Discussion: Jooster sexy-time talk

[niektete.livejournal.com]

Um, yes, so. For those of us who write graphic sex scenes in the Jeeves&Wooster fandom...

Does anyone else find it difficult to get the pillow-talk right? I mean, it's really easy to imagine Wilson (House MD) growling, "Come for me, you gorgeous bastard" (like in this story; it renders central heating pointless ^^ ) or John McClane (Die Hard) going, "I just wanna bend you over that chair, Matty" - but it's a lot more difficult imagining Jeeves demanding, "Suck my cock, Bertie!" or Bertie saying, "I say, your spunk is just top-notch, Jeeves!".

Ahem. In other words... Any tips on dirty talk/sex jargon that is more period appropriate? I mean, we can't ALL use the same few phrases all the time, can we? :)

Comments

[leaper182.livejournal.com]

... Yeah, I have serious trouble going for pillow talk with Jeeves and Bertie. Granted, I tend to think of Bertie as being a bit more virginal, and most of the talk being in the form of Jeeves murmuring encouragement, or Bertie yelping, but that's totally me. *blush*

[storyfan.livejournal.com]

Bertie yelping? Now that conjures up a few pictures. I'm afraid this discussion is going to be on the funny side. I'll be checking back frequently.

[storyfan.livejournal.com]

You're probably serious, I know, but this is hilarious. My son has a British slang dictionary. I'll take a look at that and see if there's anything we can use.

I don't tend to have my characters talk much during the proceedings just for this reason because, well, what did they say in England back then? I suppose we could find some elderly English gent and ask.

[starlightkissu.livejournal.com]

Just "What ho, sir! Think you could tell us something about bumping uglies back in the day!?"

Because I would personally love to see that conversation happen. Not be part of it, just witness it.

[random-nexus.livejournal.com]

*dies giggling*

[niektete.livejournal.com]

BWA HA HA!!! *cackles* Yes, I would like to see that, too. If I hadn't been so afraid of him, I would have asked the old English bloke who comes by the bookstore where I work sometimes :P But I don't think he'd have many constructive ideas for me...

[random-c.livejournal.com]

I nearly did. At a convention, I'd been chatting to some friends about writing Holmes slash fic while stood around having a cig outside, and not noticed an elderly chap who wasn't with the convention stood the other side of a tree in a pot. My friends disappeared back inside for some event I wasn't planning on going to, and the old chap wandered round to quiz me about it. Apparently he'd read the pearl when he was a lad and Holmes pr0n sounded right up his street, did I have anything with me? I'm a bit weird about people I know reading my stuff if we didn't meet through slash, and even weirder about people I don't know reading it. I apologized and ran away.

[niektete.livejournal.com]

Semi-serious :P Jooster in itself calls for a little humour, if you ask me!

[random-nexus.livejournal.com]

Lawzy, yes, that's a BIG problem for me, too. And it's mainly due to A- not being British and comfy with whateverthehell a Brit would say after a session of mattress mambo, and B- having less familiarity with the same from that time period.

So, oh, my, yes, I'd love to hear any tips, too!
Okay, AND see where this all goes, since this community is brimming with witty people.

[niektete.livejournal.com]

Of course, me not having English as my first language, I'm probably not qualified to write at all in this fandom XD But hey, all in good fun...

I seriously think Bertie would love the expression "mattress mambo", though!

[magicmelodyx.livejournal.com]

I can't speak from experience because I don't do much in the way of fic-writing, but I thought Triedunture's Letter by Letter did a VERY fine job of describing this sort of thing, although the format is slightly different.

http://triedunture.livejournal.com/489099.html#cutid1

[niektete.livejournal.com]

I KNOW! Guh, that fic is just perfect in every way. I think I need to study it and draw some clues from it :) Thanks for reminding me :D

[adina-atl.livejournal.com]

I've only written one (http://www.yuletidetreasure.org/archive/57/theenglish.html) graphic sex scene in Jeeves and Wooster, but in general I find that less is more when it comes to sex talk. "I say, Jeeves! Do that thing with your tongue again," is both sexier and more in character than more explicit references to body parts and/or fluids.

[lawnnun.livejournal.com]

Well, 'fuck' has been around for hundreds of years, and it's very serviceable. Also, if Jeeves has snapped enough to say anything like that you know he's not coming back for a while. XD

In the last smutfic I wrote, I used the "an' I don't remember what he said, but it was dirty" approach, since dear old Dr. Watson is almost certainly way better at that than I am.

[innocentsmith.livejournal.com]

Well, there are two problems here, I think, though they're closely related.

One is, "What kinds of things would Jeeves and Bertie say to each other in bed?" and the other is, "What kind of terminology and language is IC for Jeeves and Bertie?" - the latter applying to narration as well, especially considering that the fandom favors first person so heavily.

With the first, I agree with adina_alt that less can really be more with the sex talk. Not to say that they shouldn't be talking during sex - actually, I think you could make a pretty solid case for either or both of them being the type who never. shuts. up. in bed (babbling!Bertie always reminds me of Two Places We Shouldn't Have Gone (http://montycrowley.livejournal.com/2037.html) by montycrowley), and I have a massive kink for good talking-during-sex. Extra points for getting incoherent as things progress. resonant8 has a great multifandom essay about that here (http://resonant8.livejournal.com/66393.html), which I totally recommend in a big way. It's not necessarily what they're saying as how they're saying it.

