Kink mapping

[resonant]

I was thinking today about slash tropes that I love and ones that don't do it for me, the way you do, when suddenly it occurred to me that a whole bunch of the ones I love the best are actually a sort of double cluster around a single zingy center: a gap between intimacy and sex, so that you have one for a time while you yearn for the other one.

Here: Sex first with no intimacy. That would cover:

• Sex pollen/pon farr/accidental aphrodisiac
• Aliens make them do it
• Undercover as gay (well, OK, that's usually just making out without intimacy, but still)
• Marriage of convenience/forced marriage
• Fuckbuddies + secret yearning

I suppose that if I mostly read het, I'd have to add "sleeping together only to conceive a child."

And if you turn it around -- unusually high levels of intimacy without sex -- you get:

• Hypothermia
• Last two people on earth/safehouse/forced into hiding with only each other
• Some forms of hurt/comfort
• Some forms of slavefic
• Truth serum/character rendered unable to lie/Truth or Dare
• Telepathy/bonding
• Circumstances force them to share a bed
• Body swapping

I mean -- that's a great list! That's like 60% of the stuff I love, right there.

(Now I don't understand why I don't care for rentboy stories. They fit squarely into Category One up there.)

Now you: What does your kink terrain look like?

Comments

[nestra.livejournal.com]

My favorite romance novel tropes, even before I got to fanfic, were:

* Marriage of convenience
* Forced to pretend to be married/involved
* Best friends becoming lovers (which I think falls under intimacy without sex, at least at first)

So...yeah. It's pretty predictable what some of my fannish kinks were going to be.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Huh! I never would have thought of best-friend stories as being in this category, but they can be!

And in fact, now it occurs to me that I like some best-friend stories and dislike others precisely based on whether they make good use of that yearning. If things progress smoothly into degrees of growing intimacy, then they bore me, but if you have this thing where you're staying up all night long confessing your secrets, and helping each other get dressed for formal occasions, and so on, and yet still not taking that last step -- that's the stuff I love.

[cranberryink.livejournal.com]

I do love the sex without intimacy trope, especially undercover gayness. But I'm also a HUGE sucker for slave fic (my bulletproof kink).

[celli]

Unrequited and forbidden love--one or both of those will hit me every time. I think it's from all those Regency romances I devoured in my 20s (and, uh, now). My first slash fandom was JAG, and ever since then I've been repeatedly drawn to military/police type of characters. Which is why a lot of the first list you put up there works super well for me--forced intimacy with unrequited love, which of course turns out to be requited? Or forced intimacy with the threat of complete ruin, societal or otherwise? BRING IT ON. *g*

[norah.livejournal.com]

Ahahaha. My kink terrain is scary and maps of it are best left undrawn, because it sounds worse written down than it actually is. But that's interesting to think about...

two of my faves

[vulgarweed.livejournal.com]

--You're annoying - so why do you get me so hard/wet?

--*both* partners having their own private thought process that goes something like 's/he is hot and I am so down with cheap, tawdry, forbidden fucking, but NO WAY am I bottoming/being submissive.'...so there's a power struggle.

Re: two of my faves

[100wordspermin.livejournal.com]

I'm a sucker for the first trope you've listed--I think the first time I realized it was when I was reading "Much Ado About Nothing" and skipping any bits that didn't deal with Beatrice or Benedick (or Beatrice AND Benedick).

[maggiebloome.livejournal.com]

I think most of my kinks can be sorted one way or another under "control issues." Angry sex, bondage, characters who normally keep everything inside totally losing it in a realistic fashion... yeah, pretty much.

One thing that doesn't fit is humour. I love the funny stories that carry it through through to the bedroom, because I have a sneaking suspicion that real sex is just ridiculous enough that it has to be funny.

[fabularasa.livejournal.com]

Hee hee my brain read this without punctuation:

And if you turn it around -- unusually high levels of intimacy without sex -- you get hypothermia.

Yearning in the gap, that's exactly the way to put it. Lovely.

[fabularasa.livejournal.com]

. . .and I think you don't care for rentboy fic because your map is generally pointing in the same direction mine is, which is to say, the union of sex and intimacy. Rentboy scenarios generally involve dominance issues that work against equity/intimacy.

[randomblade.livejournal.com]

Mmm. I agree. It's that elliptical space where you get to have lots of juicy things unsaid. And the gap between the two halves - intimacy and sex - builds and builds tension for the other half.

I agree about the slave fic and rent-boy fic. Slave fic has to be the kind where the 'owner' doesn't get off on his dominance to hit my kink. So either he *has* to have the slave because of some social pressure, or he's 'rescuing' the slave from some other fate. Definitely, there has to be some ethical struggle in him re:taking advantage if I'm going to enjoy slave-fic at all. I think rent-boy fic generally precludes that kind of ethical struggle, though I have read one or two that hit my buttons.

