of the fence you're sitting on, when you read The Other, that which is foreign to you, you're exploring those issues from a different perspective. Whatever it is that you are not, if you read about it then you don't have the same view point of those inside it. You dig? When women read or write these kinds of stories, they are seeing them from the outside in and so a lot more work goes on than if they just read a simple m/f fic (which could make it less appealing since it's more familiar). I'm not sure if this is true, but I'm thinking about it like when I read about the African American experience, or when I read books set in China or Egypt, or Ancient Rome.

To you these kinds of things may be a given, and you don't feel any need to explore any of these things since they are already traversed territory. However, you have to grant that slash does deal with shit that is not dealt with in gen or het, and that it provides the kinds of worlds that simply don't exist in "normal" lit, and even queer lit.

Besides, fluff is the frame, sugar before the medicine that brings people in and then makes them think about shit. I used to hate any types of fluff with a passion, but now I accept a certain type. The kind that allows me to see that though happiness will not be a consistent thing with the two characters, some kind of compromise can be achieved where two people who may drive each other insane feel a vital need of one another, which can be called "love," or can be called whateverthefuckity.

Then again, maybe we're reading two different OP's. ;D

alchemia: when you read The Other, that which is foreign to you, you're exploring those issues from a different perspective.

Er, so everyone who is queer should be reading/writing het to explore issues?

[snipped]

You want proof that we want the happy ending...

The "we" throughout slash-essays (not just this one) feels alienating, because it speaks to unify the fandom while at the same time excluding the reader who has different reasons.

All the stories given as examples, well, all the stories actually i think the OP ever has used as examples (and that fandom squees so much about) I really do not like. so they offer me no "proof" or insight, or point by which to relate, only to further make me wonder how the heck I ended up in this corner of fandom :/

darthmouthtongue: Er, so everyone who is queer should be reading/writing het to explore issues?

Nah, people should read and experience shit that's foreign to them, because provocation is a good way to jump start the unexpected.

I can sympathize with feeling fascination for that which is exotic, even if the details don't really pertain to my life or my experience. That's what I take from it, and I leave out the rest.

You know how it is to feel undesirable-- fuck, I do and I'm a vain mofo-- or ashamed of something you shouldn't have to feel ashamed of, or glad you've finally found someone who digs what you dig. You create a bridge between your uniqueness and analogous states which you can relate with. I can read about a jewish woman in occupied France hidding out as a gentile and know what that feels like, and relate it to my own queerness, even if I'm not a jewish woman in 1940's Paris.

chthonya: It's provocative in ways that het or gen doesn't pretend to be, and it brings about many echos that gen and het simply can't evoke with their respectability. Respectability? That's rather a sweeping generalisation. Het and gen may not challenge conventional ideas of gender, but that doesn't mean it's not provocative about other things.

aubrem: Like you, I love how porn is lauded here while hidden and the focus of shame in the outside world. It's like fandom is a secret world that we were lucky enough to stumble into and find sexual reinvigoration.

virginie m: Thanks for this wonderful essay. I really feel like the fan fiction I've read has enriched my life in exactly this way – making something that society sees as secret and hidden and shameful a source of enjoyment and joy.

executrix: Lovely essay, and it expresses beautifully *one* strand of the fannish smutloving experience. But I think, as Darcy said to Elizabeth, you are talking about not good company but the very best. I've read a lot of stories that didn't celebrate desire so much as view it as a car wreck from which the writer couldn't look away. And, alas, a lot of stories that are just late-generation copies of other stories that didn't have much to do with real experiences or real desires in the first place. And, for that matter, outside fandom porn wouldn't be one of the major industries in the US if there weren't millions of pervs waving (inter alia) their credit cards. But again, there's an awful lot of ugly porn for every nugget of pretty porn.

vulagarweed: Ah, thank you so, so much for writing this. For me, the libido is such an essential part and motivator for creativity itself; were it not for feelings that I can only describe as erotic--even if very abstractly so--I would probably never write anything at all. Even if the story in question is totally gen, something about the tingle that motivates it is related in some way that is hard to describe to eroticism, and that energy is applicable just about anywhere. And I totally use smut to recharge my batteries in all sorts of ways.

chthonya: You may have heard or read somewhere that in theory porn is stigmatized, out there in many parts of the world. And I can assure you that this is, in fact, the case.

