"I know no one is looking for realism in porn (I'm definitely not)"

[AG31]

At the end, I speculated whether there may be some relation between aphantasia, and the immersive experience people report when reading fiction. I followed that up with DeepSeek. There's some sketchy research. This is the most interesting section of its response:

• Aphantasics disproportionately prefer:
  • Fast-paced plots (thrillers, mysteries) requiring problem-solving rather than descriptive world-building117.
  • Character-driven stories focusing on relationships or internal monologues (e.g., Jane Austen, Brandon Sanderson)1.
  • Non-fiction, where factual engagement replaces sensory immersion517.
• These preferences align with their reported immersion pathways—emotional and conceptual rather than visual15.

This is a spot-on description of my preferences, both reading and writing.

Me too, except for the non-fiction in long form. I prefer my non-fiction via the web.

 

[AG31]

I'm not sure what I'll do with that insigh

As far as I'm concerned, you needn't do anything at all. But if you think you do, lemme know!

 

[SimonDoom]

At the end, I speculated whether there may be some relation between aphantasia, and the immersive experience people report when reading fiction. I followed that up with DeepSeek. There's some sketchy research. This is the most interesting section of its response:

• Aphantasics disproportionately prefer:
  • Fast-paced plots (thrillers, mysteries) requiring problem-solving rather than descriptive world-building117.
  • Character-driven stories focusing on relationships or internal monologues (e.g., Jane Austen, Brandon Sanderson)1.
  • Non-fiction, where factual engagement replaces sensory immersion517.
• These preferences align with their reported immersion pathways—emotional and conceptual rather than visual15.

This is a spot-on description of my preferences, both reading and writing.

I'm curious who you think are good authors for aphantasics. Jane Austen seems like a good choice, because she has very little visual description of characters. She approaches characters through their close narrative and the way they interact with people.

Another author I think of this way is Henry James. I wonder if he was aphantasic himself, because of the absence of visual description. He goes into painstaking detail describing how his characters think and feel about things, but with almost no attention to visual detail.

 

[filthytrancendence]

First of all, whomever said that has the common but universally incorrect belief that their preferences are roughly equivalent to everyone else's. It's just obvious nonsense on the face of it.

But a much more interesting framing of the issue to me would be "To what extent is realism interesting in erotic fiction?"

My instinctive take on this, which I think you will see if you read a single paragraph of any of my stories, is that emotional realism is absolutely essential. Characters should have reasons for feeling the things they feel, and those reasons should feel human. When an extreme and potentially confusing emotion is expressed, it ought to beg the question 'what's going on here?' and you should answer that question at some point. Sex is a very emotional thing. I think that's a lot of the draw to it once the novelty of youth has worn off. There's so much emotional variation in the ways people approach and engage in sex, I think it's a shame to let that go unexplored. Nothing shatters the verisimilitude of a story more to me than when a character has an inexplicable emotional reaction that breaks my sense of them as a person. And that's a fine line to walk, because people are complex and confusing and often do unexpected things. But there are broad patterns that cohere into what we'd call human nature, and that sort of realism is non-negotiable in my mind.

The way OP framed the question is a lot more about physical realism. That's a lot fuzzier to me. There's certainly a lot of things I pretty much always try to respect about this kind of realism. Human people are human-shaped and have to interact with the world and other humans in that specific way. The laws of physics bind everyone. But there's also a lot of boring or mundane things we all have to do day to day, and I think it's usually a trap to confine yourself to depicting every single boring thing your character would need to do to exist in the real world. That's part of the fun of fiction. We can bend time when it's useful. We can leverage our reader's knowledge of how the world works to give a sense that our characters are regular people, without boring them to tears depicting the banality of life.

