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Erotic Fiction, the Furry Fandom, and You
12 years ago
I wrote my very first erotic furry story in October 2001. I had moved to Japan less than two weeks prior and I’d just gotten my paws on the new laptop that would serve as my only real link to the outside world for the remainder of my time living there. My cable company hadn’t turned the Internet on yet, but I wanted to play with my computer, so I decided to write a short story.
It was about a red fox meeting and subsequently getting double-teamed by a pair of huskies (again, this was 2001, back before one-third of the fandom was huskies, and before three-thirds of huskies were stereotyped as total bottoms). It wasn’t a particularly good story, and it’s since been lost to the sands of time, or at least to a dead hard drive, but I had fun writing it. I wound up reworking the fox character into the central character of an online story series I went on to write a few years later, which then led to my first published novel, so in a weird way, I still look back with a certain amount of fondness at that not-very-good piece of animal-people smut I wrote over twelve years ago, now.
Now it’s 2013, and both my writing and I have come a long way, both figuratively and physically. I’ve been writing, posting, and publishing stories as K.M. Hirosaki for over a decade at this point, and in that time, I’ve seen my fair share of furry writing, clean and dirty, good and bad, professional and amateur, and maybe I’ve learned a few things from all of that.
All joking aside, the phenomenal success of Fifty Shades of Grey has shown us, as a society, that erotic fiction is in demand, and that it’s taken seriously, both by publishers and by readers (and sure, maybe Fifty Shades itself isn’t your particular cup of tea, but I guarantee you that most of the people who are into it are just as confused as to why you’re into the things you read on FurAffinity or SoFurry). And sure, there’s been plenty of debate, not just now but for years and decades and centuries, about the nature of adult fiction, its place or lack thereof in the grand literary scheme of things, and what it says about people who produce it, procure it, and consume it.
I’m not trying to settle any long-standing debates here. I’m just trying chip in my own piece, as someone who’s been doing this for a long time, to hopefully add something intelligent to the discussion, and maybe give some folks some food for thought.
You have lots of labels thrown around when talking about adult writing: erotica, pornography, smut, wank material, tripe, rubbish, and sometimes ‘the hottest thing I’ve ever read OMG.’ I can’t control what language people use, nor can I decide what certain words mean to certain people, but I do still think it’s fair to say that not all adult writing is created equal, and that not all of it is the same in terms of craft, in terms of intent, or in terms of interpretation. This isn’t to say that a story about a fox randomly meeting and then getting fucked by a pair of huskies is bad while a structured, romantic novella is good—merely that they’re different, and that sometimes, acknowledging those differences can matter a lot.
Perhaps the key difference that I want to focus on, in terms of this essay, is the difference between what might derisively termed pornography, and erotica. Again, I can’t control or decide the definitions that other people want to ascribe to certain words in their own discussions, but for my purposes, as a sort of shorthand, I’ll be using ‘pornography’ to refer to works of a primarily sexual nature where the sex is the effective end-all and be-all of the work, and ‘erotica’ for works where sex is a major part of the story, but wherein the story still exists for its own sake.
Or, perhaps more bluntly, sometimes people want to read about sex for reasons other than jerking off to it.
This is a point that a lot of people seem to miss, particularly when criticizing adult writing or dismissing its merit as a form of literature. The fact of the matter is that sex is an important thing, often a very important thing, to a lot of people (dare I say most people?). It can determine how people act, what they do, what they think, the choices they make or don’t make, how society views them—and it’s silly to think or to assert that the only reason to explore those themes is to arouse a reader in some base or vulgar way. That’s not to say that I think that everyone should or needs to read erotic fiction, or that they’re a prude if they don’t—merely that’s it’s not fair to label the people who do read such fiction as degenerates looking for a way to scratch a particular itch.
Most of you reading this probably know that I co-host the Unsheathed Podcast with my fellow furry writer Kyell Gold. Through that, I’ve seen pretty directly that my fans and readers—people who are reading erotic fiction, mind—are interested in much more than just Character A and Character B boning (or sucking or scissoring or what have you). There’s a definite interest in story, and in craft, and (perhaps especially) characterization. They’re asking questions about stories that may or may not involve sex, but even if they do, they understand that very often, they can and do and should involve other things, too.
