January 04, 2013

Porn For the Rest of Us: Top 5 Reasons to Read Fanfiction

by cardstock12

The phrase “porn for women” is thrown around a lot these days, sometimes mockingly accompanied by a photo of a man doing the dishes, but you might be surprised to learn that there is a massive community of porn – real, explicit, kinky, delicious porn – created by women, for women. I'm talking about fanfiction.

Love Your Characters

It's a common notion that, in general, women prefer to be emotionally invested in sex. While this idea hasn't been scientifically proven, it's certainly supported by the readership statistics of romance novels: a whopping 91% of those who buy romantic novels are female. For many women, the plot and character development makes the inevitable sex scenes much more enjoyable, because by the time the mood strikes, they're emotionally invested in the characters and care what happens to them. Fan fiction has an advantage over both visual pornography and traditional romance novels: you already love the characters because you've read/watched/listened to the source material. This allows you to skip straight to the fun stuff. A lot of fan fiction is between two and five thousand words and much of this is what is colloquially referred to as PWP, or Porn Without Plot.

Do It For Art

But what if you don't want to skip straight to the fun stuff? What if you want action, adventure, romance, and hardcore sex scenes? Fan fiction delivers here, too. Here are more than four thousand stories of novel length or greater, and more still can be found on fandom-specific forums and websites like LiveJournal. Even better, it's good. Bestselling erotic novel Fifty Shades of Grey began life as a Twilight fan fiction, and I can tell you from experience that there are many unpublished fics (a common abbreviation) that easily surpass Fifty Shades in terms of writing quality and erotic content. Take for example Unholyverse, an 186,000 word epic about popular emo band My Chemical Romance fighting demons and fucking each other's brains out. Avengers fan fiction Chaos War is so clever and beautifully written that it could be the script for Avengers 2 if somebody cut out all the porn. As long as you know where to look – whatever you do, don't go to fanfiction.net, because that's where the preteens congregate – it's not hard to find well written or even stunningly beautiful fan fiction.

Find Your Niche

You might have heard the common punch line, Rule 34 of the internet: “if it exists, there is porn of it.” The same applies to fan fiction. It doesn't matter what you're into; chances are, your favorite book, TV show, or movie has inspired at least a few fics, some of which will probably be porn. Obviously, some fandoms are larger than others – right now, some of the largest are The Avengers , Harry Potter , Sherlock (the British TV series), and Supernatural – but that doesn't mean you won't find erotica based off of Shakespeare's works as well. Like Star Trek? That was one of the first shows to ever spawn fan fiction, and the tradition is still alive and well. Crush on Johnny Depp? Here's Pirates Of The Caribbean fan fiction. Want to have sex with democratic pundit Stephen Colbert? Apparently, so does everybody else.

Explore Your Sexuality

If you've had any experience with fan fiction before, you knew this was coming. If not, there's something you need to know: only about 21% of fan fictions feature heterosexual couples. If you keep in mind that the vast majority of fan fiction is written by women, this actually makes sense. Men notoriously love lesbian porn, so why shouldn't women love gay porn? As a medium that easily lends itself to emotionally charged stories, fan fiction offers an opportunity for us to write or read about every girl's fantasy: men who have feelings. Alternative explanation: two hot guys are better than one, right?

If you're interested in trying gay porn, great! If not, there are still tons of straight (and lesbian) fics out there, and if you still want to experiment but aren't interested in slash (a common term for male on male fan fiction), some of them are quite kinky. Whichever route you choose, you're sure to encounter something new and exciting.

Everyone Loves Free Stuff!

A trashy paperback novel costs ten dollars on average. Visual internet porn is free if you know where to look, but you always run the risk of infecting your computer with a virus, or at the very least, you have to fight through a barrage of pop-up ads on every site you visit. Fan fiction is free and, since it's generally found on reputable websites such as LiveJournal or Archive of Our Own, reading it won't give you viruses.

Convinced? Here are some useful links to get you started.

Archive Of Our Own is a “fan-created, fan-run, non-profit, non-commercial archive for transformative fanworks” and is a great place to find well-written stories in a variety of fandoms.

If you'd rather start with the best of the best, Tvtropes has a list of recommended fics for various fandoms, most of which are on the long side. Beware, not all of these are erotic!

Finally, Google is your friend, and a search for “(movie/book/etc. of your choice) fan fiction” will likely yield results. Try links hosted on LiveJournal, and in general, avoid stories from fanfiction.net if writing quality is important to you.

Here's hoping you discover something new and enjoyable, be it a kink, a pairing, or fan fiction itself. Happy ficcing!