Showing posts with label pushing boundaries. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pushing boundaries. Show all posts

Monday, May 21, 2012

Are Watersports the Odd Fetish Out?

If you've looked much at erotica publisher's guidelines, you're very familiar with the common list of squicks: scat, bestiality, necrophilia, watersports, noncon, pedophilia, etc. Some of that list is there for legality (pedophilia, for example), some for reputation (the publisher doesn't want to have a bunch of extreme, seamy stuff clogging up its erotic romance titles), and some is there, perhaps, because it doesn't sell well (maybe I'm projecting my own feelings, but I don't think there's a huge market for scat). By all means, publishers should differentiate their brands and publish what they're comfortable publishing. But I was really struck by a comment on watersports in a guest blog by Slave Nano posted at Erotica for All.

Slave Nano is discussing the editing process for what sounds like a pretty extreme bdsm novel, Adventures in Fetishland (a book with some inspiration from Alice in Wonderland):

Adventures in Fetishland has scenes of corporal punishment, nipple torture, cock and ball torture, electrical play, medical play, use of sounds, strap-on-play, cling film mummification, breath play and an attempted anal rape scene. So, you can see, it isn’t exactly for the faint hearted! But, one of the scenes I had to edit was a comic one involving Kim, the main character, pissing in a tea pot! I just have trouble grappling with how all that other extreme stuff was acceptable but a funny scene at a fetish hatter’s tea party involving pee had to be axed.

I take that point. The aversion to pee sounds silly in the context Slave Nano lists. That definitely got me thinking.

On the other hand, I wonder how salable watersports writing is. Does the publisher have any stats on that? My personal reaction might support the publisher's decision. I like some extreme stuff, and when I read the list of what is in the book, I get a little excited. Maybe a lot excited. Watersports, on the other hand, is icky to me a lot of the time -- I have read some writing about it that I liked, but it's often a negative in a piece of writing I otherwise love.

I think it's worth examining the reasons for avoiding certain subjects, and, every now and then, experimenting with pushing a boundary or two. If you're ready to push a boundary now, Slave Nano's post includes an unexpurgated version of the pee scene he had to cut from the finished book, and it is in fact quite funny.