Striving for Plausibility

[ElectricBlue]

It's kind of pointless to get pissed that the incest category gets the most play here, because it's the most or one of the two or three most popular topics in porn anywhere you go and in every era.

I'd be curious for evidence on that. I'm of an age where classic porn from my father's bookshelf, my own collection of twentieth century erotica, and more copies of Penthouse and Oui magazine than were good for me, have informed my erotica sensibilities, but it wasn't until I stumbled across Lit in 2014 that I discovered the massive incest kink and thought, what's that all about?

Sibling incest I could get my head around (being in between two sisters growing up might have helped there, especially being five years younger than my older sis), but the mom/son stuff mystified me. I'd read Freud and his Oedipus theory, but my mum? That's just odd.

Mind you, I've never consumed much video porn, so maybe that was the bit I missed.

 

[SamScribble]

... but the mom/son stuff mystified me. I'd read Freud and his Oedipus theory, but my mum? That's just odd.

Thank you, EB. I was beginning to worry that I was the only such person on the planet.

 

[KeithD]

Thank you, EB. I was beginning to worry that I was the only such person on the planet.

There are others here. There's plenty of room to play here without having that fetish.

 

[lovecraft68]

I'd be curious for evidence on that. I'm of an age where classic porn from my father's bookshelf, my own collection of twentieth century erotica, and more copies of Penthouse and Oui magazine than were good for me, have informed my erotica sensibilities, but it wasn't until I stumbled across Lit in 2014 that I discovered the massive incest kink and thought, what's that all about?

Sibling incest I could get my head around (being in between two sisters growing up might have helped there, especially being five years younger than my older sis), but the mom/son stuff mystified me. I'd read Freud and his Oedipus theory, but my mum? That's just odd.

Mind you, I've never consumed much video porn, so maybe that was the bit I missed.

I have no desire for my mother, and no biological sister- my sister is from a foster home we spent a few years in together and are still close today. Sure as hell have no desire for my daughters.

But the taboo intrigues me as what could make A MOTHER want HER SON so I try to figure out ways that could happen other than pure lust, I doubt I'm the only one

Kay Parker's Taboo launched this both in video and stories and its immense popularity speaks to how many people have these fantasies for whatever reason.

Having said that your issue here is petty jealousy over the fatc a category you don't get is the biggest one here.

Same goes for Keith who bashes it constantly, but for awhile was posting stories there because for all his talk he wanted the numbers,.

And he didn't get them which just adds to the pettiness.

Keep going with your snotty penguin comments and how its so easy to write over there.,

Despite what you think, you're no better of a writer than anyone there.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Having said that your issue here is petty jealousy over the fatc a category you don't get is the biggest one here.

Keep going with your snotty penguin comments and how its so easy to write over there.

Despite what you think, you're no better of a writer than anyone there.

Not jealous, I just don't understand the kink - as I said, I never knew it existed as a major kink until I got to Lit. It's obvious it's the biggest category with the most writers and the most readers, and a set of tropes, just like any other category. If I found it erotic, I'd write there. I don't, so I don't.

The penguin gag was a light hearted joke between Simon Doom and me (on the back of a comment I made ages ago about Ogg being unique, like a puffin on a rock), when he was talking up numbers. Simon got it, you see it as an attack and an affront - but that's on you. Ogg got it too, to the extent that he put it in his signature block.

If you can't separate a genuine query from personal invective - and show me where I have ever attacked you like you attack me - then that's your chip on your shoulder, not mine.

But I see you're an expert in psycho-analysis and know me better than I know myself, so that's the end of it, I suppose. Anyway, my mum's dead, so now what do I do? Call me Oedipus, but there's nobody home.

Carry on, I guess .

 

[TadOverdon]

I'm not sure why people try to draw a direct connection between sex fantasies and an interest in real life experiences. I don't think I've ever known anyone who consciously wanted to have sex with a family member. People like that get themselves in trouble pretty quick.

You can go surf the websites that offer copies of pulp porn writing from the last century and scan some of those titles. Of course it wasn't published in Penthouse or Oui, those pubs were as vanilla as it gets. Check out Greenleaf, Oakmore, Beeline. Midwood, all the imprints that existed just to publish porn. And frankly I don't know how you could do a real survey of the Victorian stuff and miss it.