[myalexandria.livejournal.com]

well, I like a lot of stuff, but I'd say that two big ones are the repressed/free spirit combo and things having to do with power and control, though it's *so easy* to mishandle that and have it tip over into ridiculousness. My favorite line in Helen's new SGA story last night was the one where John and Rodney are finally, finally about to have sex, and what John's thinking is:

John tried not to move too much, to make too much noise. He tipped back his head, trying to help, and heard Rodney's breath catch, and then Rodney caught his shoulder and pressed him down against his pillow.

"This okay?" he said.

"Yeah, yes," John said, in a rush.

"You like it."

"Yes," John said, Rodney was going to take his clothes off,

it's that last part of John's internal monologue that really gets me.

[whatifisaidno.livejournal.com]

"Intimacy without sex" covers 100% of my kinks. "stuck in isolation together" has to be my favorite scenario. To that I would add D/s <3. I'd rather read a D/s centric fic (intimacy w/o sex) than a BDSM centric fic (sex w/o intimacy).

[jolielaide.livejournal.com]

I'd rather read a D/s centric fic (intimacy w/o sex) than a BDSM centric fic (sex w/o intimacy).

Really well put! I don't think I've ever thought about the difference between D/s and BDSM in this way, but this is spot on.

[nudaydreamer.livejournal.com]

Your list is quite consistent with mine, actually. What I find sexiest is almost always a slow burn of some kind -- either the building sexual tension or the delayed emotional intimacy. Especially if one or both parties are oblivious to the change, and I get to stand on the sideline flailing my arms and yelling "YOU SO WANT HIM IN THE PANTS AND YOU ARE NOT GOING TO FIND OUT UNTIL THE LAST SECOND!!!!111!11".

Rentboy AUs also don't really work for me. I'll read them, and sometimes find them hot, but I can't think about them too deeply. I think it's that they too often hit my "uneven power dynamic" squick pretty hard; I have trouble shaking the feeling that, say, Rodney is taking advantage of hooker!John, because he's forcing the non-intimacy on them by paying for the sex. I find accidental or alien-forced sex pollen funny/hot because there's this sense of "we are/were in this mess together and now we have to figure out where our relationship goes from here", but if Rodney deliberately got them high on some alien drug so he could fuck John and forget about it later (even if it was supposedly because he loved him), I'd just find that creepy. *shrug*

[sesshiyuki.livejournal.com]

It's difficult to say.

One species of fic I really enjoy falls between your categories. See, I enjoy the 2nd category lots, but reagrding 'sex first with no intimacy' -- Isn't it more interesting to read when the fic/story begins The Morning After?

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

I am so there, every time, for
* kidnapping
* captivity
* marriages of convenience

Uh, autonomy and the right to choose your sex partners? Seem to have passed my lizard brain right on by and headed for somebody righteous.

[vass]

a sort of double cluster around a single zingy center: a gap between intimacy and sex, so that you have one for a time while you yearn for the other one.

That's an excellent description.

Your list covered most of my kinks as well.

Also: denial, for as long as possible... and its flipside, the moment whem Character A turns around and admits "Oh my God, I *am* in love with Character B!"

I suppose that if I mostly read het, I'd have to add "sleeping together only to conceive a child."

Now I want to read a slash version of that. I'm sure there are ways to do it well. Triangulation, Ancient device, curse... OK, that sounds awful, but I'm convinced it could be good crack.

[text-isle.livejournal.com]

Another example of "intimacy without sex" is when they are co-parents of a child and end up merging their lives to a high degree because of that.

[raqs.livejournal.com]

uh... probably pretty close to yours? communication that juuuuuust slides by one another so that the two characters are just not quite talking to each other even though they want each other so much it makes their skin hurt? sex is optional in this category but can be useful to DEMONSTRATE how very much they want each other.

interesting question.

[ellen-fremedon.livejournal.com]

My kink terrain seems to be remarkably congruent with yours.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_inbetween_/]

So you don't care for cluster one? I'd have thought both are your favourites, if it were not for the rentboy comment.

[rydra_wong]

a sort of double cluster around a single zingy center: a gap between intimacy and sex, so that you have one for a time while you yearn for the other one.

It seems like you can boil both clusters down to one: in almost all of them, you start with some sort of extreme, uninvited intimacy (whether that's physical or emotional) being forced on the characters (by aliens or other situational factors), and then you have a stage where the characters have to come to terms with it and each other -- whether that's AMTDI leading to a realization of love, or "oh noes must share body heat" leading to sex, or whatever.

And the terrifying thing is that I've just written this as gen. Novel-length gen, even. I've been trying to tell people that my gen is way kinkier than my porn is, but I don't think they believe me.

