THE SPARRING LEADS TO SEX: a Manifest
.
Home sick today! Yes, the same sickness as last week. Throat infection. DO NOT WANT! You know what that means. I write between coughing fits!
So yesterday I was standing in a gallery full of dead Dutch dudes, admiring the foreshortening and scribbling notes for my next Arthur and Eames fic in a little leather book. Choreography is peeling in my head and I make a few notes--pistol-whipping, grappling, broken furniture, and handjobs, in that order--and send just that to lindensphinx in a text.
It occurs to me somewhere between texts that in my time writing, this is the trope that keeps on coming: characters are engaged in physical combat and decide about halfway through the fight to shift their attentions to getting each other off. I have to wonder how many times I have invoked, subverted, perverted, and otherwise discussed that trope. (I'll put a list somewhere in the comments, because I know puella_nerdii is going to make me write it down, and because:)
It also occurs to me that I'm not the only one who likes it. Lord knows my collaborators through the years have encouraged this fixation. My time in the Tournament circuit at #ri placed a sort of combat premium in my mind. I know how to write a good fight scene now, and along the way I also figured out ways of inflecting the combat to play on other tensions within the scene without digressing from it. And I'll be completely honest; a good duel has always gotten my heart racing, particularly when the participants are focused not on winning, but on having a good duel, and a good time.
What I want to do in this post is unpack the trope--"The Sparring Leads to Sex"--as a thing unto itself, and also as it relates to my writing and personal preferences. And I'd like to share recommendations for good past and potential applications of this trope. White Collar fandom, I am looking at you.
1: Enjoyment
First off, "The Sparring Leads to Sex" is not "Slap Slap Kiss". "Slap Slap Kiss" is when two characters who are both-still-angry at each other decide to get it on. Slap Slap Kiss is not necessary violent, and even less necessarily combative or structured. Sometimes Slap Slap Kiss overlaps with The Sparring Leads to Sex as a motivation and spark, but oddly enough I tend to find this less hot. Perhaps this is because when it escalates to a sufficiently violent level to also qualify as The Sparring Leads to Sex, Slap Slap Kiss is much less about the physicality of the fight.
The Sparring Leads to Sex, at core, requires an enjoyment of fighting, or at least of fighting each other. At least one participant in the fight has to appreciate the fists flying.
To recap, the difference:
Slap Slap Kiss
A: I hate you.
B: I hate you more.
A: [slap]
B: [slap]
A: [kiss]
B: [okay!]
The Sparring Leads to Sex
A: I hate you.
B: I hate you more. [slap]
A: Wow, good arm!
B: Thanks. [slap]
A: [slap]
B: [kiss]
A: [okay!]
See? Much hotter.
2: Mutuality
Second off, it is no secret to someone who has known me for more than an hour that I AM KINKY, and frankly of the sadomasochistic variety. Pain often holds sexual connotations for me, and sex nearly always has painful ones. (I will discuss sexual horror in another post, someday.) So, two characters willfully trying to injure each other, being rough and vital and violent and then deciding that they should fuck because they both enjoyed the process? That resonates like an A 440 in an empty concert hall, man.
But the operative term in that construction is two. Two characters, each other, they. Mutuality is what differentiates a spar from a beatdown. Again, there is gradation, but The Sparring Leads to Sex, while violent and even sometimes deadly, is not abusive. It's called The Sparring Leads to Sex, not "The Beatdown Leads to Rape". Both (or all) parties must be invested in the fight, and invested in the sex.
The difference:
The Beatdown Leads to Rape
A: [slap]
B: Cut it out, you fucker.
A: No. [slap]
B: [defense!]
A: [kiss]
B: You're a douche.
The Sparring Leads to Sex
A: [slap]
B: Like hell. [slap] I'm gonna tear you apart.
A: Oh yeah? [slap]
B: [slap]
A: [kiss]
B: [oh yeah]
Again, much hotter.
There is, as I said, a grey area. Let's call it "The Beatdown Leads to Consensual Sex". This is the case where the fight is completely one-sided--either because B is uninterested or just playing to lose--but the resultant sex is mutual. Whether this still qualifies as The Sparring Leads to Sex is debatable, but it can definitely be hot in the same place for me in instances where B is using the spar, and I personally think it counts.
