Anyway, I'm invading your inbox to say thanks for writing TVD and all its subsequent fics and ficlets - I found it a few years after it was published; I was twenty and not *that* much younger than you, but young enough to be inexperienced with sex and kink, which had cost me - got laid for the first time, and like with Seb's first time, it was utter shite. I also got terrible advice from a friend on it; trusted her, and she was like "don't reject him because of that, that's bullshit", which, in retrospect, is objectively incorrect and a terrible thing to say to anyone who's having reservations about sex. Anyway, afterwards I was suitably traumatized and did nothing but read about 200 fluffy Johnlock fics to cope; then I got sick of those and decided to read violent or angsty Mormor fics, and eventually made my way to TVD. The outtakes were what ended up making me realize, oh, this is *not* actually normal for consensual sex, actually someone who does xyz is, in fact, being an asshole and a decent person would have done things differently. And in fact there were copious consent issues present and I'm not just being oversensitive or puritan or anything.
I think I always really loved that Seb was so good about consent and sex in general - it makes sense; he might be a scary killer, but he's a subby masochist, not a rapist or even a dubcon man (I considered "dubcon artist" but actually that seems a more suitable title for the writer of dubcon scenes). He doesn't want to put his own pleasure first, he's a slut who has a very good time making others have a good time. I know people are complaining these days about serial killers who have cookie-cutter morals around consent, but I think that can so easily and readily be done well! It's VERY easy to have a personality who kills and also has morals around autonomy or whatnot; as long as the characterization fits, I think that's all even those people would ask.
Art doesn't have an obligation to teach people how to have sex "correctly" - or to teach them anything else - but I really appreciate that your art did. Especially the scene with Seb telling Alex to ask a partner about their preferences in order to be Good At Sex. And Irene's hard limit on penetration let me also express that. For a lot of us, I think the difficulty lies in not having seen a sort of... template or social script around how to politely and acceptably say, don't do this, do that instead; more often, in mainstream (onscreen, usually) portrayals, we see people enthusiastically having magic everyone-likes-this sex, or people wanting no sex at all, or people screaming at others for doing things wrong, or occasionally people politely putting up with lackluster sex and then resignedly ghosting, but not people actually communicating. At least that was the case in the 2010s; some shows have been a lot better about this now.
All this to say, I appreciate how much your fics helped me! FiF will always live there for me as an option if/when I'm ever ready for it. Unfortunately, as the anon who asked all those years ago about getting off on flouting expectations, I will likely not be able to confirm for you whether Calvary gave me a boner, but right now I'm pretty sure the answer would have been 'no'. Not that that was a mystery that anyone ever needed solving.
So this ask has been languishing in my inbox for ages, honestly mostly because I was a bit intimidated and didn't know how to respond. I reckon that as a writer, you always hope to have a certain impact on your readers, but to have to evidence of that stare in your face, it's a bit...
Anyway. First things first. I'm so sorry that happened to you, anon. I'm glad the penny dropped eventually, and I'm sorry it took you that long. It sucks, not just to have that kind of experience but also needing to do that reinterpretation afterwards, looking back and seeing everything in a different light.
And I am very glad that what I wrote could nudge you in the right direction. I've never really written with the specific intent to change people's minds, but it did crop up in the back of my mind, sometimes, whether this was going to show people something in a new light...
And I'm very happy now that I stuck with it, because I had serious doubts. When it comes to Sebastian's ethical fucking around specifically, I've always wondered if I was getting too self-indulgent. I personally strongly dislike the kind of character where an author just shoves in a bit of their own ethics and morality without it making sense for the character in general - especially when it's a way to make "evil" characters more palatable. So I did doubt a lot (and still do, on bad days!) whether the Seb-Moran-feminist-sex-god thing I've got going on isn't just doing the same.
I hope it isn't. Mostly because Sebastian is far from the perfect woke lay. He's cruel at times, dismissive, and despite the tongue-in-the-cheek tag he is actually rather sexist in a lot of little ways. He's well-intentioned on the whole, but also wildly clueless sometimes about people with experiences other than his own, privileged one.
Nevertheless, he values consent. Although it's more than that; he doesn't just have a genuine distaste of the idea of non-consenting sex, he specifically likes it when he can give his partners something they want. He gets off on getting people off, in short, whether that's playing a service top or an enthusiastic bottom, as long as he's getting the other person to enjoy themselves, he's happy.
And, in the grander scheme of things, the way he has sex also tracks with his broader personality (I hope). On the whole he has a very clear, cut-the-bullshit view on things, so it's logical that applies to sex too, that he approaches it pragmatically. He's also observant, quick to read and interpret people, and personality-wise he's a bit of caretaker—which is a funny characteristic to give to a gun-for-hire, but the main thing there is just that he can switch that off when he think it's needed. Add to that that he's naturally suspicious of any narrative about the way things are done, his queerness, and that he has a need to distance himself from the average cishet dudebro, and you've got the background that leads to someone consistently enthusiatically consenting sex with his partners, even when that means he's got to put in the work.
Plus, from a Doylist point of view, that's also just what's needed for someone to end up having a sexual relationship with Jim the way I write him. Having someone more focused on their own pleasure, less good at communicating about it, less down-to-earth and relaxed about it all... It would have ended up a disaster.
But, yeah, it's also definitely an author tract. Sometimes I do feel like I live in a bit of a queer sex-positive bubble and it's always a bit startling to realise what's going on outside of it. That's definitely in the back of my mind every time I write a sex scene, and if that means in practice I keep providing different blueprints to say no or yes or maybe to things, to go I like this and I don't want that with it feeling easy and natural... Well, all the better.
Not that I'm doing it that way only for ethical reasons. It's also just what's more interesting, and lbr sexier to write, to me. I always aim for a certain amount of realism in everything I write, and sex isn't different. And a sex scene that feels real, that gets messy, that needs readjusting halfway through, that's way more fascinating to me than one where everything is Hollywood-perfect. So even with Jim, who's preternaturally (unrealistically) good at interpreting someone else's reactions, you get instances where he misjudges, where he needs to adapt, or where he overshoots or overestimates and they need to talk it through. Perfection bores me; it's when they have to put in the effort that it gets interesting.
So yeah. Given how many people have already told me they started reading tvd when they were teenagers or in their early twenties, I hope that they—if they didn't know that already—also took along something of that attitude on top of the many kinks. Fuck knows the sex in tvd was not written to be edifying or educational (all right, except maybe for Learning Curve) but if at least some of them absorbed the idea that for sex to be good you need to be able to ask your partner about things, take them into account, and try to approach it as honestly and pragmatically as possible, then I'll be the happiest little writer in the world.
