I miss the porn

[donnaimmaculata]

Ever since the decline of the HP fandom, I have found it increasingly difficult to write fic in other fandoms - even if I happen to fall in love (or lust) with a source. This is partly due to the fact that I find it more difficult to write in TV fandoms than in book fandoms, and partly due to the fact that, compared with the HP fandom, other fandoms are so tame.

I have just quite accidentally wandered into the hd_tropes comm, which stipulates that "all entries must be rated R or NC-17".

I love it. I'm not remotely interested in the exchange as such, but I love the fact that it's a fest that requires you to write porn. Other fandoms don't do that sort of thing that much. Every time I dip my toe into a new fandom, I feel such a deviant, because, well, there aren't many explicit fics around. Which is sad.

Right now, for example, I would like to try my hand at writing Lord Peter Wimsey fic. But there isn't any porn there, and I feel inappropriate. I mean, Lord Peter has canonically slept with a lot of people - and he is great in bed, which is actually explicitely stated in the books (admittedly, it is he who does the stating). And yet, there is no porn. And hardly any slash, either - despite the incredible h/c potential of the Peter/Bunter pairing.

In conclusion: I wish there was more porn. That's what I joined fandom for. That, and fangirling.

Comments

[shocolate.livejournal.com]

I don't spose any of those H/Ds are plotty enough to even mention Ron, but if there's a good Ron, let me know...

[donnaimmaculata.livejournal.com]

Ah, I'm not planning to read any: I wandered in accidentally - and liked the mandatory R and NC-17 ratings!

It's a shame there's no good Ron anymore. I miss the fun (and porn) of yesteryear.

[shezan.livejournal.com]

Golly, have you missed out on all the Sherlock porn???? Because really, there's LOTS. HOT.

[donnaimmaculata.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, I don't like Sherlock, so I've never been tempted to look for fic in that fandom. Me and one other person whom I once met in a comment thread are the only two people on the Internet who are not into Sherlock, I feel.

[ellensmithee.livejournal.com]

I'm not into it either! And I know several others, all of us repulsed by Benedict Cumberbatch and the sheer pretentiousness of that show and its fandom.

[donnaimmaculata.livejournal.com]

Oh, I am so glad! I only watched the first series and was annoyed how they'd made everyone (i.e. the police) a complete idiot so that Sherlock could solve their cases for them. I feel the show entirely misses the point of the Sherlock Holmes concept: his achievement was to use the novel method of forensics to solve crimes. This does not work in a modern setting, because forensics is now standard and the police are better equipped than Sherlock to apply it.

[ellensmithee.livejournal.com]

EXACTLY. That's the thing that drives me the most nuts. Sherlock doesn't do anything that an average character on an American procedural can't do and makes Scotland Yard look unbelievably like it's staffed by idiots.

[donnaimmaculata.livejournal.com]

A forensic pathologist is the first one on the scene of the crime even in the provincial backwaters of England in Midsomer Murders!

[iibnf.livejournal.com]

I was sooooooooooooo prolific in HP fandom, but have struggled everywhere else. I think the extended time span of the canon helped me enormously because I'm so slow, and the material itself absorbed my 'weird creativity'.

[donnaimmaculata.livejournal.com]

I never was immensely prolific, and yet I managed to produce a wide variety of stories, some of them decidedly weird. I've never achieved the same level of weirdness in any other fandom. It's rather sad.

[ellensmithee.livejournal.com]

I'm in a few other fandoms and it seems like the days of really porny PWPs is past for the most part. All the teens on tumblr seemed to have pushed fic firmly into the PG/R range and no one seems to even get the point of porny fic anymore. I'm trying to figure out where all the adults went.

[donnaimmaculata.livejournal.com]

And not just the porny PWPs. For me, the process of writing fanfiction was an attempt of pushing boundaries: to see how I could take an insane scenario and make it plausible. This very includes sexual relationships (and scenes) which are obviously impossible in canon. Whereas now, I feel like writers in many fandoms are too... careful and considerate, I suppose. To go back to my Lord Peter Wimsey example: I've read discussions about how the Lord Peter/Bunter pairing is implausible, because Peter would never take advantage of a servant and Bunter would never presume. Which is not the point! Of course they wouldn't. The challenge is to write them in such a way that it becomes believable.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

I don't care for porn, but you might find some hooks in the authorized Wimsey pastiches by Jill Whatshername. (All pretty good EXCEPT for The Attenborough Emeralds which trashes the characters AND the house.

[donnaimmaculata.livejournal.com]

It's not so much the porn - that was me being flippant - but rather the freedom to push boundaries and create seriously weird scenarios that nevertheless work. The HP fandom's encouraged such an approach very much and, as a writer, you could experiment with outlandish pairings and/or settings. This is admittedly very much a hit-and-miss approach, but if it works out, it's got the potential to be excellent.

I've been dipping my toes into other fandoms, on and off, and I find most of them much more puristical and less willing to experiment. In the Wimsey fandom, I was genuinely surprised at the lack of the Peter/Bunter pairing, for example. I know that canonical Peter - and especially canonical Bunter! - would never do such a thing, but that's the beauty of fanfiction: you can try to make the impossible work.

Jill Paton-Walsh, I think? I have not yet got round to reading her novels. I've read mixed reviews, and I'm worried the books might destroy the fabulousness of Harriet!