Books. And the role of sex scenes in genre.

[leahbobet]

#8 -- John M. Ford, The Last Hot Time

This book, above and beyond keeping me up way too late for two nights in a row until I finished it, has illustrated a few things for me.

One is what mrissa (and others, clearly, but I see her talking about it most) terms "Minnesotan"; all the emotional content in The Last Hot Time is frozen about five inches below a layer of composure and distance. Not in a way that means the writer does not know how to connect up the emotion; it's quite deliberate, and there are clues to that in the way that its protagonist, Danny, who's later Doc, has a Worst Fear that involves losing control of his emotions. There's a sense that beneath the somewhat cool exterior, if you opened the right door or turned the right valve, there is a mess of emotion and motivation and hurt and joy that would explode so hard it would knock you five blocks southwards, and that's what drives this book. This is a book written at least halfway in the subtext, which too is thematic, being about a Chicago between a very different notion of Faerie and what's called The World. You have to work for this book, stretch out your hand some and meet it.

I like that.

The second thing? Is where my failure-to-connect, as a reader, is with the bulk of genre lit sex scenes. Because there are two sex scenes in this book -- one near the middle, and one at the end. And let me say, they are neither of them vanilla sex scenes. They're reasonably kinky if not hardcore, and they're not soft-focus, and they're important -- vital -- to the turn of the plot and characterization.

They are possibly the most loving sex scenes I've ever read. After the second, which closes the book? I, on instinct, hugged said book and cried a little. The good kind.

And I think, perhaps, this is why your generic Paranormal Urban Fantasy sex scene (yes, I know I pick on PUF a lot; you can throw most epic fantasy sex scenes in this particular bucket too, Kushiel's Dart and The Fires of Heaven and the early Dark Tower books and, I am told by my wonderful peoples, The Queen's Bastard, and we will not talk about horror sex since in horror sex is a different signifier than in fantasy) well, leaves me cold. They're just sex scenes, in a way. The emotional foundation of them -- and every scene between characters has an emotional foundation, doesn't matter if they're doing the dishes or having an orgy -- isn't love. It's usually...dominance. Or competition. Or fear-not-really-fear-maybe. Or anger. Sex is such a very competitive sport in fiction of late. I must say, my sex life (yes, kids, once upon a time Leah had a sex life) has never reflected that much foundation in negative things, in really bad reasons to be sleeping with somebody. And if it did? I'd be worried about why I was sleeping with that person and my good friends would hopefully perform an intervention. Sex based in dislike leaves me cold.

(And since it's so obviously fantasy fodder -- you know that precious few people, exposed to the reality of a relationship where all the intimacy was based in fear or anger or dominance or competition, would actually stay in that relationship. And that knowing makes everything in those books, the people and the plots and everything, less real to the reader.)

So in this space where there's a dearth of depictions of sex -- and remember, we're dealing with non-vanilla kinky sex here -- which is not ooh-naughty, not butterflies-and-flowers, but healthy, human, real people sex, there is this book. Which contains sex had by characters who are real and whole and care about each other's well-being in ways that don't have to be twisted and brooding and respect and like each other. And it is clear-eyed. The Last Hot Time is, yes, discussing greater thematic issues of power and in part using kink as a straight-line symbol for that (which is what most kink in genre books seems to be tied to, pun not intended). And if you think about it like that? I think having kinky bondage-oriented sex between people who love and respect each other before, during, and after? Makes a very strong statement about power and its use and its ethics.

Which is also what is lacking for me in most genre sex scenes.

---

Beyond all that, which is largely an intellectual-critical approach?

Having read this book, I wish I could have met the man who wrote it and bought him a drink or three.

Comments

[tithenai.livejournal.com]

Do you have a rant about Kushiel's Dart somewhere? I need to read it to convince myself that there is SOMEONE ELSE IN THE WORLD who has read that novel and despised it. If you in fact despised it and didn't just dislike the sex scenes...

