thefourthvine | Rant: Enough Is Enough; or, Signs I've Read Too Much Fan Fiction

Entry tags:

[rant]

Rant: Enough Is Enough; or, Signs I've Read Too Much Fan Fiction

In other words: I've lost it, and it's time for another bitter, mean-spirited, entirely unnecessary rant. If you're still in the dewy-eyed phase of FF love - in other words, if you see nothing wrong with "Harry eagerly mouthed Snape's huge, aching, weeping cock, laving it with his tongue and nibbling it until Snape screamed with his gushing release" - don't look behind the cut.

Let's start with the three that commenters reminded me of after the last rant*.

Ghost. Very evocative, no doubt, of a sort of gentle, shivery, not-quite touch. But you can have too much of ghosting in a sex scene; we've reached a point where in some cases it seems to be not so much, say, Kowalski/Fraser as Kowalski/Fraser/Unusually Frisky Legions of the Undead.
Card. Again, a term that describes a certain behavior clearly, and we could all use clearer descriptions when it comes to FF. But, really, this one only works if one of the partners has long hair. Even then there should probably be a two-card limit in any given story. And please, folks, let us have no more carding of chest hair. This is only appropriate if one of the partners is a sheep. And no one should take that as an invitation to write sheepslash.
Shell of an ear. Unless your character has seashells attached to his head (and if he does, I love you), this phrase has extremely dubious utility. For one thing, it makes me mutter, "Your ears are like petals, Grace! Veritable petals!" And that kind of thing is really difficult to explain. For another, it has been done somewhere beyond being done to death. And, finally, the kicker: it isn't even that descriptive. Seriously. Go to a mirror. Look at your ear. Does it not look far more like a dried apricot or a prune than a shell? It does. So you should not use "he licked his shell of an ear" until you have used "he licked his prune of an ear" at least twice.

And now for the all-new ones, i.e., clear indications that I should be getting out more than I do. Or maybe meditating or something.