Or don't bother - just type "incest porn" into Google. I promise that the FBI won't call your bank and mom and husband.

Someone said they thought the popularity of the genre might have something to do with the fact that the taboo is so universal that almost no one will ever explore it in real life, unlike BDSM or swinging, etc. I have no idea. I just know the vanilla stuff doesn't move at sites like Smashwords where people are willing to pay.

 

[ElectricBlue]

You can go surf the websites that offer copies of pulp porn writing from the last century and scan some of those titles. Of course it wasn't published in Penthouse or Oui, those pubs were as vanilla as it gets. Check out Greenleaf, Oakmore, Beeline. Midwood, all the imprints that existed just to publish porn. And frankly I don't know how you could do a real survey of the Victorian stuff and miss it.

There you go, I've never heard of any of those imprints. But then, Australia had an active censor up until 1972 so that content never got into the country. So my smut experience as a teenager started with The Story of O, de Sade and Playboy, and migrated to Penthouse and its affiliate, Forum, and that's as porn as I ever got. I do miss Guccione nudes, though.

After reading Walter's My Secret Life as a teenager, that was enough Victoriana for me. Looks like I missed out on all that stuff. I don't think I'll bother catching up.

 

[TadOverdon]

There you go, I've never heard of any of those imprints. But then, Australia had an active censor up until 1972 so that content never got into the country.

Christ, that would be the explanation, yeah. Just scan a Wikipedia article about the history of obscenity laws and pornography in the U.S. and you'll get the flavor of what happened here. Even mainstream writers refer to the 1970s-1980s as "The Golden Age of Porn."

Oddly, since the subject's come up, I'm not sure I've ever written a brother-sister scene. Oodles of mom-son, lately some father-daughter (where I don't have much use for the father as authority figure or dominating the daughter)...sister-sister is fun to write. No brother-sister that I can remember, or brother-brother for that matter. The moms in our stuff are usually about as young as we can get away with and still have everyone plausibly of legal age all the time. I think that may have been more plausible a few generations ago, when people married younger and it was less of a foregone conclusion that a woman would continue her education beyond high school. And the moms tend mostly have kind of buddy-buddy relationships with their grown kids. Family authority figures? Not so much. A few of them are dominating and exaggeratedly sexually aggressive toward men in general. I kind of hate the term "predatory" being applied to women. It belongs in a giveaway box with "hysterical."

I've read that the most popular family stories here center on mothers who are "nice and likeable and reluctant." I'm not interested.

For whatever it's worth as data (nothing at all, really), my family of origin is the Ideal American Nuclear Family, minus .2 of a child: mother and father still together, two older brothers, me. Writing partner has a sister and two grown kids.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Christ, that would be the explanation, yeah. Just scan a Wikipedia article about the history of obscenity laws and pornography in the U.S. and you'll get the flavor of what happened here. Even mainstream writers refer to the 1970s-1980s as "The Golden Age of Porn."

Yes, plus an English background - the Lady Chatterley and Oz obscenity trials, an older sister who came out in 1972 in Australia (before the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras was even thought of - not an easy thing to do), who was then politically active in Thatcher's Britain, and a social historian father. In other words, an academic world view with no real knowledge of the US other than mainstream literature, cinema, and some American music (Joe Walsh, Frank Zappa, Lou Reed, The Doors and Love, those kinds of sixties, seventies genres).

Until the twenty-first century, my literary smut was mostly classic erotica, not under the counter porn. Pre-internet, too. So yeah, some of the Lit kink categories were an eye-opener. Who knew about the all American mom? I sure didn't!

 

[davion2308]

There's a balance

There's a balance in fantasy writing in that I can have my characters do anything to turn the reader on but they have to do it in a fashion that is believable to a certain extent.

The whole "My wife is a conservative church-goer but she flips a coin and now she's lining up the men in a gloryhole at an ABS on the interstate" is tough to swallow (lol). A progression where she starts wearing slightly sexier clothes and likes the attention she's not used to, and then she thinks about other men outside her marriage and fantasizes about them touching her, and the first hesitant experiments start, and finally she decides to take the plunge ... well, that character arc is going to be better because it shows a subtle, crafted change over time.