The Beatdown Leads to Consensual Sex
A: [slap]
B: Oh you can do better than that.
A: [slap] [slap] [slap] [pant]
B: Feel good?
A: Yeah.
B: So do I. Now fuck me.
A: [kiss]
B: [okay!]
Or:
A: [slap]
B: Oh you can do better than that.
A: [slap] [slap] [slap] [pant] [kiss]
B: [wait what OKAY!]
These definitely qualify as The Sparring Leads to Sex because they are still mutual activities in the end, even if the sparring is solely-directed.
3: Personality
Third off, and this should really be a given: No matter how many directions the violence is going in, the violence does have to be directed. Indiscriminate violence is less hot than personal violence. (This is why I do not ship Godzilla/Tokyo.) For the same reasons I don't want to read about A just humping the furniture, I don't want to read about A just hitting B because B is there and A wants to hit something. That is not The Sparring Leads to Sex.
All drama is personal. Fight scenes, sex scenes, death scenes, negotiation scenes, all of these are meaningless without character. This is why "rocks fall everyone dies" is insulting. We want our scenes to mean. That especially includes things like sex, where it is always better if there is more to it than Tab A Slot B, and combat, where it is always better if the stakes are dramatic and thus personal.
The violence in a sparring scene has to be for more than just its own sake. The characters have to want to hurt each other, or themselves, or someone else by proxy--or derail a mission, extract information, give information. Or teach! Some of the best The Sparring Leads to Sex is instructive--frankly, some of the best fight scenes in general are instructive--because the relationship between the participants is always at the center of the fight.
The differences:
Boring
A: [slap]
B: [slap]
A: [kiss]
B: [okay!]
Less Boring
A: [slap]
B: I deserved that.
A: Yeah, you kind of did. [slap]
B: And you deserved THIS! [slap]
A: [slap]
B: [kiss]
A: [okay!]
Or:
A: [slap]
B: Aim lower.
A: [slap]
B: Lower.
A: [slap]
B: No, like this. [slap]
A: [slap]
B: Good!
A: [kiss]
B: [okay!]
Or:
A: You stole my MacGuffin! [slap]
B: Get bent. [slap]
A: [slap]
B: [slap]
A: [steal]
B: Give that back! [slap]
A: Make me. [slap]
B: [kiss]
A: [okay!]
Again, much hotter.
There is a point where it becomes too personal, but that's a subjective point. If the characters' violence-inducing issues overwhelm the scene, the scene tends to become too embroiled in the violence and leave no plausible room for the sex. If A broke B's heart, mind, and arm, and killed his sister, and is about to initiate the Apocalypse, well for one thing we're in a CLAMP manga, but for another, it takes a very special A and B to pull the fighting into fucking without completely losing the reader.
-
Now that the guidelines are down, I want to use them to talk about the versatility and applicability of The Sparring Leads to Sex. If The Sparring Leads to Sex requires enjoyment, mutuality, and personality--like most good sex--thereafter the uniquenesses of the characters will determine the timbre of the scene. It takes characters who comply with the guidelines to create a scenario that complies with the guidelines. I know it sounds tautological, but that's actually really easy to forget when faced with the shiny.
1) The characters must take pleasure in fighting, or at least in fighting each other. A True Pacifist like, say, Simon Tam (at least in the early episodes of Firefly) is extremely unlikely to participate in The Sparring Leads to Sex, but a Technical Pacifist like Himura Kenshin can fit the trope like hand in dueling glove. Likewise for Martial-by-Proxy characters like Kongming and Pacifists-With-Berserk-Buttons like Quatre Winner. Not everyone who can get into The Sparring Leads to Sex is a bloodthirsty warmonger. Some are casual combatants, some are retired badasses, and many are just normal, chill people who see nothing wrong with throwing a punch.
Prowess is nice, but never required, just like with sex. And again just like with sex, ineptitude in fighting doesn't bring the scene to a standstill. Instructional scenes can be really hot, and as long as an impassioned but inept A wants to learn what B can teach, you have motivation and personality as well.