Well, 'out there', a lot of the porn is crap, boring, unerotic, without a trace of evocation of desire or (God forbid) love. So those who condemn it are condemning something that's very different from what we see in fandom, though of course they might not see it that way! I suppose that's one advantage of its acceptability in fandom: there's no shame in talking about it so word gets around about where to find the good stuff.

Having said that, I've find the extent to which porn is valued, admired, extolled more irritating the longer I've been in fandom. Perhaps part of the reason is that I'm on medication that suppresses desire, perhaps also that I've passed out of the stage of life when love and desire seemed more essential than food and drink.

It's not that I object to porn per se. I'm just constantly amazed by how much of it there is compared to other types of story. It's something that I might like to dip into now and again - just as I'd like to dip into a well-written Harry/Hermione story every once and a while if I ever saw one recced. But there are so many other ideas to explore - what is it with the excessive focus on sex and/or partnership as the be all and end all?

darthmouthtounge: I would argue that in adult life, sex is simply there.

So is eating and defecating and menstruating, but these activities get somewhat less exposure in fanfic. ;)

And if you give me a dozen pages about how two characters fall into such a relationship, and then close the door to the bedroom as soon as they walk inside it . . . well, something is missing there.

I think it depends on the story.

I agree if a main thread in the story is the building of sexual tension, then to back out of some description about how those characters interact in the bedroom (or wherever) could be seen to be cheating the reader, especially in the sex-crazed atmosphere of fandom where it's expected. But I don't think it's necessary to go into NC-17 detail; one can put across enough detail to meet characterisation requirements at an R rating. (And often it's more erotic to leave the details to the imagination, though people's mileages vary, as you say. But it's so easy to knock people out of an erotic frame of mind by a clumsy image or turn of phrase, that I would have thought one would induce the required eroticism in a greater number of readers by leaving more to the imagination.)

The problem I have with the profusion of fandom NC-17 stories is that often the desire for sexual content seems to drive the plot, rather than the other way round. For example, I read an excellent Ron/Draco story a while back which showed their rapprochement brilliantly but then took the relationship to a sexual level, which seemed extremely out of character to me and I couldn't help wondering why it had been done. So often it seems to be a case of 'how do I get these characters to have sex' rather than 'what happens if I put these two characters in a story together'. And in the case of the former, it's completely beside the point to argue that sex is part of the character development, as characterisation is not really the point of the story.

Incidentally, I really appreciated copperbadge's approach with 'Stealing Harry': I have zero interest in Sirius/Remus smut, but the alternative chapters enabled me to avoid the worst of it and enjoy the story.

darthmouthtongue: I have zero interest in Sirius/Remus smut, but the alternative chapters enabled me to avoid the worst of it and enjoy the story.

I think that sometimes, like say with The Persian Boy, it's fine to fade to black like Renault liked to do. I mean, I read it as a young boy and I really liked it and got what she was trying to say and I don't think it was necessary to be graphic about the shit because her style of writing is not really conducive to that sort of thing. Plus, the Bagoas dude was this courtesan and if you describe what he did you might take some of the mystique and artistry away from him and make it too understandable, too common or mechanic.

However, in many cases it can be cowardice or even an indication that the writer correlates sex with negative shit or moral shit, that may have nothing to do with the characters in question. Why would it be fine for Ron and Draco to be friends or create a rapport but not to fuck? What's so uncharacteristic about two teenage dudes getting it on?

galena417: I was introduced to slash by a random click on lallyloo's LJ - she was celebrating "World Slash Appreciation Day" or something like that, and went through all her favourite pairings, and recced some stories.

I was intrigued by the concept of Snape & Harry together in a romantic sense, and chose to read Aucta Sinistra's Quid Pro Quo as my first slash story. I was so enthralled, captivated, even, that I was late for my DD's swimming lessons that morning, and tripped rushing to get there, skinning both my knees & one elbow. To this date, the only person IRL that knows I read slash is my DH. Somehow, I don't think my friends at work (especially the HP fans, and all of us HS teachers) would appreciate the concept so much.

So, to make a long comment even longer, just let me say that I completely understand your viewpoint in this essay - just recalling images from some of my favourite stories can give me a happy, tingly feeling inside.