#johnlock feels

Silk - Giselle

You make my heart spin sorrow into silk

You make me sleep like a young child with warm milk

You held me tighter when I pushed you away

You turn my sorrow into silk

Reading this quote by Francesca Coppa on the purpose of fanfic and erotica, it's not that I disagree. Not at all. It's just... when I read a fantasy that includes romance and some sexuality, like Grace Draven's work, I remember my stance on how I do prefer romance to be slow-build and sexual, and this fits the bill. I absolutely like the careful, gradual characterization involved in slow-build romance like this, although I like there to be tension or animosity as much as friendship as a foundation. Starting with sex is a difficult proposition (although not impossible to do well by any means, as long as it's not instalove). The issue is that 'eventual sex' isn't enough for me either. The friendship needs to be built up to have satisfying romance, just like Coppa suggests. But the sex too needs build up.

The problem with Draven's books is that they have some sex but they're not sexy. The sexual tension is barely plausible. Sometimes, like with sci-fi/fantasy erotica by R. Lee Smith, the sex isn't sexy but this isn't important due to the amount of characterization and situation-specific tone that goes into each of these scenes. They're not sexy as in titillating, but they don't have to be: they're enlightening, sometimes sweet, sometimes grim, sometimes just weird. With Draven's books, there are pretty paint-by-numbers sex scenes that aren't either sexy or especially personal. This is an issue when it's original writing, rather than fanfic. With fic, you let the original work do a lot of characterization heavy lifting so that in explicit fics, you can spend a lot of time on building sexual tension. And sexual tension is no minor add-on. I think portraying it believably is way more important than the actual sex scenes. Combining it plausibly with friendship is a major feat. It generally takes more than one book in a series, or a pretty long story, at the very least.

In my opinion, sexual tension is a huge part of the draw for erotica of any kind, just like romantic tension is a major factor in the appeal of romance. One reason why I admire good fanfic is that I think using most established friendship as a source is difficult, especially if you're hoping to be in character. It's definitely not easier than an original work that starts with romantic/sexual tension, and it might well be considered harder. The thing is, good sexual tension isn't something that comes late in a relationship (in most cases), though it can be pretty subtle at first. It always exists between two people in a way friendship doesn't, but it doesn't prevent the slow build of self-awareness and an actual relationship. It's just a delicate balance.

In Draven's work, you can see she actually tries to do this: the sexual tension is gestured at, more or less. But it's not actually *there*. One reason it's so tricky is that while you can simply sit down and write a sex scene, sexual tension pervades every interaction between the characters in some small way. And it can be subtle (at least at first) or very overt, as long as it's *palpable*. It's very obvious (at least to me) if the writer doesn't feel the heat, so to speak. And it's very obvious if they do, even if no sexual innuendo or overt arousal occurs. To be clear, a man having a hard-on or a woman blushing and staring at his eyes or mouth is not necessarily 'sexual tension'. Even less so, lots of references to the extreme attractiveness of the other person. Good banter, on the other hand, is frequently all that's needed.

Good banter is hard. One of the reasons fanfic of noncanon couples succeeds for me even though I'm a canon-whore is that a lot of times, the source material includes well-written, bantery dialogue. You can probably ship every other character with each other in Marvel or on Buffy at least partly for this reason. This was definitely true in S1-2 of BBC Sherlock, at least for me: it's not that they were such close friends and fic could use that. It's that they *weren't*. There was tons of tension involved in that relationship, both bantering and not. Combined with their obvious (if conflicted) attachment, this created all that's necessary to make a romantic relationship plausible. Once their relationship truly settled into comfortable, close friendship, IMO some mild romantic potential remains but the sexual tension would be gone.

It's perhaps hard to explain properly what a friendship that doesn't lend itself to sexual romance is truly like, which is why I mention Grace Draven. I knew it when I saw it, particularly so because this is m/f friendship (in a romance genre work) and my brain should have a low threshold for accepting sexualization in this context. And yet, her couples seem platonic to me.

I'm not sure this perception is common. A lot of people in fandom seem to have a very, very low sexualization threshold (especially for their preferred couples). Outside fandom, lots of readers seem content with using the heteronormative attraction presumption more broadly and easily than me, judging by the comments on Draven's book, at least. I did find one Amazon commenter who said they found the sexual tension to be implausible, though they said this was due to some of the description or nature of the characters and their situation rather than the writing itself. I'm a lot more open to a whole lot of different situations and contexts leading to attraction. But the writing has to sell it for me. Grace Draven is a good writer, who is very good at characterization overall (which is what makes her a good example of this specific flaw). She is just not very good at selling sexual tension. It may or may not be related to her average skills at snappy dialogue. There are definitely other ways to build sexual tension, but not a lot that coexist with slow build romances based on friendship first.