THINGS IN FIC WHICH ARE ON NOTICE:

[cimorene]

(As far as I can tell the Stephen Colbert On Notice Generator has gafiated.)

1. "pucker"


2. "greedy" (to describe the anus)


3. "spilling hotly"


4. "so hot. so tight"


5. "his lower regions"


6. "that bundle of nerves"


7. "the evidence of his desire"


8. "erotic" in the middle of a sex scene


9. "warm fluid"


10. "his shaft"


11. "his cloth-covered length"


12. "drifting south" (or "South", which is even funnier)


13. "heat in his groin"


14. "a hardness"


15. "corresponding hardness" ("Dear language center:...")


16. "tweaked a nipple"

Comments

[cimorene]

(both are things that used to Work For Me, but sheer overuse has made them flat and unappealing now. They need to go away a awhile until maybe they can become hot again. Or just go away.)

This is often the case. It's like overplayed pop music! I was just thinking that in regards to nipple-tweaking, that there's nothing inherently wrong with the description, it's just that it's EVERYWHERE and then usually not really very successfully done in context.

Also ANGRY-LOOKING, yes, yes.

As for "erotic", it has done its job as a meaning-conveying word in the past perfectly adequately, and it hasn't exactly been played out; it's just I've noticed a trend recently of its being used in that particular way that makes me want to say "SHOW, not TELL!" or "If you have to say it yourself it's probably not true, honey" - the surrounding passage is sorely lacking in eroticism and you really would have to take their word for it.

[anatsuno]

yeah, there's clearly a show-not-tell issue with using a word that might characterize the situation to describe it, since characterizing and describing are two different things…

The whole thing where stuff that was once hot gets less hot as we overuse it is one of the most delicate issues in porn, I think, because there's a certain opposite that's true - the most popular porn is not the most original either; too many people have strong objections and reactions to marked language and we tend to require "slightly unmarked" phrases that convey "hot" without hurting our singular sensibilities, yeah? As a writer I find my solution to the conundrum is to not try to anticipate what others will find hot and to only use what *I* find hot, but that of course doesn't remove me from the flow of then-or-now vocabulary; it means I'm more likely to stop using what I find overdone right now, and thus contribute to the rise of the next thing that's not yet overdone, I suppose.

sorry if I'm slightly inarticulate, today's hard. :))

[cimorene]

Yeah, I've actually noticed that before. There are terms that I think of as 'porn words' and that irritate and jar me out of the fic (thereby rendering it less hot, because the last thing you want is to be distracted when you're in the ~mood), and sometimes those terms later gain in popularity and I get used to them enough that eventually they don't break the mood anymore.

I HAVE read porn with really original phrasing and terminology that was still hot (I remember thinking how surprising it was at the time but the only examples I can think of now are Vonda McIntyre's Starfarer novels which aren't really all that explicit, I don't think, so I might not even call them 'porn' if I read them again now). That doesn't happen often though. It runs the risk of being too distracting, even if it's not necessarily offensive to one's sensibilities.