I'm inclined to think that explicit descriptions of masturbation, no matter how bizarrely constructed and mislabeled, are probably NSFW. Even if it takes some people a read or three to get it.
Just remembered a thing from a YA series I found as a kid at my local library. My memory was prompted by that tumblr post about how 100 years is a long time for Americans and 100 miles is a long ways for Europeans. So - protag is a teenage girl who can see and interact with ghosts. She tries to keep this ability a secret, and her mom tries to pretend like it's definitely not a thing which is real. Fair enough, nothing too weird for YA there. The part that tripped me up at the time was the line, in the first book, "my mom and I had trouble finding places to live because I refused to live anywhere that was more than five years old. Anything older than that, someone would have died in it." Which, first of all, how are you guaranteeing that no one has ever died in an apartment or house your mom is looking at that's under five years old? Second of all, how the hell are you convincing your mom to pass up housing options when it sounds like she's been struggling to stay employed for long enough that the two of you even get to stay in one place for very long? How are you finding so many places where someone died? Why are you refusing to be in a place with ghosts, instead of trying to resolve their business or just banish their asses so that they quit bothering you? Why is your mom not using this to knock rent prices down? Why are you not using it to earn a bit of cash? Third, why is your mom even humouring you on this? You're sixteen at most, you were prepubescent for most of this hatred of living in a place with ghosts!
Yeah, that's weird. How on earth are these five year old homes accumulating so many dead bodies? I looked up some statistics because I was curious. https://palliative.stanford.edu/home-hospice-home-care-of-the-dying-patient/where-do-americans-die/ Maybe they should look into housing options far away from hospitals and nursing homes instead.
Possibility: Mom is actually a slightly self-aware schizophrenic who is unsuccessfully trying to pretend that her child did not convince her that she can see ghosts. Her behavior has convinced the child that her fear of bogeys in the closet is a legit ability to contact the dead. This is far from the only reason that they experience housing insecurity, but the child has become convinced that it is entirely her fault. ... I made myself sad.
Mom has phobias related to used or old things, fearing various types of contamination that may endanger her child. It's not rational, but it's so overwhelming that it functionally doesn't matter how real it is. It really strains their already tight budget that various things may suddenly need to be replaced with new items because anxiety. Child has picked up on some of this without realizing it. Child has an inaccurate internal narrative about it, especially relating to their housing problems. Wow, that is sad. And really interesting and sympathetic, but sad.
Those are interesting possibilities, yeah. The series made it clear that this was a legit supernatural ability, though - the first book has the protag being awkward with Unexpected Cowboy Ghost who's haunting her bedroom, and she has to banish some dead schoolmates who died in a car accident during the summer before she transferred in. There's also conflict between protag and the school's priest, because he also knows about and deals with ghosts and the two of them disagree on banishment methods; his preferred method is comparable to opening a door so that they can leave, while her preferred method is opening the door and shoving them through it before slamming it shut on them. And mom isn't (that I recall) portrayed has having any kind of mental health issues; she's exasperated that protag is going to kick up a fuss over their new home, which was a boarding house during the California gold rush, and the house belongs to mom's new husband who's supposed to be a really rich doctor and has his own kids. I think the series was trying to cash in on the sudden popularity of BtVS at the time, by having the protagonist be dealing with supernatural problems that she had to hide from her mom.
If I wrote fanfic I would probably be writing depressing interpretations of literally everything in terms of mental illness, unhealthy relationship dynamics, and trauma. But I'd probably keep the literal ghosts as well.
So for anyone who doesn't know, Literary Review magazine does an annual award for worst sex scene in a non-pornographic novel. This year's winner involves a comparison to a billiard rack and describing someone's skin color as like a dirty bathtub.
I've never read Knight Moves (it's some trashy romance novel), but I remember this review of it very well, and I feel it deserves to be linked to here because holy shit.
I just don’t understand how that resembles a billiard rack. I’m not sure I was destined to understand.
clearly he is furnished with a series of long narrow parallel dicklets or, wait, does he mean rack as in the setup of billiard balls before the game starts? because in that case, he has a pyramidal array of colored testes and a free-roaming stickdick just waiting to fire one into his partner
tbh some of the nominated choices don't read as overtly bad to me... in general if they're one sentence long and/or poetically interesting then at least we're not treated to an awkward simile-metaphor trainwreck. but whoa dang there are some bad choices there also. honestly it makes me wonder what the judges consider a GOOD sex scene, because I'm sure I'd disagree on many fronts, but it would be interesting to know their metric for comparison.
From what I recall of previous nominated choices, the accepted nominees tend to fall into a few categories: Ikea Sex; urple prose; simile-metaphor trainwrecks; non-euclidean positioning; and stuff that reads like it was a suggestion from Cosmo. Of these groups, Ikea Sex tends to be least likely to win if it doesn't also contain one of the other categories - Ikea Sex is boring, but not actually bad in and of itself.
My favourite part about the were-rollercoaster story was a line where one of the coasters threatens another with "I'll cut your restraints off". One commentor says "It's impossible to take a threat like this seriously. First off, I keep forgetting that they're animate rollercoasters, which just makes it sound like Railrunner's going to untie his prisoner as a form of punishment. But then when I remember they're animate rollercoasters, I still can't take it seriously, because they're animate rollercoasters." I have a sudden need for Dave Strider writing ironic friendfic crossovers with that in which everyone is a rampaging inexplicably-human-eating carnival ride.