With some of my fellow writers, I’ve jokingly commented that my stories about the character Reylin Saticoy are ones where I’ve ‘tricked’ my readers into reading adult fiction where no sex actually happens. Now, I know that, in reality, most of my readers don’t need to be tricked into anything, and that they’re not reading what I write just because they want to read about fucking (see above), but the fact is that the two main stories about Reylin to date (not including my 2012 summer short) don’t actually involve him having sex with anyone on the actual page.
Now, he’s a highly sexualized character in sexualized situations. There’s frank discussion of sex and sexuality throughout those stories, and I certainly wouldn’t want my seven-year-old kid (who doesn’t actually exist) to read them, but you’d be hard-pressed, I think, to call those stories pornography. They’re stories about a character whose sexuality is such a defining part of who he is, to what you could reasonably argue is a detrimental extent, in fact, and while he’s meant to be an attractive character getting into potentially arousing situations, I can say as the writer that my intent isn’t for people to furtively jerk off to these stories, and I’m guessing most readers who have read those stories could see that (though it might be interesting to see how many of those readers noticed that no actual sex happened while reading them).
This isn’t to say that all of my adult fiction is meant to be detailed character studies or anything grand and noble. The story of mine with the most hits online is about a pizza delivery fox getting fucked against a wall by a frustrated coyote, and sure, there’s a bit of a twist in there that makes it an actual story beyond just “here’s a scene with a fox getting pounded like a slut,” but I’m comfortable acknowledging that the story is more pornography than erotica, and that this one was written with a deliberate intent to arouse more than anything else. I have plenty of other stories like it, along with other stories more like my pieces about Reylin, and plenty of things in between. Different stories are meant for and do different things, and lumping them all together because “they’re all about people having sex” is unfair and possibly even disingenuous.
Within the furry fandom, there’s also a fairly prevalent belief, both amongst supporters and detractors of erotic fiction, that writing adult material is an automatic fast-track to fame, success, adoration, and all the tea in China or something similar. Yes, there’s the time-honored saying “sex sells,” and that’s as true for churchgoing housewives as it is for CEOs as it is for the guy in the otter fursuit at Anthrocon. We are not unique in this regard (and trying to claim that we are is another annoyance of mine, but that’s another essay entirely), but as true as “sex sells” is, you’ll notice it’s not “sex is the only thing that sells, ever.” Otherwise you wouldn’t be able to buy cereal or whatever recent remake of the board game Monopoly has just been released.
As I mentioned earlier in this essay, I’ve been “K.M. Hirosaki” for over a decade, at this point. Beyond that just being a mind-blowing and somewhat sobering thought, during that time, I’ve also been, well, myself, someone who isn’t K.M. Hirosaki, someone who also writes furry fiction and doesn’t necessarily write about things that have sex in them. And in that more-than-a-decade, I’ve been much more well-known and successful as “myself” than I have been as K.M. Hirosaki, regardless of the lack of foxes getting double-teamed by huskies. Writing about sex isn’t a magical cheat code.
The seemingly perpetually fiasco-ridden Ursa Major Awards have had this sort of talk happen a lot in recent years. There have been some, shall we say, vocal discussions about Kyell Gold having dominated the Novel and Short Story categories for many years, and what could/should/must be done to fix that. Now, leaving aside that it’s perhaps a silly notion to try to “fix” a popularity-based award because it was consistently being won by someone whose work was popular, there have been a number of very outspoken, very angry people who had and have been casting aspersions that said popularity stemmed solely from the fact that Kyell Gold writes erotic fiction and that that’s why he was constantly popping up on the list of nominees and winners.
But when it comes down to it, there’s not exactly a shortage of furry writers who focus on adult fiction. There isn’t even a shortage of prominent ones. If all it took to get recognition for work in this fandom of ours was “write stories about animal-people having sex,” we’d have a hundred Kyell Golds, but (at least as of the last time I checked) we’ve only got the one. To imply—or, worse yet, to accuse that level of success as being based on just writing about sex like it’s some kind of cheat to instant fame is hugely disrespectful, not only to Kyell Gold, but to anyone else who’s ever worked hard on writing, furry or not, adult or clean.
