Showdown!

Aug. 4th, 2019 03:55 pm
rheasilvia: (Write more porn)
[personal profile] rheasilvia
Poll #22464 Showdown!
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 30


When you realize your showdown will be about as long as the entire rest of the story, the best response is to:

View Answers

shrug! Wordcount is meaningless, like smoke in the wind.
22 (73.3%)

giggle madly!
17 (56.7%)

find ways to shorten the showdown.
1 (3.3%)

write more of the non-showdown part of the story.
10 (33.3%)

eat cake.
15 (50.0%)

insert sex scenes into the rest of the story.
6 (20.0%)

insert sex scenes into the showdown.
5 (16.7%)

decide only the last bit of the showdown actually counts as a showdown.
10 (33.3%)



Just kidding, I won't be inserting random sex scenes. Although I have to say that is IS weird that none of my stories appear to include actual sex scenes anymore. Am I turning decent in my old age? Perish the thought!

No Sunday Six as of now, as I am actually working. You can tell by the fact I am posting polls on DW. ;-) But I did look at my showdown notes again, so that counts, right?

Date: 2019-08-04 02:02 pm (UTC)
jo_lasalle: a sleeping panda (sw porridge)
From: [personal profile] jo_lasalle
If that's what your showdown needs, that's what your showdown needs!

Although I have to say that is IS weird that none of my stories appear to include actual sex scenes anymore. Am I turning decent in my old age?

I recently said to someone else that "Not Actually A Prude It's Complicated" should be my sub header / ID button in Guardian fandom. I blame the fandom, not age! ^_^

Date: 2019-08-04 02:54 pm (UTC)
mecurtin: Zhao Yunlan is pointing at YOU. (ZYL chooses you)
From: [personal profile] mecurtin
Looking at your icon does NOT incline me to transcend mere physical lust, jsyk. Holy moly.

Date: 2019-08-04 03:04 pm (UTC)
jo_lasalle: a sleeping panda (zyl waving)
From: [personal profile] jo_lasalle
But hey, editing tends to add to my wordcount anyway

LOL! Aaaah, yes, that...

Which is great and all, but boys. Come on.

The groan of many a writing Sunday! I mean, I do at least have a backalley handjob to my name, but I still find them very, very complicated for porn, and especially compared to the anything and everything goes that's Akame for me... IOW, no, it's not just you!

Date: 2019-08-04 03:40 pm (UTC)
jo_lasalle: a sleeping panda (ZYL red)
From: [personal profile] jo_lasalle
LOL, your icon! IT SPEAKS TRUTH. /o\

Basically, yes, to everything you said here, and I can totally see that AU is easier. Stupid boys.

Date: 2019-08-04 02:04 pm (UTC)
akk: (Perv-Tree[tm])
From: [personal profile] akk
I assume you realize that 2,5, and 7 won't solve the perceived problem, and that 7 would even aggravate it by adding (deliciously?) to the word count. ;)

Date: 2019-08-04 02:50 pm (UTC)
akk: (Seishiro - Hunter. Eternal Hunger.)
From: [personal profile] akk
It solves the perception, not the problem. ;)

Date: 2019-08-04 04:26 pm (UTC)
akk: Kamui of Heaven  (Kamui - black and white wing)
From: [personal profile] akk
That's a matter of perspective. ;)

Date: 2019-08-04 03:35 pm (UTC)
extrapenguin: Man wagging his finger at offscreen while looking at camera (zhao yunlan)
From: [personal profile] extrapenguin
But are you sure that they shouldn't have time for an adventurous blowjob in the back of the Jeep before the showdown? :P

Congratulations on having a thing! The showdown and prelude should be as long as they need to be. Eat cake and chill. ;)

Date: 2019-08-04 03:36 pm (UTC)
clevermanka: default (Default)
From: [personal profile] clevermanka
Love how nobody so far has said to shorten it. =D

Date: 2019-08-04 04:41 pm (UTC)
lauand: (Gojyo - Fuck up)
From: [personal profile] lauand
Meanwhile, during the showdown:

"Okay, I know we're in the middle of something important, but I think we should have random sex."

"...Whut?"

-----

I tend to think the writer is pretty much a vessel and the story is actually the boss. If the showdown is longer than the rest of the story, so be it. You can't really tame the gods of fiction, the best path is always blind faith and obedience. And a bit of worshipping, that can't hurt.


