#sex cw

[dhaaruni]

Okay we've completely lost the plot, haven't we?

[armoricaroyalty]

beautiful and horny

I recently reread one of my favorite essays, Everyone is Beautiful and No One is Horny, and posted a bit about it here. The difference between "beautiful" and "horny" (between "hot" and "sexy," as my bestie @nexility-sims puts it) is kind of difficult to explain in the abstract. So instead of just complaining, I thought it might be useful for me to try to explain how I've tried to depict sex and desire in my story.

Suggestion One: use close-ups to demonstrate desire

First off: I think the key to making something sexy isn't to show someone or something that is visually beautiful. Sexiness isn't about aesthetics, it's about desire. It's very easy to show the audience a beautiful person, harder to make clear that they are desirable. Desire isn't about seeing a beautiful person, it's about looking at them and noticing things about them, specific things. Desire often carries a little bit of objectification with it, and that's okay -- the problem is when someone is wholly objectified, made into a passive thing, a receptacle for desire rather than a person who is themselves desirable.

In this scene, I have two close-ups that emphasize Vivi's backless dress (and Julián's touch). She's wearing that backless dress the whole time, but we don't really notice it until the camera calls specific attention to it by moving in close. The zoom-in on the second shot intensifies what is already present in the first shot, creating a sense of escalation -- it's the same thing, twice in a row, but there is a sense that tension is building. Please also note that Julián is bare-handed, but all the Armoricans are all wearing gloves.

So, to show that someone is desirable, you need to show what the other character is noticing about them. This is happily pretty easy in a visual medium! The entire point of a close-up is to show the audience what they're meant to be noticing: the listening device hidden in the potted plant, the smudged handwriting in a suspect's passport, the curve of the love interest's spine in her backless dress. An effective close-up helps the reader see the character as their love interest does, helps them understand why that character is sexy.

(This doesn't need to be entirely physical! Skill and expertise are desireable traits...a close-up of a chef's hands as they lovingly prepare a meal for their beloved can express desire, as could a shot of an athlete clearing the bar in the high jump.)

Suggestion Two: sex is a thing you do with your mouth and hands

As a wise man once said in an interview about one of my favorite video games, "the thing about desire is that it’s stronger when it’s not totally satisfied."

A wide shot where you can see someone's entire naked body is like 50% sexy. A close-up where you can see part of their naked body is like 75% sexy. A close-up of someone's hands as they tug at the plunging neckline of their evening dress is all the way sexy.

Anything that makes your imagination go into overdrive to fill in the details is automatically going to be sexier than something where you see everything.

(see also: William Ware Theiss, one of the costume designers for Star Trek, who said, "the sexiness of an outfit is directly proportional to the perceived possibility that a vital piece of it might fall off.")

I make use of this a lot.

In this scene, there's a lot of chest on display, but when Vivi makes a pass at Julián, we're looking at their hands and not their bodies. This is another escalation, her touching him instead of the other way around. We're seeing her take the lead, which is sexy!!!

In this scene, we get mouths and hands in a single shot. In a wide shot, this moment of him feeding her ice cream might read as cute, but removed from context and zoomed in to just the mouth and hands, it becomes sensual.

Suggestion Three: Linger in the moment, let us see the reaction

A lot of the idioms related to sex and desire suggest a loss of control. Arousal is "getting hot and bothered," having sex is "giving in" to desire. It's not enough just to show something sexy, we also need to see the effect it's having on our characters. Don't be afraid to show your characters getting flustered, stammering, getting caught up in the moment. I think that people are sometimes a little embarrassed about including sex and want to show only the bare minimum. They want it to be sexy, but they also want it to be over and done with. These two desires are almost always at odds with one another -- if you want something to be sexy, don't be afraid to linger in the moment. Show the action, but more importantly, show the reaction.

In this scene, we don't need to see any naked bodies (or where exactly Emily's put her hands). It's enough to see Freddy getting progressively more worked up as they make out.

It's especially sexy to show a person who is ordinarily very controlled coming undone.

