(An old post from my deviantART, but worth mentioning, here, I think.)

It is no secret that my personal tastes (when it comes to writing, though drawing, too) lean toward the raunchy side. Anyone who has read my more recent work should realise that. And I’ve talked about this before (pardon me for beating the dead horse), but it comes up again and again, like…well, like a zombie version of aforementioned dead horse. And beating it several times in the head just won’t make the darn thing stay down.

My stories deal very intimately with adult relationships, and a large part of adult relationships has to do with sex. That is not to say that two people cannot have a loving, nurturing, give-and-take relationship that has very little or even nothing at all to do with sex – they can! – but that’s not how most of my characters approach their affairs. My main protagonists nearly always tend to be very sexual, very physical beings, who enjoy and even sometimes rely on sex to communicate to their partner what they can’t say in words. This is how I’ve often viewed my own adult relationships. We talk with our bodies in very simple ways – nodding, shrugging, smiling, hugging – but we also talk with them in equally complex ways: kissing, fondling, and – yes! – even screwing.

It was during a recent writing sojourn into another fandom (Doctor Who, for those interested, though it’s not particularly relevant to my point) that I realised that all of my (adult) characters express their affection physically and sexually. But I also realised that the issues that come with sex between one set of characters can be very different from the issues that come between others. And I enjoy examining that.

Is the sex that I write pandering? I don’t think so. But I’m the author, so I would say that.

Rather, I’ve found that I don’t enjoy writing sex so much for the shock value, as I do to explore what’s sometimes going on beneath the surface of two bodies slipping and seething over each other. (1 More Chance!, for example, examined these issues in spades, and nearly every sexual interaction that the main protagonists had was fraught with subtext and subconscious agendas and deeper meaning for the individuals involved, than just “and then they fuck.” Fearless approaches the subject of sex in a slightly different, though no less impactful, way, in that it’s somewhat central to the main external conflict.) So, I’ve come up with a word that I think sums up my position – and what I hope to convey with my raunchier stories – and that is:

smuff.

“Smuff” is a mix of smut and fluff. The smut part is obvious (I did say I get pretty saucy with my work)…but there is also an inarguable amount of fluff in what I write, too. The characters are never raping each other (because rape is not about sex, it’s about power…and I don’t think it’s a healthy part of any loving, nurturing relationship). They might get enthusiastic about sex, but there’s also a layer of tenderness that tends to crop up in nearly every sexual interaction through which I put them. That’s no mistake. I might be a filthy-minded individual…but I’m also an incurable romantic.

So, you’ll likely be seeing the “smuff” categorization popping up with some frequency for my posts. If you don’t mind, I appreciate the support to write what I please.

And if you do mind it, you can just click away quickly. I’ll never know.