Looking at your notes definitely counts. It's actually what I fear the most when resuming an old WIP. Because it doesn't feel like progress, but it's still very necessary and it keeps the machinery greased and in optimal condition for the work.


Date: 2019-08-04 06:00 pm (UTC)
extrapenguin: Man wagging his finger at offscreen while looking at camera (zhao yunlan)
From: [personal profile] extrapenguin
"Okay, I know we're in the middle of something important, but I think we should have random sex."
A good dose of sex pollen can make anything happen!

Date: 2019-08-04 06:24 pm (UTC)
lauand: (Gojyo - Fuck up)
From: [personal profile] lauand
To be completely honest, I think it's one of the best qualities of porn, this unapologetic ability to make sex a justifiable decision no matter the circumstances. Real life should definitely take notes on that. Mankind as a whole would benefit from it. I certainly would.

Date: 2019-08-04 07:39 pm (UTC)
clevermanka: default (Default)
From: [personal profile] clevermanka
"Okay, I know we're in the middle of something important, but I think we should have random sex."
This is pretty much literally what's happening in the fic I'm writing right now. =D
Edited Date: 2019-08-04 07:40 pm (UTC)

Date: 2019-08-04 08:01 pm (UTC)
lauand: (Schwarz - Redhanded)
From: [personal profile] lauand
XDDDD!!! OMG, I seriously love fanfiction!! ♥

Date: 2019-08-04 08:05 pm (UTC)
clevermanka: default (Default)
From: [personal profile] clevermanka
Seriously I kinda wanna use that line as the fic summary. (I mean, I won't, but...it's 100% accurate)

Date: 2019-08-04 08:08 pm (UTC)
lauand: (Gojyo - Fuck up)
From: [personal profile] lauand
It's the kind of sinopsis that would definitely make me want to read a story. I'm not even joking, I'm dead serious about it.

Date: 2019-08-04 08:14 pm (UTC)
clevermanka: default (Default)
From: [personal profile] clevermanka
I'll probably wind up using something pretty similar, just a little more detailed. Thanks for the idea!

Date: 2019-08-04 08:27 pm (UTC)
lauand: (Gojyo - Fuck up)
From: [personal profile] lauand
*thumbs up*

Date: 2019-08-04 08:04 pm (UTC)
lauand: (Gojyo - Fuck up)
From: [personal profile] lauand
I have total faith in your writing prowess and criterium! Let us know how it works out in the end :)

Date: 2019-08-04 08:26 pm (UTC)
lauand: (Gojyo - Fuck up)
From: [personal profile] lauand
:D

Date: 2019-08-04 06:11 pm (UTC)
trobadora: (Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan - Hei Pao-gege)
From: [personal profile] trobadora
What the story needs, the story needs. :)

Date: 2019-08-04 08:42 pm (UTC)
phyrry: Silhouette of a flying dragon. (Default)
From: [personal profile] phyrry
I have written my Weilan sex fic and, ongoing tentacle fluff aside, I am done with ship-centric fic for the forseeable future. (In fact the tentacle fluff is turning into plotty casefic, too.) So I see no problems with a lack of sex scenes; sometimes they're just not what you want to write, and that's okay.

Date: 2019-08-05 12:21 am (UTC)
phyrry: Silhouette of a flying dragon. (Default)
From: [personal profile] phyrry
They have a complicated relationship! Zhao Yunlan's boyfriend is a lot of work, what with all that stonewalling. :p
Edited Date: 2019-08-05 12:22 am (UTC)

Date: 2019-08-04 09:00 pm (UTC)
china_shop: Close-up of Zhao Yunlan grinning (Default)
From: [personal profile] china_shop
Although I have to say that is IS weird that none of my stories appear to include actual sex scenes anymore.

Ha! I've been puzzling a lot lately over what makes some pairings easier to porn than others. There are some that easily lend themselves to dirty little PWPs, and others that just don't seem to. My current vague-not-quite-theory is a combination of one of the characters being reserved/earnest/self-controlled, plus high levels of certainty about the relationship (in canon), combining into a kind of stability that's hard to smutify? Or something? Idk.

