Ah reading, the hobby that teachers promised would make my little noodle into a refined Galaxy Brain if I read The Great Gatsby two times over. I got some bad news, reading certainly can broaden your perspective and introduce you to new ideas but unless I got short-changed somehow it, in fact, does not automatically make you a genius. Dammit, all that time reading The Hardy Boys was wasted… Anyway, harking back on the whole broadening perspective thing, one day years ago I sat down and thought “yo instead of Fahrenheit 451, what if I read Fahrenheit 451 Bitches In Heat” and began looking for porn to read. Nothing like some classic smut fanfiction. Since then I still occasionally partake in some written porn but it’s a very rare occasion when I’m in the mood. Today I hope to discuss some advantages and disadvantages of the medium and see where you guys stand on the concept.
Okay let’s get into some pros right out of the gate: if you’re a fast reader it makes for a great quick fap. Second, the barrier to entry for writing fanfiction is $0 so a ton of people do it. You can find some porn of almost any prominent series AND it can be of any scenario that the writer is willing to cover. With doujinshi and hentai, the artist has to be skilled enough to draw/animate whatever scene they imagine whereas in writing you can simply throw the words onto the paper. “They fucked for dear life while holding onto the railing” took me 5 seconds to type while trying to draw two people fucking for dear life while holding onto a railing would be a much more arduous task. So you have a lot of people covering a lot of different series, and they can portray whatever sexy scenario they dream of. Variety is a nice spice and may lead you to find those rare kinks. Another important bonus is reading smut is a lot harder to detect than watching hentai or reading a doujin. Since it’s merely words on a page, even if someone barged into your room/space or tried to look over your shoulder to see what you were looking at on your screen, it’s hard to know unless they’re close enough to read the words and garnish an idea. That makes it a nice option when you need to indulge in a risky quick one. Lastly, the text format takes barely any space compared to videos and images so you could store TONS of it relatively cheaply. Slap it into a file on your computer called “Theoretical Physics For Dummies” and put it in the middle of two huge paragraphs about physics and you’re good to go. Nobody will ever be shifting through that shit.
See what I mean? Practically undetectable.
It’s not all sunshine and rainbows in the text world though. For starters you’re back to the fucking basics. No music, no voice acting, no images, no art, no nothing. If you’re a visual and/or auditory porn consumer, then reading porn is probably off the table already as it offers nothing in those departments. This is easily the biggest drawback and the reason why I rarely partake in a literature fap. Sure in a pinch I don’t mind joining the Reading Rainbow, but most of the time there’s no reason to subject myself to losing out on the visuals and audio that other types of porn offer. Another big problem though is that when there’s no barrier to entry, anybody can hop in that shit. A lot of smut is poorly written, due either to frequent spelling mistakes or boring sentences like “they fucked really hard, like really hard, it was a hard fuck for sure and it was hot”. As a young lad I read my fair share of Twilight fanfiction and 95% of it was a waste of time for those two exact reasons. No doubt a newcomer to the medium would have to spend some time weeding through the garbage to isolate smut they A) were interested in and B) was actually written well enough to be engaging.
To illustrate my point, I will instead put text here rather than a typical image. Please imagine I put a really funny meme about Kakashi reading lewd content while conducting his classes. Next, proceed to laugh out loud, but softly, cause it wasn't that funny. Thank you, now it's time to scroll past this "image" and continue reading the text. Man I miss visuals already.
As it stands I won’t turn away from a dirty story about characters or a situation that interests me but I’m damn well not searching it out like I do for doujinshi and hentai. If it comes my way I’ll probably read it, but if not that’s fine too. I’m too addicted to the auditory and visual blessings of modern technology nowadays. Have you guys tried reading smut? Have an advantage or disadvantage I didn’t mention? Ride the Reading Rainbow down to the comments below!
