Rec: Look At Your Renegade Time Lord

[x_losfic]

Hello all! I bogarted the last reccing period using my phenomenal modly powers (actually my living space is pretty reasonable, thanks for asking). Please direct all crying/cursing the unfairness of the dark cabal that is b_e to fandomsecrets (I did just pm the mod and sign up like a pleb, but the drama will keep us young

Comments

[bagheera_san]

You do realize you just asked for everyone's thoughts on yaoi?Aside from some die-hard kinks that I have, what makes sex-writing work for me is: characterisation / character dynamic, some dialogue, the right length, build-up, explicit language (rather than purple prose) and tension

[x_los]

What I DO NOT realize is how I failed to make that joke. Seriously. What was I on

[bagheera_san]

Blank-page argument is hilarious. I'm not saying that less is ALWAYS more, or that one-line sex scenes are the best. It's just that the vast majority of sex scenes tend to be too long for my tastes rather than too short. A one liner probably works best as part of either a very short fic that couldn't carry the weight of a longer sex scene, or a multi-chapter fic where it revs up the UST but eventually you get a longer scene. And a single line doesn't necessarily have to be very allusive, because it could spell out very clearly what a character is imagining or what is going on, (one sentence could tell you who does what to whom where, when and how - "and there he was, riding K9 like a pony on the president's desk in front of the entire High Council, and wearing the coronet of Rassilon at a rakish angle like an outlaw's cowboy hat" - okay, maybe that sentence leaves room for interpretation... terrible interpretation).

[x_los]

Katy was like SURELY THEY ARE JOKING, NO REAL PERSON WOULD SAY THAT, IT SOUNDS LIKE A PARODY.

And I was like, um... alas. No.

Okay, allusion was perhaps a sloppy choice of words, b/c what you say is v. fair. Also foul. Why K-9? Whyyyyyy? :(

[szara1121]

I second basically everything bagheera_san said but would like to add

[x_los]

I like it when characters discover something new about themselves and their partner - their likes and their dislikes - and then respecting those discoveries and boundaries.

I like characters to like each other.

I really like these points.

Re: What I haven't really seen yet is one partner suggesting something, and the other partner declining it. , this is interesting. Maybe to an extent we drop sexual incompatibilities that have to be worked-around or through in the way we drop a lot of the less-sexy, more-gross physical realities of sex in order to prioritized the porn? I.e. there is no colonics in the Whoniverse... thank god. But there might be some very interesting fic from that working through and around stuff, that engages with good character stuff.

[elviaprose]

I don't think UST needs to become RST when sex begins, and, in fic, I think it's much, much better when it doesn't. In fic, wanting, longing, needing more from a person doesn't and shouldn't stop just because you are now touching him/her more intimately than you were before. For me, that's a big part of why Doctor/Master sex, generally, does more for me than a lot of other pairings. The Doctor and the Master see the world so differently that even when they're together, there's going to be a lot of negotiation and tension around what each touch between them means. When the significance of a touch is magnified, distorted, almost overloaded with meaning, it becomes incredibly erotic for me. Thinking "oh, that would feel good" has almost nothing to do with it

[elviaprose]

Hmm. I had a few more thoughts on the sex toy issue. And _why_ I think what I think about it. One thing I already basically implied but didn't say: I think there's something appealing about sexualizing a non-sexual object or situation or ratcheting up the sexuality of an only mildly sexual situation or object (this, I think, is part of the appeal of slash) and that can get lost when toys are involved. Toys are already only sexual. Maybe. Idk. That being said, I think more is going on there

[tardiscrash]

I think you hit it on the head with "more professionally choreographed," for why I tend not to like sex toys in fic. I don't dislike them and TMI, they can be fantastic fun to use with a partner. I just don't see a lot of cross over between sex toy use and intimacy in fanfic. Like, you see the word butt plug and expect a certain kind of fic and it's not going to be something with a lot of honest emotional connection between the characters or between the text and the reader. It becomes a novelisation of a porn film, and that's not what i come to fan fic for.

