Deadman

Yeah, I wasn’t necessarily saying you shouldn’t. Just putting forward my view of the issue. For me, I write a lot in the Buffy fandom. It wouldn’t make sense to have the main character be a male character.

I wasn’t necessarily thinking of the gender bending as a plot point where a character was one gender and become another as part of the story. Mainly introducing a character from canon as a different gender.

Some people want to do the thought experiment, the “what if” the original author penned the character differently.  We all do this to some degree, there’s an innate amount that’s subconscious as we write a fanfiction.  It’s most definitely out-of-canon, however, I certainly won’t berate anybody for doing it.  Heck, even in canon, might be a genderless name that can go either direction (Zabini Blaise comes to mind from the potter universe).  And a “gender bender” could add in some serious considerations…like what if the Dursleys abused Harry bad enough (some accident) that they forcibly “transitioned” Harry to hide it?  Or, maybe after Cedric Diggory’s death (or Sirius’), Harry shows up to Hogwarts demanding to use the girls bathroom while wearing dresses (to cope)?

I would say so personally. I mean, most characters are the gender they are for a reason. Particularly if the character has appeared on screen, like most of mine have.

So I prefer to create an OC rather than gender bend a character. Or I just shift the sexuality of the character. More than a few of the female characters I write about have intense relationships with other women. Though most of them aren’t explicitly lesbians. So occasionally I just give them a broader sexuality, usually bisexual.

I would say so personally. I mean, most characters are the gender they are for a reason. Particularly if the character has appeared on screen, like most of mine have.

So I prefer to create an OC rather than gender bend a character. Or I just shift the sexuality of the character. More than a few of the female characters I write about have intense relationships with other women. Though most of them aren’t explicitly lesbians. So occasionally I just give them a broader sexuality, usually bisexual.

As an obsessive perfectionist, I find that I'm constantly over thinking things and constantly marring my work, by focusing on things that don't need the extra attention.
In a few days, I'm sure I'll have the free time to finish and post a new story in the archive.
I looked at the story codes and started thinking, (obsessing needlessly), about two tags in particular. GB - the gender bender tag, and OC - the original character tag.
This really made me wonder, wouldn't a gender bender character, also count as an original character?
I'm interested in hearing anyone's thoughts on what makes an 'original character', in the face of such a change. How much can that character change, before that character is considered, a different character?

My potter fanfic is on AO3, but similar debate.  Voldemort...dies in canon, pretty typical for villains, so I didn’t worry about it there (Ditto for Dumbledore).  However, my main characters do seemingly die for an extended period of time, and that’s what prompted me to simply add in MCD and be done with it.  (And now that I’ve got Harry jumping into alternate realities where those alternates do die, it’s kinda warranted.)  I’d rather err on the side of tagging things, than not.

Suppose another way to view it… list the tag, taunt that characters are about to die (multiple times), leave the reader guessing, and proceed to kill absolutely nobody.  😝

I have a related question: How about a character finding out that they are already dead and then seeing their own death in flashback (a la The Sixth Sense)?
If the character continues to exist in the same form as they have throughout the story, then maybe the MCD tag isn't needed, because that character isn't "lost" to the reader. On the other hand, if "seeing" the character die is the important thing, then the tag ought to be used.

If the character didn’t die, then you don’t need the tag. 

Hi, @BronxWench and all.
Third Time’s a Soul Bond is a “fix-it,” time-travel, etc.  Delores Umbridge “Darwins out” in Chapter 1.  However,
The Yankee’s Nephew and the Philosopher’s Stone, which might get a title change if I run the entire “HP Hogwarts Experience” into the one story, is actually a crossover between my original story Riding the Lincoln Way, plus every JKR and licensee story that takes place between 1975-2021.  I’ve already “gotten rid of” ten major Lincoln Way characters, plus Peter Pettegrew, who is a key minor character in Hogwarts Mystery, above and beyond what he won’t be around to do when Harry finally makes it to school.  I’m also only up to Chapter 11 on Yankee’s Nephew, and Harry isn’t quite three years old.  I did manage to ‘save’ three Lincoln Way characters who in Lincoln Way died off-screen.
Third Time has the MiCD tag.  I forgot to (have added by you when you fixed it last time) either MiCD or MCD to Yankee’s Nephew. 
Thanks in advance for your thoughts, and assistance.

There are two options. If the character is central to the story, even if they die offstage, so to speak, I‘d recommend the Major Character Death (MCD) tag. If the character is not central to the story, you could use the Minor Character Death (MiCD) tag, to alert readers to the death of a character without having them pull their hair out over losing one of the stars of the canon.

Hi, Deadman and all.
That is a brilliant question, and I’m sure that you aren’t the only one who needs to know.  While I haven’t “killed off” any of the Golden Trio in any of my HP crossovers, I have killed off a villain or few ‘early’ in both of the big ones.  And, I might even un-kill a ghost or few before I’m done, too.
@BronxWench? 
Thanks in advance.

Just curious about the major character death tag.

