I miss my loli ~n~

I wonder if this is why so many people love vanilla.

The thing I said about taboo was largely inspired by manga critics like Shaenon Garrity who seem to have this idea that hentai manga is supposed to be obscene. Which is not to say they dislikes hentai (quite on the contrary), but going by what they have written on the subject they make it sounds as if a hentai manga that's wholesome is not doing its job. I've also heard the word vanilla be used in the context of comedy that is mild and inoffensive. It's a widely held belief that in order for comedy to work someone must be offended, in the sense that if someones pride isn't shattered then it won't be effective comedy. So by that definition vanilla comedy is comedy that still works but hardly shatters any pride.

If the same thing is true for hentai then you might assume that vanilla wouldn't be so popular, but it is (at least here on FAKKU, I don't know about other places). I've been thinking about this and one theory I have is that people love it because they can relate to it more easily. It's fun to read an erotic scenario that shouldn't or couldn't happen in real life, but if it's something that's not only possible but also fulfilling in real life then people find more happiness in projecting themselves on that scenario. But it could also simply be that people find their erotic fiction more rewarding if there is a romance to go with it, and of course this can be applied to a more edgy or bizarre scenario (as I learned from Yamatogawa's Withcraft). Part of me wonders if this reflects a more sex-positive mindset with people, that they no longer think of sex as something you take from another but rather as something you dive into with gutso and enjoy together.