/report: porn and smut and filth, oh my!

[rageprufrock]

This week on /report, we're joined by cherrybina to chat about porn, porn, and when we're done with that, some more porn. Well, we start off by answering some of our backlog of listener questions, but then we get straight to the smut — what makes it hot, what makes it not, how we write it, why we read it, and horrifying childhood tales of erotica discovery and humiliation in bookstores. So plug in, turn up the volume, and crank on your iBuzz. (PS: If you actually turn on your iBuzz while listening to this, please don't tell us.)

Click here to download or stream online, and as always, the podcast will be available shortly on the RSS/iTunes feed.

• Prodigal by i_claudia [Merlin RPF, Bradley/Colin]


• The One Where There is a Truly Ridiculous Amount of Fucking by ifyouweremine [Merlin, Merlin/Arthur]


• Don't Pull Your Punches by versy [Inception, Arthur/Eames]


• Hallefuckinglujah by weatherfront [Inception, Arthur/Eames]


• Count to Three by Lightgetsin [Dresden Files, Marcone/Dresden/Kincaid]


• In Heat by Elandrialor [H50, Steve/Danny]


• Talk About the Blind Leading the Visually Challenged by Pforte [BBC Sherlock, Sherlock/John]


• Discipline by Bentrumors [BBC Merlin, Merlin/Arthur]


• Let Your Loss Be Your Lesson by Sarka [Star Trek XI, McCoy/girl!Chekov]

Comments

[green_grrl]

My first guess for Star Trek fic "ED" would immediately be eating disorder!Kirk, because Tarsus IV is canon and there are numerous fics referencing it that include resulting eating issues for Kirk.

My vote for the character study/relationship plot fic told through porn: Paian's Slipping!

Also, horrifying childhood porn stories? HILARIOUS!!!

[feanna]

Seconding Tarsus IV on the eating disorder front. Esp. for AOS fic. Which mind sound weird at first glance (or it might not, what do I know), because it's not actually canon for that verse, but the verse does do the sucky childhood trope and Tarsus falls right into that and you've talked about the tendency to include trauma in modern stuff etc.. There are some bits of TOS canon that just seem to have resonated with people and gotten passed around AOS fic a lot.

The ass-vagina thing on the other hand reminded me of the time I found out about the fact that apparetly "men with vaginas and we're not talking trans-men here" is a thing. And I found out not through fic but through fanart. So you made me recall this image of Boromir with a vagina in the place where his asshole should be. It was a really big picture and the art was actually very well done (kind of like an oil painting). So basically what I'm saying is that if anybody ever used ass-vagina in porn, then I'm going to assume that they mean an actual vagina and expect some kind of explenation as to why they are writing X-men crossover fic (or magic, or whatever, I mean SGA is crazy, but I've never seen an Ancient decive that did that). Also, yes I am still talking about manginas so that you can share in my experice of looking at that pic (sadly, I didn't save the link) at least a little bit (VISUALIZE!). If somebody actually into that reads this, then I'm not dissing your kink! I was just a little overwhelmed there, and I assume you don't mind hearing about this stuff.
So basically, my though process on hearing ass-vagina: Spread open hairy male ass with spread open pink/read labia and vaginal opening! (To combine this with the medical term thing.)

Also, I enjoyed listening to this podcast very much, thanks for making it.

[bikitchi]

I... did not know paintings like such exist. I'm both terrified and terribly curious.

[bikitchi]

Whenever I hear 'ass-pussy'), I only think of terrible hentai manga/djs or terrible erotica (y halo thar literotica.com). I would also like to add that I don't think I've ever heard it outside slashreport, haha.

Also, I'm glad mklutz revealed you two read hentai manga. That makes me feel less alone and less like a terrible terrible person. My ability to SLO through hentai manga is drastically different from what I can SLO through in slash fiction. I've got standards when it comes to fandom. They get crazy person lowered when it comes to hentai manga but even then... yeah, no thanks NTR.

[sinensis]

Agree with the comments above about the Tarsus IV episode as the canon backstory for AOS fic with Kirk and eating disorders; it is specifically referenced in lazilusong's Graduate Vulcan For Fun and Profit. (Which was posted a few months? after the reboot premiered, and was widely read/linked, so I'm guessing it might have influenced other writers.)

ETA: and I really enjoy the podcast every week. :)

[ladyvyola]

Not only do you have Tarsus IV as TOS canon but there's the "Jim is allergic to everything" trope in AOS fanon. Put 'em together and you get two great tastes that taste great together (not that Jim would know).

Great timing on the all-porn cast -- I listened while driving to a Catholic church to have Thanksgiving lunch with three of my nephews and nieces.

