Jack scissored his fingers WHERE?

[tencrush]

Oh, alright then, I'll do a post about Jack, Ianto and anal sex. Elsewhere on my flist there's already a rant about the subject, but I still feel inspired enough to contribute my thoughts on the matter.


First off, let me just say that I read very little in the way of fic. I have these bouts of extreme boredom now and again, during which I'll suddenly read about ten fics, but that's about it. I've noticed, though, during these binges, that there seem to be some overused descriptions in Jack/Ianto fic (for that is what I'll usually read, and as I've said before, the main reason I do so is because sitting down to read a big splodge of fic in one go every four weeks or so gives one an interesting insight into the overriding themes that people seem to be thinking along, I find every so often, the angle at which fic writers approach a relationship like Jack/Ianto will change, due to new canon or speculation, and suddenly romance will be higher on the agenda, or the top will become the bottom, or some such thing) and, not being an avid reader, I wonder if these are specific to this relationship, or more general slash tropes, or what. Anyone who can tell me is more than welcome to do so.

• THE LUBRICATION COEFFICIENT. People are always complaining that there's not enough lube in bumseks fics. I find this weird, because it doesn't really bother me. I find that, unless specific mention is made of there NOT being lube involved, I usually just assume that it is, whether it's mentioned or not. Someone made mention of the overuse of the lube-bottle-cap-click sound effect in Jack/Ianto fic, I've noticed this, too, and it always strikes me as a fic author's way of obliquely mentioning the lube in in order to avoid the "WOT? NO LUBE?" comments that would inevitably follow if they didn't. Is this really such a problem for the reader? Is it really too much to ask people to assume there's lubrication involved? Is it just me that assumes that there is? I personally think there's TOO MUCH mention of lube in Jack/Ianto fics. That can't just be me. (And sometimes, the "Wot no lube?" question strikes me as such a terribly anal-virgin question to ask. Obviously there's lube involved. Or a fuck of a lot of precum. Either way, does it really matter enough to warrant a mention every single time?)


• THE UNBEARABLE TIGHTNESS OF BEING. The word "tight". Yeah, the arse, Jack or Ianto's, whichever you fancy, is a "tight hole". I won't dispute that in any way, though I must say that the mention of it being a tight hole always strikes me as a tad superfluous, and, in a way, such a terribly heterosexual observation. I mean, okay, it's tight, but dear God it's not that tight and a guy will only really say that it's tight because he's mentally comparing it to your vagina. Yeah it's tight. And hot. Hot and tight. "Tight heat", even. Yes, I get it already.


• THE FINGER-SCISSOR-COCK MANEUVRE. I have a myriad of problems with this particular preparatory procedure. The first being that its description is always so overly clinical, and I can never help picturing Jack frowning in concentration as if trying to undo the tricky nut up there that makes Ianto's arse unclench (And, yeah, I find it's usually Ianto on the receiving end of this one.) But mostly it's just the simple fact that nobody, not even the most virginal of arses, is so tight that they would require this much in the way of relaxation. Prep work for anal sex is mental, and does indeed involve relaxation, but that relaxation can be achieved in whatever way you fancy, because it's mental. It doesn't require that specific tenderising-a-steak thing that some authors seem to love so much. It's mental. Got it? And apart from anything else, and as has been pointed out by several people, you can't really scissor anything up there. It ain't that roomy, and I, personally, always find myself distracted by those scissoring fingers and where they end up going next. One day, maybe I'll get that fic where they have a cuddle afterwards and one of them strokes the other's hair and the other one says "Could you not do that? Your fingers smell like my butt."

Now all of these things have something in common in my mind, and it's why I wanted to bring them up. They all strike me as a bit het, and a touch romantic. The use of lube, the tight descriptors, the thorough and loving preparation involved, it all strikes me as the sort of thing involved when heterosexual couples finally breach that frontier of "May I put my cock up your arse in a non-accidental fashion?", and not really in character for a gay couple that are regularly fucking each other. (I'm not even going to go into the amount of anal sex that Jack and Ianto seem to have, as a percentage of the total sex-things that they do, because, again, it strikes me as worryingly high, and often seems to have a vibe of this-is-the-slash-equivalent-of-vaginal-intercourse-and-therefore-romantic about it) I could, of course, be entirely wrong, I'm not a gay couple, but there's just something off about it to me. My question, really, is, are these general slash things, or are they more prevalent in Jack/Ianto than they are elsewhere? Because the thing is, to me as a reader, Jack/Ianto fic tends to come across as overly vanilla and romantic, and these things are a part of that. Now given the fact that Jack and Ianto are canonically having sex, but canon is slightly more vague on their romantic attachment, I can well figure why this would be the case in this particular pairing, fic is the place where fans fill in the gaps in canon, after all, and as far as the sex goes, this canon's not particularly gappy. If it's more of a general slash thing, is that just the heterosexuality and possible anal virginity of female authors shining through? Is that how women would like the backdoor to be approached if it's even approached at all? Am I just giving off way TMI by even mentioning that I think it's all so... delicate? I am, aren't I?

Bum.

