Sexuality in fiction (fantasy)

[sartorias]

Deborah J. Ross talks about it over at BVC in what I thought was a thought-provoking post.

Comments

[whswhs]

I deal with comparable issues in a different, though related domain: roleplaying games. There are people who believe that sexual content is inherently inappropriate to rpgs, for a variety of reasons: straightforward dislike of any character interaction that takes time away from killing and looting; discomfort with people talking about sexual matters; discomfort specifically with sexual scenes narrated by two male players; fear of "GM's girlfriend" situations where the player(s) the GM finds attractive will be treated with favoritism; or, more generally, the assumption that sexual content equates to personal sexual fantasies (which Deborah seems to have run into in dealing with author submissions). I've had people be astonished, or sometimes appalled, that I commonly include that kind of content in rpgs. (I should note that the explicitness varies widely with the decorum of the inspiring material; when I ran a campaign set in an alternate Middle-Earth I told the players at the outset that we would fade to black after the first kiss and

[sartorias]

That's interesting! I hadn't considered gaming, but yes. A completely different dynamic than reader alone with text. Fascinating stuff.

[queenoftheskies]

Thank you for the link. This is such an important aspect of world-building. For me, it relates to SF as well.

[sartorias]

Yes it does!