[giglet.livejournal.com]

I've just written this as gen.

I'd sure appreciate a link to that...

[toft-froggy.livejournal.com]

Huh, that's interesting. I'd never thought of grouping those kinks that way, all of which I go for, but you're absolutely right. For me, though, it's the feelings caused by that dissonance, the yearning for one or the other that really hits me.

[monanotlisa.livejournal.com]

Ohh, I am super-fond of exactly this as well!

Perhaps I like the second category a leeettle better because intimacy per se works for me like a big working thing, but oh, well observed.

My bullet-proof kink--and not just sexually, in general, intellectually and emotionally--is obvs. genderswitchery in all its shapes and forms. It just gets me where I live, and I have read quite terrible fiction for it, stories that, if they were the usual fanfic, I would have given up on after the header, or perhaps the first paragraph.

[hth-the-first.livejournal.com]

Hmm, interesting question! I think my first and foremost Kink Cluster is the Inappropriate Partner. I mean, hey, I hail from Mulder/Krycek fandom, back in the verra verra beginning, and what else can you say about that? So included in that you have:
--sleeping with the enemy
--interspecies
--polyamory
--slash stories that deal with sexual orientation issues
--class differences, that whole thing of becoming entangled with someone either "above" or "beneath" you. You don't see these as much in fic set here-and-now because our culture romanticizes opposites-attracting to such a degree that (in fiction, at least) it's often seen as, well, romantic rather than dangerous to cross class lines in that way. I think one of the reasons I adore rentboy fic is that it fits here: sex work is still considered something that genuinely devalues you on the romantic market, that makes you "beneath" normal people and normal relationships.
--weirdly, much of the partner/best friend fic that I also find heavily kink-hitting falls into this category, too -- anything where they're scared to jeopardize the friendship/family/mission/band/working relationship, and yet at the same time they just can't *not want* this thing that it would be so much easier and safer if they didn't want.
--goofy odd-couple pairings. They Fight Crime! But where can a fish and a bird in love build a house together?

For me, it's apparently all about wanting what you're not supposed to have. The only major exception I can think of are stories where the issue is *not wanting* at all, where you have a character who's used to not wanting anything, to being alone and self-contained, and then you introduce someone who is in fact perfect, the very *most* appropriate person possible, and the conflict stays mostly inside the reluctant character. Ronon is pretty great for stories like that; Sheppard is pretty great for stories like that; Jim Ellison and Fraser and Angel are pretty great for stories like that. But in a sense, those kind of stories are only a slightly-askew version of the very same Unlikely/Impossible Desire.

[text-isle.livejournal.com]

For me, it's apparently all about wanting what you're not supposed to have.

That's very similar to what it's about for me. Actually, for me, it's: "Society has convinced me I'm not supposed to want this, but I do, and technically I don't really believe there's anything inherently wrong with it, but the emotional injunction against it is still there (although the desire is even stronger, *gasp*)!" Heh, yours is pithier. :)

[paian]

Neat post! At a glance, my map's pretty congruent with yours, but thinking deeper will require some time and musing. Will be intriguing to do.

[reginagiraffe]

I think I must like... secrets.

I like voyeurism (secretly watching).
I like mind-melding/telepathy/truth serum, in all its various forms (learning each other's secrets).
I like fic where they are the last two people on earth/safehouse/forced into hiding with only each other fic because it forces them to rely on each other and open up to each other.

[springwoof.livejournal.com]

hmmm...that's an interesting question, isn't it? It's hard to map out what I *do* like, because I find myself liking almost anything if it's written well, if the author *sold* me on it....

what I tend *not* to like (unless some clever author found a way to sell it to me):
-- inequality/what one of your other flisters called an "uneven power dynamic"usually doesn't work for me, so BDSM usually isn't all that interesting unless it's not the main focus of whatever is going on...
-- casual sex/sex without intimacy profoundly doesn't work for me (unless the characters secretly *want* intimacy or grow to want intimacy through the sex or some other subversion of this meme). The "you're hot. let's fuck." thing isn't all that interesting after the first or second PWP. The characters have to have some kind of relationship going on...
-- related to that last, I hate to see characters *using* each other for sex without any actual emotional investment (it doesn't have to be the love of their life, but at least friendship needs to be involved there)
-- hate, *hate* partner-betrayal/infidelity. big squick. full stop, hit the back button. even if the writing is so good you've gotten me to read it anyway, I'll probably never come back to it to read again.

hmmm...seeing the outline of what I like through what I *don't* like...I prefer the "intimacy without sex" side of the coin, if I had to choose. (although I'll take *both* intimacy AND sex, if you don't mind) I happily read gen friendship fic, and just slurp up smarm, whereas I find many PWPs boring.

Very Interesting ponderings you bring up!