Sensitized. I happily read past this the first 3,000 times I saw it. The next 3,000, which seemed to pass in a matter of days, had me wincing slightly. I have now reached the point where I am so sensitized to "sensitized" that every time I see it I snap, "What, sensitive isn't good enough for you? Maybe you should try being sensitish or sensitic! Maybe you're suffering from sensitism! Maybe you're just too damn sensitiful and sensity and sensitianesque!"
Needful. Is there some Guide to Writing Good Hot Sex somewhere that says that "needful" is a sexy word and "needy" and "necessary" are not? Because even if there is, know that there's a lifetime limit on this word. And if you've written more than four thousand words of FF, you're probably over the limit already. Time to see what "needy" or "necessary" can do for you.
Fisting. Do I need to explain why this is a problem word? I do? OK. See, yes, this is a very evocative term to describe clenching, for example, the sheets, usually from sheer sexual ecstasy (but sometimes because your cock is sensitized, or because you're feeling needful). But it also describes a sex act, and, see...OK. I should not have to tell you about that sex act. If you're writing NC-17 FF, you should already know about it. So let me just say: it's a good word. In moderation. But maybe you want to think twice about it in certain contexts, and that goes triple if you're using it in the phrase "fisting his cock," which makes me recoil in horror every time I read it.
Flashing. This should be used exclusively to describe the activity involving a trenchcoat and a lack of underpants. The only appropriate use of the phrase "flashing eyes" is when one is describing Scott Summers without his glasses on. Also, tiny hint for you: if your original character has flashing eyes, you might want to ask someone for an unbiased opinion about whether she's a Mary Sue. Because the chance is there. More than there. I'm sorry, but it's better you know, right?
People are allowed to say things. Hell, I encourage it. In America, it's a right, written into the Constitution and everything. So no need to be shy about having your characters do it. Yes, "said" substitutes are occasionally nice, but if your characters routinely utter, wail, articulate, orate, hiss, declaim, or allow words to escape their lips, they're being drama queens. Annoying drama queens, if that isn't redundant. Someone needs to give them a good hearty smacking, and I would like to be the first to volunteer.
Random word mutations. "Never mind" is not one word. No, it isn't. No. It isn't. Neither is "all right." Neither is "shut up." Neither is "how come." This is not German, people. This is English, and we do not just randomly combine any damn words we feel like combining. We really don't. So stop writing as though we do.
Pleasure nubbins. Can we just say nipples? I can. Can we therefore skip nubs and buds and - please god no no no - nips? I definitely can, and I encourage you to give it a try.
Cunny, peach, box, yoni, ya-ya, and bunny. (Special thanks to makesmewannadie for bringing up this one.) If you can't bring yourself to write "cunt," for god's sake don't think these words will let you off the hook. They will only put you on another hook - the one on which we hang people who use terrible, terrible synonyms for female genitals. It may be het, but that does not give you a free pass to write your sex scenes in language five-year-olds have given up as childish.
Towering, proud, generous, rampant, and jutting. Cocks do not tower, at least not in my world, and I am sincerely grateful for that. And while their owners may in fact be proud of them, cocks themselves typically do not have such high self-esteem. And, again, while their owners may be generous, cocks aren't usually all that philanthropic. (Yes, yes, I know the ones we read about do love men. It isn't the same thing at all. Trust me.) Rampant sounds like what a male bovine does on a hot day; cocks should not be rampant unless they are on a coat of arms (and if you've ever written about, say, Aragorn's coat of arms featuring nine cocks rampant, or whatever, know that I love you). And jutting is what piers do, for god's sake. Please, either find new adjectives or explore the world of adjective-free cocks. I'm begging.
Special note for Sentinel writers. "Hippie" is what Blair is. "Hippy" is what the women Blair dates (or, in your stories, probably doesn't date) are. When you say Blair is a hippy witchdoctor, what you're actually saying is that he's a curvaceous practitioner of traditional medicine. Which he isn't. Unless of course you want him to be - your story. But you should know what you're saying about the boy. (And please don't tell me the dictionary lists "hippy" as an alternate spelling for "hippie." I know that. It does that because people misuse the word so much. But when there's a choice between two spellings, and one spelling leads to confusion and one doesn't, do you know which one you should choose? That's right! The not-confusing one! We have enough trouble with pronouns in fan fiction without deliberately causing further confusion, y'know?)
Special note to Due South writers. "Mountie" is a noun. You can use it as an adjective, yes, but only with great caution. And be aware that phrases like "Mountie cock" and "Mountie ass" (especially if "hot, sweet" precedes "Mountie") can derail a sex scene like nothing else on this planet; yes, they can also work just fine, but if you're in any kind of doubt at all, you probably should just skip the whole Mountie thing. And while we're on the topic? I don't know what the hell a Mounty is, but he isn't a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. And please don't ever, ever, write a sentence thus: "The Mountie panted as he mounted Ray." Because those kinds of things can strike a person blind and insane.

Yes, I realize you're all thinking I need some kind of sedative, but these things needed to be said. They really did. Or, well, I needed to say them.

-Footnote-

* Got one I didn't mention? I want to hear it. I encourage you to be as pedantic and difficult as possible; it will make me feel better about this rant, for one thing.

Threaded | Flat

I've seen "eat out" show up in some of my fandoms to describe a passionate, almost violent kiss. But "eat out" has only two meanings: a) go to Applebee's; b) perform cunnilingus. Kissing -- the tradtional kind, that is -- doesn't even enter into it.

Hey! Never commented here before, but I am soo with you on these that I just had to join in. I have two more irritating things:
1) 'Noble rod'. Why? Why?
2) 'Meat'. It makes me think that a steak (or something) has somehow ended up in an improbable place...

People use...card? In a sexual sense, involving body hair? Carding like you do to wool? Congratulations, you've completely made me boggle. I had no idea. Is it like, a different way of saying "He ran his fingers through X's chest hair?"

I always thought that anybody who used the word "tumescent" was asking for his or her reader to be popped out of the mood, but I don't know if that's a common fanfic crutch.

Bwahaha! You made me howl at this: Please, either find new adjectives or explore the world of adjective-free cocks. I'm begging.

But you can have too much of ghosting in a sex scene; we've reached a point where in some cases it seems to be not so much, say, Kowalski/Fraser as Kowalski/Fraser/Unusually Frisky Legions of the Undead.
*snickers* *grins*
And, given that dS actually has a ghost...

I loved this! So funny! And yet, sadly, so very true.

