Sex has been on my mind a lot lately. Not in terms of, you know, sex but in terms of, "how come so many fanfiction writers write such crappy sex scenes."

For years I worked on the theory that 75% or more of fandom's writers were not only virgins but had never actually seen a nekkid body other than their own which pretty satisfactorily explained the complete lack of comprehension not only about The Act but the basics of human anatomy when you start intertwining two or more bodies.

It also pretty much explained why "sex=penetration" to so many writers and readers. I mean, if they were getting their information from fade-to-black scenes in romance novels and movies they couldn't be expected to be acquainted with even a fraction of the range of very satisfying sexual activities indulged in by a significant percentage of the het adult population, much less the gay adult population, right?

However.

These are the Internet Years and even if you haven't Done the Deed yourself, there are an abundance of free sites where you can view graphical representations.

You can see nekkid men, nekkid women, or, if your tastes tend that way, nekkid coeds doing things to nekkid barnyard animals.

All of which pretty much eliminates the "ignorance is bliss" excuse.

It's possible, of course, to fall back on the old, "they're crappy writers" thing and that's probably largely true. If TypoidMary(tm) can't write a believable conversation between two adults, the odds are exceptionally good that she's going to be even worse at trying to write an erotic sex scene.

(I don't know…I've barely even started ranting and I'm already discouraged. I don't even know why these people bother to write, except that they seem to be desperate for approval.

People used to write because they had something to say.

Now they write because some actor floats their boat or because someone issued a challenge to see who could bring the stupidest possible elements into a fandom, or because they think it makes them special.

I got news for y'all. Being one in a group of ten thousand idiots doesn't even make you a special idiot.

I really am discouraged. Even as I type this sentence, I just know there are fifty TypoidMarys(tm) out there simultaneously insisting that the quality of their writing has nothing to do with whether or not their stories are any good and they actually seem to believe this.

Anyhow.)

Some time later....

Okay, let's try this again.

"Are you gonna just stand there and jerk off or are you gonna come over here and shoot your wad up my ass?"

Apparently I'm not the only one who has researched gay porn. I wish I weren't the only one who had realized that, (a) real people don't talk like that, and (b) gay porn isn't usually well-written or sexy.

"(deleted) stood at the foot of the far bed and raised the enema bucket to let the warm water flow between the shapely buttocks of his arch nemesis"

Anyhow, I got all distracted by that "far bed" thing and wondering how far it was, where the arch nemesis was standing and just how big that damned bucket was anyhow.

"(deleted)'s feet began rubbing against each other as if he'd transformed into an amorous cricket"

"They both cried out as the big man fell right on top of them. They whimpered but snuggled up against his big furry chest and began kissing each side of his face. Suddenly they stopped their kissing and (deleted) heard snores. The little bastards had worn themselves slap out and were sleeping right on top of their papa bear!"

"Instead he closed his palm around (deleted)'s cock. And hurray, it evoked the exact reaction he wanted."

"(deleted), for his part, had locked his eyes with (deleted)'s and nonchalantly *swallowed* three of his long fingers into the back of his throat."

The End.

You might think I spent the last hour finding these examples of highly unerotic writing, but I assure you it took exactly nine minutes, most of which was spent waiting for pages to load. I did a search for "slash fanfiction, found three archives, and opened about 10 NC-17 stories entirely at random.

Imagine what I might have found if I'd taken the time to actually read anything. (I think I just felt 23 brain cells die at the mere thought.)

TypoidMary(tm) aside, let's think about the decent authors for a change. I think that the problem is that even these people can't figure out how to get the guys' to put their hands on each other.

I mean, they have an idea for a story, they have characters, and maybe even an idea of how the sex should go, but getting the boys right up to the plate and ready to take action isn't easy.

Let me say that I have a lot of sympathy for this problem. Since I like using myself as a bad example, I can honestly say that I once had an idea for a short (8-10 page) story that wound up going on for fifty pages or more because I could not get the guys into bed. And when I finally gritted my teeth and just wrote the damned sex scene, it was pretty bad.

Anyhow, I think other people must run into that same problem. At some point, they just start shoving any old sex scene down on the page with no regard to erotic intensity, appropriateness to the setting and characters, or anything else.

Some of these people might be able to visualize the sex scene in their minds, but they lack the ability to get it down into words correctly. Contrary to what some seem to believe, writing a story isn't the same thing as a minute description of a visual scene.

I think that whenever you run into one of those, "and then A moved his arm over three inches to let B's mouth move to the side of his neck and then A arched his back until the tendons on his neck stood out" kinds of sex scenes, you're reading an author who got confused about a visual image in her head.

Some people, shudder, don't know the difference between a private sexual fantasy and a sex scene appropriate for a story. I think we all know those when we read them. For those in doubt, highly inappropriate "dirty talk" like that in the first Bad Example above is frequently a component of those private fantasies.

Ditto for the scenes where the characters are abruptly behaving wildly out of character although I admit that as much as characterization is ignored by TypoidMary(tm), this is probably too ubiquitous to be a good indicator.

Which brings us, at long last, to the subject of today's musings.

Why do people write crappy sex scenes? And why do so many of them insist on trying to write rape stories or torture stories?

Couldn't you all just give up the beatings and the tortures and the rapes and the whips and the chains?

If your friends won't tell you, I will.

Honestly, you suck at writing that stuff, okay?

The proportion of really crappy so-called BDSM stories to decent stuff is higher than the proportion of crap-to-decent in any other genre. And you're most of you so clueless what BDSM is really about that you've actually managed to give BDSM a bad name.

Very few people find that kind of scenario truly erotic and to be even more brutally honest, if you were any good at writing it, you'd probably lose 75% of your readers because most of them would be totally grossed out by a realistic scene. In other words, it's only because you write it so badly that anyone reads it at all.

And give up the torture while you're at it. You know what I mean. " 'A' gets kidnapped by Bad Men and beaten all up and probably raped ten or fifteen times and then 'B' comes in and rescues him and takes him home and they have wild anal sex and it's all better."

It was stupid the first time someone wrote it thirty-five years ago, and it hasn't gotten any more believable or any more intelligent since then.

Plus which, you know, you also suck at writing that stuff.

I've read so-called "torture" scenes that left my eyes glazing over from boredom and others where I was laughing hysterically as the poor victim was made to take more abuse than any fifteen human bodies could sustain without fatality before bouncing back like the Energizer Bunny.

You don't have to write like that. Many of us wish you'd stop trying.

What's wrong with sex? Why can't you write it unless one of the men is bleeding?

Let me guess.

You don't actually know any men, do you?

You don't actually know how men would behave in bed and you refuse to believe that men are, after all, human beings who act and react pretty much the way a human being should, right?

You have trouble believing that if you write a man being touched in a way that feels good by someone who wants to make him feel good it's going to be erotic, right?

Or are you afraid that if you don't include some bruising and maybe a little blood-letting, they're not going to seem like Real Men? That if there isn't some kind of schoolyard wrestling, they're going to seem all girly?

You don't actually know any men, do you?

Sex doesn't have to involve bloodshed, even between two men. (Nor should one of them necessarily be portrayed as an escapee from Barney's purple world. There's a middle ground between teddy bear-fondling infants and psychologically crippled brutes, and that's where most people's sexuality falls.)

It's sex, okay? It's not rocket science.

How about a nice massage scene? A massage can be verrry sexy, it's a good way to get at least one of the guys partially unclothed, gives the other guy a reason to start fondling him, and can lead to all kinds of delicious scenarios.

What fandom needs is fewer butt plugs and more massages.

A couple of bodies, a little friction and you've got fireworks. Nudity optional.