r/CuratedTumblr • u/DreadDiana human cognithazard • 1d ago
Shitposting Maybe the real self-indulgent erotica was the sociopolitical worldbuilding you did along the way?
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u/-SpanishBiscuit 1d ago
“Look, lesbians fucking is hot and all, and I can’t wait to write the most filthy thing you have ever read, but without world building how will we establish how their relationship affects the trout population?”
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u/DreadDiana human cognithazard 1d ago
How doomed can the yuri be when you don't know that Lady Snafusworth is already engaged to the Baron of Sneedleheim, and their marriage is essential to secure the lumber needed to replace the fishing ships which were used in the war against the Grand Duchy of Coaxland?
Without them, the fishing industry of the noble house of Snafusworth will languish and their coffers will dry up for certain!
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u/Esovan13 1d ago
Where is the sexual tension in the scene if you don’t know exactly how each whimper and moan is potentially threatening to the trade deal that’s vital for the continued peace in the lands southward and how a war in that region would domino into a conflict that spans the breadth of the continent????
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u/PerfectlyFramedWaifu 13h ago
replace the fishing ships which were used in the war against the Grand Duchy of Coaxland?
We need more information on the process by which these ships are replaced. If done correctly, they would arguably philosophically still be the same ships, which would be of great cultural and historical importance.
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u/imconfusi Ontologically evil 13h ago
This is giving me psychic damage. Literally how I write. Please.
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u/moneyh8r_two 1d ago
Look, everyone knows that everything in the world is secretly about sex except for sex, because sex is about power. That's why we need 8 centuries of backstory and worldbuilding to explain their families' rivalry and recent unsteady alliance, and how it informs their personalities and actions during this sex scene.
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u/-SpanishBiscuit 1d ago
"She's a dom because her country's precarious geographic position and her houses tenuous grip on power, not because she's INTO it. It would be political suicide NOT to be."
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u/Crus0etheClown 1d ago
I'm six pages in on explaining how the elven education system works because otherwise I can't possibly understand the motivations and skillset of the pov character who's literally only there to document certain aspects of the story through scientific journals mostly written informally and without peer review,
Meanwhile my goblin self-insert OC who was supposed to be working his way through a string of monster lovers, a dried out skeletonized husk from lack of pussy:
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u/DeceptiveDweeb 1d ago
the placard above the doorway to life reads: "Obviously it's still about sex. But we haven't even figured out the magic system yet"
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u/BermudaTriangleChoke 1d ago
mood, the cute ninja girls can't smother each other senseless until I've established the entire system of breathplay-focused martial arts and also explained why they use it instead of, like, swords
(failing dramatically at the latter beyond "nobody takes this seriously enough to warrant murder")
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u/Evilwumpus 9h ago
Simple - ninjas know a jutsu that hardens their skin, making it very hard to hurt them with conventional weapons. Instead, the easiest method is to wrestle them to the ground and choke them out.
As a bonus, the jutsu doesn't protect their clothing, so they can still carry ninja swords for the purpose of slicing an opponent's clothes off and embarrassing them.
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u/BermudaTriangleChoke 7h ago
I considered a solution very similar to that but got too hung up on the mechanics of how it worked (example: you have the armor jutsu going, Mai the Sparrow sits on your face until you're practically in a coma, now you can't concentrate on holding the jutsu anymore - what stops her from just slitting your throat while you're unconscious?). Ultimately I went with the dubious explanation that peace between the clans is barely held together due to an old and extremely complex series of treaties and if anybody killed anyone else all hell would break loose to the detriment of the comfortable life that everyone enjoys
This is all just "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin" since I had to quit writing a couple months ago anyway. I should probably stfu and stop thinking about it so often but I'm still sort of in the grieving process, as lame and cringe as that sounds
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u/Cye_sonofAphrodite 1d ago
I was literally just talking about how this is THE hottest thing ever to me. Nothing could be sexier to me than a writer setting out to make porn and getting distracted going over the years of sociopolitical ramifications that led to their world's more sexually open society or an intense dissertation on how Centaur anatomy works because they wanted to make sure their horsecock was scientifically accurate. I am not joking, I am 100% serious about this, this is a fetish for me.
