I'm a little reluctant to talk about it because, like, a lot of people really enjoy reading and writing smut, but can be embarrassed about it anyway
*nodsnods* That makes sense. (Alas!) Anything involving sex, fictional or not, can be so sensitive. (And there's that aggravating double standard about reading/writing smutty fiction where some subset of people just...assume that the person reading or writing it is into whatever kind of sex is in there IRL. *sighs*)
All the facets of the emotional-honesty aspect appeal to me! People betraying feelings they were trying to hide (from themselves or from the other person/people)? Excellent. Only feeling safe/comfortable/relaxed/desperate/vulnerable enough to be able to be honest about feelings when in bed? Also excellent. Showing otherwise-inexpressible emotions non-verbally? Still excellent. *happy sigh*
I haven't finished writing much Guardian smut (only one fic!), but I've got enough written in general that I'm starting to get a feel for how I interpret SW and ZYL together, and one of the things I'm finding very satisfying is that, for all Shen Wei's general failure to ask for anything or to admit to wanting or needing anything (etc. etc., because SHEN WEI), in my head he's much better about those things when it comes to sex because Zhao Yunlan so blatantly wants it for him but also actively gets off on Shen Wei feeling good. To me that's an extra-lovely juxtaposition with all the complex emotional undercurrents and the timeloop fraughtness/payoff.
(Possibly "fraughtness" is not a word. Oh, well!)
I tend to be more interested in the lead up and aftermath, and the act itself is typically just boring to me (at best; sometimes it can leave me feeling...left out? 😅)
This makes a lot of sense to me too!
Personally my reasons for liking to read smut vary somewhat, but they're basically always in the emotional range, not the visceral "this is a turn-on for me" range. (And yet I do tend to be very aware of if I think something is hot--I find some fic absolutely scorchingly hot! But even then, it's about 90% a very pleased emotional response of "these precious people I love enough to constantly read about are having a VERY GOOD TIME, and that makes me extremely happy".)
I guess basically as both a reader and a writer, what I want most is to have the emotional stuff seeded heavily right through the entire scene, so as a reader, if the actual sex is mostly about the physical mechanics, I won't love it. But what I'm always aiming for when I'm writing very explicit fic, and am absolutely delighted to find as a reader, is a sense of the characters being utterly caught up in it (unless the point is that they're not, of course) and aware of all the physical things going on, but filtered heavily through the emotions it's evoking or that they're working through. I'm content to read just about any degree of explicitness if I get that.
...ooh. As I was writing that paragraph, I thought of this: to me, the degree of physical explicitness is like the brightness of light coming in a window. If the window's clear glass, it can get too bright for me to want to look at it much or for long, but if the emotional stuff is stained glass, just about any degree of brightness coming in is okay, and the permutations of color and intensity are basically all beautiful.
(But also I'm sleepy and not sure how much sense that makes. I thought I'd write it down anyway. ^^; This got rambly, though.)
writing it is a challenge because I'm never quite sure how people will react to it, when I know my own reactions aren't a great metric.
Oof, yes. I can see how that'd be tricky. But sometimes the outcome of a challenge is so good! *^^*
no subject
*nodsnods* That makes sense. (Alas!) Anything involving sex, fictional or not, can be so sensitive. (And there's that aggravating double standard about reading/writing smutty fiction where some subset of people just...assume that the person reading or writing it is into whatever kind of sex is in there IRL. *sighs*)
All the facets of the emotional-honesty aspect appeal to me! People betraying feelings they were trying to hide (from themselves or from the other person/people)? Excellent. Only feeling safe/comfortable/relaxed/desperate/vulnerable enough to be able to be honest about feelings when in bed? Also excellent. Showing otherwise-inexpressible emotions non-verbally? Still excellent. *happy sigh*
I haven't finished writing much Guardian smut (only one fic!), but I've got enough written in general that I'm starting to get a feel for how I interpret SW and ZYL together, and one of the things I'm finding very satisfying is that, for all Shen Wei's general failure to ask for anything or to admit to wanting or needing anything (etc. etc., because SHEN WEI), in my head he's much better about those things when it comes to sex because Zhao Yunlan so blatantly wants it for him but also actively gets off on Shen Wei feeling good. To me that's an extra-lovely juxtaposition with all the complex emotional undercurrents and the timeloop fraughtness/payoff.
(Possibly "fraughtness" is not a word. Oh, well!)
I tend to be more interested in the lead up and aftermath, and the act itself is typically just boring to me (at best; sometimes it can leave me feeling...left out? 😅)
This makes a lot of sense to me too!
Personally my reasons for liking to read smut vary somewhat, but they're basically always in the emotional range, not the visceral "this is a turn-on for me" range. (And yet I do tend to be very aware of if I think something is hot--I find some fic absolutely scorchingly hot! But even then, it's about 90% a very pleased emotional response of "these precious people I love enough to constantly read about are having a VERY GOOD TIME, and that makes me extremely happy".)
I guess basically as both a reader and a writer, what I want most is to have the emotional stuff seeded heavily right through the entire scene, so as a reader, if the actual sex is mostly about the physical mechanics, I won't love it. But what I'm always aiming for when I'm writing very explicit fic, and am absolutely delighted to find as a reader, is a sense of the characters being utterly caught up in it (unless the point is that they're not, of course) and aware of all the physical things going on, but filtered heavily through the emotions it's evoking or that they're working through. I'm content to read just about any degree of explicitness if I get that.
...ooh. As I was writing that paragraph, I thought of this: to me, the degree of physical explicitness is like the brightness of light coming in a window. If the window's clear glass, it can get too bright for me to want to look at it much or for long, but if the emotional stuff is stained glass, just about any degree of brightness coming in is okay, and the permutations of color and intensity are basically all beautiful.
(But also I'm sleepy and not sure how much sense that makes. I thought I'd write it down anyway. ^^; This got rambly, though.)
writing it is a challenge because I'm never quite sure how people will react to it, when I know my own reactions aren't a great metric.
Oof, yes. I can see how that'd be tricky. But sometimes the outcome of a challenge is so good! *^^*