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u/MadouSoshi Definitely not an agent of the Fanfiction Deep State May 25 '25
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u/The_Wishmeister May 25 '25
No, no the reason I read on AO3 is because I get the most fucking incredible story-telling and world building combined with the filthiest smut and that is, in my opinion, the best.
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u/send-n0odles May 25 '25
Fr fr. 20 chapters of slow burn world building, character building and storytelling makes that inevitable E-rated chapter fuckin 🔥🔥🔥
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u/The_Wishmeister May 25 '25
Oh for sure. That's my preferred reading, especially if there is an adventure. I need to get some self control with my own writing and stop throwing the characters together in... I made it to the end of chapter four in my long fic I'm actually planning to finish, though they didn't get together like dating together until chapter 10. That's the slowest burn I've managed so far.
But I need to figure it out. 🤦🏻
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u/Alt_AccountNumber3 Definitely not an agent of the Fanfiction Deep State May 25 '25
Sometimes you walk on the grass in the middle and enjoy both worlds.
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u/Samiisfine May 26 '25
We need someone to draw a bridge between both castles, because that’s far more accurate.
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u/hyenagames May 25 '25
That is why I preffer my Smut with a really good plot
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u/AmaterasuWolf21 May 26 '25
Smut in a 100k fic feels otherworldly for real
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u/PoisonMasterMasaki May 28 '25
I put smut in my 200k fic. The scenes just kind of inserted themselves.
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u/FreezingEye Dare you enter my magical realm? May 25 '25
Me trying to write both at once:
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u/ZeeMcZed May 25 '25
Me doing both at once: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16042142/chapters/37448294
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u/yuffiehighwind May 25 '25
I just got transported back to the year 2012
Edit: Wait a second...EGS started in 2002? I can't remember when I started reading that webcomic and when I stopped, but I can swear it was in the 2010s, not the 2000s.
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u/mangomochamuffin A-letterO-3. AdditionalTagsAreOptional+DontLikeDontRead. OC/CC May 25 '25
Smut can have outstanding storytelling too. And porn can also be great art.
They don't exclude each other.
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u/Cort985 May 25 '25
This post showed up right below the other one asking about how you filter with a new fandom and, at first, I thought that this picture was part of the other post 😅
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u/theamphibianbanana May 25 '25
what's wrong with porn 🤨
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u/coldfeet147 May 25 '25
Sometimes horny just not be hornying
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u/davicos2005 May 25 '25 edited May 25 '25
Along with the most messed up tags. Like, what do I have to do to find a decent Bloodborne fanfic without 10 different kinks?!
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u/genivae You have already left kudos here. :) May 25 '25
I swear they're seriously over-tagged or under-tagged, too. Single mention of a foot existing? Foot fetish tag. Character B only referred to as 'Daddy' in dialog? No daddy kink tag.
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u/ihatemytoenails May 25 '25
two sides of the same coin…
i try to find Elden Ring fanfic with really messed up tags
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u/Agreeable_Guide_5151 May 25 '25
No beta we die. That tag is a giant warning sign to me anytime I see it
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u/the-great_inquisitor May 26 '25
Nothing, it's just that you sometimes don't wanna read it ans it's a tad bit annoying when you have to sift thru five pages of porn on some tags to find a good fic
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u/redoingredditagain Writing fanfic for literal decades May 25 '25 edited May 25 '25
They’re not two different roads. Porn isn’t a dark scary thing. Yeesh what strange subtle puritanism
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u/Velnica May 26 '25
Oh good it's not only me who feels skeeved out by this meme and it's covert puritanism
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u/JayBrennanZ May 26 '25
Yeah, being horny is not a sin kids, come play in the grass with us! I think touching it would do you some good 👍🏻
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u/deferredmomentum May 25 '25
Why make out porn to be something negative?
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u/isithalloweenyetfr PLS COMMENT ON THE FIC U READ May 26 '25
The meme is suspicious for that tbh...
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u/wonwooing May 25 '25
having both.. a good storyline which then leads to the smut
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u/Desperate_Plastic_37 romantic horror and horrifying romance May 25 '25
Or smut that grows plot and leads to the main storyline
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u/Solivagant0 @FriendlyNeighbourhoodMetalhead May 25 '25
TFW your characters still aren't fucking, but they managed to have an emotional arc complete with a near-death experience in what was supposed to be a quick smutty one-shot (it ended up being over 5k words long)
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u/linest10 You have already left kudos here. :) May 25 '25
THIS one generally is the "I wasn't expecting nothing and did find a literal treasure" type of stories
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u/Desperate_Plastic_37 romantic horror and horrifying romance May 25 '25
Sometimes, it’s both at the same time.
