How much love do you need in your porn?

[dr_mabeuse]

How important is love to you in a porn story? Do you like what you read to be a love story with graphic sex, or is just the sex enough? Does love make a story hotter, or does it decrease the raw passion and forbidden nature of the sex?

---dr.M.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Love is very important to my stories. Sex for the sake of sex can make a good story. Scratching the itch etc. But for me, sex means more when there are emotions involved other than lust. Not that lust isn't an important component, but sex with someone you love or are falling for is more intense in my opinion than sex with a person you know you can't or don't love.

-Colly

 

[shereads]

Not necessarily love, but the need for a particular person - whether it's an obsessive need, a punishing need, or the need for warmth and closeness - creates a level of tension that transcends the sex itself.

I think that's the essential difference between erotica that appeals to women and "strokers" to which we give only a cursory glance. When the male protagonist(s) - whether it's a lover or a street gang - focus on the desire for an individual, I can put myself into the fantasy.

When the female characters are treated as an interchangeable commodity, it's simply less interesting to me.

 

[Green_Gem]

I've never been into sappy love stories myself. I like emotion in a story (not necessarily love) but certainly some kind of 'connection' or attraction that happens between the characters that I can feel and identify with. In most cases porn stories are simply about lust which is fine, but I like to be able to understand and feel why there is heat between them and that's done when an author skilfully weaves human desire and/or some kind of emotion into the story along with the sex.


Green_Gem

 

[Guest]

I have very little love in my stories. I don't expect nor need it in erotica.

Perdita

 

[rgraham666]

Erotica is a form of fantasy. And fantasy is about things we don't or can't have.

This means that for me, love or some sort of warm longing is necessary for me to read or write erotica.

I'm also fond of dominance themes but those are things that will remain forever in the 'won't have' category.

 

[A7inchPhildo]

Love is very important to my stories. Sex for the sake of sex can make a good story. Scratching the itch etc. But for me, sex means more when there are emotions involved other than lust. Not that lust isn't an important component, but sex with someone you love or are falling for is more intense in my opinion than sex with a person you know you can't or don't love.

-Colly

Yeah kind of what colly said. Sex is sex and sex is boring without a great set up to me. I can read porn, and insert some of the feelings. So a good scenario of how just sex came about is good.

Love is a strong, and over used word.
Love has many meanings all different to the user.

Love in a mild sense is important for at least one character to show the full extent of their desire.

Love in a weak sense is denoting it is based more on lust.

Love in a strong sense shows more credibility to the story. While delivering hard impacting personal feelings and emotions.

How important is it?

That really depends on the nature of the story. A Bondage story can be most excellent with out hardly any love. Yet trust is important taking the place of love if there is no love.

An incest story lacks the real meaning of the topic without it.

same as wife lovers, no love no story. They are based on loving one man, and being with another, or love out side the marriage.

Romance is easy

Something like erotic coupling can go either way depends on how the author brings the situation about. One night stands don't need love to amplify the situation. Love only gets in the way. While repeated visits to make a relationship do require a sense of love.


Personally having emotions tied into the story brings the story to a higher personal level of intimacy. The really great stories all seem to touch on the amount of love and compassion within the characters.

It is like the difference between watching professional porn actors fuck at random because they are paid. And watching a home movie you found at your friends house. There is just something more erotic about the real human expressing feelings.

That does not say watching "Beef cake" and "Barbie" fuck can't be stimulating. They are two separate kinds of sex one real the other plastic. One looks good while the other feels intense.

Erotica is only but a fantasy. Even the most real of stories are still skewed from the truth. Sometimes the love is shown by the authors love for the fantasy/rewriten reality.

Opinions are like rectums every body has one. Rectum damn near killed him!

Phildo

 

[Lukie]

love or passion

Well, it was said before...is it the love or "attractiveness" that would create some "passion" in the story. I believe it is important to show why the people are attracted. Thats what gets me into the story!

 

[damppanties]

How important is love to you in a porn story? Do you like what you read to be a love story with graphic sex, or is just the sex enough? Does love make a story hotter, or does it decrease the raw passion and forbidden nature of the sex?

