The whole "I laugh so as not to cry/scream" thing?

Also, sex is inherently messy and weird, there's a ton of cultural baggage around it, and there aren't too many ways to write it well, so it doesn't take much to push it over the edge into extremely silly and/or gross. Try to get too "original" with it and chances are pretty high that you're going to miss the mark.

It's worth bearing in mind that a lot of the Legendaries are trollfic, though, so they were deliberately designed to be outrageous. YMMV on whether they succeed or not. For instance, I find "My Immortal" to be pretty tedious after a few chapters, when the gags start to become repetitive, and "C*l*br**n" presents itself so seriously it's just, dare I say, dull on rereading? Not that it didn't properly squick me out when I was younger and still really uncomfortable with the idea of R-rated fic at all, but take away the shock and there's not much left, apart from a few ingloriously over-described body parts.

Of the fics I've missioned, I think the one that's the funniest without being R-rated is "Ring Child," because it has that try-hard factor that lends itself to such delightful malapropisms as "Very relieved am I to know you are very much undead." I should try to read that one aloud sometime. Not ALL of it, because it's a beast, but some of it.

... And then I distracted myself looking at the rewritten version of "Ring Child" and trying to determine what the proper way to say "weightless" in Latin would be, because it sure ain't pondor, as the author would have it. (I gave up because I do not speak Latin and apparently forming opposites isn't as simple as sticking -less on the end.) The rewrite of the first chapter is... slightly better? Maybe? But also far more ripped directly from LotR, which does not count as improvement at all and really just makes it tedious. Why do people keep making this mistake?

~Neshomeh