bleep0bleep:

ljummen:

Some of you may have seen my tweets about this yesterday. A while back, I wrote a fic called You look like my next mistake. This next paragraph will contain some spoilers, so if you haven’t read the fic but want to, you should probably do so first. 

In short, it’s an age reversed Sterek fic, where Derek is a virgin and Stiles is the sexually experienced senior. In the fic, Derek doesn’t feel as though he’s ready for sex, and when he falls for Stiles, he thinks this might be an issue. In the end, Stiles makes it clear to him that it isn’t, and that he can wait. The story doesn’t contain sex of any form. 

When he story was posted on AO3, I received a number of comments (both on AO3 and via other sites) from people expressing that they had wished that the story would’ve ended with a sex scene. That the story’s ending would’ve been better if I had added a sex scene. This bothered me slightly, because I felt as though these people either missed the point of the story, or didn’t really care about the message I was trying to get across. 

Then, yesterday, I received a comment from a person I’ve excluded the username of. See below: 

One comment like this made it worth all the negative ones. Because this is the reason why I chose not to include a sex scene. The story was never about Derek wanting to get ready to have sex, to get more comfortable around it. This story was about Derek not being ready, and showing that that’s okay. That someone accepting this shouldn’t be an exception, but something given. Stiles isn’t being an amazing, understanding, tolerant person in this fic – he’s acting like any decent human being should, in my opinion. 

Because it is okay to not be ready for sex. There’s nothing wrong with you, you aren’t broken or weird. You’re just you, and that’s perfectly okay. Don’t let anyone ever tell you otherwise. 

I had the pleasure of beta-reading this fic for the lovely @ljummen, who worked incredibly hard on this piece. She was very hesitant at the end of the story (the end as it was published) as she thought people would expect a sex scene, was considering writing one and asked what I thought. Having read the story several times and discussed and brainstormed with her over the entire time she wrote it; and also reading it again in its entirety– the story felt complete to me; it didn’t need it, and it also didn’t fit. The tone of the piece and all the communication that happened throughout– I felt that well, putting sex at the end of this would take away from the emotional conclusion of the lovely story @ljummen had written. And @ljummen knew in her gut too what she wanted, she was nervous, though and needed the reassurance that it was okay. 

I’ve written a range of fics from G-rated to explicit; when I first starting posting fic there were a few fics that made me nervous; that I felt compelled to tag “No Sex” because I was worried people would expect it and be frustrated or upset if they didn’t get it. I think there’s a mindset with a lot of writers who think certain fics have to have explicit sex, even if they aren’t comfortable writing it or think it fits a part of the story. I’ve talked with people who are afraid that no one will be interested in their stories if there aren’t sex in them, that there’s less value in those stories. There isn’t. There’s value in your story, however you choose to tell it. 

It’s a mindset that I hope is changing with the growing number of stories with asexual and aromantic characters, with characters exploring their sexuality and figuring out what is okay and what isn’t okay, learning their own boundaries and authors I hope, who are feeling more confident about telling the stories they want to tell, whether they contain sex or not.