Of course, as many of you readers also know, Gold willingly withdrew himself from consideration for the Ursa Major Awards this year. And, lo and behold, without him on the playing field, the Short Story category now has Mary Lowd as the author of five of the six nominated stories, none of which are sexual. To my knowledge, Lowd doesn’t even write anything erotic, and yet now she’s the category frontrunner that people are talking (many of them complaining) about. And while it may be unprecedented and not ideal for five-sixths of an award category to be taken up by just one individual, credit has to go to Mary Lowd for doing (at least) one thing right: writing well enough to build up a devoted fan base who’s passionate about voting for her. The only real thing difference there, between her and Kyell Gold, is subject matter. You can’t look at that situation and logically say that it’s writing about sex or not that’s what makes or breaks them. Moreover, to sneer at either of them for success that they earned through their work is unwarranted and petty.
As we progress into the 21st Century, our society is (perhaps slowly, in some areas) becoming more sex-positive. Hell, one simply need glance at prime-time TV and compare it to what it was like in the 70s or 80s to see the changes in what’s considered the accepted norm for “not too sexualized to raise eyebrows,” as it were. Yes, some people take that as a sign that the whole world is going to hell in a handbasket, but I like to think that the prevailing consensus is that sex is an okay and natural thing, that people have and enjoy and talk about and think about and, yes, even read about. And write about.
Trying to cast erotic fiction as a “lesser” form of writing isn’t fair to the people who enjoy reading it or the people who try hard to write it well. Someone can write a sex story to be pornographically arousing or to be romantic and thought-provoking, just like how someone else can write a war memoir to be poignant or to arouse hostile feelings of militant jingoism. And hey, it’s not necessarily bad write or read something that’s meant for sexual gratification.
When it comes to “good” and “bad” in writing, leave those labels for the quality of the writing itself, not for the content. You’re allowed to think that Fifty Shades of Grey is poorly written while still enjoying it for what it is. You can accept that Ernest Hemingway was an extremely talented writer whose works simply aren’t to your tastes. You can be an intelligent, educated, cultured individual and still forgo reading Ulysses in favor of a story about a fox getting spit-roasted by a pair of huskies, whether you’re planning on jerking off to it or not.
It was about a red fox meeting and subsequently getting double-teamed by a pair of huskies (again, this was 2001, back before one-third of the fandom was huskies, and before three-thirds of huskies were stereotyped as total bottoms). It wasn’t a particularly good story, and it’s since been lost to the sands of time, or at least to a dead hard drive, but I had fun writing it. I wound up reworking the fox character into the central character of an online story series I went on to write a few years later, which then led to my first published novel, so in a weird way, I still look back with a certain amount of fondness at that not-very-good piece of animal-people smut I wrote over twelve years ago, now.
Now it’s 2013, and both my writing and I have come a long way, both figuratively and physically. I’ve been writing, posting, and publishing stories as K.M. Hirosaki for over a decade at this point, and in that time, I’ve seen my fair share of furry writing, clean and dirty, good and bad, professional and amateur, and maybe I’ve learned a few things from all of that.
All joking aside, the phenomenal success of Fifty Shades of Grey has shown us, as a society, that erotic fiction is in demand, and that it’s taken seriously, both by publishers and by readers (and sure, maybe Fifty Shades itself isn’t your particular cup of tea, but I guarantee you that most of the people who are into it are just as confused as to why you’re into the things you read on FurAffinity or SoFurry). And sure, there’s been plenty of debate, not just now but for years and decades and centuries, about the nature of adult fiction, its place or lack thereof in the grand literary scheme of things, and what it says about people who produce it, procure it, and consume it.
I’m not trying to settle any long-standing debates here. I’m just trying chip in my own piece, as someone who’s been doing this for a long time, to hopefully add something intelligent to the discussion, and maybe give some folks some food for thought.
You have lots of labels thrown around when talking about adult writing: erotica, pornography, smut, wank material, tripe, rubbish, and sometimes ‘the hottest thing I’ve ever read OMG.’ I can’t control what language people use, nor can I decide what certain words mean to certain people, but I do still think it’s fair to say that not all adult writing is created equal, and that not all of it is the same in terms of craft, in terms of intent, or in terms of interpretation. This isn’t to say that a story about a fox randomly meeting and then getting fucked by a pair of huskies is bad while a structured, romantic novella is good—merely that they’re different, and that sometimes, acknowledging those differences can matter a lot.
