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.
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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