I'm guessing the lack of work up to that is that it's boring extra work that no one really cares about with their wank material. Like how I entirely lack any sort of "Hey shouldn't we discuss the fact that I'm hanging and you're masturbating to it?" in my hanging porn fic because it's boring extra work that wouldn't really add anything to the story. GRANTED, said story also takes place in the dreamscape and therefore no one is at risk of death here. And we spend time moping about the honorable nature of this because it's Kencyrath porn and musing about the nature of honor is just what Jame does for fun. So I guess for me it's a situational thing. In terms of whether or not we spend time discussing this. Does explaining it add anything? Does not explaining it take away a lot? In many cases though it seems to take away due to it not really working with the context.
I personally see it as a largely contextual thing? Like, in a PWP fic I'm way less interested in the negotiation and such than I am in the porn, so I don't really care there, but in a plottier fic it would bother me if it just Happened And Was Magically Okay.
A sentence or two on how they discussed it offscreen would do, or if the characters are already the type to call each other obscenities in other situations no setup is needed. Just throwing it in there throws me out.
Yeah, this is pretty much how I tend to feel about it. Like, I get that it's just a sexual fantasy and it doesn't have to be realistic (even if some of the more sudden instances still jar the heck out of me)—no one who's just here to write porn wants to stop and write a page of kink negotiation or established relationship backstory before they can get to it, and "partners magically know/are into each other's kinks without having to have any awkward conversations about it" is an appealing fantasy. But if it's a part of a larger, otherwise more realistic (or intended to be realistic) fic, swerving suddenly into "it's porn, don't worry about the details" logic during sex scenes can get really uncomfortable, because the context makes it come off as if the writer thinks it's just as realistic/normal as the rest of the fic's contents. (Doesn't automatically mean they actually think that—in a lot of cases it's more a matter of people regurgitating porn tropes without thinking about how they do/don't fit with the fic—but that's how it ends up reading.)
"Hmm, what are two very strong things? I know! Trees and lions! Those are comparable, right?" Similes are hard. On a more general note, particular live-action fandom, please stop describing this one guy as various shades of extremely pale—"ivory", really?—when he's played by a dude who is olive-toned. Tan. Um, Jewish. (Like me, so I can say that.)
Given some descriptions of canon characters in certain fics, I have often been moved to ask, "who is this character you're speaking of? That is not what the character actually looks or acts like!" I've seen some fairly extreme character descriptions meant to fit whatever role they wanted the character to fulfill. (example in yaoi influenced fics, one of the characters is willowy and frail in comparison to the character cast as a seme, even though the character cast as the "uke" is actually very solidly built and kind of the opposite of small. This also happens in fics where the writer isn't necessarily seme/uke influenced, they just have a strong and inflexible definition of "bottom" traits and "top" traits.)
My two favourite cases of this were when a probably-middle-aged-in-canon female character who is built like a tank, works in a forge all day, and takes no bullshit got turned into a Barbie doll, and the one which at least bothered to mention magical enhancements which had Dumbledore have "rippling muscles".
@valenstyne "It may be true on some level that the girl you are describing is as beautiful as the Chrysler Building, but because the types of beauty are so disparate, the reader will be stopped short without a conversion table." - How Not to Write a Novel
Tbh that's the kind of novel I do want to write. I don't do it for the glory, I do it to make people go wtf.
Just saw a Reylo Titanic AU, where Kylo is Jack and Rey is Rose and for fuck's sake how fucking back asswards is that? It's so goddamned irritating to me how often class deferential get overlooked in favor of, hey let's put this girl in the girl role. No. Nooooooo. Like, you can do an AU that's like, how would Rey turn out if she were materially wealthy, but goddamn, don't just be like, hey yo, she's rich cause I'm copying this other story and in this other story the girl is rich. Piss off. I kinda hate that sorta AU in the first place, entirely because so many authors are afraid to deviate from the source material to make it work with the characters they've chosen.
Also, Rey's canonically an artist. She has a little guide thing for kiddos that's full of "her" illustrations and self portraits and stuff. It's such a cute little bit of character and it's such a shame how few people in the fandom seem to know about it. Rey's Survival Guide is honestly so great.
I can kind of hear them in my head TBH. When I wrote my Rosemary fic I mentioned at one point how you can hear the capital letters in Kanaya's voice. Who can then transmit it to another V-haver. Which is the most annoying way in the world to find out that someone is cheating on you. Man, oh man, this is a hot button of mine. There are some people I don't talk about it with, even. I am also frustrated by all the kudos and no comments, and so on, but people: There are writers out there who will slag you through hell and back if your comments aren't "interesting" or "useful" or whatever, or if they think you sound "entitled" because you say something like you're looking forward to seeing more of the story because frankly, "it was good, I liked it, I'm hopeful to see how it ends" is all you have to say. People would get more comments if people would realise that leaving comments takes spoons and not everyone's a literary critic. I was savaged all over someone's Live Journal whose writing I greatly admired for not leaving any useful constructive critical feedback in my comments and just saying that I liked her work. Which was a fucking compliment. I was new to fandom at the time and it just about broke my heart. I had nothing critical to say! I ... just want people to read my stuff and enjoy it. I don't want people to be scared to tell me that they like it. There are certain comments that are genuinely rude and most of them are the ones that are like "this would be so much better if you wrote the kind of thing that I like instead of the thing that you like" variety, or the "how dare you actually write this thing that I find offensive that you warned me you were going to write and I read it anyway" variety, but any comment that is simply positive and polite is an effort on the behalf of someone who liked what you did and you should not be mean to them about it.\ ...a weed addict?
As I understand it, weed addiction is actually a thing that can happen with heavy, frequent, long term use. It's just not nearly as dramatic as most hard drug addictions. I think this particular reference is a satire though.
None of that information has changed how I felt about it before, nor is it going to change how I feel about it now. It just won't. I hate a lack of comments. It is one of the most legitimately depressing things. That isn't changing. Not even based on how others feel.
In just as petty news: tfw you want to write prose but don't feel like it because it takes too long and isn't what you care about condensed into a tight package anyway. but you want to because dialogue Fuck you prose for taking so long.