So yeah, the character must be okay with the kink in order for the kink to to work. Not innovative, that.
2) The characters must want each other. Again, not news. The Sparring Leads to Sex is consensual at heart. Dubcon is possible, even likely, in the cases of exhilarative duress or inebriation. But the scenario must be mutual at least until they're done opening holes in each other.
But that wanting can take almost any shape! Eames wants to take Arthur apart. Ashe wants to be more like Vossler. Seishirou can't bring himself to kill Subaru but oh will he hurt him good. Squall and Seifer are just having a tense practice match and it's about to get out of hand. Sokka and Suki are just having a companionable spar but Sokka finds he really likes fighting with Suki. Mal wants to hurt Dom but Ariadne is the one in the room and Ariadne will do just fine. Landa doesn't mind taking a few punches if they come from Aldo's hand. France and England--yeah. The permutations are endless.
3) The characters must have a reason to fight, and a reason to fuck, in accordance with 1) and 2). If I just wanted to watch them fight, I'd play old school Street Fighter and use my imagination.
The most important component of The Sparring Leads to Sex is the moment of transition, the leads to. Why does the fighting turn to fucking? How? Is it a slow and imperceptible shift, a matter of one grunt that sounds too much like a moan, of one knee landing and staying in just the right place a second too long? Is it sudden, a glance and a challenge and that bite on the shoulder is all at once an invitation? Is the shift premeditated? Accidental? Hoped-but-not-asked for? A good idea at all? Does the fighting actually stop, or is the sex just as violent, just as much a kind of combat? Does this resolve anything, or create more problems?
God I love this trope.
-
Now for a few cosmetic notes. Here, have some charts!
Nonlethal ______________________________________ Lethal
Inexplicit _____________________________________ Explicit
Superficial __________________________________ Cathartic
Compartmentalized ________________________ Conflated
These designations keep track of the scene, based on your characters' motivations.
Lethality is measured in the strength of your characters and their ability to affect one another. Are they fighting to knockdown or knockout? First blood? Grievous injury? Death? Expulsion? Are they barehanded or using weapons? If weapons, are they blunt? Tourney? Field? Paramilitary? Legal? Ranged? Psychological? (Your characters' wits count as weapons, you know, and a verbal insult used well can cause a lot of damage.) And if no weapons are involved, are your characters still extremely lethal?
Lethality, like all of these designations, is subject to preference, but always good to keep in mind and the easiest way to raise the stakes of the scene for high drama. Of course the transition between fighting and fucking means more if your characters could very well have killed each other before they dropped their swords and grabbed each other's hair instead. But sometimes the fighting is just for fun, or for external stakes. Nonlethal fights can also be high-drama, if some of the other designations come into play.
Explicitness is the measure of sexual content within the scene and its influence on the characters. A fight leading to an embrace or a kiss can be just as powerful as one leading to mutual orgasm--again, if you create the stakes with one of the other designations. A scene that is both nonlethal and inexplicit--like a light instructional scene, say with tourney swords or fisticuffs and UST--can still be high-drama if it is cathartic or conflated.
Catharsis is the measure of emotional investment and release. If your spar is nonlethal and inexplicit, it had really better be cathartic for the characters, otherwise it will be hard to believe they wanted to fight at all. Frankly, I don't think The Sparring Leads to Sex can be done well if the investment of the characters is entirely superficial. It doesn't have to be the end of the world or the greatest love of all, but both the characters must have something to release and share with the audience.
Conflation is the measure of the correlation between sex and violence in the minds of the characters (and frankly the author). Characters who do not conflate sex and violence at all will have a hard time transitioning between the two; characters who conflate too much will have too easy a time, and also they tend to be sexually repugnant, like Shira from Blade of the Immortal, who is in my opinion not allowed to have consensual sex ever, let alone a consensual spar that leads to it.
-
With all that laid out and down, plain and clear, it's easy for me to articulate why I find it hot when The Sparring Leads to Sex. Characters want each other. The stakes are high. The sex is rough. Everyone wins, usually in multiple ways. There is absolutely nothing wrong with any of this in my book!
