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valkryorOkay. I have a personal bugbear: the use of 'entrance' during sexytimes in the books I read. Since I read a lot of Regency romance, I see it much more than I would like. It throws me out of the story because I find it So. Fucking. JARRING.
When the pairing is two men, I've taken to muttering, "it's anal, not architecture."
I first encountered it reading fanfic, where gay boys are imagined everywhere and hook up with abandon. And you know what, that's glorious, but 'entrance'? Not so much. It's now in romance novels for reasons(?). I don't fucking know why. Is there a dearth of appropriate words? Do we need to go back to pork swords and love grottoes? Inquiring minds something something.
There is no dearth in appropriate words. I write erotica/porn for the D&D games I'm in for funsies and have had a fair amount of practice writing effective, affecting, HOT sex, with no entrance in sight. It's possible, it's good, and I've found, with that practice, that less is more. Letting the reader do the heavy lifting makes it more personal, more impactful. (At least for me. Your mileage, etc.)
And now that I've sung my own praises without providing any examples (something akin to this VERY NSFW one that I wrote a decade ago here), I've decided to fix my 'entrance' problem in a way that I find amusing. It's like this: if I'm going to be forcibly ejected from the narrative by an author's word choice, then I get to do what I will with that word choice.
To that end, I'm going to lean into the architecture with synonyms.
If you're going to use 'entrance' for vaginal penetration, whether that be by fingers, penis, or other phallic object, then I'm going to mentally change 'entrance' to 'foyer' or 'antechamber' or 'vestibule'. Typically, in palatial homes, a foyer consists of marble columns, expensive flooring, that lone table in the middle holding a vase of hothouse flowers, and so on. It's the guest entrance. It's made to impress and decorated as such. Now, when I read "the entrance to her body beckoned him inside", it will now be "the foyer to her body beckoned him inside". There. That's better; much more jarring and much more amusing. Perfect.
Now, for why it's anal and not architecture, I've gone with something else that will work much better than 'entrance': mudroom. It's often at the back of the house, is more function than form, and was designed in days of yore as a pass through from the muddy outside to the clean inside. I have also read a startling amount of anal sex scenes with zero lube and fewer condoms. Mudroom, indeed. "Eric lined himself up with Archie's entrance and pushed in" will now be "Eric lined himself up with Archie's mudroom and pushed in". If I'm going to be ejected from the narrative, then I want to be EJECTED FROM THE NARRATIVE. No more weak attempts to get me to leave the story's flow, oh no, just one great heave into the nothing outside the wordy embrace that I've sunk myself into.
Yes, I know that this is a very silly thing to get my gitch in a twist, and I also know that it's a 'me' problem. And yet maybe this little rant will change someone else's mind about the word, and they'll find something better in their own writing, or even drop it completely. Until that happens (if it happens), I'm going to amuse myself, as it's a damn sight better than being annoyed when all I want to do is enjoy the time I spend reading.
When the pairing is two men, I've taken to muttering, "it's anal, not architecture."
I first encountered it reading fanfic, where gay boys are imagined everywhere and hook up with abandon. And you know what, that's glorious, but 'entrance'? Not so much. It's now in romance novels for reasons(?). I don't fucking know why. Is there a dearth of appropriate words? Do we need to go back to pork swords and love grottoes? Inquiring minds something something.
There is no dearth in appropriate words. I write erotica/porn for the D&D games I'm in for funsies and have had a fair amount of practice writing effective, affecting, HOT sex, with no entrance in sight. It's possible, it's good, and I've found, with that practice, that less is more. Letting the reader do the heavy lifting makes it more personal, more impactful. (At least for me. Your mileage, etc.)
And now that I've sung my own praises without providing any examples (something akin to this VERY NSFW one that I wrote a decade ago here), I've decided to fix my 'entrance' problem in a way that I find amusing. It's like this: if I'm going to be forcibly ejected from the narrative by an author's word choice, then I get to do what I will with that word choice.
To that end, I'm going to lean into the architecture with synonyms.
If you're going to use 'entrance' for vaginal penetration, whether that be by fingers, penis, or other phallic object, then I'm going to mentally change 'entrance' to 'foyer' or 'antechamber' or 'vestibule'. Typically, in palatial homes, a foyer consists of marble columns, expensive flooring, that lone table in the middle holding a vase of hothouse flowers, and so on. It's the guest entrance. It's made to impress and decorated as such. Now, when I read "the entrance to her body beckoned him inside", it will now be "the foyer to her body beckoned him inside". There. That's better; much more jarring and much more amusing. Perfect.
Now, for why it's anal and not architecture, I've gone with something else that will work much better than 'entrance': mudroom. It's often at the back of the house, is more function than form, and was designed in days of yore as a pass through from the muddy outside to the clean inside. I have also read a startling amount of anal sex scenes with zero lube and fewer condoms. Mudroom, indeed. "Eric lined himself up with Archie's entrance and pushed in" will now be "Eric lined himself up with Archie's mudroom and pushed in". If I'm going to be ejected from the narrative, then I want to be EJECTED FROM THE NARRATIVE. No more weak attempts to get me to leave the story's flow, oh no, just one great heave into the nothing outside the wordy embrace that I've sunk myself into.
Yes, I know that this is a very silly thing to get my gitch in a twist, and I also know that it's a 'me' problem. And yet maybe this little rant will change someone else's mind about the word, and they'll find something better in their own writing, or even drop it completely. Until that happens (if it happens), I'm going to amuse myself, as it's a damn sight better than being annoyed when all I want to do is enjoy the time I spend reading.