---dr.M.

Well, no generalisation. Sometimes when I'm looking for a light read, I go for the only sex bit. When I want something more serious, more involved - I take the love or any other emotion.

Does love make a story hotter? No, good writing does.

 

[Guest]

Re: Re: How much love do you need in your porn?

Does love make a story hotter? No, good writing does.

Brava!

Perdita

 

[Guest]

Well said, DP!

To me "love" per se isn't important in a porn story, but, I do want to know what the motivations of the characters are. I cannot be doing where characters in a story just happen to bump into each other and then fuck. Why? What drove them to it? Why wasn't just a handshake enough?

Whether that motivation is love, lust, greed, paying someone back, the thrill, the danger, etc etc. matters not, provided there is some reasoning. Also, give me conflict!

I must just add that love, in a sexual relationship, can come in many forms. To me, in a story about a BDSM relationship, love is very important; it's where the extreme trust element comes in, and if that isn't tackled by the writer, it always seems somewhat less believable to me.

Lou

 

[cloudy]

I don't think love, per se, is all that important to good erotica. I do like to see passion of some sort......the "why" of the situation.

Erotica without at least some passion displayed by the characters is like a one-night stand - satisfying at the moment, but empty feeling later.

 

[ABSTRUSE]

I think it depends on the writer and the reader. Along with the subject matter.
~A~
good question Doc.

 

[Liar]

I wouldn't limit it to love. But I do think that when I read an erotic story, I need to have some suspension of disbelief to what I read. And in my universe, people just don't fuck for the fuck of it very often. Sex as I see it is a part of a complicated web of desires, instincts and emotions, and since there aren't too many ways to write about the inserting of peg A in slot B, it's the tension before it, the thoughts and emotions of the fucker and fuckee, that is interresting. A story about Bob who is horny, meets Sue, and balls her brains out, without giving me some kind of emotional connection just won't cut it for me. I need beliveable feeling tossed in.

As such, love, as in romantic interrest or even obsession, is definitely not a turn-off. Of course, it can be badly written sappy cliché romance, (waiting for DP's Worst Chain Story Ever for an example ) or it can be stacked full of strong, human emotions in beliveable characters with all their flaws and issues. And that, real human beings, is a major turn-on-

One of the best stories I have read on Lit (and which I am pretty annoyed that I can't find anymore...I guess the author took it down) was a twisted romantic story between two quite complicated, messed up individuals, who took out everything from envy, guilt and hate to obsessive love on eachother in intense raw, steaming hot sex. It was a love story, but so far from sappy romance as you can imagine.

#L

 

[Guest]

... in my universe, people just don't fuck for the fuck of it very often.

That's exactly a fave fantasy of mine. I like the idea of fucking just to fuck. It can happen when two people are able to recognize this in each other (whether by a look, an ad, being at the right place at the right time). I love the idea of plain unadulterated sex, no conversation, no emotional intimacy, just lust being fed and satisfied mutually. It hasn't happened often and I don't look for it, don't think about it much either, but it's a great fantasy.

Perdita

 

[shereads]

Erotica is a form of fantasy. And fantasy is about things we don't or can't have.

Life can surprise you, rg.

Wait, I take that back.

Life will surprise you. In nine years of marriage, and 14 years of the relationship that followed it, I never so much as allowed myself the fantasies that I've recently been able to have in reality. I come from a Southern fundamentalist background, and a family where sex was never discussed except to whisper about some scandal - like two people living together - and I am the least likely person on the planet to have done some of the things I've done recently.

As I said of a character in one of my role-play threads, it's as if you'd been fed sand and water all your life, then suddenly learned of the existence of sourdough rolls and prime rib and hot fudge sundaes and champagne.

I won't tell you to pursue your fantasies, rg. I didn't pursue mine; it just happened. I will say, "Never say never."

 

[shereads]

That's exactly a fave fantasy of mine. I like the idea of fucking just to fuck. It can happen when two people are able to recognize this in each other (whether by a look, an ad, being at the right place at the right time). I love the idea of plain unadulterated sex, no conversation, no emotional intimacy, just lust being fed and satisfied mutually. It hasn't happened often and I don't look for it, don't think about it much either, but it's a great fantasy.