Rather along the lines of people saying things, rather than spitting or hissing or expositioning them, I'd rather writers err on the side of possibly confusing "he"s than overusing descriptives to avoid it. I myself once read a couple of pages of an eight-part story which used "the dark-haired boy" eight separate times in three screens' worth of text. Rather than "he" or, say, "Harry Potter".

Yes. Yes, yes, YES!

To every freaking one of these.

Also, I'd like to nominate using the verb "gobbled" in a sex scene. Ye, verily, I have actually seen this. Several times. Once involving Snape and Harry, and neither had a turkey animagus form. (Ouch. Ouch. Oooh, going to hell now.)

Ye, verily, I have witnessed sexual gobbling, and I have wept. ;P

you can have too much of ghosting in a sex scene; we've reached a point where in some cases it seems to be not so much, say, Kowalski/Fraser as Kowalski/Fraser/Unusually Frisky Legions of the Undead.

Please may I sig that?

Overall, total agreement though I have and probably will use a few of these. Writing sex scenes is like grammar usage--you don't break the rules until you know every single damned one of them.

*pats* Go read some old

viva_gloria. It'll settle your stomach.

Re: Fisting -- yes!!!! Or, rather, no. Because the first time I read the phrase "fisting his cock" I spent about five minutes trying to imagine how the hell that would work (ow, ew, ow). Even fisting of the sheets will make me stop and re-read ...

Re: Random word mutations: another big yes!!! Although "nevermind" as dialog makes me think someone's imitating Miss Emily Litella (from early SNL) and if that's what the author's going for it works, but generally, no. I think "alright" can be blamed on The Who (and sadly, it's in the dictionary as an alternate spelling now) but I hate it.

(I have used "ghosted" but I promise never to do so again. *g*)

Just so you know...you might find a soul-sister (or soul-brother) over HERE (http://www.livejournal.com/users/resonant8/63303.html).

And personally, carded/card/cards/carding drives me up the freaking wall.

(And please don't tell me the dictionary lists "hippy" as an alternate spelling for "hippie." I know that. It does that because people misuse the word so much.

The Oxford English Dictionary very clearly lists 'hippy' as the primary spelling for both the hips and the lifestyle, and gives hippie as a variant spelling for the lifestyle.

One phrase which makes me blink is 'throbbing cock'. Not when the point of view is the owner of said throbbing cock, because I've asked, and apparently that's a reasonable description of how it can feel. But from a third party's perspective? I've never personally seen a cock throb, and I'm not sure I'd want to. Twitch, yes. Bob, indeed. Throb? Not so much. Likewise, less of the 'pulsating', please.

Since I've got the dictionary open, 'come' is a perfectly good noun, beloved by the OED, while 'cum' is both ugly and totally unnecessary. And 'cummed' is just...no. No.

Oh, and while I'm venting, 'a while' and 'awhile' are not the same thing.

Ahh. Thank you :-)

Cunny is a variant of cunt that goes right back to ME. It's not an infantilisation of cunt, it's a dialect variation. It's often mistakenly thought to be from the Latin cunnus, meaning vulva, where the endlessly amusing cunnilingus comes from. In fact it is germanic in origin.

I don't read a great deal of explicit fanfic, so some of these I've never even come across (I'm still kind of aghast over "carding"), but let me just say--

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU for coming out against "nevermind." That has been one of my pet peeves since forever, but no one's ever just stood up and screamed that no, damn it, that's wrong. (Probably this means I should have, and didn't have the guts. Oh, well.)

On a similar note, the single thing that is most likely to turn me off a story is another usage quirk-- failure to include commas in direct address. The next time I read something like "'Luke I have a bad feeling about this,' said Han," I will cut my own throat.

How about "plunder" used to mean "kiss energetically"? Back when I read Hercules fanfic, poor Iolaus was always getting his mouth plundered. No. Just no.

I don't know what the hell a Mounty is, but he isn't a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Maybe not anymore, but it's certainly the spelling I grew up with - I had a number of books as a kid (all written before 1960, I will admit) that used the spelling "Mounty". So I used that spelling well into adulthood, when I noticed that it wasn't in common use around me and switched over.

I wouldn't be entirely surprised if a lot of people got their spellings from the same place I did; at least one of the books I'm referring to (Mrs. Mike) is pretty widely read and consistently in print. The OED still lists "Mounty" as a var. of "Mountie", so I'd say it's rare, and possibly archaic, but not actually wrong.

