Porn v. Erotica

One of the lists I'm on is in the midst of that debate. I don't know exactly where I fall in all that. I like to read books with sex in them...but with a book, I do want characters I care about and an actual plot that doesn't consist of just transitions between sex scenes.

Yet, visually I'm on Xtube surfing wank videos (not me wanking, I'm on watching guys masturbate kick right now). For that I want longer than a minute but if we're going on 6 you need to do some judicious cutting.

I read sex stories on Nifty and Literotica (a lot) and a good short locker-room scene can be great. I guess it's an expectation of what I'm buying. If I surf a free porn site, I expect wham-bam-thank-you-sir, if I pick up a 200 word erotic novel I want to be entertained and wound up. Even in my mainstream fic reading, if you shut the bedroom door on me I get annoyed. I don't expect hard core ...you can fluffy it up for me, but don't take away my experience of the characters.

I guess that's why I write stories the way I do. Sex is a character at their most raw and vulnerable. People will do and say things while screwing they'd never let happen any other time. It's a chance to explore real depth in a character. So I don't know as I'll ever solve it. The two most cognizant definitions I've heard are:

"I write erotica, he writes porn, and she writes smut." Since it's all in the "who's judging."

the second was on that same list. The difference between Porn and Erotica (according to Cork) is 200%...cause if you call it hard core you can charge about 200% more than if you call it sensual or erotic. As a corrallary to that...I guess it's just plain smut if it's free.

So, I'm off to go surf some smut and see who's wanking for cameras tonight....

The New Black

It's New Year's Eve and my long-time friends are bemusedly asking yet again "What is it you're writing?"

I glanced up from trying desperately to get through Metallica's "One" on Guitar Hero III. "Male/male erotic romance. And it's primarily for a straight female audience."

They laughed but I could still hear their disbelief. I tried to find a way to explain. After staring at my onscreen avatar, I said, "It's the new black. You know those bands your daughters listen to, Panic! At the Disco, Fall Out Boy? They're wowing their audiences with male/male kisses and other suggestive things on stage. And their female fan base screams for it."

I could tell I still didn't make much headway with my friends of seventeen years. If I'd had my laptop, I could have sent them to youtube to look at Brothers and Sisters or Luke and Noah from As the World Turns or to watch some of Torchwood: Jack and Ianto, Jack and John, or even Jack and Jack.

My favorite flavor of romance is no longer locked away on pay cable or in hard-to-find independent films. Look at the media blitz created by the fans upset over the lack of Luke and Noah kisses on As the World Turns. In addition to an AP run in big newspapers (and all my local ones) it's made British news websites, CNN and even NPR. And other than the obligatory conservative rant about the homosexual
agenda (Now, where did I put mine? I have to look up my apointments), everyone seems to be on the side of more boy kissing. Male/male romance is the new black. I couldn't be happier to see our favorite romances making news and new fans.

And by the way, I totally rock on Guitar Hero. I just wish I could get some of the avatars to mimic the aforementioned bands. Ah well, maybe in Guitar Hero IV.