Firstly the birthdays. Many Happy Returns to
moniquemo and terrayndian for the 30th of July and lysrouge for today.I apologise if I have left some people off birthdays recently, but I have just discovered that the birthdays page you can view from the web does not necessarily list all birthdays. I noticed this because semagic told me about
lysrouge, but the web page didn't. I have no idea why this is, but I shall have to go back to relying on semagic and using the web page as a reminder rather than the other way around.Now on to the smut or rather the discusion of the word. The results of the poll are most interesting. It seems that the majority believe smut to mean graphic sex, but half that number (way in advance of all other options) seem to think it means anything referenceing sex. I think this probably means that the real definition of the word is graphic sex, but there is a fandom bent that means it can be taken to mean sex in general as well.
For those who commented in teh Other box there were a majority who seem to think smut is when the sex does not advance the plot, which I found to be an interesting opinion as well.
wonapalei also mentioned that there is a difference between a fic containing smut and fic that is smut (along with some other interesting points ::g::).My main conclusions from this discussion is that we are definitely not all talking about the same thing when we say 'smut', however, the one thing we can agree on is that is someone mentions 'smut' sex is involved in some way, shape or form :).
Just so we're clear, if you see something along the lines of 'it's pure smut' when I'm talking about a fic, I mean that it's graphic and nothing but sex; if I'm saying anything else with the word 'smut' in there, I'm probably just commenting that there is sex in it :).
Thank you all so much for joining in, it has been quite educational and fun. I don't think we've advanced global understanding any, but I'm sure we could make it look as if we had if we felt like it :).