Dragonborn is for Porn: The Intertextual Semiotics of the TESV: Skyrim Fan Made Pornographic Modifications

This conference paper, presented at DiGRA 2019, examines pornographic fan modifications for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, focusing on content built on the SexLab animation framework distributed through LoversLab.com. Its central aim is to determine whether such fan-made pornography depends on the aesthetics of the game being modded or draws on a general pool of pornographic imagery shared across the modding community. Drawing on Michael Riffaterre's theory of intertextual semiotics, the author argues that these mods can be read as interpretive responses to perceived gaps in the game, with recurring extreme themes such as slavery, bestiality, and fixation on oral sex and lactation reflecting the creators' own visions of what a Nordic-inspired RPG should contain.

The paper reports that SexLab has been downloaded over 3.5 million times on its main host, with the true figure likely higher given informal distribution networks, and that hundreds of mods and thousands of animations are built on it. The author characterizes this content as predominantly misogynistic and built on rape fantasies, positioning it against more optimistic accounts of modding as creative and inclusive. The research method is textual and comparative: mod content is to be analyzed across aesthetic, narrative, and gameplay levels and related to mainstream pornography, sword-and-sorcery eroticism, and pornographic mods for other Bethesda titles and The Sims 4 to isolate what is specific to Skyrim.

The document is presented as a proposal or preliminary framing rather than a completed empirical study, so it offers no survey sample or quantified findings beyond download figures. Its contribution lies in methodological argument, positioning intertextual semiotics as a tool for studying mods and contributing to debates over the portrayal of women in digital games.