Then there's the level of scenario realism, I guess you could say. Is your setup likely to occur in real life? I suspect this is more what the "no one is looking for realism in porn" comment was referring to. Again, this is one of the strengths of fiction. It doesn't need to be likely to occur. You can just do it. Half the fun of playing out an absurd scenario is thoughtfully and seriously navigating through it as if it were real. Because life is full of absurdity. Many of these crazy things do actually happen to many of us collectively, if not individually. On the other hand, it can also be fun and exciting to take a banal scenario and find a realistic way to spice it up. This would be the "realism in porn", I think. It's clearly possible to tell an engaging story with either approach.

And perhaps most subtle of all is what I'd call perspective realism, I guess. Can you, as a writer, plausibly depict the physical and emotional reality of the kind of character you are writing. There are different dimensions of this. Really as many as you want to delve into. Gender, sex, orientation, culture, subculture, body type, interests, hobbies, professions, disabilities, relationship styles, kinks, traumas, addictions, illnesses, class, race, even locality. You get the idea. It's relatively trivial to depict a character that closely aligns with ourselves. It's relatively easy to depict other character's reactions to that character, for similar reasons. The further from yourself you get, the more work is required to do either one well. I suppose this is just a subtype of what I called emotional realism, but extends beyond emotions into how the character exists within their culture. I don't really blame anybody for flubbing this one, but at the same time I think it's a pretty critical part of making rich, living characters.

Turns out I had a lot more to say about that than I thought... there's probably more. In summary, on one hand, we have to be mindful of the ways our medium can playfully bend realism in interesting ways. On the other, one of the deepest wells in the discipline of writing fiction is increasing our capacity to depict things realistically in every sense of that word.

 

[ChuckWolf]

From another thread, someone brought up the inherent messiness of too much baby oil and I'm going to work that into a story; I think it'll provide a degree of realism in an otherwise, unlikely story.

https://forum.literotica.com/threads/oiled-up.1626940/page-3#post-101082741

 

[AG31]

I asked DeepSeek for further information. You may be interested in the response:

As I said in other replies, it was very interesting. And seemed intuitively true. But this morning I got to thinking about the hallusinations in the government Make America Healthy Again report. And about my own thread about AI stupidity. Why wouldn't DeepSeek articulate something that just "seems" right? What if you took the two responses and gave them to DeepSeek with the request to come up with references in the regular scientific literature for each of the conclusions?

 

[AG31]

I'm curious who you think are good authors for aphantasics. Jane Austen seems like a good choice, because she has very little visual description of characters. She approaches characters through their close narrative and the way they interact with people.

Another author I think of this way is Henry James. I wonder if he was aphantasic himself, because of the absence of visual description. He goes into painstaking detail describing how his characters think and feel about things, but with almost no attention to visual detail.

I assume this might be directed at all of us aphantasics?

I confine myself mostly to thrillers and mysteries outside of Literotica, and in the realm of real books. But I don't think I'm put off by authors that are heavy into physical description. It's often helpful to know if the suspect lives in a dump or an obsessively clean place, or an apartment filled with modern art.

Up thread you'll see some back and forth between me and Electricblue about what it is I like about his stories (especially the shorter ones). It's pleasant for me when he describes the act of looking at something, if that makes any sense.

Bottom line, though, is I don't think the presence or absence of description affects how I react to a story. Whether it's done well or poorly certainly does.

 

[AG31]

But a much more interesting framing of the issue to me would be "To what extent is realism interesting in erotic fiction?"

More or less what I said in the second part of my OP, no?

To what degree is realism in erotica important to your enjoyment?

 

[StillStunned]

Building on this discussion, what's the most "realistic" bit you've ever included in a sex scene? If it were turned into porn, what moment would be on the cutting floor before the producer could say, "I don't think viewers would like-"?

Off the top of my head, for me it would probably be one of these:

From Flesh for Another Fantasy:

I felt the mattress shift with her weight, then bounce up and down. She gave a muffled curse, and I could sense her fighting for balance. Then she steadied. "That's better. Here, these are for you."

Or from While She Watches Them:

I decided that Allie knew best. She certainly seemed to be enjoying the sight. The fingers of one hand had found their way back up to her mound and were rubbing softly. A little more pressure brought a sudden squelch, and she gave a muffled snort. "Oops."