Perhaps the key difference that I want to focus on, in terms of this essay, is the difference between what might derisively termed pornography, and erotica. Again, I can’t control or decide the definitions that other people want to ascribe to certain words in their own discussions, but for my purposes, as a sort of shorthand, I’ll be using ‘pornography’ to refer to works of a primarily sexual nature where the sex is the effective end-all and be-all of the work, and ‘erotica’ for works where sex is a major part of the story, but wherein the story still exists for its own sake.
Or, perhaps more bluntly, sometimes people want to read about sex for reasons other than jerking off to it.
This is a point that a lot of people seem to miss, particularly when criticizing adult writing or dismissing its merit as a form of literature. The fact of the matter is that sex is an important thing, often a very important thing, to a lot of people (dare I say most people?). It can determine how people act, what they do, what they think, the choices they make or don’t make, how society views them—and it’s silly to think or to assert that the only reason to explore those themes is to arouse a reader in some base or vulgar way. That’s not to say that I think that everyone should or needs to read erotic fiction, or that they’re a prude if they don’t—merely that’s it’s not fair to label the people who do read such fiction as degenerates looking for a way to scratch a particular itch.
Most of you reading this probably know that I co-host the Unsheathed Podcast with my fellow furry writer Kyell Gold. Through that, I’ve seen pretty directly that my fans and readers—people who are reading erotic fiction, mind—are interested in much more than just Character A and Character B boning (or sucking or scissoring or what have you). There’s a definite interest in story, and in craft, and (perhaps especially) characterization. They’re asking questions about stories that may or may not involve sex, but even if they do, they understand that very often, they can and do and should involve other things, too.
With some of my fellow writers, I’ve jokingly commented that my stories about the character Reylin Saticoy are ones where I’ve ‘tricked’ my readers into reading adult fiction where no sex actually happens. Now, I know that, in reality, most of my readers don’t need to be tricked into anything, and that they’re not reading what I write just because they want to read about fucking (see above), but the fact is that the two main stories about Reylin to date (not including my 2012 summer short) don’t actually involve him having sex with anyone on the actual page.
Now, he’s a highly sexualized character in sexualized situations. There’s frank discussion of sex and sexuality throughout those stories, and I certainly wouldn’t want my seven-year-old kid (who doesn’t actually exist) to read them, but you’d be hard-pressed, I think, to call those stories pornography. They’re stories about a character whose sexuality is such a defining part of who he is, to what you could reasonably argue is a detrimental extent, in fact, and while he’s meant to be an attractive character getting into potentially arousing situations, I can say as the writer that my intent isn’t for people to furtively jerk off to these stories, and I’m guessing most readers who have read those stories could see that (though it might be interesting to see how many of those readers noticed that no actual sex happened while reading them).
This isn’t to say that all of my adult fiction is meant to be detailed character studies or anything grand and noble. The story of mine with the most hits online is about a pizza delivery fox getting fucked against a wall by a frustrated coyote, and sure, there’s a bit of a twist in there that makes it an actual story beyond just “here’s a scene with a fox getting pounded like a slut,” but I’m comfortable acknowledging that the story is more pornography than erotica, and that this one was written with a deliberate intent to arouse more than anything else. I have plenty of other stories like it, along with other stories more like my pieces about Reylin, and plenty of things in between. Different stories are meant for and do different things, and lumping them all together because “they’re all about people having sex” is unfair and possibly even disingenuous.
Within the furry fandom, there’s also a fairly prevalent belief, both amongst supporters and detractors of erotic fiction, that writing adult material is an automatic fast-track to fame, success, adoration, and all the tea in China or something similar. Yes, there’s the time-honored saying “sex sells,” and that’s as true for churchgoing housewives as it is for CEOs as it is for the guy in the otter fursuit at Anthrocon. We are not unique in this regard (and trying to claim that we are is another annoyance of mine, but that’s another essay entirely), but as true as “sex sells” is, you’ll notice it’s not “sex is the only thing that sells, ever.” Otherwise you wouldn’t be able to buy cereal or whatever recent remake of the board game Monopoly has just been released.