I have a story in which a character death happens in between two chapters. It’s mentioned but it’s not necessarily part of the story. The character does appear in a chapter of the story. Basically, between the two chapters is about a year of canon in which the character died.

Should I be putting the tag on my story?

I’ve used my potter fanfic as an example because it’s always intended to have a low/high road type of feeling, a plot-focused and more sex-infused versions, but with FF.net’s shenanigans regarding explicit material, and a review, I had shifted to plot-focused only.  After my disastrous edit (the one that produced a 107kword CHAPTER), I had dabbled with “smutting it back up”, using styles/colors in libreoffice.  And TBH, that felt tacky, because it was, as the sexual bit is an afterthought, not part of the process.
When I returned to revise and realized it needed to be rewritten, I of course, flexed my programmer hat, created my little utility.  As I rewrite, I can consider the implications of both the sexual and plot sides of the story, together; so in a discussion with Dumbledore over a new breed of bats, it can be an ordinary conversation (well, ordinary for the story) … Harry’s stark naked in the explicit, so comment on his todger, whereas he’s implicitly dressed in the cleaner version.
Explicit’s become more than smut, it also allows for me to go deeper.  So, Harry’s scar, after Voldemort learned of its existence, Harry had trouble keeping Voldemort out… he learned he had the strongest power to repel Voldemort by having gay sex.  After a while, Harry learns to keep it in balance with memories of it, however, in a scene I wrote yesterday, I had Voldemort go stronger than ever; not sure who was more surprised by that scene, myself or Fred Weasley.   I can explore Ash’s (OC) little nudist group, one that arose because of Ash’s insecurities and his steadfast belief in Harry’s innocence.  I can explore Ginny’s fangirl lust for Harry, to the point of schemes to snag him (Ron’s accidentally bitten that bullet more than once for Harry).
I do worry about the cleaner becoming a second class story to the explicit one, given the efforts I put in.  Though I find it easier and less tacky, overall to clean up an explicit scene, versus smutting up a clean scene.

Hi, @Deadman, @Desiderius Price, and all.
I would have to agree with Desiderius more, though I also see your point.  We’ve been talking more about the explicitness of sex, sexuality, and sexual tension versus whether to have any “s, s, and st” at all.
There are some stories where “s, s, and st” just don’t belong.  There are others where you can’t possibly avoid at least some of that.  But, how explicit do you want or feel the need to get?
In “Star Wars Episode Two,” the screen writers don’t show what Annikin Skywalker does to the Tuskan Raiders.  Instead, they have a deeply traumatized Annikin relate what he did to them to Padme, in the very scene after they show him cut his way out of the tent where he held his mother while she died.  In that case, the violence was made even more real by not being directly shown to the viewer.
In the case of your (potential if not already written) stories, you don’t need to remove, and probably should keep the “lead-up” to the sex scenes, and even include the sex participant’s internal thoughts about their circumstances, however explicitly you describe their assignations.  This would, if you do it right, increase both the eroticism and drama of each scene, whether you got to near-clinical explicitness about ‘how each of her pubic hairs curled differently when anointed with the dew of their passion,’ or how he was packing ‘double-Peroni-Bologna that anointed her between her belly button and sternum before he planted it vigorously in...’ or simply faded to black while they kissed passionately even while unfastening each other’s belts and jeans.
Explicit sex without any explanation or leading tension is not just pornography, it’s typically mediocre pornography at best, even in print.  So, Elliot and Karen started randomly and explicitly copulating on the courthouse steps.  Okay, why did they start doing that where and when they did?  If you try to answer that question, then you’ve bridged the gap between the ‘wank-o-thon’ and an actual story.  If you do it well, people will want to read it.  Or, if you’re only going for the ‘wank-o-thon’ readers, leave the ‘excess’ prose in the bit bucket of your word processor of choice.
Cheers!

Yes, that was a typo. I intended to say “non-sex” which is how AFF tends to categories things. If you’re writing a more traditional narrative story where the point isn’t necessarily the sex, it goes under “non-sex”.

So my intent there is for it to be that I would have 20-30 pages of non-sex plot before getting to the sex stuff.

Lets reshape the debate, as talking about it as “non-sex” vs “sex” stuff feels a bit wrong.  In my originals, I’m sprinkling the sexual stuff throughout the story; sure, some sections are steamier than others.  In my potter fanfic… the explicit one does the same, sprinkles in the sexual material within the “cleaner” scenes.  In explicit, I’d have two male characters continue their conversation into the lavatory and their dicks hang out; in clean, I’d skip the restroom.  In explicit, I’d be describing some of the dirt and grime to underwear, perhaps a hole or two; in clean, maybe mention the underwear, or try to write it out of the scene.  In more compromising situations, I’d have explicit make them naked; cleaner would keep their underwear in.  Sex… when needed, it’s fade to black for cleaner (unless plot requires it shown, at which point, details are kept as brief/light as possible).
One fun way that shows the differences, I’ve got Ron and Hermione going on a date to London.  In the explicit, its full details.  In the clean, it’s Harry reading/commenting on the citations for lewd/indecent behavior the morning after.

