I was thinking about the tendency in slash (and het, sometimes) fics to use the word "keen" in a sexual situation. The authors probably don't know, of course, that "keen" is a word of horrible grief, or mourning. Banshees keen, which makes it so ironic when "Sasuke keened as Naruto teased him gently" and so forth. When you are having sex, you don't want your lover to keen - if they are, you are doing something wrong.

Keen is also an entirely emotional word. It refers to an extremity of emotion, rather than a physical pain. If you are hit in the stomach with a aluminum bat, you are not going to keen. When your arm breaks or you're being tortured, you're not going to keen, you're going to scream your head off. So it's always interesting when "keen" is used in a sexual situation - and it works. It invokes an extremity of emotional distress during what is supposed to be a physically pleasurable moment.

Tags: meta
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