Pretty Lynne Writes

Lately I’ve been describing myself as a “vanilla” creator, and I can feel the apology in the description. “You might find my work a bit boring,” I’m implying, “but that’s what I do.”

I’d like to take that back. 

I have been around the erotic audio and Lit community for a while now. In that time, I’ve seen a few trends come and go. 

There was the hand necklace (still a thing, but featured less prominently in audios now); the somewhat vague tag [butt stuff] had its moment; the historical or regency surge, inspired by Bridgerton; the [toxic] tag always has its place; and the Eiffel Tower or MMF audios have been fast and furious lately. On Reddit, you find pain play, CNC and coercion. The range of fantasy is wide.    

Fantasy is just that. You can love a DD/lg audio, but not actually want that kind of relationship. You can love a bit of degradation in your audios, but want to slap anyone who calls you a whore in real life. 

And maybe you’re into those things in real life too, and that’s cool. One of the things I’ve learned about myself in the last few years is that my own sexual history is not nearly as vanilla as I’d always assumed. But I can also say that I have learned about kinks and proclivities I had never even imagined before. 

I love that about the porn industry. No matter what you’re into, you can find it there (it should go without saying that I am a big believer that porn shouldn’t harm anyone involved in its making, but I’ll say it anyway). You can learn so much about consent and communication from the kink community. You can discover things you didn’t know you liked until you heard, read, or saw them. 

I also have a theory that some of us become accustomed to the dopamine hit we get from watching, listening to or reading certain types of porn, and that sometimes we need to seek out different things to get that same hit. This may be why some people think vanilla sex makes for boring porn. 

So what constitutes “vanilla” sex? To most people, it means sex without toys or props or accoutrements. No sensory play or marking, no power dynamics, no degradation or praise. It’s sometimes thought of as missionary for heterosexual couples, but I think a better definition might be any kind of sex in which partners face each other. It might also be known as “making love.”

In stories like “Nothing and Everything,” and “After the Party,” I write about couples in small, quiet intimate moments. Moments in which they are communicating how much they choose and love each other. The vanilla sex they have is the way they express their emotional connection to each other. 

That’s the beauty of writing about vanilla sex. It isn’t about what parts go where, or how many times someone orgasms, or novelty or adrenaline or sensation. There’s a time and place for all of those things, in new and established relationships. 

But sometimes, the other things fall away and all we want from a sexual experience is to know that we are seen and wanted. 

To me, that experience will always be sexy, and never be boring.