I choked back a laugh of my own. "Don't worry. It's a happy sound."

Or from Pas de Trois:

She bent down and picked up the condom [used for anal sex]. The look on her face was a disgusted grin. I felt myself grinning back. A few steps brought her to the open window, and with a flick of her wrist the rubber tube flew into the open air, vanishing from sight into the shadows below. Then she closed the windows and turned to leave.

 

[RetroFan]

I think that some sense of realism is required in any type of fiction to engage readers/viewers.

For example, George Orwell's 'Animal Farm' is a classic political satire. The events in the novel - the animals of an English farm driving out their brutal and incompetent owners, running the farm themselves only to end up worse than before - could obviously never happen in real life.

But what is significant is that the animals in the novel, while doing unrealistic things at times, do behave according to their personality types and intelligence levels. Take literacy. The more intelligent animals - pigs, dogs, cats, goats and donkeys - all learn to read and write perfectly. Next level down are the horses and cows, which prove able to learn the alphabet but not put words together. The birds - chickens, ducks, geese and pigeons - cannot become literate to any degree, but prove able to think for themselves. Lowest are the sheep, which obviously cannot learn to read or write, but are so stupid they can't even learn the most basic things. The pigs have to teach them to repeat 'four legs good, two legs bad' which they finally do learn but with no real understanding of what they are saying or why.

The intelligence levels and behaviour patterns of the animals in the book corresponding with animals in the real world is important. Had the sheep in Orwell's novel been super intelligent and able to think for themselves, this would have immediately lost connection with the readers.

 

[XerXesXu]

As I said in other replies, it was very interesting. And seemed intuitively true. But this morning I got to thinking about the hallusinations in the government Make America Healthy Again report. And about my own thread about AI stupidity. Why wouldn't DeepSeek articulate something that just "seems" right? What if you took the two responses and gave them to DeepSeek with the request to come up with references in the regular scientific literature for each of the conclusions?

It did. It's a 'chain of thought' model, you get its reasoning, and it cites its sources in its response. The hyperlinks don't come out as hyperlinks when I cut and paste, just as those curious numbers at the end of each paragraph.

 

[XerXesXu]

I'm curious who you think are good authors for aphantasics. Jane Austen seems like a good choice, because she has very little visual description of characters. She approaches characters through their close narrative and the way they interact with people.

Another author I think of this way is Henry James. I wonder if he was aphantasic himself, because of the absence of visual description. He goes into painstaking detail describing how his characters think and feel about things, but with almost no attention to visual detail.

Prompt; 'Do you think Henry James would be the type of author an aphantasic would prefer, if so, why?'

Response:

'Based on the search results and characteristics of aphantasia, Henry James could be both appealing and challenging for aphantasic readers, depending on their individual preferences. Here's a breakdown:

Potential Reasons for Preference​

1. Focus on Psychological Depth Over Visuals:
   James prioritizes complex character psychology, social nuances, and internal conflicts over lavish visual descriptions. Aphantasics often struggle with immersive sensory details but excel at processing abstract concepts and emotional subtleties 215. His exploration of motives and relationships (e.g., The Portrait of a Lady) aligns with the verbal/analytical strengths common in aphantasia 22.
2. Emphasis on Dialogue and Ideas:
   James's dense dialogue and philosophical debates dominate his narratives. Aphantasic writers and readers frequently report prioritizing dialogue, plot logic, and thematic patterns over imagery 322. One aphantasic novelist in the results explicitly states: "I write differently than my peers ... Lots of dialog and action, very little description" 3.
3. "Impressionist" Narration:
   James's late style (e.g., The Golden Bowl) uses ambiguous, psychologically filtered narration. Aphantasics often process stories through emotional or conceptual "impressions" rather than vivid images, making James's subjective narrative techniques a potential fit 1522.

