... just how big is this bed?

Claire smiled at her lover, the only man she would ever love. Jamie's mouth quirked into a crooked grin meant just for her. She pushed her fingers through the redhead's long tresses, sighing in contentment, and he bit the neck of his golden-eyed beauty gently, pleasuring her as only he knew how. She gasped, her tall lover's hot skin velveting against her own, and moaned the way she knew pleased her freckled husband the most. He groaned as his curly-haired true love's clever fingers found their way under his kilt, and whispered Scottish endearments into the ear of the wayward, fickle woman who had stolen his heart from the moment he'd...


... hang on, how many people are in this scene? 'Cause I count about seven so far.

OK, that's not a direct quote - in fact I made the whole thing up - but seriously, I think there's a kind of conspiracy among some fanfic writers to overcrowd scenes, especially those containing ficbeds, as much as possible. I get the need to give a bit of description, but yowza, when your readers start drowning in "raven-haired" this and "azure-eyed" that and need a flipchart to remember who's who, you've gone a tad too far.


Quoteybit from today's viewing of Lord of the Rings:
Boromir: (to Aragorn, as he hands Frodo back the Ring) As you wish, it matters not to me.
Daniel: (quoting The Princess Bride) And that was the day that he realized that he really meant, "I love you."
Me, Chris and Justin: ::laugh::
Me: (to Chris, in an undertone) Oh there's acres of fanfic about the exactly that.
Chris: What?
Me: The Boromir + Aragorn thing. Unwashed manly Middle-Earth love.
Chris: Ew.
Me: ::laugh::
Chris: Now, Boromir/Gimli, that I could see.
Me: ::laugh:: Ah, no, Gimli's with Legolas.
Chris: What?!
Me: Oh yeah. Acres and acres of it. Dwarf/elf, baby.
Chris: Eeew.
Me: Yeah. There's a lot of things I don't get, myself, but am perfectly willing to allow that they may be very attractive to other people. Dwarfsex, though... unwashed, grossly hairy, and smelling of metal and beer. Ick.
Chris: Yeah, no, it's not the first thing I think of as attractive either.
Me: Now the elf thing I can see.
Chris: Oh yeah.
Me: All for the elfsex part. I mean, they don't wash much either in these movies, but you can tell it doesn't affect them. They probably don't even sweat.
Chris: No, they don't. In fact, they hardly even defecate.
Me: ::laugh::
Chris: And when they do, it's like rabbit pellets.
Me: Ohmygod I will never be able to read slash again.