It's a Latin word with indo-germanic roots. A foreign word in all the languages that make use of it.
It's so familiar in our languages that we are often not even aware it's a foreign word.

silverblaze wrote:

Nope, penis in Dutch is penis. I think it's a Latin word and it crept into the Germanic languages a very long time ago. Could also be Greek, I'm not an expert on classic languages. It's not an English loan word as far as I can tell. AG, our languages are related, in case you were wondering, there are more words that are similar or the same. It's a bit more obvious with English English though.

I think we use it in the same way Susi describes: the normal word for the thing. So apparently it's different in English. What's the normal word in English then? I can think of a few words, but they either sound rude or too childish. Penis seemed to me the most neutral one. 

I'm American, not Brit, and it's possible we have a much less formal way of speaking and thinking than the rest of the English-speaking world. Not sure about that. The "real" word for penis is penis, but guys don't use that word unless they're speaking to their doctors or, as I said earlier, taking an anatomy and physiology class or something. There are many euphemisms, some that little boys use, like willy or tinkle or pee-pee or wee-wee, and I'm sure there are loads of others. Big boys are more apt to call it dick or cock or My Thing or tool or weiner. I dunno. I don't have one, so I don't call it anything, lol. There's nothing wrong per se with calling it penis, since that's the word for it! It just sounds kinda formal to my American ears, especially if someone is writing fic where it's being used for sex with either gender.


 

So basically: when writing sex scenes, go easy on the Latin. 

I'm starting to understand now why writing sex scenes is so hard in English. No proper words for important body parts. 

Heheheh. Thanks for that piece of information Tonnaree. 

Isn't there some award for the worst written sex scene in literature every year? Probably plenty of members and manhoods there. 

Although probably nothing beats the 'Inner Goddess' from 50 Shades, which is of course.... a vagina! I didn't even realise that when I read the book, only afterwards people pointed it out to me. 

Last edited by silverblaze (December 16, 2014 10:41 pm)

I think writing sex scenes must be one of the hardest things you can do. Especially if you're a woman and writing a sex scene between two men. There is no way for us to really understand how that works and feels, so we would just be winging it. 

My rule of thumb for whether a sex scene is good or not (when it comes to fanfics) is that if the scene could be any ship or pairing, it's badly written. If they manage to bring the characters in and all through the scene, then it's greatly written.

Vhanja wrote:

I think writing sex scenes must be one of the hardest things you can do. Especially if you're a woman and writing a sex scene between two men. There is no way for us to really understand how that works and feels, so we would just be winging it.

The emotions of romance and sexual attraction are shared by all humans, however. Except that a lot (most?) men are very repressed with their own emotions and also non-verbal. One of the things that makes good homoerotic sex scenes is to make sure neither one of them, or both of them, sound like women. Avoid chattiness, avoid questions like "do you really love me?" and bringing up discussion about *anything* before, during or after the actual act. Don't turn either partner into the little wifey.  This is easy to say but can be hard for some authors to accomplish. As female authors, we need to make an effort to butch it up, lol.

If an author reads enough homoerotic fiction, of different types and by all kinds of different authors, after awhile she'll get a feel for it. Yes, very few of us who write that kind of fan fic are men, but if we immerse ourselves in homoerotic fan fic, in a few months or so we start to get accustomed to it, and the sex scenes can seem to flow more easily, more believably.

My rule of thumb for whether a sex scene is good or not (when it comes to fanfics) is that if the scene could be any ship or pairing, it's badly written. If they manage to bring the characters in and all through the scene, then it's greatly written.

IMO that's true for the whole story, not just the sex scenes within the story. I want Sherlock to sound like Sherlock, saying and doing Sherlock things, and the same for John, saying and doing John things. Just because the two of them have decided to hook up in the story I'm reading, I don't want to sit there and wonder who in heck those two guys are, because I cannot "see" or "hear" our familiar guys in the author's Sherlock and John. So anyway, yeah, I want the sex scenes to ring true in that way, but I want the characterizations in the whole story to ring true as well, whatever the author has them getting up to throughout.

Last edited by ancientsgate (December 17, 2014 1:11 pm)

ancientsgate wrote:

Harriet wrote:

And let's also realize there is not just one English language, but many cultures make their own unique use of it..

But when writing fan fic for a specific fandom, in this case BBC Sherlock, which uses BC and MF's faces, bodies voices and dialogue, then the best fan fics use those characters' recognizable voices. I can usually tell when an author is American (or at least non-Brit), simply because she hasn't been able to make them sound like Brits in her story.

I admit to being a nitpicker. I imagine the vast majority of fan fic readers don't care one way or the other about whether the Sherlock and John they're reading about seem like *our* Sherlock and John. But to me, the best Sherlock fan fics are ones in which I have no trouble visualizing and hearing our familiar characters in the words.
 

 
It matters a great deal to me too AG.  I can accept all sorts of weirdness in the plot as long as Sherlock and John are recognizable as Sherlock and John.    And even though I'm American stories that have not been BritPicked annoy me.

ancientsgate wrote:

Harriet wrote:

And let's also realize there is not just one English language, but many cultures make their own unique use of it..

But when writing fan fic for a specific fandom, in this case BBC Sherlock, which uses BC's and MF's faces, bodies, voices and dialogue, then the best fan fics use those characters' recognizable voices and appearance. I can usually tell when an author is American (or at least non-Brit), simply because she hasn't been able to make them sound like Brits in her story.
...
 

That was not what I was talking about. I said it needs an awareness of the varieties of language as well to be a good writer.
 

ancientsgate wrote:

The other thing that complicates things with homoerotic fan fic is that the majority of the stories are written by women and almost exclusively FOR women. I've read M/M fic in other fandoms that have been written by gay males, and they're pretty rough. Their stories didn't suit my female sensibilities. I wasn't offended by the rough language and casual sexual experiences necessarily, but I don't find those things entertaining in the characters I love, so...  It's hard, because I want the guys to sound and act like real men, but I don't want them to sound and act in ways that make me (as a woman) cringe, which is why I don't read BDSM, for instance. And yes, I realize that not everyone shares that opinion-- that's what makes a horse race; everyone likes something diff in their slash fic.

 

It´s exactly like this in Japan. They have plenty of yaoi stories (stories about gay male lovers) written, but everybody undestands that the stories are written by women for the female audience. Nobody is trying to recruit real homosexual men on board, because it is undestood that these people wouldn´t be able to speak to women´s sensibilities. Homosexuals write for their own audience and their stories have a very different tone and atmosphere.
 

Vhanja wrote:

It is very hard especially when we haven't seen the two of them have sex. One is hetero, and the other is... Sherlock. So that makes it extra challenging to write a good sex scene.
 

Well ...
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