seriousfic wrote an interesting essay about how sex scenes in fanfic can resemble the "Hero's Journey" outlined by Joseph Campbell, to which I offered the following reply:

See, to my mind, fanfic sex is ultimately just a symptom of the larger functions of fanfic overall, which are either a) simply to allow authors to take their favorite characters out for test drives, or b) to somehow personalize or "improve" upon the characters, continuities or franchises in question to the fans' liking.

Options a) and b) are not mutually exclusive, but in my reading of fanfic, I'd say that b) is often a strong driver, even for fanfic writers who believe they're simply carrying out a).

A quote I first heard in college was that "glamor is democracy frozen halfway," meaning that "glamor" can only exist when there is an inherent inequality in a society's beauty standards, but that this inequality can potentially be overcome by certain individuals (heavier girls are considered less pretty than thinner girls, but if they buy the right products and lose enough weight, they can be considered pretty, too).

In a sense, I'd almost say the same of fanfic, because it can only exist when a franchise is imperfect enough to have gaps that fans can fill in for themselves, but that franchise also needs to be appealing enough to inspire those fans to want to make such an effort. Citizen Kane is a great movie, but because it's so good, precious few people can think of anything that could be added to it. Likewise, Battlefield Earth needs all the help it could get, in order to make some sort of sense as a satisfying story, but if you were to try and fix everything that was wrong with it, you might as well write your own story, because that's what you'll have done anyway, by the time you're done.

How does this relate to sex in fanfic? Well, if fanfic is about filling in the gaps of franchise canon, then sex is the hugest elephant in the room, because it's one of the most primary and universal drives of humanity, and yet, it's one of the rarest to be featured explicitly in canon. You don't have to be a stereotypically sex-obsessed pervert to be curious; after all, if you're a longtime fan of, say, Batman, then you've probably seen at least 15 different versions each of every other aspect of his life, aside from whom he fucks and how he fucks them, which only serves to make such omissions more glaring by contrast.

So, even if you're a fanfic writer who's mostly motivated by a), it's not unlikely that you'd want to open the door to your favorite characters' bedrooms, so to speak, unless they're in one of the rare franchises that actually tackles sexual issues more directly. After all, if you're a fan of '80s kids' cartoons, it might be enough to revel in the novelty of simply showing those characters having sex, but if you're a fan of, say, Torchwood, sex alone isn't going to be as strong of a motivator to inspire someone to write fanfic, because if you want to see Torchwood characters having sex ... well, you can just watch Torchwood itself.

For more sexualized franchises, as well as franchises which play heavily with unresolved sexual tension, b) becomes a more prevalent motivator for sexual fanfic, since it's not just about the desire to see your favorite characters having sex, but also doing so in ways that you, as the author, believe would improve the treatments of sex that have been shown in canon. Taking the new Doctor Who as an example, the fact that fans like me felt that Martha Jones was treated badly by the in-canon stories was a boon to the emergence of Martha Jones fanfic online, much of which centers around the UST between her and the Doctor getting resolved in some very adult-rated ways.

I'm not disagreeing that sex scenes can be used as miniature versions of Campbell's "Hero's Journey" in fanfic, but what I would assert is that the motivation to write such stories is not merely borne out of the desire to take a character through a transformative arc, but often, is inspired by a perceived need, on the part of the authors, to correct the franchise itself.

My problem is that most of the fanfics I have read that include sex (admittedly very few) are univerally so badly written that I am left with the impression that - far from following the Heroes Journey of improving on the franchise - the author is simply typing left-handed.

I have no objection to sex when it actually fits in a story. The impression I have got, however, is that some people out there are obsessed with shoehorning sex into a story, whether it needs to be there or not.

And, since it occured to me while I was writing this: Rule 34.

Even the fanfics that were obviously typed one-handed go along with option a) that I outlined, of reasons for writing fanfic (ie. taking your favorite characters out for a test drive). And the essay that I linked to actually did address the difference between necessary and unnecessary sex scenes, comparing it to the difference between necessary and unnecessary action scenes in mainstream movies. Indeed, she cited The Matrix trilogy as an example of both necessary and unnecessary scenes, citing Neo's climactic conflicts against Agent Smith as necessary, because they illustrate the "Hero's Journey" arc his character has gone through since the start, while the fight scenes in The Matrix Reloaded were unnecessary in her opinion, given that they had no dramatic tension and served as nothing more than eye-candy. In that sense, she was agreeing with you, because she was requesting to see more sex scenes in fanfic which serve some need other than showing sex.

That being said, I'd contend that there's a large and growing number of fanfics which, even if they're little more than porn without plot, are also motivated by a desire to correct what authors see as "errors" in the source material. In my Doctor Who fanfics, many of which are blatantly porn, I write sex scenes with characters like Donna and Martha and Sarah Jane because ... well, obviously, I'd like to see them having sex, but I also want to create closer bonds between certain characters, and to create situations in which their lovability is affirmed, in ways that I kind of wish it could be in canon. It's a fairly inconsequential application of my feminist leanings, but I like knowing that I've created a world in which a female character, who might not be as loved as she should be, is given a bit of a boost, even if it involves three-ways in the TARDIS or alien pheromone pollen.