As I mentioned earlier in this essay, I’ve been “K.M. Hirosaki” for over a decade, at this point. Beyond that just being a mind-blowing and somewhat sobering thought, during that time, I’ve also been, well, myself, someone who isn’t K.M. Hirosaki, someone who also writes furry fiction and doesn’t necessarily write about things that have sex in them. And in that more-than-a-decade, I’ve been much more well-known and successful as “myself” than I have been as K.M. Hirosaki, regardless of the lack of foxes getting double-teamed by huskies. Writing about sex isn’t a magical cheat code.
The seemingly perpetually fiasco-ridden Ursa Major Awards have had this sort of talk happen a lot in recent years. There have been some, shall we say, vocal discussions about Kyell Gold having dominated the Novel and Short Story categories for many years, and what could/should/must be done to fix that. Now, leaving aside that it’s perhaps a silly notion to try to “fix” a popularity-based award because it was consistently being won by someone whose work was popular, there have been a number of very outspoken, very angry people who had and have been casting aspersions that said popularity stemmed solely from the fact that Kyell Gold writes erotic fiction and that that’s why he was constantly popping up on the list of nominees and winners.
But when it comes down to it, there’s not exactly a shortage of furry writers who focus on adult fiction. There isn’t even a shortage of prominent ones. If all it took to get recognition for work in this fandom of ours was “write stories about animal-people having sex,” we’d have a hundred Kyell Golds, but (at least as of the last time I checked) we’ve only got the one. To imply—or, worse yet, to accuse that level of success as being based on just writing about sex like it’s some kind of cheat to instant fame is hugely disrespectful, not only to Kyell Gold, but to anyone else who’s ever worked hard on writing, furry or not, adult or clean.
Of course, as many of you readers also know, Gold willingly withdrew himself from consideration for the Ursa Major Awards this year. And, lo and behold, without him on the playing field, the Short Story category now has Mary Lowd as the author of five of the six nominated stories, none of which are sexual. To my knowledge, Lowd doesn’t even write anything erotic, and yet now she’s the category frontrunner that people are talking (many of them complaining) about. And while it may be unprecedented and not ideal for five-sixths of an award category to be taken up by just one individual, credit has to go to Mary Lowd for doing (at least) one thing right: writing well enough to build up a devoted fan base who’s passionate about voting for her. The only real thing difference there, between her and Kyell Gold, is subject matter. You can’t look at that situation and logically say that it’s writing about sex or not that’s what makes or breaks them. Moreover, to sneer at either of them for success that they earned through their work is unwarranted and petty.
As we progress into the 21st Century, our society is (perhaps slowly, in some areas) becoming more sex-positive. Hell, one simply need glance at prime-time TV and compare it to what it was like in the 70s or 80s to see the changes in what’s considered the accepted norm for “not too sexualized to raise eyebrows,” as it were. Yes, some people take that as a sign that the whole world is going to hell in a handbasket, but I like to think that the prevailing consensus is that sex is an okay and natural thing, that people have and enjoy and talk about and think about and, yes, even read about. And write about.
Trying to cast erotic fiction as a “lesser” form of writing isn’t fair to the people who enjoy reading it or the people who try hard to write it well. Someone can write a sex story to be pornographically arousing or to be romantic and thought-provoking, just like how someone else can write a war memoir to be poignant or to arouse hostile feelings of militant jingoism. And hey, it’s not necessarily bad write or read something that’s meant for sexual gratification.
When it comes to “good” and “bad” in writing, leave those labels for the quality of the writing itself, not for the content. You’re allowed to think that Fifty Shades of Grey is poorly written while still enjoying it for what it is. You can accept that Ernest Hemingway was an extremely talented writer whose works simply aren’t to your tastes. You can be an intelligent, educated, cultured individual and still forgo reading Ulysses in favor of a story about a fox getting spit-roasted by a pair of huskies, whether you’re planning on jerking off to it or not.
Case in point, a few years back, FA released the Top 10 search terms for the site's search feature, and the number 1 entry was "vore." Now, obviously, this doesn't mean that FurAffinity is packed to the gills with nothing but vore, or that it's primarily a vore-related site--merely that when people want to find something very specific, they go looking for it very actively, and there's very little casual browsing going on to discover new things.
