holiday

- Am off to a week's holiday in Biarritz tomorrow.

- Have been pondering Dudley-boxing-Olympics fic. It should go nicely with sheldrake's Orlando-archery-Olympics fic.

Or should that read Olymfic?

expletives and exclamations in hp

I cannot now remember exactly what expletives and exclamations are used in book-canon and can't be bothered walking down the stairs to find out (this is when indifference to canon reaches Dudleyesque proportions!) but in fanon there seem to be three main positions:

1) Words such as 'God', 'Jesus', 'Heavens' are avoided. Presumably this is because of an underlying belief that wizards and witches have no organised religion revolving around anything resembling Christianity. Instead, other expletives are invented, notably 'Merlin' (which I enjoyed reading the first ten times but now I don't think I need to read another 'Merlin' ever, ever again), 'hell' or 'hells' (an odd one as it still pertains to Christianity but presumably a 'darker' Christianity) and similar. Some of these can be wonderfully inventive (resonant8's 'Lethe and Phlegethon' will forever stay with me). Others grate a little and detract from the power that an expletive is intended to convey.

2) Words such as 'God' etc. are avoided. Instead, neutral words such as 'goodness' or 'bother' (from canon?) or, more strongly, 'shit' and 'fuck' are used. This is the compromise solution.

3) Words such as 'God' etc. are used without excuse or worry.

My own position tends to be an inbetween one. I am hesitant about the use of 'God'. There is no canon evidence that any religion revolving around a 'God' exists among wizards and witches, or ever has. However, curiously wizards do celebrate Christmas so they either believe in Christ or they used once to have a meaningful ritual involving Christ that is now long forgotten and remains only as a tradition. So I tend to make them say 'christ' but spell it with a small 'c' to denote that this is not a sacred Christ but a word that lives on as expletive but has no current liturgical value. I am more equivocal about 'god' and avoid it.

But it is a quandary. I love 'shits' and 'fucks' but there are moments when they are not right. When Harry slowly slides into Draco so that a blush runs hotly up and down Draco's spine and he can't help gasping... He could gasp 'shit' or 'bother' but I would really like to have him gasp 'god, oh god'.

What do others think? What ways have you found around this quandary?

overused but much-loved erotic fanfic words

Recently, isiscolo, resonant8 and thefourthvine have posted rants about overused fanfic words. I found these highly entertaining to read, and the overused words (clever fingers, scoot, talented mouth) are certainly cross-fandom, as far as my tiny sum of experience shows.

My particular bugbears are:

- undulate (Orlando tends to do this a lot)
- tangle (tongues tangling, fingers tangling in hair)
- hissing (when people hiss things that do not have sibilants in them; can one really 'hiss' the word "oh", for example??)
- 'Want more, want you.' (already listed in the abovementioned threads but I hate this one so much, it's on a par with:)
- 'Bed. Now.' ( Military camp comes to sex talk.)

However, what I really wanted to post about it here were overused but much-loved fanfic words. As ineke and angela_la_la pointed out in the abovementioned threads, some of these overused words pack considerable erotic punch; they push the sexy buttons and have a sort of Pavlovian effect, putting the reader in the mood. This is certainly what happens to me.

Words I particularly adore and can't get enough of, no matter how often I see them written:

- hungry (of mouth, of eyes, of anything)

- mouth (this word is the single most erotic word in the English language for me; I don't know, the combination of 'ow' and the lisp-sound and the soft 'm' at the beginning, it's just swoonsome; so if a guy says 'Give me your mouth' in a fic, I am melted, I am.)

- sweet (I cannot read enough of sweet; a properly dosed 'sweet' is just divine, especially when paired with an unlikely other word, like 'sweet and wild' or with any part of the anatomy: sweet mouth, sweet arse, sweet sweat, oh anything; maybe it's the combination of a sugary-girly-cutesy word with the manly sex that I find so irresistible)

- moan (when the boys start moaning, I am lost; I can cope with a certain amount of groaning; I am allergic to grunting and growling, especially if it's Viggo who is doing the growling -- but moaning, oh, oh yes)

- oh (a well-placed 'oh' is gorgeous, simply gorgeous, with its implications of lost control and surprise)

- oh god (this is a heightening of a simple 'oh'; I used the staggered 'oh's and 'oh god's in "Up Shit Creek" and they still give me the shivers; first Billy says 'oh', and after a sentence, he says 'oh god' -- oh god!)

- helpless (this is another one like 'sweet', which puts something soft and 'feminine' into the context of the manly; it also implies loss of control so it goes nicely with all sorts of moaning and sayings of 'oh')

- lust (this just says it all; a spade is a spade, no buggering about with desire [although this is a word I also like] but a monosyllabic, straightforward word with tremendous drive)

- bliss (well, this used sparingly is very lovely, especially when said of orgasms - I am such a romantic mooshball, I really am)

- saying something quickly (there is something about this dialogue ploy: "How about a beer?" X. asked. "Okay," Q. said quickly. It implies that the speaker is holding something back but is actually, deep down, faint with lust. And it's an adverb.)

- lazily (Another adverb! I do love people 'kissing lazily' or 'fucking lazily' or doing anything lazily, really. It conjures up two guys being relaxed with each other, or it evokes a particular kind of personality that appeals to me.)

All of these work for me in combination, too: sweet hungry mouths and lazy lust, oh god yes!

In addition, there are some words that are overused but where I think it is a pity that they are overused, and where it is also perhaps inevitable. Non-sexual words include 'smirk'. I like to read and write characters who smirk, and there aren't that many synonyms in the English language. So I do realise that 'smirk' is overused and that especially Draco smirks non-stop (when he's not 'sneering') but what to substitute?

As to sexual words, here I think there is a limit to inventiveness. After all, there are only so many ways to have sex if you possess a human anatomy. There are more words for describing these ways than there are ways but still, once you've run the gamut of cock, prick, dick and penis, you're into the territory of 'towering manhood' and, for me, those overdone metaphors only work in AU or in crack!fic.

(Small aside, in response to a conversation I had with resonant8: I happen to like the word 'penis' which to me is a nice word that conjures up a nice relationship of penis-owner to penis and that is midway between obscene (cock) and infantile (willie). I know that some find it too medical and un-erotic but to me it evokes a vulnerability that I quite like. If it fits in with tone and voice.)

I also quite tend to like dirty sex. Too often in fic, the sex is sanitised, and I've read some stories where characters' jog to the shower before, after and ideally during the act is almost obsessive. I like the sweat of sex, and the smell, and the viscousness of come (though, in my experience, come is not 'sticky', as it so often is in fic); I loved shinysparkly's fics which had men fucking in mud and rain, and, in one memorable instance, in a manure-covered stable.

Still, I also like the non-realism of fic sex. I come here to live fantasies so I'm not bothered if the men seem like women with cocks or if nobody ever needs an enema. I recently read a discussion where somebody, a man (I forget the lj username) said he found a lot of slash unrealistic because men didn't feel their prostate glands like that and men didn't do something or other. I don't care. And if sex often isn't the Hollywood version of swoonsome moaning, sweet mouths, hot lust and helpless bliss in real life, then I want it all the more in fic life. And sometimes, to be fair, sex is all that in real life, too (at least in my, again, tiny experience). And in my porn I want it to be like that all the time. I love OTT orgasms; I have written them and I will continue to write them.

But what I myself like writing combines grittiness (the fact of fucking a part of the intestines, for god's sake) with swoonsome over-the-topness (the hungry blissed-out mouths etc.)

:-)