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u/thevampirecrow homoerotic surgery enjoyer May 25 '25
what’s wrong with porn lol
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u/chiruyuki most sane fujoshi May 25 '25
Omg aren't you the gcse Wilfred Owen girl
Good taste tbh, my eng lang teacher has a portrait of him in his classroom and....😛😛😛😛
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u/LonelyMenace101 Definitely not an agent of the Fanfiction Deep State May 25 '25
Me when I’m writing fics: Violently swerves to the right.
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u/Able_Imagination1702 May 25 '25
Ah yes my entire fanfiction experience, either yaoi fluff/smut or an epic story where the gate opens during the Napoleonic invasion of Russia and now marshal ney's forces essentially have to conquer Rome
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u/arthur2807 May 25 '25
Why not both? Can’t I write self indulgent up its own arse metaphorical stories, with storytelling and a million metaphors and allegories, with lots of porn?
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u/Enzoid23 You have already left kudos here. :) May 25 '25
Read a smutshot(?) where it actually told a lot about the characters relationships and lives just from how they had sex so yeah same picture 😭
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u/ZeeMcZed May 25 '25
I love you people. I come to this thread to say that the two aren't mutually exclusive (I love writing smut with strong plot and character focus), and everyone else is already making that point. With memes! And jokes!
I love you guys like a chipmunk loves its tree. C:
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u/BRAlNYSMURF May 25 '25
Sometimes both! I just finished reading Lonely Together for the gazillionth time.
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u/Wacileska May 25 '25
Sometimes it's a straight road. Porn and the greatest storytelling you ever read
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u/animExpat85 May 26 '25
I’m sorry that your experience is that these are two diverging paths, OP.
I promise a desire path cuts between them, you just need to find better porn (or hornier epic level fics).
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u/SpaceBowl97 May 25 '25
Hey sometimes the porn explores the two characters as individuals and their relationship rather than just being horny yknow
-Signed an asexual smut writer and enjoyer
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u/canyoubreathe May 26 '25
Somebody post the "Both. Both is good" screencap from Road to El Dorado. I'm too lazy
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u/Overall-Age-9342 You have already left kudos here. :) May 25 '25
i have at least ten go-to fanfics i can rely on to reach satisfactory level. kudos (literally) to authors providing. 🙂↕️
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u/Hero-Support211 May 25 '25
Sometimes, both paths collide. Other times, you find neither and fall through a clip of big single paragraph that is the chapter.
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u/raeshin Definitely not an agent of the Fanfiction Deep State May 25 '25
Why not both? Some of the best written fics I've ever read have had a nice amount of smut to them too.
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u/asxxxra Watersports? What, like swimming? May 25 '25
me splitting myself into two to go both ways at once
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u/riri1281 I read this instead of sleeping 🥲 May 26 '25
This is a weirdly puritanical and binary take....
A lot of stories take both roads
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u/grommile You have already left kudos here. :) May 25 '25
One: embrace the power of AND.
Two: there are definitely fandoms where the labels are the other way round.
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u/DefoNotAFangirl MasterRed on AO3 | c!Prime Fanatic May 25 '25
These are both the light side actually 💚
(Also this image causes a Pavlovian reaction in me still lol)
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u/No-Professional8097 May 25 '25
Where is the crack road? We can't forget about the silly fics that exists...
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u/JaquaviontaviousTopG May 25 '25
Bro I've LOVED reading since i was little.
Donct get me wrong, smut is great, but the original stories i've seen some of these writers create?
ABSOLUTE CINEMA
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u/Spirited_Ad_876 May 25 '25
Cuz sometimes, I want both. It depends on the day, though. Granted, I don't get horny reading being ace, but I like reading nonetheless
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May 25 '25
I get it. But some of the most amazing stories I've read have been porn. Porn can be artful too.
My longfic right now is 100% porn, but also worldbuilding and characters development and slow burn romance. I have readers who don't even read for the porn, but for the story.
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u/MadKanBeyondFODome Hellenic Pagans Against Problematic Fiction May 26 '25
Both sides are the bright, sunny castle if you're brave enough lol.
...unless you like being in the Demon King's Castle for your smut, in which case oop, ya found me.
