The Thrill of Defeat, Part Four
As if she could sense my nervousness, Jessie smiled seductively at me and arched
her back a little. "Touch me, James," she whispered.
Guardian’s Song: Oi, enthusiastic consent! (Although Jessie would be more likely to seize him herself and let him *cough* nonverbally know of her enthusiastic consent…) And concern about one’s partner! *sigh* It’s a pity that the writing’s so bland and the fics plunge into sheer lunacy, because some of Cori Falls’ stuff is genuinely better than average, and she… well, as I said earlier, her heart seems to be somewhat in the right place. When reading, I’ll begin to genuinely think well of her…
…And then it drops into extreme shallowness, deranged, narcissistic pettiness, and a twelve-year-old being savaged almost to the point of death. I hope Cori Falls got her head straightened out, because she obviously needed it.
I relaxed when I heard the eagerness in her voice and gently placed a hand on
each of her breasts. Instinctively, I began to caress them and trace patterns on
her soft, creamy skin with the tips of my fingers.
Guardian’s Song: Uh. I admittedly am not a teenage boy, so I’m not an expert on this, but I don’t think one’s first instinct when confronted with bare breasts is to “trace patterns on [them] with the tips of [one’s] fingers”.
Jessie gasped, and her
breathing became shallow and rapid as my fingertips brushed across her nipples.
Sensing that I was giving her pleasure, I kept my hands where they were and
enjoyed the sensation of her nipples hardening in response to my touch.
Guardian’s Song: “Enjoyed the sensation of her nipples hardening in response to my touch”. That has to be the most clinical description of arousal I’ve ever read. Yes, that includes the actual clinical descriptions I’ve read in textbooks and the like - you know (paraphrasing from memory), ‘measuring the increase in penile circumference’, ‘using an MRI scan to observe the changes in brain activity in response to genital stimulation’, and the like. I think it’s because of the sheer padding.
“Jessie gasped, her breathing speeding and becoming shallower as my fingertips brushed across her nipples; I guessed I had to be doing something right, and kept it up, a pulse of pleasure going through me as her nipples hardened beneath my touch.”
…Perhaps “padding” isn’t the right word? That’s actually only one word shorter, and only by sheer coincidence - I wasn’t trying to shorten it. Just… the language is so passive and abstract. “Her breathing became shallow and rapid”… “Sensing that I was giving her pleasure”… “Enjoyed the sensation of”… Bleh. Well, my version is still terrible - and I’d like to fob it off on my trying to copy Cori Falls’s original sentence rather than writing my own, but that’s no excuse - but I think it’s slightly improved.
While I continued to massage her breasts, Jessie stepped closer and wrapped her
arms around me. As she slid her fingers down my back and closed her hands over
my butt, I became aroused again.
Guardian’s Song: Um, Mrs. Weasley, may I please have the CAPSLOCK? Thank you.
WHAT THE ****, CORI FALLS? HE’S CARESSING HER BARE BREASTS! HOW WAS HE NOT AROUSED ALREADY?! HE HAS JUST STRIPPED HER DOWN AND IS TOUCHING HER BARE BREASTS - AND YOU TELL ME HE GETS AROUSED BECAUSE SHE’S TOUCHING HIS BUTTOCKS? GOOD GRIEF, IS HE GAY? BECAUSE I THINK JUST ABOUT ANY HETEROSEXUAL TEENAGE MALE WOULD HAVE NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE TIME STAYING FLACCID IF HE TRIED UNDER THESE CIRCUMSTANCES, PERFORMANCE ANXIETY OR NO, ESPECIALLY IF HE’D BEEN FANTASIZING OVER IT FOR THE LAST FEW YEARS!
And if he wasn’t aroused for whatever reason, why in the world would he become aroused because she grabbed his buttocks?