Right at the top of my own personal list is the verb 'rape' to describe a violent/needy/intense kiss. Grabbing Giles' hair, he crushed their mouths together, then raped Giles' mouth with his tongue... Just so wrong; 'rape' is going to kill any smutty mood for me, and to use in that kind of approving way is doubly gross.

You are my Favorite Person of the Day.

I'm still trying to figure out how to write girlporn, but I will be double damned before I resort to "cunny", even if it /is/ legitimate. And the rest are just sad.

I agree with previous commenter that epithets are a huge turnoff. Unless you do them right. Which most people don't.

Thank you for that because I subscribe to every of your word. I think "glistening leaking cock" are the 3 words most able to make me throw up my dinner. Errrk.

And "tiny nubs of flesh..."

Maybe the problem lies somewhere in the excessive use of adjective and the quest for more and more originality.

And someone tells me why those guys are always "glistening with sweat?" And what's the sexy thing about it? I have a husband and holding his "glistening with sweat" body isn't exactly the most erotic thing I know.

Fic:

~Despite the fact that Krycek goes commando *and* always wears really tight pants, usually jeans... nothing ever gets caught in nothing, nothing ever gets hurt or pinched or chafed.

~In fact, guys who wear really tights pants and no underwear can be on the run for days without changing, and still nothing is too chafed and nothing smells too bad.

~Everyone's mouths are oh so talented. Can your mouth sing, tap-dance and juggle while giving a blow-job?

~Two words: throbbing manhoods. If I see one more throbbing manhood, I swear I'll cut it off. Same with the twitching and the weeping - ever thought of sending
your cock to therapy?

~Blushing virgins who turn into well-experienced, extra-kinky and very loud sluts
during their first time.

~People who declare everlasting love and ownership during sex, especially if it's their first time.
People don't do that, ever. Emotionally constipated males don't do that, more to the point.
As a rule, sex isn't such a life-altering experience as it's ficced out to be.

~People who say "I love you" far too easily to people they just met and kissed. People like that...
well, they do exist, but we don't like them in real life, do we? "We kissed. I want to spend the rest
of eternity with you." I heard that from people, and somehow, I just didn't take them seriously.

~Leaving marks on people just from holding them? Not that easy, unless there's
some super-power involved. And unless you're into pain, not that much fun either.
Human skin is not that easily marked.

~Alex Krycek is not skinny nor frail. Neither is Vic or Cory or any other Nick Lea character;
he just doesn't have the body for it. So, unless you're writing about how the character was starved
for weeks, I don't see a reason to say his ribs were showing. Same goes for Ethan Rayne, who
might be better dressed but is definitely not the skinny-ass femboy people make him out to be.

~People insist on wearing condoms for anal sex because it's safe. That's of the good.
Or it would be, if they weren't cocksucking and rimming all over the place,
no condom, no nothing. Dear gods, people, get real! Keep continuity.

~"He freed his cock from its denim/leather prison" - okay,
let's start a political movement: "Free the cocks! FREE THE COCKS!"

~Just because you have X-ray vision, does not mean you also have the medical training
required to tell if a bone is broken or not.

You might enjoy this website: http://www.squirreltail.net/heamc/ - the things Lori's found, oi vey!

Bunny? Peach?!? What the fuckity fuck? People really say that?

And I thought "cookie" was bad.

Pass the valium.

Hmmm, sheepslash.

I had the sudden urge to write crack!fic using all your abhorred words but got distracted by Olympics. be glad.

Towering, proud, generous, rampant, and jutting.

*dies* I agree. *flails*

LOL. You do know I have a whole section of my memories (http://www.livejournal.com/tools/memories.bml?user=makesmewannadie&keyword=Petty+whining&filter=all) devoted to such pet peeves? Probably the most extensive entry is here (http://www.livejournal.com/users/makesmewannadie/39308.html), where I did a little subjective hotness quantifying.

But I don't rant nearly as entertainingly as you do.

Threaded | Flat

Page 1 of 2

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Pedantic?

no subject

no subject

Mounty vs. Mountie

no subject

no subject

no subject

old old rant of mine. less about words, more...

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject