every now and then a rash of posts will come across my dash or my bsky feed about how smut in fic needs literary value, there must be themes present, it's inherently a character exploration and thus needs to create meaning, 'the fingers in his mouth have symbolic significance' etc etc.
and while i'm aware that some of these are jokes, some of them very much are not. i've been in discussions where it seemed like the writers present had to somehow apologize for the smut they were working on by first disclaiming about the meaning/themes/character significance relevant. or where people sat and patted each other on the back about how they wrote 'good' smut specifically because theirs had literary value while other pwp did not.
it's a weird fandom double standard that artists can draw the characters as simply two nude people committing a sex act, but writers need to postulate and create 'value' in smut somehow. simply having the people involved be in character is not enough- there must be a Point™ to it all beyond the pornographic aspect.
(and then, fairly often, when people comment they comment around the smut- only the literary aspects really get acknowledged, as though we can't admit why we really clicked on in the first place)
as someone who almost exclusively creates explicit works it leaves me in a bind sometimes- i want to create about a specific act, but i worry that i must stress about the theme and the reasoning and the meaning about it. if the fingers in his mouth aren't significant and hold deep meaning, is that okay? will anyone still interact with and enjoy the work if those fingers are 'just because'? is it not enough that i wanted to mash my fictional barbies together because it would be hot, and not because i needed to make a deep statement on the character's self image?
i think if the entire point is just to titillate there's value in that. there is value in creating something about pleasure, with the intention of the audience feeling pleasure about it. i think it's okay not to be sorry about that, and it worries me that in this current climate of prudishness i might be an odd one out.
so i don't know what the point of all of this is, really, except to maybe reassure someone else who's seen those posts and worried about their own work. we need people putting those fingers in his mouth just because just as much (if not more, recently, in this sex negative regression state) as we need the deep meaning smut.