You say that you "don't have the right audience." The thing to do, in that case, is to promote your work, and tell people where it is, where to find it, instead of just waiting for them to find it on their own, because the latter is only going to happen very slowly.
But of course, the question comes down to where are good places for a writer to promote their work that they might not think of?
And yeah, like you said, don't let one person reflect the views of an entire site. SoFurry at least gives you a place to showcase your work, and you're trying to find YOUR audience, not random people who won't appreciate you just because you're not writing what they prefer. They can go read someone else; you don't need them.
Reviews can be useful. I wrote a handful of reviews on Flayrah, but I stopped because I don't want to say anything negative about someone's work. Rabbit Valley said sales went up with every review, so at least someone read them. Personally, though, I don't trust the reviews I find online, because I never know if the reviewer has taste that aligns with mine, and I also suspect that many reviewers sugarcoat their opinions to avoid hurt feelings (I've done this). Also, while a few people read reviews, I don't think it's very many, not to mention that reviews usually only cover published works, so you'll miss quite a lot of literature.
I wonder what types of promotion are useful. Toumal selected my first story (a fetish porn story) as a featured story on SoFurry, which I assumed drove most of the views until I realized that the view count on FA and Sofurry were nearly identical. My other story has a nearly identical view count on both sites, too.
I've noticed that 90% of my views come within the first few days of posting a story, so I'm guessing that most people find literature via the front page of FA and from searches that are sorted by date. This falls in line with another observation: one of the largest driving factors for someone's watch list is how much literature they produce.
Gotta study; will write more later.
I really like how you differentiate pornography and erotica in this journal. Sex and the sexual relationships between individuals are often a very important part of people's lives, and there are some stories that you just can't tell properly in a G-PG publication. Heat evolved out of Anthrolations because we had people submitting really good stories that simply didn't fit within the social expectations for what was acceptable for the "general readers" anthology. Yes, some of the stories have slanted more towards the pornographic, but overall I like to think that Heat has shown the strength and variety of furry authors in the realm of erotica, including yours!
Obviously, that line can and does move, and I think that for the stories that you publish in Heat, the line is closer to the 'middle' than for most of my stories. Granted, the two stories I've had in Heat are closer to that middle, too, where I think (or at least like to think) the sex is legitimately titilating, but where the larger story around it is crucial to informing what's going on--and also WHY it's hot.
This applies to a lot more than just writing I would say. Practically anything that you could have an opinion on, I'd say.
This was a great read, though. Thanks for the insight.
I am the first to say that no genre is in and of itself inferior. Naturally people have preferences - I myself lean towards historical and modern fantasy - but to ascribe an all-encompassing derisive label to a genre merely because a person finds it unenjoyable is more arrogance than anything, in my opinion. I find the general category of adult fiction to be average, though adult fiction as I have defined it above is something that I find most fascinating, and it is such because of what you pointed out: sex is an important thing. I agree that I would not show such a story to children, but sex is one of the most important things in adult life. It can help to make, break, or repair relationships. It is a tool as much as a toy, something to use as well as enjoy. Adult fiction as I have defined it has been interesting to me because it doesn't gloss over this integral part of society. I enjoy a good yarn as anybody else, but when a work can tell a story and does not shield the reader from what is important in the story - including sex - I find myself respecting that author more and enjoying the story more. Is sex important to every story? Obviously not; in the world of furries alone, we have Brian Jacques, whose characters may sometimes be questionable, but whose stories are without a doubt damn good stories. You can argue the intricacies of his story-telling all you want, but many children and adults enjoy his work, which means that he is at least doing something right.
At the end of the day, the writing needs to do one thing: it needs to act as a medium of communication between the author and their audience, and it must do so effectively. Bad books are rarely bad because of their subject matter (religious/socio-cultural issues aside), but because of the amateur execution. In his book On Writing, Stephen King makes note that to him writing is telepathy, a non-verbal, non-signal method of communication between people. While I do not completely subscribe to this viewpoint, he does make a good point that it doesn't matter what you write, as long as the image is communicated clearly. How much of the image you leave up to the imagination of the reader is something that every writer must reconcile themselves with, but a successful writer is able to create a world for the readers to immerse themselves in, and also provides the basic tools necessary for the re-envisioning of that world in the mind of the reader. 'Bad' books are books that do not do that, not books whose subject matter is questionable.
