lmao are we really doing this shit again https://www.sfwa.org/2020/12/15/explicit-sex-scenes-and-the-work-of-stories/ https://twitter.com/kasi_irving/status/1343971968836628483

“But that’s written fiction! You can’t dig into a character like that on screen!” You have never seen a film or a TV show, have you?

What I especially love here is the implicit point that BEING HOT is not a sufficient reason for anything to be in media

If you think that way, I would like you to interrogate why

“Being hot” is plenty sufficient, and the only reason why we think it isn’t is toxically Puritan culture that devalues and degrades sexuality and sexual enjoyment of other people

Like seriously, defend to me the proposition that people fucking on-screen always and automatically and objectively across-the-board makes anything worse without appealing to sex-negativity. Go on. I’m waiting.

If you’re uncomfortable with explicit sex that is 100% FINE, but don’t confuse that with making anything objectively worse.

I don’t know who needs to hear this but personal preferences are not natural laws.

By the way, just in case it isn’t clear enough, I am not saying sex scenes are automatically always GOOD either because a) if you’ve ever seen any number of them you know that is extremely not true, and b) there are people who will find it harder to enjoy media that has sex in it

Like any other form of storytelling craft, it’s possible to do them well or do them poorly, and place them in good or bad spots in the narrative.

What I’m saying is that blanket statements like OP’s are categorical bullshit.

Also “being hot” is a good enough reason, that’s a hill I’ll fucking die on

If an action scene can be in something purely because “it’s cool”, I fail to see why “it’s hot” is any poorer a justification.

A) they’re boring to *you*, personal preferences are not natural laws
B) they’re usually done badly in part because of how we culturally value them, ie “they’re always bad/pointless” so they’re not worth doing well
B) ...okay, you’re not reading the right novels then lmao https://twitter.com/dweebicusm/status/1344134408077508610

A lot of this would be vastly improved if we

A) ditched this discourse and started treating them like any other kind of craft, which is to say worth doing well
B) got some people in there to do them who aren’t straight cis men

In terms of novels, there are a fuckton of good sex scenes out there, what the hell

“Make them well, then defend them” how about instead we defend them as something worth doing well, that is just utterly backwards

Yeah, someone saying they’ve never read a good sex scene in a novel (and thereby concluding that those don’t exist)... I mean, maybe one just doesn’t like them, which as I said is FINE, but to me it suggests they either aren’t aware of romance or don’t think it’s legit fiction. https://twitter.com/herhandsmyhands/status/1344315695488786433

So much of what people think is bad or can’t be done well in fiction has been done well for ages in romance, it’s just that people who don’t read romance tend to look down on romance and assume there’s nothing good there

By the way, I think the ace/aro criticism that “THERE’S ALREADY SEX IN EVERYTHING” isn’t entirely illegitimate, but allow me to point to the thing where the MPAA *counts thrusts* and has literally sent films back for showing women climaxing on-screen

There is indeed sex “in everything”, but it’s usually fucked up and bad and poisoned by purity culture, there’s a reason why those of us who do like good sex in media are not happy with the current state of affairs

If you think sex scenes in media are always bad and boring because sex scenes are intrinsically bad and boring, consider how much of our media is written and directed and produced by straight white cis men and then consider whether that might be a factor