So. Recommendations? Things that have been written? Things that should be?
.
Home sick today! Yes, the same sickness as last week. Throat infection. DO NOT WANT! You know what that means. I write between coughing fits!
So yesterday I was standing in a gallery full of dead Dutch dudes, admiring the foreshortening and scribbling notes for my next Arthur and Eames fic in a little leather book. Choreography is peeling in my head and I make a few notes--pistol-whipping, grappling, broken furniture, and handjobs, in that order--and send just that to lindensphinx in a text.
It occurs to me somewhere between texts that in my time writing, this is the trope that keeps on coming: characters are engaged in physical combat and decide about halfway through the fight to shift their attentions to getting each other off. I have to wonder how many times I have invoked, subverted, perverted, and otherwise discussed that trope. (I'll put a list somewhere in the comments, because I know puella_nerdii is going to make me write it down, and because:)
It also occurs to me that I'm not the only one who likes it. Lord knows my collaborators through the years have encouraged this fixation. My time in the Tournament circuit at #ri placed a sort of combat premium in my mind. I know how to write a good fight scene now, and along the way I also figured out ways of inflecting the combat to play on other tensions within the scene without digressing from it. And I'll be completely honest; a good duel has always gotten my heart racing, particularly when the participants are focused not on winning, but on having a good duel, and a good time.
What I want to do in this post is unpack the trope--"The Sparring Leads to Sex"--as a thing unto itself, and also as it relates to my writing and personal preferences. And I'd like to share recommendations for good past and potential applications of this trope. White Collar fandom, I am looking at you.
1: Enjoyment
First off, "The Sparring Leads to Sex" is not "Slap Slap Kiss". "Slap Slap Kiss" is when two characters who are both-still-angry at each other decide to get it on. Slap Slap Kiss is not necessary violent, and even less necessarily combative or structured. Sometimes Slap Slap Kiss overlaps with The Sparring Leads to Sex as a motivation and spark, but oddly enough I tend to find this less hot. Perhaps this is because when it escalates to a sufficiently violent level to also qualify as The Sparring Leads to Sex, Slap Slap Kiss is much less about the physicality of the fight.
The Sparring Leads to Sex, at core, requires an enjoyment of fighting, or at least of fighting each other. At least one participant in the fight has to appreciate the fists flying.
To recap, the difference:
Slap Slap Kiss
A: I hate you.
B: I hate you more.
A: [slap]
B: [slap]
A: [kiss]
B: [okay!]
The Sparring Leads to Sex
A: I hate you.
B: I hate you more. [slap]
A: Wow, good arm!
B: Thanks. [slap]
A: [slap]
B: [kiss]
A: [okay!]
See? Much hotter.
2: Mutuality
Second off, it is no secret to someone who has known me for more than an hour that I AM KINKY, and frankly of the sadomasochistic variety. Pain often holds sexual connotations for me, and sex nearly always has painful ones. (I will discuss sexual horror in another post, someday.) So, two characters willfully trying to injure each other, being rough and vital and violent and then deciding that they should fuck because they both enjoyed the process? That resonates like an A 440 in an empty concert hall, man.
But the operative term in that construction is two. Two characters, each other, they. Mutuality is what differentiates a spar from a beatdown. Again, there is gradation, but The Sparring Leads to Sex, while violent and even sometimes deadly, is not abusive. It's called The Sparring Leads to Sex, not "The Beatdown Leads to Rape". Both (or all) parties must be invested in the fight, and invested in the sex.
The difference:
The Beatdown Leads to Rape
A: [slap]
B: Cut it out, you fucker.
A: No. [slap]
B: [defense!]
A: [kiss]
B: You're a douche.
The Sparring Leads to Sex
A: [slap]
B: Like hell. [slap] I'm gonna tear you apart.
A: Oh yeah? [slap]
B: [slap]
A: [kiss]
B: [oh yeah]
Again, much hotter.
There is, as I said, a grey area. Let's call it "The Beatdown Leads to Consensual Sex". This is the case where the fight is completely one-sided--either because B is uninterested or just playing to lose--but the resultant sex is mutual. Whether this still qualifies as The Sparring Leads to Sex is debatable, but it can definitely be hot in the same place for me in instances where B is using the spar, and I personally think it counts.