(Speaking for myself, I totally do a scroll-forward, or sometimes even hit the backbutton, if sex talk gets mishandled. Few things are more off-putting than having Bertie and Jeeves suddenly start sounding like bad video pr0n - thank golly at least I don't think I've ever seen them calling each other "slut" or the like, because iiieeeEEE!squick!)

But you can't really avoid coherence in narration, and man, it's hard to write IC Jeeves/Bertie smut in either of their voices. I think it took a while for the slash fandom to even just get over the inherent sense that the boys would either go bright red with embarrassment at the thought of detailing such things, or get terribly offended and refuse to talk about it. Not to say that they wouldn't do stuff, but just that they might not want to talk about it. There's a lot more NC-17 stuff in the fandom than there used to be, and as someone who's been around a few years (sometimes not very actively, of course) I think that's great and I'm impressed that people take it on, because it really is kind of hard.

In re: terminology, I dearly love my battered old copy of Slang and Euphemism (http://www.amazon.com/Slang-Euphemism-3rd-revised-ed/dp/0451203712) - you can usually get a copy for cheap, and it's good for many periods of history. There are also quite a few collections of Jazz Age slang on the interwebs - I like this one (http://home.earthlink.net/~dlarkins/slang-pg.htm) - which have some dirty words and concepts mixed in. Also, reading stuff written by other writers in the period might help with what the sensibility about sex was. And if literary sources aren't explicit enough, you could have a look at some Tijuana bibles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tijuana_bibles), which are interesting anyway in being (a) proto-fanfic, and (b) kind of hilarious in their own right.

And then there's the issue of how to write sex just in general, and to have it be hot, and not too Tab A + Slot B, and that's just a huge subject about which many more talented smutmeisters than I have ventured their opinions or demonstrated aspects of in their own writing. For that, I'd say just check the tabs on Metafandom and read as much of the good stuff as you can, because it seriously ain't easy. But it sure can be fun. ;)

[sunsetsinthewes.livejournal.com]

This may sound a bit odd, but I absolutely love the entirety of this comment. And I thought you would want to know.

These are some wonderful suggestions for reference materials, too.

[araminya.livejournal.com]

Ok, I've just read all new comments in these three discussions - forget what I said about you kind of rocking right now. I think it would be far more approriate to say, especially what with your correcting your college professors, that you're kind of my new favourite person right now. :D

[closetofheroes.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the recs. I think American slang from that period can be useful for Bertie - Jeeves's language is much more, well, hidebound. He doesn't use the same slang that Bertie does. In fact, he plain doesn't use slang. I remember one story that ended with him having a drink with Bertie and saying 'Pip-pip, sir, if I may use the expression.' That's about as daring as Jeeves gets when it comes to using more colourful language.

Great post. You sum up the difficulties perfectly. I think I'll always prefer reading Jeeves/Bertie porn to writing it!

[waqaychay.livejournal.com]

i think that's why a lot of authors write the boys as being bashful. well, that and their proper upbringings. but we just don't know what to have them say.

i was thinking about this the other day, actually. i usually write really filthy stuff and all this non-filthy jooster porn is making me long to write something really dirty. i was thinking about just chucking the whole "in-character-ness" and doing some extremely porny gentleman-on-valet action.

[lawnnun.livejournal.com]

Two words: Alternate. Universe.

Or, if you'd like to use your filthy impulses to do me a favor, write some Jeeves that is *actually* the son of the Devil or something. Demons can always get dirtier, Jeeves often seems really infernal to me, and you know that Bertie could find out and let it just roll off his bubbly little head like water off a duck's back, so it would be fine. XD

[storyfan.livejournal.com]

Go ahead Waqaychay. You know we'd love it.

[thirstyrobot.livejournal.com]

For naughty-bits words, there's always Teleny if you can find it. It's a bit early but if nothing else it gives a sense of what was already in use (and what you should never, never do with a wine bottle).

In the *counts* five sex scenes now present in my Epic Epic, I've mostly gone with Jeeves being the one willing to say the really raunchy stuff (and trying to tease Bertie into saying some himself), but Bertie having explained in narration early on that he can't write them down without feeling like an ass. So I end up with lines like and teased my fingertips over-- what's the proper euphe-whatsit? evidence of his regard?-- well, that. Whether it works will remain to be seen, and that sort of thing really may not work if you're going for a more serious tone.

Other than that, I'll just heartily echo innocentsmith above.

[closetofheroes.livejournal.com]

It's a toughie. I find sex scenes hard to write at the best of times, not because I'm prudish about it - well, maybe a bit - but mostly because it's a lot of description of an action without much dialogue. I could try describing the action through the dialogue, but then there's the problem of what would they say? Somehow the idea of Bertie and Jeeves discussing what they're doing explicitly doesn't seem in character, especially if it's the beginning of this stage of their relationship.

I really struggle with it. I think all the stories I'm working on are at roadblocks because they've got to the sex bit.

So far I've done something between the two - described roughly what's going on, and had their conversation, if you can call it that, focus more on the emotional side of things than the physical.

I don't know.

What would a 1930s term for sexual intercourse be? Did they say 'having sex'? 'Fooling around'? I can't find out for the life of me. And it's nothing to do with nationality, it's the period.

How many people here are British besides me? Just curious. I feel like I'm alone.

[closetofheroes.livejournal.com]

Btw, it's not because I'm british that I'm slightly prudish and have such a hard time with sex scenes. I'd love to blame my nationality, but I have to admit, it's just me.

[aspirate.livejournal.com]

I'll pop my head out of lurkerdom to say "Yes! I am British too!".

Apparently we're the most likely nation to go naked while answering the phone, so you can't accuse us of prudishness.