Obligatory this is my own personal opinion/experience, and in no way do I assume others feel the same.
Obviously much of it comes down to both the writing quality as well as the narrator quality, but for me personally, I can do nothing but cringe during spicy scenes of an audiobook. The crazy thing is that I'm really the farthest thing from a prude. I'm fully comfortable reading those scenes, watching them in any sort of visual media, talking about them, literally any other form is perfectly fine! And to add onto that, I've even been a fan of spicy audio content before as well, just the kind that isn't read aloud from a book lol.
And this remains true for me no matter if the book is specifically erotica/smut or if it's a fully plot-driven book that just so happens to have like one single spicy scene. It makes my skin crawl either way, and it has never once enhanced my listening experience. I can do descriptions/depictions of nudity or general sensuality of a person on their own, but the moment it becomes two or more people acting together, it just falls apart for me.
Do you find it hard to take audiobook spice seriously? Or are you the opposite of me and can get more engrossed into the spice when it's being narrated? Because I find it borderline paradoxical that for me personally, it really doesn't matter how good the writing is nor who is narrating. Something about spicy readaloud time just REALLY does not hit the right notes for me, even though I have utterly zero issue with just about any other medium for spicy content under the sun.
by PsyferRL
3 Comments
I feel similarly! If it’s anything more than open door but not necessarily explicit, it feels super cringey. I think primarily because the narration can either be stilted or overly enthusiastic. It seems (from what I’ve listened to) that the middle ground is hard to achieve.
For me it depends on the VAs. I listened to one and ended up skipping through some of the “erotic” parts bc it just sounded like two people trying to sound dirty and it just was very cringy to listen to.
I’ve noticed that sex scenes often feel like they were written independently and just slapped into the narrative. Like the characterization has an abrupt disconnect during sex and the style of prose and word choice might change too. It can feel super jarring and cringey.