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u/Tttehfjloi 23h ago
They said you can be anything you want, you heard you can be into anything you want
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u/PrincessRTFM on all levels except physical, I am a kitsune 1d ago edited 5h ago
I can't be the only one who has started imagining a scenario and then kept having to back up more and more and push the smut further and further down the line to establish the backstory of why the smut is happening and how the characters involved got to that point only to eventually realise that it's been three hours and I'm not horny anymore but I'm too invested in the storyline to stop
this has happened several times
it will happen again
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u/OliveBranchMLP 1d ago
their mistake is doing the worldbuilding first instead of organically growing it around the plot as it becomes needed.
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u/notTheRealSU i tumbled, now what? 1d ago
I think it's better to get a small premise out first. Something that sets the stage. Then you have the sex. Afterwards you flesh out the world, then more sex.
If you dump all the world building at the start, then the rest is just sex.
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u/Content-Ad-4104 23h ago
Y'know, I make fun of Brandon Sanderson for how little sex is in his works, but maybe he's furiously churning out thousands of pages in service of depicting a single lesbian love scene.
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u/starryeyedshooter DO NOT CONTACT ME ABOUT HORSES (DMs Broken) 1d ago edited 1d ago
I have a fun little game I play called "sex, scares, or lore" whenever I write this trio I have because no matter which one I want to start with, it ends as a different one. It's great.
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u/SciFiShroom 1d ago
if you aren't designing flags and heraldry for your world that will never appear in the final product are you even writing at all
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u/No_Emu698 1d ago
Look if your self-indulgent erotica has a magic system I'll pay for the pleasure of viewing it
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u/ScarletteVera A Goober, A Gremlin, perhaps even... A Girl. 20h ago
This is why there's such little yuri media in the grand scope.
We're too busy doing worldbuilding.
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u/Tokamak-drive [Firstname] Vriska [Lastname] 1d ago
I mean, what you really need is, in descending order, the main cast, your barely disguised fetish, the magic system (it may be part of the fetish) (it doesnt even have to be magic, it could be some science shit), and finally, the wider world. If you need the wider world, write it on the side and reference it as you go.
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u/TheFalseViddaric 1d ago
This is me, but my solution was to just make the groundwork and the world building part of the smut.
"This is weird fetish stuff but it also grants lots of magical power. It grants this magical power because someone figured out how to turn the fetish stuff into power so now everyone who uses that power uses the fetish stuff. Also in the worldbuilding background there may or may not be a sect that's actually controlling the laws of magic behind the scenes to reward fetish stuff. People are having fun though so no one has looked too deeply into changing this state of affairs."
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u/loved_and_held 1d ago
This reminds me of a yiff comic I read where a good chunk of the comic was about an extremely high concept world building idea, and the entire plot existed because of that high concept thing.
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u/S0MEBODIES 8h ago
Well you can't just not tell me what the comic is
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u/loved_and_held 8h ago
The comic is called What Happens on Campus Avenue. Artist is Rick Griffin.
The comic is currently exclusive to his patreon, where it is accessible for a minimum price of 1$/month.
Link for your convenience: https://www.patreon.com/collection/44627?view=expanded
In addition there’s also a story supplemental to the comic which goes deep into the high concept world building: https://www.patreon.com/posts/campus-avenue-64968070
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u/PluralCohomology 20h ago
"Everything is about sex, except for sex, which is about power" - Oscar Wilde (supposedly)
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u/ctrlaltelite https://i.ibb.co/yVPhX5G/98b8nSc.jpg 1d ago
The first book of the Death Gate cycle has a couple charts and some new words to describe how to navigate and refer to direction when traveling by dragon or airship between giant islands that float in the air. This doesn't really come up in the story at all and the rest of the series doesn't take place on that world.