Perdita

I agree that erotica doesn't need the element of emotional caring between the characters. I enjoy some nonconsent stories, and there's certainly no warmth and caring there. But there can be, even in nonconsent situations, a kind of intimacy - a focus on the object of desire. To be the faceless victim in a rape tale isn't the least bit erotic to me; but to have the fantasy that this woman is the sole focus of this man's need - that he needs her in this moment, to the exclusion of reason or control - can give me chillbumps when it's well written.

It's not love. But neither is it blind lust for something or someone to fuck. There's an element of intimacy, even forced intimacy, that makes the mechanics of sex compelling.

 

[shereads]

Sex as I see it is a part of a complicated web of desires, instincts and emotions, and since there aren't too many ways to write about the inserting of peg A in slot B, it's the tension before it, the thoughts and emotions of the fucker and fuckee, that is interresting. A story about Bob who is horny, meets Sue, and balls her brains out, without giving me some kind of emotional connection just won't cut it for me. I need beliveable feeling tossed in.

What he said.

 

[Sunnie]

Not necessarily love, but the need for a particular person - whether it's an obsessive need, a punishing need, or the need for warmth and closeness - creates a level of tension that transcends the sex itself.

VERY well said. And even if romantic love isn't involved, just the closeness of a special friendship which has evolved into a sexual tryst can bring out that much-appreciated tension.

 

[Guest]

 

[AngeloMichael]

For me it's all about the love. A good romance makes any story infinitely more interesting to me. But I hate it in some stories just when the characters are coming together, they passionately kiss or whatever, then it's end scene or even end of story. I want to know more and to read what happens next. I want the details of their love described. Which leads me to erotica.

But then a lot of times I am faced with a reversed dilema. The characters can't get together fast enough, and sometimes there is no rhyme or reason, they are just fucking for fucks sake, and to me that is terribly boring.

If I am lucky I will find a story where characters have fantasies that come true and there will be deep feelings of love and desire between them. Whether the characters are madly in love with each other from the beginning but it takes events in the story to bring them together, or one character is in love with another at first and as the story progresses the other character returns the love, or maybe both characters despise each other at first then through common circumstances come to desire each other, if love and other deep feelings are happening, I find it all intriguing.

I will agree with Tatelou though that conflict is another essential element to making a story interesting. Whether the conflict comes from outside or within, it is needed for an effective plot.

 

[English Lady]

Thinking over my stories there is love in absolutely every single one of them. sometimes it is long established love, other times it is love and passion at first sight and sometimes my stories follow what happens to get the characters on the road to love in the first place.


It is weird really as I don't need to read love in a story to enjoy it but I think I read at lit to satisfy a sexual lust but i write to satisfy a different lust. One that needs more than just sex to be satisfied.

 

[KarenAM]

I've written both love stories with sex (my earthbound stuff, mostly), and sex stories which were much more just about sex (the science fiction stuff). But even in the non-love stories there needs to be something more than just the sex, some emotion that drives the characters and the story along.

In other words, I regard erotica as stories about sex and emotion. What that emotion is will vary. In my novel I started out with the sex and slavery motif, then turned it into a love story. As I wrote it, I noted that the sex went from being raw lust with emotions of shame and longing to passionate lust between the two lovers.

Sex is a complex thing to write about. That's what makes it so endlessly fascinating.

 

[minsue]

That's exactly a fave fantasy of mine. I like the idea of fucking just to fuck. It can happen when two people are able to recognize this in each other (whether by a look, an ad, being at the right place at the right time). I love the idea of plain unadulterated sex, no conversation, no emotional intimacy, just lust being fed and satisfied mutually. It hasn't happened often and I don't look for it, don't think about it much either, but it's a great fantasy.

Perdita

The few times I've indulged, reality never lived up to the fantasy. I rather wish I hadn't as it was a favorite fantasy of mine and is a bit tainted now.