an unprintable combination of the sacred and the profane

You'll have picked up that there's a lot of sex in the show (and book) Heated Rivalry. And, unsurprisingly, there's a lot in the fanfic.

And one thing I'm having to deal with is a bunch of otherwise perfectly readable authors referring to "cum". It almost knocks me out of the mood, but not quite.

Having issues about spelling come as cum is doubtless linked with me being older than dirt and having learned English not just in school but from reading a hell of a lot of novels (before sinking without trace into fanfic). And I probably associate cum with porn dialogue, so that's partly an embarrassment thing, and partly me being a snob.

Anyway, I did some research on the interwebs and the most frequent viewpoint is:

• cum is the noun
• come is the verb

From etymonline.com, cum dates from 1973, initially used as a noun and mostly in porn, now used more widely and as both a noun and verb. Come is obviously a lot older, but as a synonym for ejaculating it seems to date from the 1500-1600s, and as semen, from the 1920s.

Which is all very well, but I just have a visceral dislike of the word cum. I'm going "ew, gross", like Shane when people use the term "lovers". It looks like a spelling mistake to me, and I doubt I'll ever use it in a fic except in a fake porn video title. So that leaves me stubbornly using come, or writing in a way that avoids the word altogether, because I am also not going to use "semen" or (worse) "ejaculate", except in very specific circumstances. Not to mention "reach completion" or "climax". Nope. Slang terms like jizz, spunk and spooge are sometimes okay in dialogue though, or in the pov of characters where it wouldn't be ooc.

What about you: come or cum? Enquiring minds want to know! Don't feel limited to its use in Heated Rivalry - this applies in most fandoms, and in some profic, I bet.