Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related Why is the smut locked in?

Hmm. I have yet to read a fic which I find violent enough to garner an Nfic rating.

Sure, Nfic being called "smut" is a convention (and not just in L&C fic)--but couldn't the convention have been made around a word with a less negative--and in some people's minds--overly dirty (read: unneccesarily, almost disgustingly, kinky--as opposed to just kinky)--connotation?

But we've had countless debates on this one over the years and have yet to come to a concensus on what would be a suitable replacment, so it stays nfic until we do.

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.

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.

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?

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).

OK, but really are their anyone that finds Nfic section kinky today?

Obscenity laws in the US have always been a source of great contention. After all, who decides what is obscene?

And, as I said in my previous post, our experience is that some minors lie to get access to nfic. You might as well just not bother having the button at all and just have a free for all, for all the barrier they provide.

It hasn't been unknown in the past, for example, for the admins to be blasted with email from irate parents who have just discovered their little darlings reading nfic. (Although they have backed down sharply when we can show them proof - through the password/access application forms - that said little darlings lied their back teeth off about their age to gain access

I do remember being frustrated when I wasn't successfull in finding any Lois and Clark nfic I could read!

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?

Well, okay, maybe not "rape." But "smut" definitely has a MUCH less-innocent connotation for me than "consenting sex between adults" or "making love."

Although . . . come to think of it, I don't know of any other word besides "sex," or "sex fics" that might fit.

To me, smut definitely has a much less innocent connotation.

But, LabRat, as you previously said:

Yes, the n stands for naughty. It's a convention which I myself think is out of date. Back when it was coined the majority of nfic was, I believe, of the mind candy, romp variety. Nowadays, the genre encompasses a far greater range of themes.

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).

Hmmm . . . Back when I read BtVS fic, I always thought it stood for the "N" in "NC-17." But "naughty" fits too.

I'll bite about the quote, because I think the question of why fanfics go towards "NC-17" territory and why people like them is a loaded one.

No, you were clear. You appear to me to be saying that other pornsites obviously can, so why can't we? That's a whole different issue to me.

A lot of them work out of other countries where US law enforcement really cannot do much to take them down. Or, they do happen to operate in the US and have managed to fly under the radar. Also, there is a *ton* of law enforcement work just to get rid of one, but naturally, even as all this work is being done, more and more sprout up.

What I meant is, it takes such little effort to be dishonest with the click button system that it might as well not be there, if all you have to do is click on 'yes, I'm over 18' and you're in.

With the password system, it's amazing how often we actually catch out the dishonest (and I'm not saying here how they trip themselves up.), simply because the system requires a little more effort to get there, even if you are being dishonest.

It generates a quite different impression in me whenever I see it. But, if it's widely used for nfic in other fandoms, I can understand why people use it and don't mean what I do when I say smut.

I'll bite about the quote, because I think the question of why fanfics go towards "NC-17" territory and why people like them is a loaded one.

Does English have a word for ladies hm erotica, in my own language there is one, you know the creamy thighs bodice ripper thing, I thought smut was that word in English.

Personally, I only think it makes it harder for everybody to get in. When I filled in the form all I said was that I was over eighteen. I saw no way that you could verify that, which made me wonder why it was in place. I mean even if some ten-year-old fill in the blanks wrong, all she has to do is try a new email address.

I can also not see why it's necessary to have stricter security measures on this site then bona fide pornsites. If people want porn I can't imagine way they would come here.

Faced with that choice? We're hot dang gonna go with the path of least resistance and the system that cuts down the abusive emails we get.

I’m sure there are many different reasons why women are into smutfic all people are different but as an all purpose explanation I thought she made a lot of sense.

I thought I'd already gone into this one and explained the reasons why we have a password/controlled access system here. It's got nothing to do with being concerned that someone who likes hardcore porn might read our stories. It's all about ensuring that nfic is restricted to those over the age of 18 and not made freely available to minors.

In the end, this is the system the admins have chosen for this forum. Just as the owner of another website - or a porn website - may choose the click button, that's entirely up to them.

What is also highly likely is that were we to replace this system with free for all access to nfic, we would get complaints from those who don't like nfic, whether they could avoid it or not. And, most likely, from the parents of minors who don't think it's right for their children to read that kind of sexually explicit content.

Faced with that choice? We're hot dang gonna go with the path of least resistance and the system that cuts down the abusive emails we get.

Then again how does the Harry Potter sites handle it, It would surprise me if this kind of problem didn’t dwarf yours, but perhaps they are just more thick-skinned and inclined to take the extra work.(not implying laziness now, how much free work people want to spend on fansites is of course up to them.)