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

You are not alone.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Most of my Kushiel rant is actually a rant about fantasy books about Walking. They kind of walk somewhere for 250 pages and then they turn around and...walk back. I kinda skipped back.

Also, there were buckets of things wrong with what was going on in the relationship dynamics there, but...it's probably been too long since I read those for me to do this right.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

They kind of walk somewhere for 250 pages and then they turn around and...walk back.

OMG, yes.

[tithenai.livejournal.com]

I just couldn't get past the premise. There's a whole House dedicated to the sacred prostitutes who're into pain -- but she's special because she's really REALLY into pain! Bwuh?

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

I am special because I'm really into chocolate. *g*

(Oh, btw, it's you who has made mention of a chocolate store called Leonidas, right? I found one local to me this weekend; not sure if they're actually the same store or two coincidental chocolate stores.)

[tithenai.livejournal.com]

Ooh! It is indeed me; let me know what you think! But the two to realllly watch out for are Truffle Treasures and Juliette et Chocolat. BUT! YOU! Are going to Worldcon, aren't you? That's in Montreal, and if I can manage to be there, I will take you there, beceause ommmnomnom. Everyone needs s'more of that in their lives.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

I am! Worldcon rah rah! And I plan to eat at least one good-sized chunk of Montreal while I'm there. :)

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

Where's the one near you? Because there's one at the Humber Loop shopping plaza.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

In the concourse between Bloor station and Holt Renfrew! I was trying to get myself over to Avenue Road without too much outdoors time and stumbled upon it.

[wirewalking.livejournal.com]

Huh.

*buys*

[abidemi.livejournal.com]

It seems like the sticking point is that, if the sex scene has no skeevy dominance or other unhealthy stuff going on, it's much more difficult to make plot-relevant.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

I dunno. I think that depends on what plot you're telling, and what conversation you're having.

[abidemi.livejournal.com]

It's (boiling it down to ridiculous extremes) the difference between writing a scene where two people are happy with each other, and writing a scene where two people are upset with each other. The latter lends itself to drama and storytelling more than the former.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

That's only if you're looking at that scene in isolation. And no scene exists in isolation.

Depending on the story you're telling, where the scene is, between who? A scene where people are happy with each other can produce buckets of storytelling and drama.

[abidemi.livejournal.com]

It certainly can. I just think it's more difficult, and that's why genre fiction has more unhealthy sex than healthy sex.

[asatomuraki.livejournal.com]

I was just having a similar conversation with a friend about sex in books and why it works and why it doesn't. Now, I'm cool with sex in books just for the sake of being erotic, but to me it isn't erotic if it doesn't make sense, if you can't for the life of you see why anyone would be doing it with that person or under those circumstances. You know?

Of course, I used to say I wouldn't put sex in a story, and then I started in on Boyhouse and realized that sex was relevant to a book about gender politics. But... I don't like reading books in which the sex is a gimmick. I just don't. So many women seem to go for that, but I don't get it.

I'm definitely seeking out this one, though. Thanks for the tip. ;)

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

I think you'd like this very much. And yeah, I think a sex act, like any other character act, has to make sense that way. It's not...seperate, in terms of motivations.

(I still think Boyhouse is neat, and I miss it.)

[asatomuraki.livejournal.com]

Oh, my! What a wonderful thing to say about Boyhouse. Serendipitous, too, since I just decided to make finishing that first draft my next project while the first draft of the shape-shifter thing cools. I'm hoping I've gotten good enough to do what I want to do with it, but I guess I'll find out.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Yay! Good!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yah. You would have liked Mike. I really do think. He is like pameladean in that when you have talked with the person for an hour or so, you realize that she really is like her books as an aggregate make it seem like she should be, that they aren't any kind of cheat.

This death thing: I am not on board with it.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

...then yes, I think I would have liked him very much.