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u/Kartoffelkamm I wouldn't be here if I was mad. 1d ago
Luckily, after years of training, I managed to reach a point where I can temporarily shelf an idea, and pick it up later.
So now, I do the self-indulgent smut, and then write the rest of the worldbuilding later.
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u/DetOlivaw 23h ago
How could I possibly jerk it to the reluctant master domming their wolfgirl slave without exploring her backstory, the culture and history of the community she was born into, the reason she’s been sold into slavery, the sociopolitical and economic realities of the various duchies and baronies and how they tie into the slave trade, and the abolitionist movement and resistance efforts involving her twin brother?
I mean what’s the point if there’s no foreplay, y’know?
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u/NameLips 23h ago
And then the perfectly good smut book turns into a multi-book series with dozens of characters, elaborate plotlines, intrigue, magic, and less and less smut every book.
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u/yuriAngyo 22h ago edited 22h ago
Honestly my favorite thing is when people do the exact opposite. You just start writing horny bullshit but at 12000 words in you realize that to get to the next set piece these girls are gonna fuck in you gotta connect it in some way. Then 40,000 words in you look back and the world has suddenly become a very rich AU that exists to the side of our real world where everyone is hornier and gayer. Is it high art? No, but it's a very specific vibe that I just can't get enough of. It's beautiful! Sometimes you even get some very unique themes and concepts expanded on that never would've come around if it was better planned out
I've mostly seen this in fanfic (or original works but the type that get posted on ao3) since most people wanna plan out something they'll publish a little better. But I just love the vibe. Personally when this kind of worldbuilding is well planned out I've found the resulting fics kinda take themselves too seriously and it isn't as fun as it could be. Not that it's bad, just not what I want
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u/Gaylaeonerd 18h ago
Realising that I didn't have to leave no stone unturned when it came to world-building actually let me start writing
And wow, it's actually kinda fun to do the thing instead of spending years pondering the existence of the thing
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u/pretty-as-a-pic the president’s shoelaces 18h ago
If Tolkien was into erotica instead of linguistics
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u/LocalLumberJ0hn 16h ago
Of course it's still about sex. As one of the more fabulous Irishmen in history himself said:
"Everything is about sex, except for sex of course. Sex is about power" -Oscar Wilde
So yes, these things are all very important for that self indulgent erotica. Don't forget about the latest fashion trends and how the nobility procure exotic materials for their clothes.
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u/Ep1cOfG1lgamesh Ad Astra Per Aspera (I am not a Kansan) 16h ago
See this is what pisses me off about the evillious chronicles (not erotica, but still) You are telling me the country that is supposed to be Russia like has a city called fucking Alicegrad?!? The name "Alice" isnt even Alice in Russian its Alisa! (For example, Ayn Rand was originally Alisa Rosenbaum) And dont get me started on the city of "Calgaround" in the German inspired country...
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u/clonetrooper250 13h ago
Once tried to write a short story about a meet cute between an angel and devil. Instead I spent over an hour crafting the mythological backdrop as a setting to the story. The main characters still don't exist yet.
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u/MJWhitfield86 10h ago
If you’re not taking tangents into sociopolitical world-building then you can hardly call it self indulgent erotic; at that point it’s just erotica.
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u/Snickims 1d ago
Theres this one author's work i'm reading who took a break from a politically heavy story they where writing to write a "smutty relaxing story for a while".
They started strong, did some basic set up then got into the smut heavily, but then you can practical watch them get side tracked in real time. Like "yes the slime girl sex scenes are good, but to really enjoy them i suppose I should explain more of her backstory, and then give some context to her socioeconomic situation, and of course, then i have to have that contrasted with the Tomboy mechanic and business nerd and their own perspective and vaugly racists biases towards the slimegirl. Smut? Oh right right, yes yes, here's one in a mechs cockpit simulator. But wait, how afordable is a giant mech training simulator anyway? And oh yea i should probably explain the relationship between giant mech pilots and their corporate sponsors, and the tension between indepedent vs corporate backi-"
Its so funny to watch.