Comments

[kashiichan.livejournal.com]

One day, maybe I'll get that fic where they have a cuddle afterwards and one of them strokes the other's hair and the other one says "Could you not do that? Your fingers smell like my butt."
Oh man, that'd be FANTASTIC.

[lydia-petze.livejournal.com]

My question, really, is, are these general slash things

Definitely general slash things - everything you've said here is common to every slash fandom I've ever read in, and I've read in a lot. It's also probably the reason that, although I'm still a big slasher, I rarely read fic these days, and when I do, I tend to skip the sex, unless the author's convinced me she's going to bring something different to the party.

[webbgirl.livejournal.com]

Yeah, there are a lot of tropes that have been passed down through the years in slash. I've also seen the same in a lot of gay erotica and even gay porn.

The lube mentions I think are much more prevalent in fandom, but I think that has to do with a fear of getting smacked down in comments for not mentioning it. Personally, I would rather folks not mention the lube at all than use some of the random and oh so not appropriate materials.

As for the anal sex quotient, I think it's about equivalent to what you'd find in gay lit, which I think would be much more equivalent than comparing it to 'real life'. Het fic is just as bad when it comes to this sort of stuff and it's comparisons to what goes on with real couples.

I don't know about the heteronormative aspect of anal sex with men. I guess that may be true for some authors. I land on the side of folks who enjoy the activity, so I'm probably not the one to ask.

[spoggly.livejournal.com]

In my experience, this happens in a lot of fandoms, and it is JUST AS RAGINGLY STUPID AND HETEROCENTRIST in every single one.

A+ POST TWO THUMBS UP

[ceindreadh.livejournal.com]

A+ POST TWO THUMBS UP

Ah, but the big question is, 'up where' ? ;-)

(oh come on, like I wasn't the only one thinking it!)

[spoggly.livejournal.com]

In whatever orifice pleases you most!

[sorrelchestnut.livejournal.com]

The lube thing I can answer, actually, since it looks like everyone else has it all covered. The reason people tend to dogpile non-lube-mentioning stories is because there have been SO VERY MANY bad!fic slash stories that... don't use lube during anal sex. And I'm not just talking about not mentioning it, I mean the characters actually weren't using any. Or they were using spit, or mayonnaise or on one memorable occasion, glue. So basically it's even easier to find anal-sex-with-non-lubricating-substances than it is to find anal-sex-with-scissoring-fingers. (Though I always just took that to mean a sort of very slight wiggling around of fingers? I dunno.) It boils down to a case of writers (and readers) being supercautious about the whole thing, because Bad Things have happened in slash fic way, way too many times, and nobody wants to have their sexin' ruined by the thought of the boys going lubeless.

[alchemia.livejournal.com]

I prefer spit actually, it does work for some people.

[sorrelchestnut.livejournal.com]

Not really having any kind of personal experience myself, all I can say is that as far as I've seen spit-for-lube usually sets off at least one comment of "No! And also ow!" so I'm guessing it works less well for others.

[alchemia.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, I didn't mean that it would work for everyone. But then that is true of any sex act. I just wanted to point out that its really an issue of personal preference rather than something that is always physically impossible.

[sorrelchestnut.livejournal.com]

Glue, on the other hand, seems a little counterproductive.

[alchemia.livejournal.com]

yeah; that I can't imagine.
When I saw it mentioned, it immediately made me think of this limerick:
There once was a couple from New Delhi
Who walked around belly-to-belly
Because, in their haste,
They used carpenter's paste
Instead of petroleum jelly

[sorrelchestnut.livejournal.com]

Ahahaha, so true. Though that makes me think of the song from Hedwig and the Angry Inch, though they were back-to-back in that one.

[miriam-heddy.livejournal.com]

It's bad form to run with scissors. It's also bad form to fuck with scissors.

Scissors are sharp.

And I must say that I prefer mentions of lube only because I've been traumatized by too much slash in which the writer clearly modeled the anus on the vag.

[carmarthen.livejournal.com]

Not in your fandom, so I'd say yes, those are very common in other fandoms, too.

Personally, I'd like to see fingering treated as something really fun rather than as a necessary prelude to buttsex. Fingers are much more...nimble...than penises. Also, fingering + blowjob would be awesome, and I can't even think of the last time I saw that in a slash story.

Personally, as a heterosexual woman--yes, preparation for anal sex is mental. But foreplay is fun, and I would imagine that many gay and bisexual men enjoy foreplay as much as most straight men. And I tend to feel that certain types of slash treat foreplay as a necessary "warm-up" for the buttsex, which I think is kind of unfortunate--personally, I'm not really interested in wham-bam-thank-you-sir smut. So I'm irked by the same cliches, but I think for slightly different reasons.

here from metafandom

[inamac.livejournal.com]

You pose interesting questions, because while a lot of these things are general slash tropes (and I've been reading and writing it for thirty years now), TW is at the end of a very long development, both as a TV show that actually deals with gay sex in canon (one of the reasons that slash developed in fandom was as a subversion of canon - Kirk's chasing all those women on screen was clearly over-compensation), and as an international/internet fandom (unless they had 'out' gay friends who were willing to discuss the practicalities of gay sex early slash writers didn't have access to any information - The Joy of Gay Sex was only published in the early 1980s and not widely available - even when not banned outright (incidentally, the judge's comments in the Canadian obscenity hearing are relevant: "However repugnant the concept of anal sex may be to the heterosexual observer it is, I find, the central sexual act of homosexual practice. To write about homosexual practices without dealing with anal intercourse would be equivalent to writing a history of music and omitting Mozart.")