[elisem.livejournal.com]

I am pretty sure he would have liked very much what you have to say here. (I am also pretty sure he would have said, "Oh... well..." and looked really embarrassed, but that a little corner of a smile would have crept onto his face as he averted it. And also that you would have gone on to have good conversation, probably miles away from anything about the book, until later when a whole bunch of things would snap into focus and new context would emerge, because that's just how he was, but anyway.)

You gonna be in the same place as me any time in the next few months? Because there's a story or two about that book I could tell you, but it's an in-person kind of conversation, really truly.

He was a very fine Mike indeed. Have you read his short stories?

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

...thank you. That means a lot. Truly.

I am doing Readercon and Worldcon this year, with Fourth Street as a big fat maybe until I can figure out whether there are vacation days and money in the right place at the right time. No Wiscon, due to those vacation days (we have some strict rules about when we can take them at work, and how many people can be out at a time, and someone else got there first).

This is the first thing of his I've read; I asked someone where the good place to start with this stuff was, and was pointed here. I am glad I was.

[elisem.livejournal.com]

Might want to try "Growing Up Weightless" next, actually.

(edited because I can spell, given two tries)

Is about kids on the Moon. Is intense.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

I have ordered. :)

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

I guess my question here would be: But if those are my characters and I designed them to be this way, and them having sex is at least a bit integral to the plot, then why should this particular slant disqualify my sex scenes from being "real" sex scenes? Isn't this sort of like saying "curry is bad and pepper is good, and too many people use curry because it's easy, so use pepper instead, you lazy fool"?

I realize you're not talking about horror sex, and you said you weren't, so believe me, I'm not taking any of this personally (and I'm also not a big Kushiel series fan either, in case you wondered). OTOH, it's just as easy to ask why there should be any sort of sex scenes at all, ever, in anything; I certainly don't necessarily read any sort of genre fiction for the sex. But if you've already laid out a society where BDSM sex is the lingua franca, there's probably going to be a lot of inequitable, negatively-charged sex going on--and maybe that author (name escapes me) isn't even thinking of those scenes as "sex" scenes per se. Maybe she's thinking of them as combat, conversation, or diplomacy.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this, but...there you are.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

I think the important bit here is: And I think, perhaps, this is why your generic Paranormal Urban Fantasy sex scene ... well, leaves me cold. I'm only really nattering on about my own reactions as a reader, and how this illustrated why I have this certain reaction, rather than claiming validity, badness, goodness or "realness" for any one approach to writing a book. All books are valid, I'm just not personally going to read and enjoy 'em all.

[stillnotbored.livejournal.com]

I went back and read the post this morning and not just the comments. Not the kind of spoilers to spoil the book for me, Instead I want to finish it even faster now.

This part right here:

(And since it's so obviously fantasy fodder -- you know that precious few people, exposed to the reality of a relationship where all the intimacy was based in fear or anger or dominance or competition, would actually stay in that relationship. And that knowing makes everything in those books, the people and the plots and everything, less real to the reader.)

I think you nailed right here why I have an almost physical aversion to fantasy where the only basis for a relationship or intimacy is based on fear and dominance, etc. The reality of that is not fun and the fantasy version less so.

And it doesn't matter how kinky or plain vanilla the sex in a book is, it's the relationship between the people having sex that counts. Unhealthy relationship = unhealthy sex. Unhealthy balance of power = unhealthy sex.

There has to be a pretty damn valid and huge thematic reason for that set up way in advance for me not to recoil and put the book down. There needs to be some character revelation or a hard lesson learned and some moving on from there. A point in other words.

That point can consist of a character discovering the strength to break free or realizing that he/she needs the twisted aspect for some reason or whatever. There are many valid points to be made about power and dominance.

Otherwise...it comes off to me as a personal kink of the author's or a calculated way To Sell Books Full Of Naughty Things.

Which is not the same to my mind as a good reason to write such scenes or a book that contains them.