Res ipsa loquitur

Away with the idea that everyone, by nature, is either a top or a bottom.

Let's have more of the idea that everyone, by nature, is either a big spoon or a little spoon.

Newly discovered squick ( cut on account of not-work-safe-ness )

How about this? Instead of talking about smut I don't like, how about if I follow lobelia321's example and talk about smut I do like?

In the comments on Lobelia's post, there's a thread on something that's dear to my heart: dirty talk.

I adore dirty talk, when it's done well. I don't like insults, and I've already ranted at length to various people about how I hate to read guys calling each other "slut," but aside from that, I love sex with a lot of talking.

( Please, please, more! )

This 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.

Until I started reading HP, I'd never been involved in a fandom in which one of the characters wore glasses.

It's becoming increasingly obvious to me that most of the writers do not wear glasses.

I'm nearsighted and astigmatic, and I've been wearing glasses since I was 24. For the benefit of HP writers who are cursed with perfect vision, here are a few observations about glasses that you might find useful in your next story.

1. If I kissed you while I was wearing my glasses, they would quickly become covered with smears of grease from your face and mine. It's kind of disgusting. Plus, a passionate kiss would push the nosepieces into the bridge of my nose in a rather uncomfortable way.

If I'm going to deliver any kiss beyond a quick goodbye peck, I always take my glasses off first.

2. If I had sex with you while wearing my glasses, then I'd have the abovementioned nosepiece problem, only much, much worse. If I lay on my side or pressed my face against a pillow (or against your smooth, strong thighs), the earpieces would press inward against my temples or outward against the backs of my ears, which is quite uncomfortable. And they'd probably get bent out of shape, too, so that they'd be uncomfortable to wear afterwards until I could manage to take them to the optician for adjustment. They might even get bent enough to pop a lens out.

Plus: Within a couple of minutes they'd be so smeared that I wouldn't be able to see through them anyway.

If I'm going to be having sex, I take my glasses off. And I put them in a safe place, far, far away. This is so that a flailing hand can't knock them from the nightstand onto the bed, where they might be rolled over upon and smooshed.

3. My vision is moderately bad -- I can't legally drive with uncorrected vision -- but I'm not blind without my glasses. I can read and write and carry on conversations without them.

Out to about eighteen inches from my face, things are just as clear to me without glasses as with them. From eighteen inches out to arm's length, things are still pretty clear -- I can easily distinguish facial expressions from that distance, and I can read my laptop screen without my glasses if I squint a bit. This means that I don't need to wear my glasses to bed in order to see the look of passion and adoration on my lover's face.

If I knew you well, I'd be able to recognize you from across the room without my glasses (though I probably couldn't tell if you were winking at me).

So there you go. Now I don't want to read any more stories where Harry keeps his glasses on while giving head because he wants to be able to see what he's doing, all right?