I suppose what I am ultimately doing here is vindicating your argument, but through a slightly different coloured lens. To try and bring it all into one sentence, I find that even the most 'heinous' content can be intellectually stomached (keeping in mind that the 'heinous' nature of the content is very subjective) with proper execution, but the most glorious idea can be wasted when the author fails to deliver at least a semblance of their vision or intent for the story. Methods of execution vary - though I find proper grammar to be a continuous damning criterion - but what I find it all comes down to is whether or not the author communicated what they wanted to communicate, over-zealous students and professors aside.
I feel the same way about erotic stories in the fandom. It is insulting to profess that sexual content trumps quality writing and to suggest that a novel's success is solely from its erotic content rather than the hard work the author put into crafting an engaging story. But I find it insincere to say an adult furry novel would see the same level of success with a story stripped of any sexual themes. I believe very strongly a non-sexual furry story can be made just as engaging-- in fact, I would find it insulting if someone were to suggest a story couldn't be as well crafted without a sexual relationship in the plot. But to ignore the popular appeal of a theme that resonates so powerfully with this fandom-- and with people in general-- is to deny the tastes of our community, whether furry or American or worldwide.
I think it's fair to recognize the benefits of adding sex to a story, and that there is a legitimate argument to a story being cheapened by its presence. Sexual themes appeal to a broad base, broader than subjects like 14th century politics, which is exactly why sex is added to stories like those. And honestly, if an author did write a novel about chemical engineering that generated just as much revenue as another novel about the same theme but also featured erotic images, I would argue that the first novel would have been the more impressive feat. I say it's fair to claim sex cheapens a story, because it's a simple way of pulling in more interest-- just like putting Bruce Willis in a movie about a child psychologist in Philly cheapens what was already a brilliant screenplay. It doesn't make it bad. It doesn't cheapen it by much. But it makes it less impressive than it could have been.
I've heard this argument from furry writers before, and I still find it difficult to accept. And part of that is because of my personal experience. I made a decision early on that I wanted the FBA to be open to furries of all ages, and part of that decision was limiting the sexual themes in it. It's not that we have none at all, we certainly do have sexual themes and hints throughout the league. But I work hard to keep things from being explicit and to push stories that don't hinge on athletes dropping their pants. It's difficult at times, though. There is a constant, casual pressure from many sides to make things in the FBA pornographic, to take the familiar themes of locker rooms and athletic male bodies in the direction so many are used to in this fandom. And it is very disheartening when I hear people assume that because the FBA is "furry" it must be pornographic. Given that experience, I don't understand the argument that sexual content is somehow completely independent of success in this fandom, that there is no broad consuming base hungry for porn and that the FBA wouldn't see broader visibility if I did commission a series of pornographic basketball-themed images.
I'm not a prude. And I'm not going to pretend I wouldn't have any interest in seeing that. But I won't agree that it's unfair to find erotic stories "lesser" than clean ones. There is an argument for that, and in my mind, it has merit. It can be unfair if it's taken too far, though. Sexual content doesn't erase the accomplishments of a well-crafted story. But it does make it easier to promote.
Perhaps this depends on why the sex scene is in the story to begin with?
See, in this case, if we're talking about ADDING sex to a story just to make it more popular, instead of putting it in because it belongs there to begin with, then that's an entirely separate argument. In that case, I think it's can very easily become something wherein the author is merely baiting people into reading their work, or to try to bolster sales of a book or story or whatever, and in that case, you've got an author who's looking at business, not at story.
When I published my first novel, I stuck my real name on it, and a few people asked me why I didn't stick the "K.M. Hirosaki" name on it. I explained that I was too proud of what I'd written to hide behind a pseudonym (and besides, it wasn't an erotic novel); people then asked, "Well, why not put the name on it anyway, to bring in the popularity and fan base?"
Now, I was lucky enough that the "real me" was already more popular than "K.M. Hirosaki" anyway, but that seemed like a weird choice to me. I'd feel like I was lying to my readers, and I'd never want to do that.