The Beatdown Leads to Consensual Sex
A: [slap]
B: Oh you can do better than that.
A: [slap] [slap] [slap] [pant]
B: Feel good?
A: Yeah.
B: So do I. Now fuck me.
A: [kiss]
B: [okay!]
Or:
A: [slap]
B: Oh you can do better than that.
A: [slap] [slap] [slap] [pant] [kiss]
B: [wait what OKAY!]
These definitely qualify as The Sparring Leads to Sex because they are still mutual activities in the end, even if the sparring is solely-directed.
3: Personality
Third off, and this should really be a given: No matter how many directions the violence is going in, the violence does have to be directed. Indiscriminate violence is less hot than personal violence. (This is why I do not ship Godzilla/Tokyo.) For the same reasons I don't want to read about A just humping the furniture, I don't want to read about A just hitting B because B is there and A wants to hit something. That is not The Sparring Leads to Sex.
All drama is personal. Fight scenes, sex scenes, death scenes, negotiation scenes, all of these are meaningless without character. This is why "rocks fall everyone dies" is insulting. We want our scenes to mean. That especially includes things like sex, where it is always better if there is more to it than Tab A Slot B, and combat, where it is always better if the stakes are dramatic and thus personal.
The violence in a sparring scene has to be for more than just its own sake. The characters have to want to hurt each other, or themselves, or someone else by proxy--or derail a mission, extract information, give information. Or teach! Some of the best The Sparring Leads to Sex is instructive--frankly, some of the best fight scenes in general are instructive--because the relationship between the participants is always at the center of the fight.
The differences:
Boring
A: [slap]
B: [slap]
A: [kiss]
B: [okay!]
Less Boring
A: [slap]
B: I deserved that.
A: Yeah, you kind of did. [slap]
B: And you deserved THIS! [slap]
A: [slap]
B: [kiss]
A: [okay!]
Or:
A: [slap]
B: Aim lower.
A: [slap]
B: Lower.
A: [slap]
B: No, like this. [slap]
A: [slap]
B: Good!
A: [kiss]
B: [okay!]
Or:
A: You stole my MacGuffin! [slap]
B: Get bent. [slap]
A: [slap]
B: [slap]
A: [steal]
B: Give that back! [slap]
A: Make me. [slap]
B: [kiss]
A: [okay!]
Again, much hotter.
There is a point where it becomes too personal, but that's a subjective point. If the characters' violence-inducing issues overwhelm the scene, the scene tends to become too embroiled in the violence and leave no plausible room for the sex. If A broke B's heart, mind, and arm, and killed his sister, and is about to initiate the Apocalypse, well for one thing we're in a CLAMP manga, but for another, it takes a very special A and B to pull the fighting into fucking without completely losing the reader.
-
Now that the guidelines are down, I want to use them to talk about the versatility and applicability of The Sparring Leads to Sex. If The Sparring Leads to Sex requires enjoyment, mutuality, and personality--like most good sex--thereafter the uniquenesses of the characters will determine the timbre of the scene. It takes characters who comply with the guidelines to create a scenario that complies with the guidelines. I know it sounds tautological, but that's actually really easy to forget when faced with the shiny.
1) The characters must take pleasure in fighting, or at least in fighting each other. A True Pacifist like, say, Simon Tam (at least in the early episodes of Firefly) is extremely unlikely to participate in The Sparring Leads to Sex, but a Technical Pacifist like Himura Kenshin can fit the trope like hand in dueling glove. Likewise for Martial-by-Proxy characters like Kongming and Pacifists-With-Berserk-Buttons like Quatre Winner. Not everyone who can get into The Sparring Leads to Sex is a bloodthirsty warmonger. Some are casual combatants, some are retired badasses, and many are just normal, chill people who see nothing wrong with throwing a punch.
Prowess is nice, but never required, just like with sex. And again just like with sex, ineptitude in fighting doesn't bring the scene to a standstill. Instructional scenes can be really hot, and as long as an impassioned but inept A wants to learn what B can teach, you have motivation and personality as well.
