I suppose I must come forward to say that I don’t care for sex, not very much even in fiction. Nowadays I am able and even willing to read sex scenes and to include short, R-rated ones in some of my fics, and recently I’ve enjoyed reading even an E/NC-17-rated one, although I’m still not usually interested in stories in which the sex is the main focus and conclusion. But fifteen years ago I, too, often felt that I was the only one who wasn’t here for sex and kink, and I found it hard to explain it without giving the impression that I had something against other people writing high-rated, explicit sex scenes.
An essay I read about kink a few days ago made me realise that kink is not always about the characters having sex – although I think that there usually is a sex scene in a kinky fanfic – but anything that the reader finds erotic (even if sometimes the characters or even the writer don’t). I suppose there’s something I find erotic in a lot of the fic I write – but perhaps my kink is so unusual that it doesn’t work like that for readers.
In any case you’re certainly not alone, as the earlier comments here have shown. I hope that in this changed fandom it is easier to find what to read – if not necessarily readers for your fic – when people search stories on AO3 on the basis of tags and ratings. I don’t know how small a minority we who are not into sex and not so much into romance, either, are, and it must vary between fandoms, subfandoms and characters. (For instance, I used to feel that very few people who cared about my favourite pair of protagonists, Remus and Sirius, were interested in fics without sex, but of course even in this corner there are writers and readers of fluffy kissing fics, not so many interested in not-romance-or-sex-centred ones.)
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2020-01-28 03:30 pm (UTC)An essay I read about kink a few days ago made me realise that kink is not always about the characters having sex – although I think that there usually is a sex scene in a kinky fanfic – but anything that the reader finds erotic (even if sometimes the characters or even the writer don’t). I suppose there’s something I find erotic in a lot of the fic I write – but perhaps my kink is so unusual that it doesn’t work like that for readers.
In any case you’re certainly not alone, as the earlier comments here have shown. I hope that in this changed fandom it is easier to find what to read – if not necessarily readers for your fic – when people search stories on AO3 on the basis of tags and ratings. I don’t know how small a minority we who are not into sex and not so much into romance, either, are, and it must vary between fandoms, subfandoms and characters. (For instance, I used to feel that very few people who cared about my favourite pair of protagonists, Remus and Sirius, were interested in fics without sex, but of course even in this corner there are writers and readers of fluffy kissing fics, not so many interested in not-romance-or-sex-centred ones.)