Potential Challenges​

1. Complex Syntax and Abstraction:
   James's notoriously intricate sentences and abstract vocabulary may overwhelm readers who prefer streamlined prose. Some aphantasics report fatigue with excessive textual complexity, gravitating toward efficient plot-driven writing 15.
2. Residual Visual Demands:
   While less focused on scenery, James still employs symbolic objects (e.g., the porcelain bowl in The Golden Bowl) and subtle facial expressions to convey meaning. Aphantasics with weak visual memory might miss these cues, though they can compensate through contextual analysis 215.

Why Other Authors Might Be Preferred​

Aphantasics often favor:

• Dialogue-heavy genres (e.g., Austen, screenplays) or concept-driven fiction (e.g., Borges, Kafka) 315.
• Minimalist descriptions: As one aphantasic reader notes: "Tell me it's a castle on a mountain and I'm good" 22.

Verdict​

Henry James would likely resonate with aphantasics who enjoy psychological complexity and linguistic richness, but might frustrate those seeking efficient pacing or sensory simplicity. His work exemplifies how literature can thrive without reliance on visual imagination—a strength many aphantasic writers share 322.
For further insights, see discussions on aphantasic writing styles 322 or neurocognitive studies on reading without imagery 24.'



Follow up prompt: 'Looking at the way he writes, does Henry James appear to have been aphantasic? Is there any other evidence relating to this?'

Response:

'Based on an analysis of Henry James's writing style, personal correspondence, and critical scholarship, there is compelling but not conclusive evidence suggesting James may have had aphantasic tendencies—characterized by reduced or absent voluntary visual imagery. The relationship between his cognitive profile and literary technique reveals fascinating intersections:

1. Minimalist Visual Description in Fiction​

James's novels conspicuously avoid elaborate visual scene-setting. Unlike contemporaries (e.g., Dickens or Hardy), he prioritized psychological interiors over sensory environments. For example:

• In The Portrait of a Lady, Isabel Archer's moral crises dominate, with rooms, landscapes, or objects rarely described unless thematically relevant to character dynamics 12.
• The Ambassadors uses settings like Paris as abstract backdrops for moral ambiguities rather than visually immersive locales 612.
  Scholars note this aligns with aphantasic preferences for conceptual/emotional engagement over pictorial detail 112.

2. Metacognitive Language and Abstract Metaphors​

James's narratives rely heavily on:

• Verbal abstraction: Phrases like "she took it in," "lucidly," or "he had his idea" recur, emphasizing cognitive processing over sensory recall 12.
• Non-visual metaphors: The famous "figure in the carpet" (The Figure in the Carpet) symbolizes hidden artistic unity—an intellectual conceit, not a visual image 12.
  This contrasts with hyperphantasic authors (e.g., Dickens), whose metaphors often build vivid mental pictures.

3. Revision Practices and Paratextual Clues​

• James's New York Edition revisions (1907–1909) deleted descriptive passages, intensifying psychological focus. Critics like F.R. Leavis accused him of refining prose into "excessive ambiguity" 12, possibly reflecting discomfort with visual elaboration.
• In prefaces, he framed writing as constructing "houses of fiction" with "windows" of perspective—spatial-conceptual, not visual, analogies 412.

4. Ambivalence Toward Visual Media​

James expressed unease with portraiture and photography:

• Called himself "terribly unphotographable," avoiding cameras due to dissatisfaction with his appearance 4.
• When selecting Coburn's photographic portrait for the New York Edition, he cropped it to a shadowed profile, emphasizing impenetrability over visual revelation 4. This aligns with aphantasic tendencies to privilege non-visual identity markers.

5. Contradictory Evidence: Occasional Visual Precision​

Some exceptions complicate the aphantasia hypothesis:

• Early works like Daisy Miller include sharp social observations (e.g., Roman settings) 12.
• The American opens with Newman's physiognomy scrutinized in the Louvre—though this serves symbolic class analysis, not immersive world-building 412.
  These may reflect learned conventions rather than innate imagery capacity.

