Safe Sex in Fanfic
Time for a rant.
Is it really necessary for every love scene in fanfiction to include that moment where someone leans over to the bedside table and pulls out the condom? In every fandom that takes place in our modern day world (and some that don’t), whenever anything hot and heavy gets going, the safe sex minion has to rear his head. I actually read a femslash today where someone pulls out a dental dam at “that moment”. Talk about breaking the mood.
Look, I get that we live in a post-HIV world; I know that most fanfics are written by people who weren’t even born when the first case of AIDS was found. It is part of our reality. But does it have to be part of our fictional world too?
I’m not saying that our beloved characters should be careless with their sexuality. Not at all. These self-same characters were also born in the same post-HIV world. I’m sure they inevitably will use protection of one kind or another. But my beef is, do we have to see it?
I’ve written plenty of love scenes in both my fanfiction and my original fiction. But never once has the word “condom”, uhm, arisen. Much less the phrase “dental dam”. That doesn’t mean my characters are being unsafe. It doesn’t mean anything, actually, other than I haven’t shown them pull out a condom. If the reader wants to assume they used a condom, fine. But if there is a buzzkill moment - necessary though it is - in the course of an intimate evening, it’s that moment when someone brings up protection, or pulls out protection, or- well, you get the idea. If that is uncomfortable in real life, why the hell do I have to see it in fanfiction? I’m reading fanfiction to escape reality, for goodness sake.
It’s not like someone who is reading fanfiction is going to get the idea that since they didn’t see, I don’t know, Buffy and Giles, or Clark and Chloe, use a condom in some BtVS or Smallville fanfic, that it’s okay for the reader to have unprotected sex in real life. That’s just silly. People aren’t that stupid. And if they are, well, there’s nothing we fanfic writers can do to fix them.
We as fanfic writers - hell, as writers period - should be clever enough to find ways to imply the characters are smart enough to engage in safe sex without having to see the safe part.
This is one case where “show, don’t tell” is a bad idea.