Been thinking about what makes Declan’s sex scenes so good (apart from the fact that…he is in them). There’s a lot I could talk about here but I did just want to hone in on 2 things that I think are surprisingly rare in sex on screen, and those are a) ‘Christ, you’re wet’, and b) in 2 out of his 3 sex scenes not only do we see him fuck Maud with his fingers but that’s all we as viewers see: that’s the main event from our perspective.
(Note: generally cisnormative language used in this post just bc I’m talking about the film & tv industry which is cisnormative and in this specific instance talking about cis characters.)
‘Christ, you’re wet’ has lived in my head rent-free since I first saw it and it stands out so much as a line, and I think part of that is just that we so rarely hear any reference to women being wet on screen, even from women themselves. I actually can’t think of any other scene off the top of my head (though there must be some). We hear about men’s hard-ons all the fucking time, both generally and in a way that’s supposed to be titillating, but we never fucking hear about how wet a woman is! To hear that vocalised and acknowledged feels both meaningful and sexy, especially when combined with Declan’s thick Irish accent and that intense gaze.
Honestly I think especially hearing a man vocalise something like this stands out to me, because in this horrifying patriarchal culture we live in there’s this dichotomy of a not insubstantial portion of men treating women’s bodies like they’re at once incredibly desirable and incredible repulsive. I know I personally grew up around male friends who viewed women’s bodies in this way. So to see this gorgeous man acknowledge a woman being really wet and in a way that makes it so clear how turned on he is by that feels not only super fucking hot but important.
I think there’s also just something really fucking sexy about hearing something that’s usually kept quiet almost to the point of being taboo spoken out loud. There’s that little thrill of being like ‘oh! We just heard Aidan Turner talk dirty about how wet she is’, it feels private and intimate and like we’re getting to hear something we usually wouldn’t. You know? It feels fucking dirty. Even though the reality is he’s just acknowledging a very normal and expected part of sex.
And of course, then there’s the fact that being told how wet you are by someone you’re fucking is hot for many reasons: it feels exposing, it’s a way for them to assert their power over you by communicating that they know exactly how much they turn you on, and it also exposes their desire for you.
And then the same with Declan fucking Maud with his fingers (I don’t really like the phrase ‘fingering’ bc it just reminds me of being 12 years old and hearing that so-and-so had been fingered in the school loos by a pimply pre-teen boy whilst they bunked off P.E. or whatever… Profoundly unsexy) - I feel like we so rarely see this on screen in sex scenes between cis men and women? We see men giving oral to women more but even that has only started becoming more common in the last decade or so. I remember listening to an episode of Sentimental Garbage about Maroon 5’s Songs About Jane and the hosts made a great comment about how sexy the line ‘sinking my fingers into every inch of you, because I know that’s what you want me to do’ is, and how that’s in part because it’s just so rare to hear fingering (fine, I’ll use that word) acknowledged in art/media, let alone given that kind of sexual charge and attention, despite it being something that so many women love.
For that reason it contains a lot of the same thrill that hearing Declan tell Maud how wet she is does. And on top of that we get to see a sex act purely focused on the woman’s pleasure, and we get to see this strong, incredibly sexy, very sexually competent capable man using his skills purely to get her off. I think on screen (hell, in fiction, in culture in general) straight cis men’s sexual prowess tends to be limited solely to the realm of their dicks and what they can do with them, and still ends up revolving around their own pleasure as opposed to their partner’s - it’s like, they’re fucking a woman for their own gratification and the woman just happens to love it too. Whereas these two scenes with Declan are focused on him very intentionally pleasing Maud, and at the same time we see how much pleasure he gets out of that, how turned on he is by fucking her with his fingers, feeling how wet she is, hearing her moan.. Especially in the third scene, the camera really lingers on his face as he touches her and we hear her moaning - it really makes a point to show us in the intensity of his expression how turned on he is by pleasing her, how determined he is to please her, how present he is in the moment. Fuck! It’s hot.
And I just can’t think of any other scenes like that?
And that’s what those scenes revolve around - sure, maybe they have other kinds of sex after that, but we don’t see it. The fingering is the event, the fingering is the sex scene. The show is telling us this is important and hot and worthwhile in and of itself. And it’s clear that Declan thinks so, too.
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