6. Cognitive and Creative Implications​

James's style exemplifies non-visual imagination:

• Psychological depth: Characters' inner lives unfold through dialogue, moral calculus, and "central consciousness" narration (e.g., Strether in The Ambassadors) 412.
• Emotional architecture: Trauma and desire manifest as relational patterns, not flashbacks or visual hallucinations 14.
  This resonates with modern aphantasic writers who compensate via verbal complexity or kinetic empathy 14.

Conclusion: Likely Aphantasic Tendencies, Not Deficit​

James probably existed on the aphantasia spectrum—leveraging conceptual lucidity to offset limited visualization. His "late style" (e.g., The Golden Bowl) evolved toward radical psychological interiority, suggesting a cognitive preference aligned with aphantasia 112. However, without direct self-report (like Galton's 1880 surveys 2), this remains inferential. His oeuvre ultimately demonstrates that literary power can thrive without mental imagery, prioritizing what he termed "the atmosphere of the mind" over the eye 1214.'


These are much fuller answers, and better sourced, than mine would have been.

'

 

[AG31]

Building on this discussion, what's the most "realistic" bit you've ever included in a sex scene? If it were turned into porn, what moment would be on the cutting floor before the producer could say, "I don't think viewers would like-"?

Off the top of my head, for me it would probably be one of these:

From Flesh for Another Fantasy:


Or from While She Watches Them:


Or from Pas de Trois:

Interesting question. Sometimes such bits are humorous. Sometimes they convey intimacy. It makes me wonder if writing is a better way to convey such intimacy than film (as you suggest). See the thread How Do You Handle the Earthier Aspects of Anal Intercourse for some thoughts on the matter.

 

[StillStunned]

Interesting question. Sometimes such bits are humorous. Sometimes they convey intimacy. It makes me wonder if writing is a better way to convey such intimacy than film (as you suggest). See the thread How Do You Handle the Earthier Aspects of Anal Intercourse for some thoughts on the matter.

You're probably very right. I also noticed that all three of my examples are 1P POV, and also they're all voyeurism stories. They have a built-in intimacy mechanism, in that the reader is already inside the narrator's head with a very limited focus on what's happening, i.e. only what they're watching.

I won't say I don't include bits like this in other stories - my characters are forever getting their trousers stuck around their ankles, or brushing pubes from each other's chins - but in those cases it leans more towards the humour side.

Thanks for pointing this out.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Building on this discussion, what's the most "realistic" bit you've ever included in a sex scene? If it were turned into porn, what moment would be on the cutting floor before the producer could say, "I don't think viewers would like-"?

Probably this one [ugh just noticed a typo, please pretend that's not there]:

I kissed her throat and her breasts, and I eased her onto her back and crouched astride her kissing her mouth.

That was the moment when a soft male voice spoke from under the bed in a creepy sing-song:

"Daisy."

If I hadn't been there, I think Phoebe would have hit the roof. As it was she started, banging her chin into my lip, ramming it into my teeth, and scrambled backward into the corner against the wall, "Jesus!"

I clutched my mouth and tasted copper, too dazed to respond to her. There was a sound of heavy breathing nearby and a hissing noise behind it. And then the voice again, lower this time, sing-song:

"Daisy."

"S' okay," I managed to mumble through a mouthful of blood. "It's just —"

"...give me your answer, do."

"— my phone. Low battery alert."

 

[Djmac1031]

Building on this discussion, what's the most "realistic" bit you've ever included in a sex scene?

From Friends With Bennie Fitz.

Setting: The MMC is getting his first handjob:

Bennie ignored my stupid attempt at humor and continued, her soft hand moving up and over my head with a light squeeze on the upstrokes. Thirty seconds later I had to beg off. "Stop! Stop! I'm too close, too close!"

Bennie let go and watched, wide eyed, as I struggled to hold back my orgasm. Valiant as my effort was, I couldn't contain myself. My cock twitched wildly as it erupted, the first blast so strong it splattered across Bennie's belly as she let out a startled yelp.

https://www.literotica.com/s/friends-with-bennie-fitz