Things that piss me off
Jun. 12th, 2002 09:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ivyblossomOkay, there's one thing that pisses me off today. Let me tell you all about it. You know how there's often a distinction between virgin-writing-smut, and someone-with-some-sexual-experience writing smut? Like, not that they have to do *everything*, not that it has to be gay sex or straight sex necessarily (ideally one of the two, of course, but not one or the other exclusively), but people who have some sense of what the sexual is about, some sense of how the engine works, some sense of how it all feels?
Right. So it's cool when someone can express that in a way that feels really genuine, I think. That sense of closeness and excitement and all of that. I don't care if you need a cliche to explain it or not, frankly, but it seems to me you can often tell who's writing by watching a steamy movie about sex and who is working from a memory of someone kissing their neck. Yanno what I'm saying?
Now. We know there aren't many boys in this fandom, really. There are some, but not many. And how many gay boys are there? How about gay boys who are English and are in boarding school, with boyfriends in another other house that they sneak around to shag and snog? Yeah. Not too many. Is said boy a Good Thing(tm)? I think so. God, the resources there. The insight. And, come on, he's just so damn adorable.
We are writing about relatively newly sexual people, a lot of the time. About boys exploring each other. About things boys can get up to together when left unsupervised, without explicit direction, with a manual. Getting a glimpse into where that leads is pretty valuable to us, I'd say.
And, like, I have to say, for myself, and this will be exemplified when Haven comes out, I have been inspired and corrected and prodded along the boysex smut trail by a certain Aidan Lynch, a lovely young man who knows of what he speaks when it comes to boys getting to know each other, if you know what i mean. I could go into detail, but let's just say, he knows what he's talking about. And he's such a doll. He's young, newly minted, and learning what makes thinks go bump in the night. I love him.
So. When Aidan goes ahead and does me and the rest of the fic universe a favour and writes some very realistic smut from the point of view of an 18 year old gay schoolboy deeply in love, I'm horrified to say that someone went ahead and flamed him for being sexually inexperienced. [see review here.]
I realize that we all have the right to review, to a degree. But this review in particular, at this time, to this person, really makes me want to jump up and down. First, because the fic in question is really useful to me in terms of writing smut because of the insane amount of detail that wouldn't occur to me, since, you know, as a woman there's only so much I can guess about gay male sex, but also because it's such a personal attack. It says: Your lack of sexual experience is sadly obvious in this fic....You're a good writer. But honey, these details are ruining it.
See, for the record, it's just not true. He is sexually experienced, as much as randy Harry and Draco are when they're jumping into closets and meeting in empty classrooms and shagging as much as humanly possible. His sexual experience may not be the reviewers sexual experience, but I think from the fic it's pretty freakin' clear that he's not making this shit up.
I know how hard it is to write smut. And I really do support everyone who gives it a shot. I'm so, so annoyed that someone would not just attack a fic or the way things were worded, but anonymously pin their problems with a fic on this author's sexual experience.
to "Someone who cares enough to tell the truth". Kiss my ass.
Right. So it's cool when someone can express that in a way that feels really genuine, I think. That sense of closeness and excitement and all of that. I don't care if you need a cliche to explain it or not, frankly, but it seems to me you can often tell who's writing by watching a steamy movie about sex and who is working from a memory of someone kissing their neck. Yanno what I'm saying?
Now. We know there aren't many boys in this fandom, really. There are some, but not many. And how many gay boys are there? How about gay boys who are English and are in boarding school, with boyfriends in another other house that they sneak around to shag and snog? Yeah. Not too many. Is said boy a Good Thing(tm)? I think so. God, the resources there. The insight. And, come on, he's just so damn adorable.
We are writing about relatively newly sexual people, a lot of the time. About boys exploring each other. About things boys can get up to together when left unsupervised, without explicit direction, with a manual. Getting a glimpse into where that leads is pretty valuable to us, I'd say.
And, like, I have to say, for myself, and this will be exemplified when Haven comes out, I have been inspired and corrected and prodded along the boysex smut trail by a certain Aidan Lynch, a lovely young man who knows of what he speaks when it comes to boys getting to know each other, if you know what i mean. I could go into detail, but let's just say, he knows what he's talking about. And he's such a doll. He's young, newly minted, and learning what makes thinks go bump in the night. I love him.
So. When Aidan goes ahead and does me and the rest of the fic universe a favour and writes some very realistic smut from the point of view of an 18 year old gay schoolboy deeply in love, I'm horrified to say that someone went ahead and flamed him for being sexually inexperienced. [see review here.]
I realize that we all have the right to review, to a degree. But this review in particular, at this time, to this person, really makes me want to jump up and down. First, because the fic in question is really useful to me in terms of writing smut because of the insane amount of detail that wouldn't occur to me, since, you know, as a woman there's only so much I can guess about gay male sex, but also because it's such a personal attack. It says: Your lack of sexual experience is sadly obvious in this fic....You're a good writer. But honey, these details are ruining it.
See, for the record, it's just not true. He is sexually experienced, as much as randy Harry and Draco are when they're jumping into closets and meeting in empty classrooms and shagging as much as humanly possible. His sexual experience may not be the reviewers sexual experience, but I think from the fic it's pretty freakin' clear that he's not making this shit up.
I know how hard it is to write smut. And I really do support everyone who gives it a shot. I'm so, so annoyed that someone would not just attack a fic or the way things were worded, but anonymously pin their problems with a fic on this author's sexual experience.
to "Someone who cares enough to tell the truth". Kiss my ass.