Hi, all.
I hope that it was just a typo, with 20-30 pages of “non story.”  With a “typical” word count of roughly 220 words on a “page,” that would be almost five thousand words of nothing.
@Desiderius Price, when I’m talking “clean vs dirty,” I’m also describing the detail.  in once scene of Yankee’s Nephew, I have two characters play strip poker, start a relatively tame BDSM spanking, and then quit and talk about what ‘she’ wants to do with ‘him’ instead before fading to black.  I also join several couples after the act, wearing “only each other.”  This hasn’t been ‘scandalous’ since the 1950s or so in the United States.  In a “dirty” story, I leave almost nothing to the reader’s imagination.
If I wrote the @GeorgeGlass inspired short story I’m Your Ass, I could easily write it either ‘no-sex,’ or a very explicit M/M M/F Pegging story, especially since Amir has a nightstick.
Cheers! 

I appreciate it for sure.

For details, most of my stuff here involve at least 5-15 pages of story before the sex actually happens in the story.

However, for this story it would probably by 20-30 pages and either will have sex around page 25. Or I could just have 20-30 pages of non story, then chapter 2 will be the sex stuff.
 

I appreciate it for sure.

For details, most of my stuff here involve at least 5-15 pages of story before the sex actually happens in the story.

However, for this story it would probably by 20-30 pages and either will have sex around page 25. Or I could just have 20-30 pages of non story, then chapter 2 will be the sex stuff.
 

I remember playing games with fonts/margins back in school (when you’re given a minimum page count).

Hi, Deadman and all.
Just my “two-cent’s worth,” it would depend on whether or not the story itself interested me, and was well-written.  There are “no-sex” stories here, and unless they’re total trash, they do get readers.  Likewise, even if you start the very first paragraph of Chapter 1 with the “adult-rated” stuff, if a story is poorly written, or just not something I’m interested in, then I won’t read it.
You are the author, and you probably know where the porn belongs in your story.  The reader, in turn, will decide if you’ve got it right.  But, if the story is well-written, and the premise of the story itself is interesting to the reader, then they’ll usually agree with you.
Unlike some fiction sites, this one only allows adults, so there isn’t as much of a likelihood of “scaring the children.”  Posting “clean and dirty” or “dirty and dirtier” versions of a story can be a great idea for all sorts of reasons.  But because we only allow adults here, it doesn’t seem to be done as much because of that.
Agreed.  I have no idea whether someone else’s “page count” story is single-spaced, double-spaced, or something else.  And, what size is their page in the first place?  What size is their font?  Word count (five characters plus one space equals one word) is used commonly enough that you can get some idea of what you’re about to be looking at. 
Good luck with whatever you decide.

I’ve been thinking about a story I’ve been working on and it wasn’t originally intended to involve a lot of sex. However, I’ve since decided to do a second version of the story which has more sex.

But I want to post the first couple chapters together as the first chapter for context. Would you read it if they only had sex in the second chapter?

There’s a version of it where the end of the first chapter could have some sex in it. Not sure if I want to do this though.
 

I combine… usually the other way, since I try to keep it reasonable on length (4-9k), but there’s some deviations.  To the same plot point, clean is 110 chapters, while it’s 263 on the explicit.  (Note, I use kwords because the “page” metric is highly subjective to font choices, layout, etc.) 

It started similarly for me on the potter fanfic rewrite.  I’d have them starkers in the explicit, clothed in the clean, fade to black, etc.  Sometimes it’d be easier to exclude a scene entirely from the clean too, like Ginny sneakily pleasuring herself to a naked Harry in the Burrow in the first chapter (because the story’s Harry/Muggle not Ginny, and Ginny’s a tad jealous with a sense of entitlement).  During Harry’s summer holiday trip across Europe with muggle, Ron, & Hermione; the explicit showed them starkers practically the whole time, after Harry & Ron make sure the girls’ prank backfires to that.
However, the biggest contributor to the differences is a particular first year OC – Ash.  I’d created him with problems as a foil to Harry assisting Oliver Wood in teaching the first year’s flying lesson (Wood replaced Madam Hooch), thus Harry spent the entire lesson focusing on helping Ash, to Wood’s ire, including having Ash ride on the broom with Harry.  In the explicit, I wanted to make it super-awkward for Harry, so I loosened his Quidditch Robes, and when Ash grabbed around Harry to hold the broom handle between Harry’s legs, Ash accidentally holds Harry’s stiffy instead.  After that, Ash simply became fun to write, as a shy character that required genitalia contact in order to trust enough to talk, have confidence, function normally with another person.  This invoked a strong little/big brother type of relationship between Harry & Ash (non-sexual).  Thus, the related antics basically gets Ash banished to the explicit version only… him going permanently nudist in protest of the frame-up job being done against Harry.  Ash’s a “happy little accident”
I did praise my way because it’s resulted in the two versions that feel organic in writing – though I do worry a bit that there may be a sense of “missing something” in the clean, given how much I’ve been writing on the explicit side only (it’s around a 3:1 ratio on words).