Thank you, Mrs. Weasley. *hands back CAPSLOCK*
*pauses before continuing* Yes, I understand that heterosexual teenage boys are not one monolithic entity, that some may have different reactions to stimulus, et cetera. I still think it doesn’t make any sense. (Just as I found it ludicrous in New Moon that Bella is standing right in front of a well-muscled, shirtless young man and doesn’t pause for even a moment to appreciate the view. Well, taking her to be a repressed lesbian, yes, it makes sense. But if we’re to believe she’s a straight girl who’s so horny that she ogles Edward constantly and attempts to pressure him into sex in Eclipse, well…)
When she felt me pressing against her belly,
Jessie took one of her hands off my butt and placed it on my crotch instead.
Guardian’s Song: Also, pet peeve - I don’t like “ass” since it doesn’t sound appealing to me at all (same with “pussy”), but “butt” sounds like something a child might say. I’ll gladly take “buttocks”, “posterior”, “rear end”, etc…
Another surge of desire coursed through me
Guardian’s Song: Ah, already better than My Inner Life. It didn’t “curse” through him.
as she ran her fingers along the
shaft and gently massaged the tip, and I knew that this time, I was going to
have my satisfaction.
Guardian’s Song: You know, in the Viz Manga translation of Yu Yu Hakusho, during the Yusuke-Hiei fight, when Hiei uses his Jagan powers to paralyze Yusuke, he shouts “Now I will have satisfaction!” before pummeling Yusuke mercilessly.
That’s not Cori Falls’s fault, but still, it’s a weird association to have during a sex scene. “This time, I was going to have my satisfaction”? Is this anything like Rebuild!Kaworu Nagisa’s “At last, the promised time has come, Ikari Shinji-kun. This time… I’m going to make you happy.”? Point being, it’s an oddly abstract and passive way to refer to finally having sex with Jessie. Much like action scenes, sex scenes do not do well with passive language out the kazoo.
Slowly, I removed my hands from Jessie's breasts and hooked her black
string-bikini panties with my thumbs. My fingers caressed her butt and the backs
of her thighs as I began to pull them down. Meanwhile, Jessie had taken her hand
off of my crotch and started pulling down my boxer shorts.
AAAAAAAAARGH!
I slowly slid my hands down Jessie’s torso from her breasts to the top of her
panties and began to pull them down, my fingers caressing her buttocks and
the back of her thighs; meanwhile, Jessie did the same to my boxer shorts,
moving slowly and sensually as she eased it over my erection.
Guardian’s Song: I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I couldn’t take it anymore! You might have to endure some of my gadawful sex scene writing as this continues, because I can’t stand any more of Cori Falls’s!
After we'd stepped out of our underwear, Jessie and I pressed our naked bodies
together, and our lips met in another passionate kiss. As our tongues invaded
each other's mouths,
Jerry: (Jessie and James) *SCREAM AND JUMP BACK*
(Lickitung) *has escaped from the Pokéball* Licki lick? Lickiiiiiitung! (Ah, and James had pancakes for breakfast? Goes well with the pizza you had for breakfast!)
I gently lowered Jessie onto my sleeping bag. Once I'd laid
her down, she spread her legs apart, and I knealt knelt between them.
"Are you sure about this, Jess?" I asked. "Do you still want me?"
Jessie nodded and placed a hand on my cheek. "Yes. Make love to me, James," she
replied. "Please make love to me."
Guardian’s Song: *sighs* Again, enthusiastic consent is a very good thing… It’s a pity the prose is so boring. (And, again, for sex scenes, I prefer the *ahem* nonverbal highly enthusiastic consent, but that’s personal preference.)
My heart skipped a beat when she said this. For years, I'd fantasized about
hearing Jessie say those words to me, and now that it was real...now that I was
finally holding her in my arms and hearing her ask me, I felt a sudden surge of
confidence.
The coupling of man and woman was as natural as the rising and setting of the
sun -- something that's been since the beginning of time.
Guardian’s Song: Technically, since the evolution of the human race, and more abstractly, since the evolution of sexual reproduction in the first place. Amoebas do not couple. Furthermore, our solar system has only been around for four billion years or so, if I recall correctly…
To be less pedantic - wunderbar, I have a sneaking suspicion Cori Falls worships The Natural Beauty of Heterosexual Couplings and freaks out at any mention of homosexuality. She insists on firm gender roles (“real-man”!James and angsty-emotional!Jessie), so she’s the type. Actually, I know from her rant page preserved on the Wayback Machine that, while carping about non-James/Jessie James-pairings and Jessie-pairings, she complained about slash in particular.