This is the same for fantasy, futuristic or sci-fi stories, and basically across the board. Sure, faster-than-light travel is impossible but if you craft a story where people stay young forever because they're flying FTL and you focus on the characters themselves, it's believable and people will like it.

I think showing people interacting and fucking and making decisions that mirror our own lives is where acceptance happens. Suspending disbelief is one thing when it comes to vampires and monsters, making something ridiculous in that people don't act like that is completely different.

 

[BuckyDuckman]

I don't think I ever struggled with plausibility as much as I did with "Mason and the Genie," but I'm happy with how it turned out. (Did an insane amount of research into the lore before writing it, though.)

I think of Stephen King quite often when I'm writing porn and the way he grounds a story in the mundane before heading into the fantastical. Maybe that's a key? (And internal consistency.)

Quite often, my motivation for writing a piece of erotica begins with "What will it take to get this particular character to do these things?" Where's that tipping point? That's fascinating to me.

 

[SimonDoom]

People err if they think that a fondness for reading or writing incest stories necessarily means one has an incest fetish. I don't, at all. Doesn't interest me in the slightest. But the stories do. The taboo element gives the sex a whole extra sizzle. The element of the forbidden is one of the things that does it for me, not just in this category but in others as well.

Other than in Sci Fi/Fantasy stories, the plausibility issue for me always centers around getting the character past the taboo, or social barrier, or whatever it is. It's a big part of the appeal of the story, and that's why, while there's no single best way to do it, attention should be paid to that part of the story before the payoff at the end.

 

[TadOverdon]

Until the twenty-first century, my literary smut was mostly classic erotica, not under the counter porn. Pre-internet, too. So yeah, some of the Lit kink categories were an eye-opener. Who knew about the all American mom? I sure didn't!

I mostly learned about the under-the-counter stuff, to which in the U.S. entire brick-and-mortar-right-there-in-your-face stores were devoted, from my partner. Dude corrupted me.

 

[KeithD]

Same goes for Keith who bashes it constantly, but for awhile was posting stories there because for all his talk he wanted the numbers,.

You're lying. Cite my constant bashing of any category here. You're a malicious, sick puppy.

 

[TadOverdon]

Although people take shots at the category because either they don't like it, or are pissed that it gets the most play here, Incest can be a challenging category to write in providing you are aiming for more than "Mom's hot, why not"

I've written some stories that are really out there, its more about just enjoying the kink,. but I've done quite a few where my goal was to take this absurd(and disturbing in real life) kink and make people say, this could happen.

On that general subject let me say that I read Mom's Morning After last evening and quite enjoyed it. Among other things to like, it's amazing that you can do 25,000 words on what's more or less a single encounter without being repetitious, and also keep the action interesting and arousing.

My people usually fuck in 2000-3000 word chunks and sometimes I just wish one of them would fake it so the other will goddamn finish. I'm sure that shows.

 

[Comshaw]

Suspension of disbelief is a requirement, not for the author but for the reader if they wish to enjoy a fiction story. If it's written with skill, with a style that draws in the reader and immerses them in the story, then it matters not what kind of wild story-line it is, the reader will enjoy it.

As far as rules to follow, as a long-time reader of Sci-fi and fantasy, the author gets to make up their own rules for whatever universe they have manufactured. The only thing I would say is those rules need to be applied consistently to make the story consist. A good example: Superman is only vulnerable to Kryptonite because the author said so and for no other reason. An omnipotent protagonist would be boring UNLESS the author can find a device to engage the reader.

Erotic fiction can be good or bad, depending on the author. But at its base, distilled down to the essence of its being, it's is there to titillate and stroke a person's libido, even if it's only slightly. That is implicit in the name "Erotic fiction" If it doesn't it isn't erotic fiction.

As far as being plausible, over a long life where I have seen many things that aren't plausible, that designator and "possible" are two different things entirely. It may not be plausible by our experience and standards, but it could be possible because of the billions of people and cultures on this earth.