It's not hard to understand why this was my best-performing post of 2023. Leonor and Andre, both very buttoned-up and in-control people, can't keep their hands off of one another. The facade slips for both of them, they need one another more than they need to discuss whatever important thing they were supposed to be discussing.

Suggestion Four: If you aren't fully comfortable showing sex, you don't have to

Not a ton to say here, but I think it's an important point to end on. If you feel weird and awkward writing sex, downloading sexy poses, and taking sexy screenshots, you don't have to include those things in your story!

Sex positivity doesn't mean everyone's fucking all of the time, it means everyone is expressing the amount of sexuality they are comfortable with. I exclusively wrote erotica/smut for nearly a decade, I am very comfortable including sex in my story. But if that's not you, that's okay! You don't need to include anything you don't want to.

A Random Observation That Didn't Fit Anywhere Else

If you have a scene that features naked or nearly-naked characters that aren't meant to be sexy, you can do the opposite of these things to avoid sexualizing them. Show them in wide shots, don't zoom in close to emphasize any one part of their body, focus on things other than physical reaction -- I've got this whole scene with Leonor in a swimsuit but it's not really sexy in the context. We're not leering at her body, she just happens to be wearing a swimsuit because they're at the beach. Even the physical touch and intimacy in that scene isn't particularly sexy, the emphasis there is on the emotions.

[twelve-thousand-pizzas]

There is no greater post nut regret than the kind you get after nutting to the thought of the most concerning ass frightening ass creepypasta character and then just laying there and fully realizing what you’ve done. Yeah.

[ilovemesomevincentprice]

Okay, I found this article a while back. According to Tallulah Bankhead, one day while Vincent was up to her apartment having breakfast with her, and her new husband, John Emery (the mustached guy in the gif with Vincent above) was asleep in their bedroom, she sneaked Vincent into the room to gaze upon Emery's gigantic "member".

So, they sneak into the bedroom and Bankhead lifts the blanket and Emery is lying there completely naked. She offered Vincent the opportunity to "sample the wares" of her new husband and Vincent obliged....

Now, the article states "gay". I know he was "bisexual" because he did genuinely care and he loved his wives and girlfriends throughout his life, but no one truly knows, except Vincent. But this article made me giddy. And I just love it.

Carry on.

[forgotten-daydreamer]

Re-reading RHATO as an adult is wild because I used to be like "okay, yeah, Roy and Kori often have sex, no biggie." But what did I know about sex when I was 16? Nothing. Reading it now and seeing that Kori is sometimes the big spoon, or that Roy has burns on his knees as if scorching hands pried 'em open, or even that he has the same burns on his shoulders but in a way that indicates he's been grabbed from behind*... freaky freaky. Love me a submissive king. Love me a dom queen. Yes!!

*RHATO #10 vol. 1

[ladylaguna]

I read a smut fic in a video game fandom I don’t go to (someone drew hot fanart, don’t judge me), it was pretty conventional P in V sex and this girl was crying and drooling. I’ve been seeing more and more of this lately. I can only assume (edit: conventional straight internet video!) porn is to blame.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve been fucked so well I got a little weepy, but that’s an extreme circumstance. I have never gotten complaints for my ability to suck a dick and I have never drooled in my life. I know everyone’s experiences are different and I just. Don’t like spit that much, personally.

But I feel like you better write your character with very good stroke game if the receiver is going to start leaking fluids all over the damn place?!

