Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Sex and Relationships in Time Braid
It seems that about every thirty or forty reviews I get a complaint that there's too much sex in Time Braid, which I admit has me a little puzzled. Indomitable has a lot more explicit sex going on, but it hardly gets any complaints at all on that score. Maybe it's just that Time Braid starts with everyone being twelve, and it doesn't spend enough time describing their process of growing up? Or maybe the way they get dumped back in their younger bodies every loop generates some squick factor? Or maybe this is really just a request for more action and less touchy-feely relationship stuff? If anyone has an idea I'd be interested to hear it.
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I thought the amount of sex in it was fine... maybe it's because Sakura's the main character so you have more female readers reading it than males? In my perspective we're more likely to complain about amount of sex in stories than praise for it.
ReplyDeleteTime Braid's summary doesn't give any indication of the sex and the rating doesn't give indication that it's going to be as...sex packed as it is. Indomitable does. Add Sakura/Multi and it might cease.
ReplyDeletexshrugsx
Huh. I always thought that there was a lot more sex in Time Braid than Indomitable, though it's more explicit in the latter. I'd bet that readers complain/comment less if Naruto was the one getting the girls (on screen); people are much more accepting of perversion when it's on the part of the main male protagonist doing it. We probably have a double standard at work.
ReplyDeleteEither way, can't wait to see what happens next!
I think it's mostly the difference in the nature of the sex. There might be more of it in Indomitable, but it's far more central to the plot in Time Braid. And really, I can't actually recall there being _that_ much in Indomitable, whereas I remember most of it from Time Braid.
ReplyDeleteactually, it seems to be more plot dependant in indomitable.
ReplyDeletei think it is because it is sakura, and not awesome macho man.
I've figured out an easy solution to your plight.
ReplyDeleteToss more explicit sex into the story.
As it is the only reason that I could think for a person to complain is that they are not making the connections between character growth and sex. So if your more explicit in the sex then the connection will be easier to identify.
"I thought the amount of sex in it was fine... maybe it's because Sakura's the main character so you have more female readers reading it than males? In my perspective we're more likely to complain about amount of sex in stories than praise for it."
ReplyDeleteThis comment betrays the answer. Most western cultures are a bit more prudish about women having sex than men, a blatant and paradoxical double standard that nevertheless holds true. After immersing the reader in a female perspective, sexually promiscuous activity will more often strike the reader as 'wrong' than the more typical male perspective. Honestly, fascination with attraction, seduction, and sex at a relatively young age contributes more to your Sakura's muliebrity than it detracts. Girls mature faster and are assumed to have a greater proclivity towards romance, however unbecoming explicit activities might be in a conservative western society.
It's really nothing more than hypocrisy. You've got nothin' on an honest-to-god romance novel, after all. For what it's worth, I find the role sex plays in your story to be somewhat subdued given the apparent age of the characters (which seem to be written as older teenagers). It is, perhaps, quite too much if you were to stick to the literal age of 12 for most of the cast, but the protagonist is a thirty-year-old woman often wearing a seventeen-year-old body. There is nothing about that which does not scream 'sexual peak' in every metric.
For me it really has nothing to do with that, it's just in the Chuunin exams, they were 12... and this resets before they stop being 12. So what growing up do they really do? They get more memories yes, but maturity is a lot of mental development that takes place during the teens where your mind literally is still changing.
ReplyDeleteMostly though- not a lolicon :) Girls gotta be well through the teens before I want to hear about her getting laid.
As for the relationship differences in Time Braid vs. Indomitable in the latter they are actually forming relationships, it's not really casual sex, it has consequences. In the former, pretty much the opposite, but seeing how you'll only rarely see someone else that actually matters on the outside, not too surpising.
Personally wonder if Ino can make the jumps with someone if she's in their head at the moment of switch. ah well food for though.
I'm ok with the amount of sex in this story. ;p
ReplyDeleteThe amount of sex doesn't bother me. And the characters are mentally much older than I am (a few of Sakura's individual loops took decades) and physically adults, so that doesn't squick me.
ReplyDeleteThe part that did bother me was in chapter 16, when Sakura was trying to have a serious conversation about the future with Naruto, and he overwhelmed her with sexyness. He really should have finished the conversation before turning up the charm; even though I know Naruto had good intentions, his behavior and supernatural attractiveness still has too much resemblance to H-jutsu or mind control.
personally, i am just glad, like a girl, that its not a super boy getting all the sex
ReplyDelete(though, at the end you made a threesome, about to girls that love each other, but love more to sex up naruto....this seems to bother me beyond anything...i used to love this sort of sakura centric fic, and i could actually dig the narusaku and the naruhina and even a sasusaku, but the whole: naruto is waay to special and girls should be happy to be able to share him...pffffttttttttt)
Honestly? I can't see what the complainers are talking about. None of the sex is actually described in detail, unless you count when Naruto was in Sakura's mindscape. Everything sexual in the story is plot-relevant in one way or another, and honestly? I agree that there would be less complainers if Naruto was the one getting laid all the time. You do great work, have you considered becoming a professional writer?