So yeah, the character must be okay with the kink in order for the kink to to work. Not innovative, that.
2) The characters must want each other. Again, not news. The Sparring Leads to Sex is consensual at heart. Dubcon is possible, even likely, in the cases of exhilarative duress or inebriation. But the scenario must be mutual at least until they're done opening holes in each other.
But that wanting can take almost any shape! Eames wants to take Arthur apart. Ashe wants to be more like Vossler. Seishirou can't bring himself to kill Subaru but oh will he hurt him good. Squall and Seifer are just having a tense practice match and it's about to get out of hand. Sokka and Suki are just having a companionable spar but Sokka finds he really likes fighting with Suki. Mal wants to hurt Dom but Ariadne is the one in the room and Ariadne will do just fine. Landa doesn't mind taking a few punches if they come from Aldo's hand. France and England--yeah. The permutations are endless.
3) The characters must have a reason to fight, and a reason to fuck, in accordance with 1) and 2). If I just wanted to watch them fight, I'd play old school Street Fighter and use my imagination.
The most important component of The Sparring Leads to Sex is the moment of transition, the leads to. Why does the fighting turn to fucking? How? Is it a slow and imperceptible shift, a matter of one grunt that sounds too much like a moan, of one knee landing and staying in just the right place a second too long? Is it sudden, a glance and a challenge and that bite on the shoulder is all at once an invitation? Is the shift premeditated? Accidental? Hoped-but-not-asked for? A good idea at all? Does the fighting actually stop, or is the sex just as violent, just as much a kind of combat? Does this resolve anything, or create more problems?
God I love this trope.
-
Now for a few cosmetic notes. Here, have some charts!
Nonlethal ______________________________________ Lethal
Inexplicit _____________________________________ Explicit
Superficial __________________________________ Cathartic
Compartmentalized ________________________ Conflated
These designations keep track of the scene, based on your characters' motivations.
Lethality is measured in the strength of your characters and their ability to affect one another. Are they fighting to knockdown or knockout? First blood? Grievous injury? Death? Expulsion? Are they barehanded or using weapons? If weapons, are they blunt? Tourney? Field? Paramilitary? Legal? Ranged? Psychological? (Your characters' wits count as weapons, you know, and a verbal insult used well can cause a lot of damage.) And if no weapons are involved, are your characters still extremely lethal?
Lethality, like all of these designations, is subject to preference, but always good to keep in mind and the easiest way to raise the stakes of the scene for high drama. Of course the transition between fighting and fucking means more if your characters could very well have killed each other before they dropped their swords and grabbed each other's hair instead. But sometimes the fighting is just for fun, or for external stakes. Nonlethal fights can also be high-drama, if some of the other designations come into play.
Explicitness is the measure of sexual content within the scene and its influence on the characters. A fight leading to an embrace or a kiss can be just as powerful as one leading to mutual orgasm--again, if you create the stakes with one of the other designations. A scene that is both nonlethal and inexplicit--like a light instructional scene, say with tourney swords or fisticuffs and UST--can still be high-drama if it is cathartic or conflated.
Catharsis is the measure of emotional investment and release. If your spar is nonlethal and inexplicit, it had really better be cathartic for the characters, otherwise it will be hard to believe they wanted to fight at all. Frankly, I don't think The Sparring Leads to Sex can be done well if the investment of the characters is entirely superficial. It doesn't have to be the end of the world or the greatest love of all, but both the characters must have something to release and share with the audience.
Conflation is the measure of the correlation between sex and violence in the minds of the characters (and frankly the author). Characters who do not conflate sex and violence at all will have a hard time transitioning between the two; characters who conflate too much will have too easy a time, and also they tend to be sexually repugnant, like Shira from Blade of the Immortal, who is in my opinion not allowed to have consensual sex ever, let alone a consensual spar that leads to it.
-
With all that laid out and down, plain and clear, it's easy for me to articulate why I find it hot when The Sparring Leads to Sex. Characters want each other. The stakes are high. The sex is rough. Everyone wins, usually in multiple ways. There is absolutely nothing wrong with any of this in my book!
So. Recommendations? Things that have been written? Things that should be?
.