After finishing the third Kushiel book, I decided to just move on to the fourth, Kushiel’s Scion. I’ve read it before, but I didn’t remember much of it — I seem to remember at some point Imriel swaps bodies with someone during the trilogy? — so it felt pretty new to me.

As expected, there are sex scenes, including when Imriel loses his virginity. It contains this passage:

Just as I said before that there’s no really sexy way to refer to female genitalia in writing, so too is there no really nice way to refer to the scrotum. And, in fact, this entire passage reads a little too clinical for me to enjoy. On top of that, there’s some anachronisms — if the series takes place in the 1400s or the 14th century, the word “glans” wasn’t in use until the 1600s. Now, obviously this is fiction, and it doesn’t really matter when the word was in use, but the fact that she uses “foreskin”, “glans”, and “testes” all feels a little dry.

As someone who is working on a series of stories that focus on the balls, you’d think I’d have a better way to refer to “the sack”. But even now, the only words I can use for scrotum are scrotum itself and sack (or sac). I try to write around it, as I do with other things that have words I don’t like to use because of how they sound, but there have been a few instances when I’ve actually had to use “scrotum” in my stories. I hope it doesn’t make anyone feel weird or clinical, but I feel like my intended audience will probably not care.

(It’s just a funny gif. Deal with it.)