The necessity of ratings

[(Anonymous)]

I just listened to the Slash Report smutisode and I had a number of feelings about the part of the discussion touching on the necessity (or otherwise) of ratings.

I felt that you were very much approaching the issue as adult readers of fanfic who are (forgive me if I'm being presumptuous!) sexually experienced. And there's nothing wrong with that....

...it's just you're concentrating on whether ratings make much difference to you now whereas I can't help but think about whether ratings can/should protect an underage reader from reading something that maybe they shouldn't.

I can hear a big ol' can of worms cracking open as I type.....

I know you talked about your own underage attempts (pre-fanfic) to access smutty material and hey, we've all been there. But the thing is that for you (and me) - going by what you described - those experiences were before the internet had become what it is today, before the kind of fanfic you were discussing was so freely available to say, an eleven year old girl, sitting in her little pink bedroom.

And this is not necessarily me saying, hold on, kids should not be exposed to any of this kind of stuff til they're legally allowed to actually do it. What I am particularly concerned about is that young girls can easily access porn via fanfic at a time when their own sexuality is still being formed, in a way, and when they fall into fanfic, they are (by and large) going to be consuming a diet of m/m sex. How does that fit with their emergent female sexuality? You're learning about sex and what is good/bad about sex and how sex 'works' via the kind of sex you, as a female, will never be able to have. (Sure, you might wanna get into pegging when you're all grown up but that's still a completely different thing...)

I suppose you could say, at this stage, at least it's m/m written by female authors so it's a female perspective on an exclusively male activity.

I just get concerned about things like agency and, I don't know, other things like nascent female sexualities being formed in a society that is already (still) geared towards the male consumption of sex and how a steady of diet of m/m fanfic from a very early age might impact on that. I realise it's very different for me because I actually got into fanfic in university, as a sexually experienced young woman, so I do not have the kind of experiences I've heard on the /report of people discovering fanfic when they were still in primary (elementary) school. So I completely acknowledge that YMMV.

Maybe you'll say, look - if it's hot, it's hot. End of.

In a nutshell, what I'm saying is maybe people tend to look at ratings as a helpful guide as to how quickly they click on a story but the original point of a ratings system (whether for fanfic or cinema) is to but up a barrier that a reader has to think carefully about whether they are ready to cross or not. Basically: don't you think it's still important to remember what ratings were for in the first place?

(I'm sure a very thinky discussion has happened elsewhere on the internet on this topic and it was much more lucid than what I have just churned out but I haven't found it yet. Hence you get my twopence worth.)

- Gail

Oh PS: I notice you didn't talk about how fanfic's depiction of gay sex measures up against the actual reality of two (or more) guys getting it on. I remember someone on LJ back in the day making a despairing post about fics written by feverish female virgins who had never seen any gay porn or possibly a penis ever in their lives and it got some interesting responses, including from queer guys who lent their POV on the discussion. Or do you think 'accuracy' doesn't really matter, it's all just for fun at the end of the day? Myself, if I come across this kind of thing, the eye-roll it induces in me is enough to physically make me unable to actually read the rest of the fic anyways. (Interesting sidenote: I remember, back in the day, a fandom forming around a gay couple who were/are porn actors and thought how interesting a concept that was for fanfic, when you could actually watch your RPF characters actually fucking each other IRL.)

Wow, that's seriously enough.....I'd better go. As MK might say, this needs to end.

[(Anonymous)]

in response to gail:

so, unfortunately i didn't actually listen to the report, but as someone who did read m/m fic from about the age of 12, i can say i did read ratings. of course, there was always the titillating intrigue of a fic involving sex... but i know that some things i chose to stay away from (perhaps because so much of it was available?).

however, by now (i am in my 20s), i have read my fair share of m/m porn (as well as much other, well-written stuff!) and i am sure this has somehow influenced my "emergent female sexuality." i am not quite sure how. (het sex seems somehow less romantic, less a partnering of equals i guess? and of course RL sex is always less epic than in fiction! so perhaps we equate f/m sex as less epic than m/m sex?)

i actually haven't seen anything else written about this subject, and would be quite curious to read about it. thanks for remembering us younguns (though i don't think i, or most 12 year olds, were/are all that innocent...)

perhaps the best thing the internet can offer young female readers is not protection from smut, necessarily, but stories about strong women, who respect their bodies, and have pretty great sex? what first pops to mind is samdonne's stuff, but i'm sure there's other stuff out there, it's just that the m/m stuff seems to dominate in the well-written category (or is that just my focus?)

just my two cents!

ll.