ReplyDeleteWe probably have a double standard at work
ReplyDeleteIt's really nothing more than hypocrisy
i think it is because it is sakura, and not awesome macho man
Maybe, maybe not. Personally, I thought that the amount was okay.
That said, this self pitying attitude is really not an attractive quality. Nor does it constitute a rational argument, at most another cliche answer to toss around. Maybe they are prejudiced against women, maybe they are homophobic, maybe they are simply prudish, maybe not, it's not as if we can get inside their head without them telling us their opinion. If we were to apply the same superficial outlook and scream 'discrimination' at every turn, what would one think of the one-guy-with-two-girls-harem-pairing? Because, you know, on paper... It's really just another way to avoid having a discussion by making unprovable claims out of the blue, trying to bullshit a way out of an argument without being forced to actually address the claim in question.
Remember, you might talk about what you think of the story, but the dismissal tone and claiming to know what goes on in another people's head is just another form of prejudice -there is no way you, as a fellow mammal, can claim to know how another person came to a certain conclusion without him giving you some hint, and in the other answer we have seen alternative reasons... maybe some people think that casual sex takes away from the development of a relationship, maybe they don't like it if it's outside a main pairing, maybe they don't deal well with 'promiscuity' in general, be the person involved male or female, who knows... well you and me certainly do not-, if we want to look at it that way.
It's another thing if we actually see someone make an argument stating that they don't like it because it's Sakura, etc., or if their argument implies that similar considerations went through their head. In that case one might bring up the double standard, dismiss the argument and drop the discussion.
I think it doesn't matter. I had no problem with the amount of sex, and my only wished it was in more detail. (Although that was mainly because I had just left a site where the sex was more acceptable in great detail, if I had been reading lightly detailed fics right before reading this I wouldn't have cared.)
ReplyDeletePersonally, I'm glad to have found someone who can actually make a multi-sided relationship work in a fic without it being implausible. Someone mentioned being turned off about both girls loving Naruto more than each other, but that's stupid. In any relationship someone is more in love than the other, someone gives up more than the other. Equal relationships are a nice thought, but they rarely actually happen. We try, but there is usually someone who sacrifices more to make the relationship work than their partner. Hinata would obviously be that person in a Naruto/Hinata relationship, which is why I don't usually like Naru/Hina fics. She'd just let him walk all over her without him even realizing. The reason I prefer Naru/Saku fics is because Sakura will actually stand up to Naruto if he's being an idiot and not just go along with whatever he says. Hinata is a sub, and Naruto needs someone who can make him see sense when he's being stupid. But I'm getting off my actual point here.
The real point is, it doesn't matter what people think about your writing. You have thousands of reviews, and a huge crap-ton of people who think your story is awesome. There are always going to be those who want more sex, less sex, not to mention other things in the fic to be the way they want. You can never make everyone happy. If you could, we wouldn't have fanfiction in the first place. So just write what you feel you should, and those who like it will read it, those who don't will not.
[Necro]
ReplyDeleteSurprisingly, there are still lots of prudes on the internet, reading ur M-rated fictions.
I think a common complaint is a lack of clear content warning - people have suggested Sakura/Multi for the pairing, even though I think yours is fine, since there's the sex/romance distinction. The trigger warning for all the mindrape is a little less debatable, but considering most things pass by word of mouth these days, it's not that likely to cause major distress, and it makes the surprise better, for sure.
I read fics with any rating, up to and including straight smut and porn, so I really didn't see the sex as a problem. Increased freedom and loosening morals are a staple of the Time Loop genre, so anyone who didn't see it coming is a little genre-blind, and I really can't feel too bad for them.
I've seen people upset by any of the following in the fic:
- Promiscuity
- Polyamory
- Age-squick
- BDSM (The (mostly?) benevolent kind)
- Taking advantage of a minor(?) (And that's legal talk, in any case, so who really knows on that score, unless Kishimoto has said something about it...)
As a time-loop veteran and morally-liberal individual, I didn't really see the problems.
I think some people got annoyed by the occurrence of statistically too-many bi and lesbian characters, but eh, fuck'em, Naruto-baseline is not exactly normal-central anyhow.
Other people got upset by Naruto hero-worship, but that is just too dumb for words, and is probably influenced overly-much by personal pairing favoritism. For Hinata, it made more than enough sense, and I thought there was plenty of development as to exactly why she fell for him, even ignoring her baseline Tsundere nature.
It was great, ShaperV. It could have also been great without the sex, but don't let anyone tell you that makes it worse.