Taking your tropes: Lube (in the 'over-the-counter-everyone-has-some-in-the-nightstand-drawer' sense) is relatively new - both in rl and fanfic - the people who complain that there isn't enough of it may be remembering the days when half the fic had to be devoted to raiding the kitchen cupboards for a tub of lard - compared with which the 'flick of a cap' is a relief (not least to Ianto).

Tightness - yeah, slash is (mostly) written by het women, and while they may be writing two blokes, what they're imagining is Jack's cock in their vagina... And nothing wrong with that...

Scissoring - I suspect that this can be traced back to a specific fic published online in the last 10 years - I've never seen it in zines, but I have seen it right across a number of online fandoms - indeed, I just beta-ed it out of a Harry Potter fic. I did replace it with 'corkscrewing' in one fic, purely to see whether anyone picked up on it - they didn't.

Re: here from metafandom

[tencrush]

Yeah, I find it interesting in this particular fandom, because the approach is completely different and the actual sexual relationships are established canon, which is a completely different thing to writing Spike/Angel, you know?

I like corkscrewing, if nothing else it is at least more accurate. The scissoring thing does just seem to be an online thing, the whole phrasing around it is quite formulaic, like it's been copie and passed down from fic to fic. Which wouldn't really be a noticaeable thing if it wasn't quite such an inaccurate word to describe the motion.

[fireholly.livejournal.com]

Hi, I'm here via metafandom - I've watched a bit of Torchwood but I'm not an active fan.

Your rant raises a ton of really interesting points. Re lube - I think a lot of readers only complain about the relative lube presence because they're scared of what people will think of them if they don't make sure to mention lube. There's a huge fanfic stigma against glossing over, but I think that mostly stems from fandoms where the author's hooking up characters who have previously only been in heterosexual romances and are on some mysterious other planet where there is no lube (as opposed to Torchwood, where Jack and Ianto are canonically shagging and have been doing so for some time). It'd make sense for there to be a stigma against authors assuming buttsex in a non-primed situation would be automatically easy.

But Torchwood's hardly a conventional fandom, because the canon establishes the background of the characters as pertaining to buttsex. In Torchwood fanfic, it'd be pretty sensible to assume they're going to have access to lube, or, if not, they've had practice at going it dry. I think going into detail about use of lube would be unnecessary for that pairing in that fandom unless they were in a desert island or something.

My big lube pet peeve is when the author describes the lube in great detail and then when they actually start inserting parts everything goes into blurry 'HIS BODY ARCHED WITH PLEASURE AS THE MAN BEHIND HIM STRUCK AGAIN AND AGAIN AND THEIR SOULS TOUCHED ACROSS THE UNIVERSE AND COLLAPSED IN POOLS OF LIQUID GOLD' mode. I think behaviour like that stems from the mostly socially-driven lube-absence-phobia.


Good point about 'tightness' being a 'compared-to-the-vagina' word. I honestly did not think of that and I'm glad you pointed it out, because now you've said it, it's so obvious I'm wincing. Thank you.


tl;dr ♥

EDITED for clarity

[amarin-rose.livejournal.com]

I can't give you fic about the fingers smelling like butts, but I can give you fic where 69-rimming was had, and then one character wanted to kiss (http://gwaddiction.com/p.php?id=2225&title=Start+Me+Up&author=tkmaxwell777&to=106&series=&part=&last=&authorpage=TK.shtml&fic=./tk/start) and the other didn't. It's in one of the later parts, though.

In response to the lube thing, though, I once wrote a slash sex scene having the established couple just use copious amounts of spit, and was told by several betas to have them use lube, so...

[frogy.livejournal.com]

I'm getting to the party a little late, but yes all three of these things are pretty common across all slash fandoms. And while it's bad across all fandoms, there usually a lot harder to deny on a canonical level because most slash pairings are based on subtext. In Torchwood we know for a fact that Jack is "innovative" and "avant-garde" and probably not doing the same boring thing in bed that badfic writers across fandoms write in mad-lib style fics ([character's name here] scissored his fingers in [other character's name here]). (Unless we're assuming that Ianto was flat out lying to Martha, but I like to think there was some truth to it--he was still vague enough that it doesn't seem like OOC oversharing, and Ianto is an actualfact adult who can brag about having really good sex with his boyfriend and not a stammering middle school girl with self-esteem problems which is a problem in fic that bothers me a lot more than mediocre, rote sex scenes.)

[tencrush]

I agree. Conversations and posts following on from this one eventually led to the creation of ninja_teaboy. A comm in which I shall attempt to police and wipe out fic depictions of Ianto as some sort of giggly schoolgirl.