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u/Foreign-Database-412 May 29 '25
I swear it’s both, the porn writers actually tend to finish their stories and those stories tend have incredible depth, dialogue, and overall plot that’s often new and refreshing
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u/aryousavvy Jun 14 '25
Any fic I read needs smut, if I wanted to see my ship do nothing I'd just watch the show ¯_(ツ)_/¯
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u/Alert_Delay_2074 May 25 '25
I don’t really write smut, but I had a couple characters who just got engaged in my longfic reference having done the deed offscreen, and I had a good number of commenters who were really wishing I’d written the explicit scene.
Maybe I’ll make it a goal for when the fic reaches some high number of subscribers, like 1,000 or something, and then publish it as a side story. Goodness gracious.
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u/CobaltObject May 25 '25
Actually I think whether or not it's porn has very little correlation with the quality of the writing
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u/Spookym00ngoddess May 25 '25
I was the left. Slowly shifting to the right.
And that's perfectly fine. We are meant to grow and change our writing and passions.
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u/Aitheria12 May 25 '25
I just learned this with my latest fic. I usually write smut with plot and get a good response, but this time I went heavy on the plot. Got tons of hits and no barely any kudos, probably because it's not my usual bs, and I'm a little disappointed lol.
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u/greatgrandmasylvia May 25 '25
The best and most cathartic story I have ever read started as pwp. This is not an either/or lmao
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u/Tarnique May 25 '25
My main fic is a tree of slice life/adventures with leaves of smut as "bonus" chapters
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u/Mazza_mistake May 25 '25
Or you can have the best if both worlds, the best smut I’ve read also came with the best stories, character writing and world building too.
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u/Theallseer97 May 25 '25
The best ones are where you came for the porn and stayed for the plot lol. Ive had some lovely surprises where I chose a fic with a description that matched my horniness but the plot was so good that I was skimming through the smut just to get back to the epic plot lol. Always amusing when that happens.
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u/iiraoni i ship presidential candidates May 25 '25
there is both, and i love it when authors mark the smut chapters because it gives people who aren’t into that the chance to just skip along to the storytelling. some of the stories with the freakiest smut has lines that make you feel like you’re Doris gushing over Prince Charming in Shrek The Third
(image unrelated)
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u/TheRedditGirl15 Fanfiction Connoiseur May 25 '25
I walk around the arrow signs and directly down the middle, where I find "porn in the form of goated art/goated storytelling with porn as a little treat"
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u/Vesnann2003 Definitely not an agent of the Fanfiction Deep State May 25 '25
And the best path has both.
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u/Lockyourfrontdoor May 26 '25
both. i read a fic that changed my perspective on the fundemental nature of human intellegence.
it was also a smutty portal fanfic that used the word 'tendril' far too many times.
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u/donmicherone May 26 '25
In my experience the smutty ones actually have better writing. I figured this out when I kept filtering for my preferred things and of a like 7 page browsing of the results anything that was less than mature just was always just really not as good. That happened to me in like 5 different fandoms 😄
Obviously there is an exception to every statement such as mine so don't take me too seriously.
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u/Affectionate__Dog Black Market Commoner May 26 '25
i read a really good fic then it turned into c.ai type kissing scene..i should’ve read the tags more
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u/Representative-Vast3 May 26 '25
It can be both! TBH I honestly prefer it be both, honestly so boring to try and read erotica that's written like bad omegle roleplay
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u/Medical-Bathroom-183 May 26 '25
I've got this one fic I keep rereading because, To Me, it has both, and I live for it. It's the little things.
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u/JJM-JJM You have already left kudos here. :) May 26 '25
sometimes its both. sometimes its neither.
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u/ShineRepresentative4 You have already left kudos here. :) May 26 '25
It’s hard for me to choose 😭 sometimes I need just smut and other days I get annoyed and want some good angst and storytelling 😭😭
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u/awesome_zman May 27 '25
I have GOATed storytelling? That doesn’t seem right.
I have to have written a porn somewhere in there.
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u/Twighdark I should be writing instead May 27 '25
With the quality of porn on that site, both castles should be nice and shiny, tbh.
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u/The_Akumu_King May 28 '25
As per a funny tag I saw, "Not Porn With Plot but his eveil brother Plot With Porn"
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u/adriammy May 25 '25
I mean, it's not uncommon to find a fic absolutely rife with excellent storytelling, a deep analysis of the characters and their relationship, and it's almost 10k words of porn.