[punkeropercyjackson]

The whole 'dark Percy' side of the fandom reeks of cowardice because they will give Percy the most detailed and 'exotic'(*biracial hurl*)designs,the delibaretly problematic gender potrayals for him and oversexualization of his dynamics with Luke and the gods and even Octavian and that one irrelevant white blank page Hecate kid from a sidebook as if they couldn't just like........Since they want him to be unique looking in a historical way that's super attractive,they could use his accidental afrolatino-coding to give him super strong facial features and really dark skin and all kinds of african hairstyles since all black hair is beautiful.He could be transfem multigender/nonbinary with mix and match masc and fem physical traits for visible gender fuckery and gender euphoria he got himself greek mythos transition magic items for.They could respect Percy's canonical discomfort with ancient greek male norms that make her uncomfortable because she's smart enough to realize they're literally just misogyny and abuse and systemic corruption and be normal about her in sexual situations and in regards to sex in general seeing as Pjo will be always be a kids book series no matter how much in-universe time passes.It's just white people wanting to be special without having to be minorities and it's insane to project that onto.Again,a YOUNG adult protagonist for a pg media.As a young adult myself who selfships with Percy,it's giving the 'missing the good 'ol days but not the bigotry' ahh💀

[spurgie-cousin]

Can I send your google history further into the grave and ask what medieval christians thought about sex with Jesus? Does that come up at all as being a thing does any kind of “I had this vivid sexual dream/hallucination(?)” fall into witchcraft by default

I can probably answer this without too much research, although I did Google "medieval Christians sex Jesus" just in case there was some wild bit of trivia I wasn't aware of (all of the results were just people debating whether or not Jesus was a sex haver, which if you don't know is a huge argument amongst some theologians lol).

The reason medieval Christians were so hung up on the devil gettin' it on with human women is essentially the same reason many still want Jesus to be a virgin now, and that's just because Christianity has demonized sexuality (particularly female and queer sexuality) for centuries as a means of control. In these kinds of stories, the devil is always presented as masculine, and the victim/sinful willing participant is always a woman, and that's not an accident.

The stories from the Malleus Maleficarum (handbook on witches/how to identify and prosecute them from the 1400s) and the book below (too long of a title to type lol, 1697) present themselves as true accounts but really they read more like morality tales, warning women that any exploration of sexuality outside of reproduction with a husband will land them in some kind of eternal suffering. For example, a popular archetype is the devil donning some sort of human man disguise and seducing an unsuspecting woman, after which she is damned to hell for the sin of being deceived/being horny.

So all of that to say, sex = evil and bad, and therefore it was not associated with Jesus. The fact that Jesus was basically asexual was held up as a sign of his perfection and purity, so saying you had some kind of dream or vision about boning God's son would 1. be taboo because as a woman you weren't supposed to be talking about sex period and 2. probably get you suspected of some kind of witchcraft because the only people allowed to have any direct communication with God/Jesus, including visions of their plans, were the men who ran your church.

It's a notion that's carried over to the present day as we know, since there's still a stigma around anything sexual within the greater Christian culture, especially when it comes to female Christians.

[dhaaruni]

[scream scream scream]

[starstruckwombatfishbakery]

[strawberryscentedhugs]

shout out to regressors who:

🍓 have temper tantrums when regressed

🍓 have emotional dysregulation

🍓 dissociate

🍓 are impulsive

🍓 are hypersexual

you're not doing something wrong and you're not weird for having these issues. trauma affects everyone differently and it's OK if you have these issues. and remember, healing isn't linear.

[ilovemesomevincentprice]

Vincent Price and Hilary Dwyer - Witchfinder General/The Conqueror Worm (1968)

[doctorkinkphd]

If a hypothetical person were to hook up with one's ex-girlfriend, and that hypothetical hookup were to hypothetically end in both of you being covered in someone's blood but you're still not sure whose blood it was or where it was coming from

WOULD that be considered a sign from the universe to not. do that anymore

[gooberscollage]

Random phrases from old magazines

Taken from magazines archived by The Lost Library of the Atypical and Unattainable on Archive.org

[dhaaruni]

I saw a romance novel blogger whining about readers "kinkshaming" a historical romance in which the hero repeatedly spanks and whips the heroine (she doesn't reciprocate) and it was just weird that she couldn't fathom why female readers might be uncomfortable with that content.

I'm sure there are women in the world who get genuinely turned on by men whipping them and drawing blood but it's frustrating that pointing out women are often socially conditioned to be sexual in ways that cause discomfort and even physical pain gets you instantly labeled puritanical.