I’ve talked in previous blog posts before about my writing’s relationship with reality and non-reality. To abridge what I’ve previously said, I enjoy making realistic situations so that dialogue and emotions carry actual weight and can possibly have relatability, but I also like flirting with improbable situations, such as the genius intellect of Nicole or the unlikeliness of Molly’s sexsomnia.

Erotica itself seems to have a bit of a fascination with non-reality. D or DD cups being the norm, 7-9 inch penises left and right, 14-year-olds being sex aficionados despite it being their first time, and that’s before we get into certain stories having every character be okay with gross and illegal subject matter like incest and bestiality. Even beyond tropes, we love non-reality in porn. We love mind control, we love body modification and genie powers, we like playing God, and we like having sex with fantasy beings. But we also like another kind of non-reality, a type where we like to use erotica as escapism and pretend the world works another way than it does.

This can manifest itself in both obvious ways and non-obvious ways. Those among us who have read rape fetish stories (or perhaps ones that are more ‘traditional’ than GBM) probably remember reading a story where a guy has his way with a girl and she hates it at the beginning but by the end is screaming for more. This is as much a fantasy as are mind control and having sex with Elves – sure, it’s not an impossibility for this scenario to happen, but that’s not how human beings react to being raped. Still, we like to believe these situations can be true. Rape fetish stories are about power, but the girl enjoying it by the end still gives her enjoyment and pleasure. Best of both worlds, right? It helps us ignore the ugly reality of rape and that if such a thing happened in the real world, odds are the victim was unstable the whole time, still hated it by the end, and felt powerless and traumatized for the next portion of her life.

Sorry, does that make you uncomfortable? Arguably, it should, especially if you have ever read a rape fetish story where the girl enjoyed it by the end. It’s a fantasy. It’s an unrealistic depiction of non-consensual sex. And yet, so many people emailed me after chapter 8 of The Good, the Bad and the Molly either confused that Molly wasn’t enjoying it or straight-up getting mad at me that she felt traumatized by it. They weren’t mad at me when I wrote Aaron actually having sex with her, but they were mad when I wrote her reacting negatively to learning she had sex without her consent. Some emailers still are vouching for a happy ending, emailing asking how Molly is going to forgive him or asking if Aaron is going to have sex with her in his sleep again. As I said recently, if this were the real world, chapter 8 should have been the final chapter. We’re living outside of reality, so this story has more to it, and I myself am going to be guilty when it comes to bending the rules of how humans should emotionally react to things. I hope it makes a better story, but that’s up to you to decide.

In the meantime, it’s worth thinking about that my stories are extremes. As Phil said in Chapter 20 of BMS, what Adam experienced isn’t what high schoolers should, and in many cases do, experience. It’s extreme. The scenarios in all of my stories are extreme. Arguably the most tame story I ever wrote involves a gangbang on a bus. What does that say about me? I don’t want to think about that too hard, I’ll just go insane. I’ll talk to you all next week.