(You wouldn't happen to have a link to that fic would you? I adore Three/Jo)

[elviaprose]

(Hmm, I can't seem to find it! I thought it was by Dame Syrup, but I seem to have been thinking of this fic Worth checking out, if you like Three/Jo. Okay, now I've convinced the world that I'm a closeted Three/Jo shipper, I'll just go back to my work.)

[aralias]

is this weird? perhaps it's a bit weird. i shall write this comment anyway...

i... disagree about the length issue. i really do think that size matters, and that although the idea of something might be briefly interesting, it does take a sex scene of more than say... 20 lines to do anything for me hotness wise. that said, when i write my own i have these massive long scenes in my head that emerge as about 10 line sections in the actual fic because my soul clamps down and says YOU CANNOT WRITE THIS ARGH. there's usually a lot of talking in the sex that i write, but i would probably be ok with none.

this is the article i was reading yesterday - which i think has some interesting things to say on this subject

[bagheera_san]

Interesting - even though we disagree on a couple of things, I generally find the sex scenes you've written pretty hot. I guess good writing counts for more than a set of rules.

There's an art of gasp-writing, probably. If you've mastered it, gasping is indeed hot. But the likeliness of it going wrong is pretty high.

[tweedymcgee]

when i write my own i have these massive long scenes in my head that emerge as about 10 line sections in the actual fic because my soul clamps down and says YOU CANNOT WRITE THIS ARGH

YES, THIS. I really struggle with this. And most of the time when I do manage to get some actual sex written, I end up lying awake at night later on, mentally replaying cheesy lines and unfortunate metaphors on shuffle/repeat.

[x_los]

but slows everything down so you can experience every part of it for even longer than it actually physically took.

I know we talked about the matter of this comment already, but only now have I realized how this sexiness-as-a-function-of-authorial-control-of-time reminds me of all the others (if 'all the others' is here read as 'the Charm proposal'): horribly. :( It's not not true, it's just also I feel haunted by the ghost of thesis future.

[tweedymcgee]

It would help me out if, in the comments, you could tell me what makes sex writing work for you, in D/M fic, fic in general, and literature/art more broadlyI feel like I spend more time thinking about this than actually producing the stuff, and yet, when I get down to organizing coherent thoughts about it, they're...uh...not so coherent

[x_los]

I can handle dubcon, even noncon in fic, but I have issues with characters getting it on who have a serious power imbalance in canon/characterization.

Omg, YANA. This is why 90% of Doctor-Companion is just like, a flat, introductory 'nope' for me.

This is getting really long and rambly, but one more wee observation: The bar for hotness (in fanfic, lit, anything really) is really freaking high, and at a bare minimum, requires good writing, near-perfect grammar, etc. And when sex is explicitly being had, the bar is even higher. (Sometimes it'd be nice to have lower standards.)

Oh see, I feel like I will let my standards slip waaaay low for a hot ELEMENT in a sex scene, whereas I am Judgems McGee (no relation, that's just my 'Smith') about everything else.

[10littlebullets]

Omg, YANA. This is why 90% of Doctor-Companion is just like, a flat, introductory 'nope' for me.

Ha, yes. I'm fine with Doctor/Companion pairings for the lulz, as part of fandom's general quest to inject perviness into everything, but I'd be uncomfortable seriously shipping them. And when canon does it, it gives me the heebie-jeebies something awful.

[x_los]

Yeah--I mean not ALWAYS? I could see like, some relationships as more egalitarian than others? It's not the same for Six to run off with Evelyn, a grown-ass woman with a lot of power/agency in their dynamic, a career and interests of her own, and no situation of the Doctor being a paternal/avuncular figure for her, as it is for like, the Two to bang Victoria or something--it's about being an adult in your own culture/being treated by the Doctor as another adult equal/thinking of him as such/having a life and agency? I totally don't ship Six/Evelyn or Ten/Donna, but it wouldn't squick me properly, it'd just seem like Not My Reading.