I know this was some time ago, and things were different back then, but still - coupled with the fetishization of the Pure Goodness of Heterosexuality, I find her views particularly annoying. It’s this sort of nonsense that made me absolutely dumbfounded when I read some Janeway/Seven of Nine femmeslash, because they were portrayed as actual strong characters who were able to be in a relationship without it making either of them weak, submissive, irrational, over-emotional, or dependent - and I’m not used to seeing women in a romantic relationship portrayed like that! *sigh* “Heteronormative” is not the right word. That is absolutely insulting to good het. “Moronormative” is about right, for it relies on making women morons.
[Edit: Sorry, this is even insulting to competent writers who fetishize the Pure Goodness of Heterosexuality. Allow me to clarify - those who fetishize the Pure Goodness of Homosexuality (also known as yaoi fangirls… or fanboys) have just as many incompetents and misogynists amongst their ranks. In general, fetishizing a certain kind of behavior is a bad idea, because the person doing it tends to become delusional about subject matter pertaining to the fetish, claim that everyone would engage in it if they were just more moral/liberated (possibly both at once), and insist that, in fact, the certain kind of behavior is best gone about in exactly the way that best caters to his or her fantasies - and anyone who doesn’t go about it in that manner is ruining his or her self-pleasuring fit, er, perverting the natural goodness and beauty of the act. I admit that I tend to get this way about power-trip fiction (*whinewhinewhine*), and I *grits teeth* apologize. But my fictional fetishes do not rely upon turning 51% of the human race into dependent idiots and the other 49% into smug, pompous jerks - who pay for their inflated self-opinions every day of their lives by having to do all the dangerous work, being the sole supporters of large colonies of leeches, and going completely without equal partners in their relationships.
No, instead they rely upon turning one or two members of the human race into smug, pompous jerks - who pay for their inflated self-opinions every day of their lives by having to do all the dangerous, lonely work of world domination, being the sole rulers of a rest-of-the-world resembling nothing so much as an extremely large colony of severely retarded children, and having their equal partners be the only human beings that can stand listening to their ridiculous ego-trips for very long.
Shut up, Richard. You are bitter, aren’t you?
Perhaps I would be less bitter if you had actually stopped doing that. Tell me, are you capable of a single plot idea these days that can hold your attention for more than a few hours and does not swerve down that path?
Ah… moving on…]
As I gazed into
Jessie's beautiful blue eyes and heard her asking me to make love to her, I knew
that I had nothing to worry about.
Jerry: (James) - except whether I’d left the stove on.
(Jessie) We don’t even have a stove, you idiot!
(James) Oh yes, that’s right, isn’t it?
I could sense what she wanted...
Tom: A supersized Spoinkburger with extra cheese, an’ pickles on th’ side?
what she
needed from me -- all I had to do was trust my instincts.
Guardian’s Song: 6nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnng
*raises forehead from keyboard* *moves mouth wordlessly* *facepalms* Oh, please. You do not know how to have good sex off of pure instinct! Instinct is not for having good sex, it’s for having sex at all! If everyone knew instinctively how to have good sex, for what the bleep would there be any sort of sexual technique guides? What was the point of all that ‘I care about your feelings, and I’m worried that, due to my inexperience, I may do a poor job - but I want to do it right’ dialogue earlier, if he was just going to have good sex right off the bat? Was that just more padding? Good gad, this is bloody moronic!
And how do you know instinctively what Jessie wants and needs, anyway, James? Is your penis a telepathic, empathic antenna? You can’t know unless you actually ask, or you could be completely wrong! Instinct is NOT ALWAYS RIGHT!
…Good gad, I’m bitchy tonight. It’s either PMS, or severe caffeine withdrawal, since the semester ended December 15th [and this was written over Christmas]…