I will admit that writing for a particular audience, plausibility draws in more readers because they can identify with it. It all depends on the first subject I addressed, how skilled they are with suspending disbelief.

I think it has more to do with the skill a story is told. Many of Stephen King's stories are way the hell and gone out of the "plausible" realm but still sell millions of books. Skill is the defining factor in the success of a story.

Comshaw

 

[TadOverdon]

As far as being plausible, over a long life where I have seen many things that aren't plausible, that designator and "possible" are two different things entirely. It may not be plausible by our experience and standards, but it could be possible because of the billions of people and cultures on this earth.

I sometimes think that "plausible" in porn is often measured against "this is how we might reasonably imagine that a middle class family living in a suburb of Milwaukee behaves and expects the world to be."

In other words, the "Star Trek" standard.

 

[LAHomedog]

It's kind of pointless to get pissed that the incest category gets the most play here, because it's the most or one of the two or three most popular topics in porn anywhere you go and in every era.

My first exposure to "erotic writing" was a used copy of the Grove Press collection of The Pearl which the guy at the bookstore had no business selling to a thirteen-year-old (he probably had not the first idea what he was selling). I was pretty shocked that it seemed like very third story in every issue was brothers and sisters and cousins, Oh My! The Victorians were crazy for it.

As far as I can tell it was the most prolifically-produced category of porn paperback in the 70s and 80s. It's like, incest and interracial dominate erotic comics online (along, maybe, with a disturbing number of serious torture comics).

And people joke about how many "step-family" videos are out there, because the so-called mainstream porn producers want to be very careful about producing material that might be ruled obscene somewhere, and are even more averse to offending the credit card companies and banks who make their businesses possible. and therefore mostly stay away from "real incest," Yet they know the demand for incest material is so large and dependable that they're still determined to get as much of that market as they can.

Why should that be so? I have no theories to explain it that are worth a damn. I only know that it's true.

George R.R. Martin told a funny anecdote in an interview where he had a conversation with a porn producer who parodied Game of Thrones, and the guy told him "There's no way we can do the Jamie/Cersei story in the parody. You can do it on HBO, but not in porn."

Our experience is the same but different. (There's a Lit topic for a story.)

The Grove Press was also my first experience with erotica and we all owe a gigantic debt of gratitude to the brave publishers of the Grove Press imprint for their courageous fight in the Supreme Court over "Lady Chatterley and Tropic of Cancer." But they also gave us the plays of Beckett, Pinter and the SF poets including Allen Ginsberg.

Where we differ is -- and maybe its because I'm a bit older -- is most of my original Grove Press erotica/porn was BDSM like "The Story of O" and Marquis de Sade. I never read any incest stuff from them.

When I was a teen, the pulp paperback porn we'd get was a lot of interracial and, for some reason, animal stuff. Go figure.

Anyway, I grew up thinking the French were all about BDSM and tying everyone up thanks to the Grove Press, but then again I was maybe 16?

 

[8letters]

A lot of discussions about "plausibility" are really about something else. Consider these story outlines:

#1: Bob is a good guy fallen on hard times. His store isn't getting the business it used to, his truck just got stolen, and his wife is sick. In desperation he buys a lottery ticket, he wins the grand prize, pays off all his debts, gets his wife the treatment that saves her life, retires from business, and buys a Ferrari.

#2: Bob just won the lottery! He pays off all his debts, gets his wife the treatment she needs, retires from business, and buys a Ferrari. But it turns out money ain't everything. A bunch of false friends try to take advantage of him, and he finds himself getting into bad habits, blowing through money, and alienating his real friends. In the end he gives away the rest of the lottery winnings, trades in his Ferrari for a more serviceable truck, and goes back to running his own business.

I daresay if I posted the first story, readers would complain that the lottery win is "implausible". I very much doubt I'd draw that criticism on the second one. But they are the same story! I just made different choices about where to start and where to end. I could even put both of them together and have the lottery win in the middle.

