I had therapy this week. I’m convinced I don’t pay my therapist enough because of all the weird online shit she has to learn about to help me unpack, but anyway. In therapy this week, we talked about the bastardization of therapy language in online circles and how people are using the language of therapy to bully people from behind a shield of being “healed” and “unproblematic,” and this, in turn, helped me realize why I’ve been struggling to write sex scenes in my work of late.
Like not just an “oh god, this is embarrassing and intimate” way, but more of an “every time I try to write something sexy, I’m freezing up and having a panic attack” sort of way which is… new for me.
Writing sex used to be my 9-5 job, and I’m actually pretty good at it. (I think. I hope.)
But there’s been a creeping thought in my brain of late that makes me freeze up and close the word document, and that’s “I’m being too horny with this; I should tone it down lest people think less of this character,” and last night I had to literally sit myself down and ask myself, bestie, what?!
It’s a sex scene. It’s supposed to be horny.
Also, characters are not meant to be perfect, healed little beans. They’re allowed to be messy and do questionable things because that’s what real people are like, and that’s a good part of storytelling.
Except lately, every time I try to do something with a character that might be considered imperfect behavior, my brain shuts down and won’t let me proceed, and I’ve realized it’s because I’m pre-emptively shielding myself from the online discourse of the kink not being “wholesome” enough and, like… fuck that. Honestly.
Can kink be wholesome? Absolutely. Does it need to be? No.
Do characters all need to talk and act like they’ve gone to therapy lest they be considered the villain? Also no.
I’m tired.