Smut pet peeve
Apr. 24th, 2004 06:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
resonantThis isn't exactly in the category of a boring smut issue, but it is a smut pet peeve: Mixed male arousal signals.
I'll be reading a sex scene, and I'll get to a sentence like this:
He was nearly hard, his cock beginning to rise out of its nest of curls, already glistening with fluid at the tip.
Which, OK, I'm willing to be corrected if I'm mistaken about this -- my knowledge of the male sexual response is deep, but my sample size is quite small -- but in my experience, you don't get to "glistening" until you've already spent some considerable amount of time at "hard." Women are moist, in various degrees, pretty much all the time. Men, not so much.
A different, but related, smut pet peeve is when you've got a character who's under 25, and he's been necking for four or five paragraphs -- consensually, quite happily, with no hint of ambivalence -- and when the clothes come off, the author will describe his cock as "hardening." Because, in my again somewhat limited experience, a young guy will be "hardening" pretty much the minute a desirable partner says, "I want to have sex with you, all right?" and a kiss or two will finish the process nicely.
And, see, it irks me all the more because it's so unnecessary. I don't need a report from the cock barometer every paragraph. I don't need to know about it at all.
As a reader, I will assume that all relevant cocks have precisely the tumescence they need in order to do what the author tells me they're doing. More detail than that will sometimes add sexiness, but more often it subtracts it -- either because it sounds wrong, and thus introduces doubts ("Only half hard after all this time? Wonder if maybe he's changing his mind?"), or just because it's gratuitous ("Oh, great, next thing you know she'll be providing length and girth measurements").
And don't even get me started on the phrase "rock hard." Not unless you're a Discword writer who's slashing Detritus.
I'll be reading a sex scene, and I'll get to a sentence like this:
He was nearly hard, his cock beginning to rise out of its nest of curls, already glistening with fluid at the tip.
Which, OK, I'm willing to be corrected if I'm mistaken about this -- my knowledge of the male sexual response is deep, but my sample size is quite small -- but in my experience, you don't get to "glistening" until you've already spent some considerable amount of time at "hard." Women are moist, in various degrees, pretty much all the time. Men, not so much.
A different, but related, smut pet peeve is when you've got a character who's under 25, and he's been necking for four or five paragraphs -- consensually, quite happily, with no hint of ambivalence -- and when the clothes come off, the author will describe his cock as "hardening." Because, in my again somewhat limited experience, a young guy will be "hardening" pretty much the minute a desirable partner says, "I want to have sex with you, all right?" and a kiss or two will finish the process nicely.
And, see, it irks me all the more because it's so unnecessary. I don't need a report from the cock barometer every paragraph. I don't need to know about it at all.
As a reader, I will assume that all relevant cocks have precisely the tumescence they need in order to do what the author tells me they're doing. More detail than that will sometimes add sexiness, but more often it subtracts it -- either because it sounds wrong, and thus introduces doubts ("Only half hard after all this time? Wonder if maybe he's changing his mind?"), or just because it's gratuitous ("Oh, great, next thing you know she'll be providing length and girth measurements").
And don't even get me started on the phrase "rock hard." Not unless you're a Discword writer who's slashing Detritus.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 4/24/04 06:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 4/24/04 06:51 pm (UTC)And they often do.
Also, I think I will be metaqoting you. *nod*
(no subject)
Date: 4/24/04 06:56 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 4/24/04 06:56 pm (UTC)*looks around furtively*
Maybe the key to all this is that you actually have experience. Whereas I often suspect that this is, er. Not the case, for some writers. There's only so much these whippersnappers can glean from The Joy of Gay Sex, y'know. :D
(no subject)
Date: 4/24/04 07:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 4/24/04 07:06 pm (UTC)As a reader, I will assume that all relevant cocks have precisely the tumescence they need in order to do what the author tells me they're doing. More detail than that will sometimes add sexiness, but more often it subtracts it -- either because it sounds wrong, and thus introduces doubts ("Only half hard after all this time? Wonder if maybe he's changing his mind?"), or just because it's gratuitous ("Oh, great, next thing you know she'll be providing length and girth measurements").
Word. I usually skip such details or close the window at all. But mostly I react to the descriptions of smells. They just came from a match, soaked like ducks, all day in high laced boots, then one of them liks the other's foot and oh divine smells. Well, I'm exaggerating for the sake of rhetorics. But the thought is clear, I suppose.
(no subject)
Date: 4/24/04 07:09 pm (UTC)it's worse then the simultaneous orgasms and multiple orgasms and coming from blowing someone and all...b/c that can be hot and i'm totally willing to suspend disbelief for my horniness...just not move back and forth in time...
(no subject)
Date: 4/24/04 07:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 4/24/04 07:10 pm (UTC)---
For some reason this sounds like something you would see on Iron Chef.. Although I don't think they have had "Battle Schlong"
(no subject)
Date: 4/24/04 07:14 pm (UTC)a "hardly cock" is just not as satisfactory as a "hard cock."
(no subject)
Date: 4/24/04 07:21 pm (UTC)I can report that it works with older guys, too. At least in my limited sample.
(no subject)
Date: 4/24/04 07:27 pm (UTC)Actually, under 25, a guy will generally be hardening pretty much the minute a desirable partner says, "Hello. How are you?"
(no subject)
Date: 4/24/04 08:01 pm (UTC)With young men especially, it is awfully implausible that they're going to be at less than full readiness after some consensual necking. And while my experience is not that wide, I have never noticed that men dribble as much as some fics would have one think. Women get wet, oh yeah, but not men, not to any great extent.
As for "rock hard" - would this mean that he's wearing a stone condom, perhaps handed down through the generations of his family since the last Ice Age? ;-)
(no subject)
Date: 4/24/04 08:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 4/24/04 08:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 4/24/04 08:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 4/24/04 09:08 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 4/24/04 09:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 4/24/04 09:17 pm (UTC)But as far as the line from Barry, I think that really varies. I actually was with a guy who wanted MORE foreplay than I did. ^^ Go figure.
(no subject)
Date: 4/24/04 09:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 4/24/04 09:27 pm (UTC)Anything's possible, but, my ghod -- with *whom?!*
"Rock hard" always struck me as one of those exceedingly subjective evaluations, like a headache that feels like it's going to explode.
The visible pre-ejaculate always seems improbable. Not that it doesn't happen at all, but the little fella would have to be holding *verrry* still for it to be visible. And that just isn't likely.
My own nominee for dreadful slash adjective is the 'weeping cock.' I always want to hand it a tissue and tell it to blow its nose.
;-P
Stone condoms
Date: 4/24/04 09:51 pm (UTC)And also, ow.
(no subject)
Date: 4/24/04 09:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 4/24/04 10:22 pm (UTC)Thank you, Tarpo-san!
(no subject)
Date: 4/24/04 10:33 pm (UTC)