On the other hand, a lot of people (including close friends of mine) just ASSUMED all my books were porn and have been surprised to learn they weren't, only buying them years later when they found out otherwise (which kind of offends me for different reasons).
Outside the sexual, we all have political, moral, social or religious perspectives to pitch in our writing. These can be contentious or even border on the offensive to people's convictions and can be harder to reconcile in some cases the sexcapades out front. What makes your writing, and Kyell's and that of all the successful erotic authors work so well is that that sexuality is a vehicle to comment on many things that we didn't come looking for but benefitted from.
Just look at what a nominated story is made of. If you subtract the sex from any of the stories that reach Ursa-scale popularity, you may have a work somewhat diminished and certainly less active to the senses, but if you were to tie all the sex scenes from these same works together without the overlying context, you'd have something diverting at best.
Quite simply, burned fur-types need to stop complaining about the prevalence of sex in popular furry lit and start wondering why they are missing so much more on the page for drastically avoiding it. Putting sex in a story doesn't make it an easy sell, but it makes the harder topics just under the covers a little more easy to slip inside.
When I wrote those first, heated, horrible stories in 1995 on notebooks in class, I had no idea they would lead me to where I am today. It's definitely shaped my presence in the fandom, and while I never had the motive of being popular, or even known (I just liked to write), it seems I've ended up that way. It's a mixed blessing.
For every person who posts a positive comment or who takes the time to actually get to know me without trying to RP with me, there are perhaps four who lose interest after they find out my stories aren't me, and I'm more down to earth than they want, or I have opinions that burst their bubble of interest. But the ones who stick around are all the more valuable because it's the having something in common that makes that connection worthwhile.
There's something to be said about marching to one's own drummer. It's not easy, when you're encouraged to fall in line if you want to get noticed. I've always written what's come to mind, and more and more lately I've found myself distracted by research just as much as the writing, if not more. Perhaps that's why my production has dropped a bit. I can't just write "smut," for your wording purposes. That slutty fox or otter or what-have-you suddenly wants to have a backstory, and I WANT TO KNOW why he's slutty beyond liking dick. So I think, and for all the thinking I do maybe 3% gets told in the showing, because a character's actions and words mean a lot more than two thick paragraphs of exposition.
It's distressing, surely, to see a poorly-written story with lots of sex and its gigantic thread of comments. But I've gotten used to the fact that it isn't an indictment of my work. It's a testament to the differing tastes of furry readers. I can't MAKE those people read my 30,000-word romance tale, even if there's some fetish content that might drive readership. They'll see the page count and click away. Which brings me back to my point of the value of the ones who 1. Click on it, 2. Read through it, 3. May or may not get off to it, and 4. Actually take the time to tell me what they thought.
Used to be, the best comment I could get would be a high cum-count on Sofurry. Now, if someone tells me they were too busy reading to jerk it, I'm flattered to hell and back. I thank them...and then I tell them to read a second time so they can get their rocks off. The mere fact that they want to reread makes me unbelievably happy.
Turning around and realizing all this attention is on you might make you think more carefully about what you write. I've given that a lot of thought and come to the conclusion I won't let it go to my head, both in the form of "popufur" whatever and in double-thinking what stories to put out. Like you, and Kyell, and every other author out there, I'm evolving in style, in inspiration and in all the other ways we can evolve. 18 years on, I still feel kind of like Hansel or Gretel. I leave these little breadcrumbs along the way, and those who choose to follow will follow. Some are aroused, others disgusted, but the ones who make it to my door are either great fans or hell-bent on giving me an earful of their inflated opinions.
But as far as I'm concerned, I certainly haven't "wasted my time."
In the short two years that I've been in the fandom, I've come across dozens of names who I can easily say produce quality work-- whether it be drawings, stories, music, or whatever else they produce--and are artists. They communicate and share through the pieces that they produce. Your own work K.M., if you'll allow a moment of adoration (XP), blends the aspects of story telling and adult situations extremely well and are very entertaining at the same time. Using your Reylin series, I could easily tell that "actual sex" was not in the story, but it was still involved with story itself. It's a fascination premise to explore the personality of a character who is very sexualized without going into details of the actual sex, so kudos to you. It's something I enjoy reading.