Caroline,
Really? I've always thought that nfic in every fandom garners more interest and enthusiasm than PG fic. The more you lock it down, the more allure it has and the more people are beating down the doors to get to it. I've certainly never had the impression it was "dismissed" by readers, here or anywhere else.
I suppose it could work both ways. But I believe the quality of the writing would draw more innocent victims, then a warning to get a password in order to access to all the dirty secrets in there(and if that is what people hope, I believe they are in for a let down.)
DSDragon,
As Yvonne said above, the Nfic section also includes especially violent fics that take them over the PG-13 rating. Not to mention, the sex portrayed isn't always "vanilla," whether it's between two consenting adults or not.
Considering what you see on TV-these days I hardly recall any especially violent fics. Vanilla is a relative term, but for me it refers to Lois and Clark practising straight intercourse and oralsex, something most people I know would consider vanilla. Sure they have sex in some strange places too that might be exotic, but the sexual acts themselves are always rather mundane. S&M, group sex, anal sex, slash etc simply doesn’t exist, the focus in the genre always on the romance, not expanding sexual boundaries.
Both Lois and Clark also have a conventional view of the relationship. They don’t sleep around, treat sex with reverence, Clark at least always have the intention to make an honest woman out of Lois. This is what I mean when I said that I would even encourage children to read them if I wanted to indoctrinate them into a traditional sexuality.
Also, I think it's strange that many people in this thread use the word "smut" as an all-'round term for Nfic. To me, "smut" is more on the line with "porn," "S&M," or even "rape," than with "vanilla sex" or "making love." Any thoughts?
English isn’t my native language, dictionary .com seems to use smut as synonymous to obscenity. But I don’t think that is how the term is used. To me smut is graphic description of sexuality for the purpose of titillation. It’s gliding scale but eventually you get to erotica/pornography where every word is intended to arouse the reader and nothing else. Bodicerippers are smutty, but Private magazine is pornographic, see?
I don’t know if anyone read my link about why fanfic is so smutty, but I thought this very interesting.
Chicks aren't wired that way. Mostly, chicks have to know something *about* the warm bodies on screen before it becomes anything but a fairly clinical *insert tab A into slot B* sort of a thing. Simply looking at people having sex is USELESS if I don't have some sort of clue about them, don't care about 'em, don't have an emotional investment in 'em. This is why a movie like, say, Dangerous Liasions or 9 1/2 Weeks is hotter for a chick to watch than something entitled "Reform School Sluts" even though the latter involves substantially more *ahem* pink bits on screen.
In addition, chicks like written porn. I do not know of *any* men who actually buy or read romance novels. Do not let the name fool you. These are fairly explicit, definitely strong lime, and, depending on the writer, fading well into lemon hues. [Lime: very strongly implied sex between characters but without graphic description of body parts and so forth. Lemon: graphically depicted sex between characters with explicit description of body parts.]
I'm sure you know the ones, with the raised shiny lettering for the title. They have a picture of a guy and a chick on the cover, chick probably in period costume, guy probably wearing black pants and a flowy white shirt that apparently stops buttoning at the navel. Odds are she's got her leg up around his waist, no doubt showing a considerable expanse of what will most definitely be referred to in the text of the thing as 'creamy thigh'.
Men do not buy these novels. Men do not, so far as I'm aware, *read* these novels. However, judging from the contents of my local bookstore, this is a genre which exceeds science fiction, westerns, mysteries, and fantasy in sheer volume of shelf space. Obviously, this stuff sells to someone. I submit that the 'someone' in question is chicks.
Now, given that chicks like to know something about the characters engaging in hot sweaty monkey sex *and* given that chicks like written porn, the average romance novel has to plow through fifty or so pages of 'getting to know the characters' before there's any sex. This takes time. (I'm getting to the point. Honest.)
Enter the fanfic.
Here are characters familiar to the reader. All the 'getting to know them' stuff is taken care of by actual canonical material (the television show, the anime episodes, whatever). These are characters that the reader already knows tons of stuff about. What they wear, how they act, what they look like, their beliefs, how they know each other. Lots of stuff. Heck, odds are that these are characters the reader *likes* on one level or another. I know I don't read fanfic for things I am not a fan of, anyway.
In fanfic, suddenly it becomes possible to skip straight to the 'good bits' without going through all the boring exposition and stuff first. The reader already KNOWS all the boring exposition. There is no real need to do all that. You can skip right to the sex part. From a chick perspective, smut fanfic is the heroin of porn. It's admirably quick, to the point, and still strangely satisfying (for the reasons pointed out above).