Anyway, good luck! *\o/* *\o/* *\o/*

Date: 2019-08-05 02:36 am (UTC)
lauand: (Gojyo - Fuck up)
From: [personal profile] lauand
I tend to think it's actually related to the intensity of their feelings is canon. Their relationship is, as you all have acknowledged, very complex and layered. They're pretty much restrained in canon, their feelings are obvious and not purely platonic, there's most definitely a lot of UST going on there, but the thing is that the base for it is the kind of devotion that trascends everything else, including the physical. On the one hand it's their past, things left unsaid and things not remembered, things they can't talk about for fear to change what's bound to happen, but it's also their present, how they hold back and talk to each other in riddles and are reluctant to say anything overt whereas they are also utterly unafraid to act and show the strength of their love or how special and fascinanting they found each other. It's the kind of thing that makes porn difficult because there's so much feeling behind it that trying to boil it down to sex feels like cheapening it or something. Which might look strange at first, because their story is not the kind of epic love story that we hold as stereotypically romantic (no damsel in distress/white knight dynamic, both are pretty much equals in every possible sense), but in a sense, I think that makes it all the more powerful because of it, so it's difficult to treat it/approach it as we would those other stories.

(So, yeah, I pretty much agree with your analysis, really.)

Date: 2019-08-05 10:02 pm (UTC)
lauand: (Gojyo - Fuck up)
From: [personal profile] lauand
I'm not very good at writing sex in general myself, to be honest, so I totally get the hardships of getting the smut right in one's head. What the hell, I don't even think I can get the grasp of their regular interaction, not just yet.

... and in the end, the physical desire is the least important part of their all-encompassing desire for each other.

Yes, I totally agree.

(And still, still, after literally 10.000 years waiting and holding back, it should be an easy-enough-to-break dam that's keeping Shen Wei in check. One would think that kind of blue balls would make smut easier to happen, and not harder.)

Date: 2019-08-05 03:53 am (UTC)
china_shop: Zhao Yunlan suggestively biting the tip of his thumb (Guardian - thumb-biting)
From: [personal profile] china_shop
but in my writing experience, there hasn't been a correlation to high levels of canon certainty about the relationship. High levels of emotional importance to the characters are a factor, though...

Yeah, I think I'm expressing the "canon certainty" thing badly. I was trying to get at "because of how things go in canon, I'm pretty confident that they will get together and stay together, in a relatively stable relationship." As opposed to two guys who meet twice in canon but somehow spark like fireworks in fic. But I have tiny sample sizes, and that factor may be more correlation than causation.

Both Zhao Yunlan and Shen Wei are complex people, and their relationship - as unquestioned and soul-deep as it is - is even more complex, with steep differences in knowledge and secrets and other such impediments littering the emotional landscape.

I don't think it's about complexity for me. I had an RPS pairing for a while that were a complex mass of all kinds of interdependencies and issues, and they were wonderfully filthy. And I had a similar smutblock (though to a lesser extent) with Fraser/Kowalski in Due South, and their relationship was actually pretty straightforward.

But in the instance of Guardian, I think you're right -- those high stakes and the care they take definitely exacerbate the problem.

Ooh, maybe it's simply how careful they are of each other? Hmm... *continues to ponder*

Date: 2019-08-05 09:59 pm (UTC)
china_shop: Text: This orgy sure is off to a slow start (orgy - slow start)
From: [personal profile] china_shop
FTR, I did write a fair amount of F/K smut; I just found it startling how much easier Ray/Ray were in comparison. They required almost no coaxing at all! ;-)

Still, I will get them there eventually! I am determined. ;-)

*cheers you on*

Date: 2019-08-05 06:54 am (UTC)
torch: Calvin and Hobbes are happy (tv glee)
From: [personal profile] torch
I only ticked "write more of the non-showdown part of the story" because it's what I would end up doing -- this is why I can't write anything short, because my solution to any perceived problem is always to add more words to it. But I think a combination of "giggle madly" and "eat cake" sounds best, really, as long as you actually finish the showdown. :)

(I actually started watching Guardian! Up to ep 6, atm, although I confess I nearly stopped after 3 because it made me want to strangle someone. Spoiler question, how long do I have to wait for the Black-Cloaked Envoy reveal? Shallow side note: that guy who always dresses in black (not to be confused with the B-C E) is nice to look at.)

Date: 2019-08-06 04:53 pm (UTC)
tinny: Something Else holding up its colorful drawing - "be different" (Default)
From: [personal profile] tinny
Just kidding, I won't be inserting random sex scenes.

What do you mean, you won't? Five people voted for doing just that. (They must be right, adding more sex scenes solves all your writing problems. :D)

Good luck writing your story! <3 I say, ignore the word count, if the showdown is engaging and interesting, it deserves all the time in the world.

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