The lottery win isn't any more improbable in #1 than in #2. But it feels very different. In #1, it's used as a quick fix to Bob's problems. Readers will feel unsatisfied because they were expecting Bob - and me - to earn his happy ending, and instead he gets it through sheer luck. In #2, it's part of the premise, setting up challenges that Bob has to overcome.

A lot of "plausibility" discussion is really about that sense of earned versus unearned outcomes. Readers will accept a lot of stuff as a premise for a story that they will not accept as a resolution to that story.

Improbable things happen quite regularly. Making your story dependent on an improbable event happening is, to me, poor writing. But starting your story with that improbable event has happened is reflecting real life. In your example, the chance of winning the lottery with one lottery ticket is very, very low. Having it resolve the problems in your story will seem like a deus ex machina. But every lottery has a winner. I once worked with someone who won the lottery.

Here is an article that talks about how improbable things happening is quite common.

 

[TadOverdon]

Having the climax of a story turn on an improbable event that hasn't been set up earlier in a plausible way is pretty bad practice. Having the precipitating event(s) of a story be highly improbable is perfectly reasonable.

 

[KeithD]

You're lying. Cite my constant bashing of any category here. You're a malicious, sick puppy.

Note that when Lovecraft68 is challenged to back up his wild and malicious assertion--crickets. That's because he just lied. He can't find anything to back up his assertion, because he just lied. There's nothing there to back it up. This is how Lovecraft68 operates on this discussion board. Posters generally avoid calling him on this because it just leads to him stalking them and being more rabid--sort of like how a certain recent president got away with outrageous behavior.

Just keep in mind what he does--that he'll make stuff up in his attacks. it won't always be me. It's already been a couple of other regulars in the past week. Someday it could be you. Just remember that he's good with making up what you post to attack it.

Like he did here.

 

[RichardWark]

I remember hearing Hitchcock say in an interview that the guilt was the "fun part." This is the basis for a lot of his films - dealing, to some degree, with feelings of guilt or, at the very least, being conflicted. Norman Bates, Roger Thornhill, Gregory Peck in "Spellbound," both Grant and Bergman (and Claude Rains, too, actually), and a never-ending list are all great characters because of their guilt or internal conflicts, and the films are great too.
And of course this carries over into classic literature. John Updike's characters angst over sex on just about every page.
This is why the Incest stories (and some of the non consent stories) tend to work so well - not necessarily because some guy is banging his mother, but because the best of them embrace the guilt and conflict that arise from them.



Richard Wark
Wark2002
https://www.literotica.com/stories/memberpage.php?uid=5430653&page=submissions

 

[CyranoJ]

You're lying. Cite my constant bashing of any category here. You're a malicious, sick puppy.

I'm conflicted about @lovecraft68: he's undeniably a talented writer but also one of the most toxic people I've ever encountered in any forum or online space, anywhere.

His moral airs about "consent" and various attempts at kink-shaming are transparently bullshit given what he actually says and writes -- not least among them the fact that his various attempts at bullying are undermined by the fact that he's a professed father with a library of incest porn that likely outpaces the theological content of the medieval library in The Name of the Rose -- and he's routinely full of crap and conspiracy theories, especially when things happen not to go his way.

But goddammit: he's good at what he does. I get why Laurel doesn't just kick him the fuck out, as I might have been motivated to do in her place. His kink isn't mine, but I like his stories. I wish to hell it was possible to get along without all this other crap.

 

[XerXesXu]

I'm conflicted about @lovecraft68: he's undeniably a talented writer but also one of the most toxic people I've ever encountered in any forum or online space, anywhere.

His moral airs about "consent" and various attempts at kink-shaming are transparently bullshit given what he actually says and writes -- not least among them the fact that his various attempts at bullying are undermined by the fact that he's a professed father with a library of incest porn that likely outpaces the theological content of the medieval library in The Name of the Rose -- and he's routinely full of crap and conspiracy theories, especially when things happen not to go his way.

But goddammit: he's good at what he does. I get why Laurel doesn't just kick him the fuck out, as I might have been motivated to do in her place. His kink isn't mine, but I like his stories. I wish to hell it was possible to get along without all this other crap.

Nice to hear from his Mum.

 

[CyranoJ]

Nice to hear from his Mum.

Hahahaha