World Of TEOTE #8: Why Sex Matters
Welcome to World of The Essence of the Equinox, a series exploring the worldbuilding, influences and ideas behind my completed gothic fantasy trilogy.
In this eigth instalment, we examine the importance of sex and female desire—and its centrality is essential to the narrative and characterisation of the female protagonist.
So, let’s get into it.
Discussions about sex in fiction often seem trapped between two extremes. Sexual content is either treated as inherently gratuitous—as though its presence must be justified in a way violence rarely is—or as nothing more than titillation.
I’ve never found either position particularly useful. Sex can perform narrative work like any other form of human interaction. In The Essence of the Equinox, desire reveals character, changes relationships, exposes vulnerability and becomes one of the ways I explore female autonomy. Nowhere is that clearer than in the relationship between Laila and Darius.
The Narrative Potency of ‘Love At First Sight’
Though much-maligned and ridiculed now, the literary trope of Love At First Sight has been utilised to great effect as a narrative kickstarter for a romantic subplot. And it’s easy to see why it’s used—it’s immediate and effective. Attraction doesn’t require a morally or intellectually satisfying justification. Sometimes another person simply arrests your attention. The narrative question isn’t why did these two beautiful people notice each other? It’s what happens after they do.
For many, this is a point of critique. Often because they have personal beliefs that romances built on initial physical attraction have a weak foundation. But I’ve never considered Love At First Sight, when written well, to be the sum of the relationship more than what ignites it. You jump in headfirst and then figure out the rest on the way down.
I also feel like it’s easier to play with the inherent irrationality of lust and love and what these emotions are capable of making us do when we’re not struggling to implement justifications for it. It suits a relationship as turbulent as Laila and Darius’s that these two are already prepared to perform greatly out of character feats when it comes to the other—that there is this potent chemistry that pivots these typically self-aware and mercenary individuals away from acting on of their best interests.
Laila and Darius do not love each other at first sight. They desire each other at first sight. I think the distinction matters. They are both hedonistic individuals who don’t shy away from enjoying pleasures of the flesh. It’s one of the many traits they both share and later bond over. That the two find each other attractive is a reason why they take notice, but it’s not enough to make them act on it alone. If that were purely the draw then it probably would’ve fizzled quickly after the novelty wore off. There is an intellectual draw working in tandem with the physical draw and they both happen to feed each other. It’s why there’s always an underlying sexual tension in their conversations. They’re verbally sparring and getting off on every riposte. Their flirtation is effectively foreplay.
The Transformative Power of Sex
Sex is something that is simultaneously overvalued and undervalued in our current society. There are conflicting forces which treat is as something that wields immense power, as inherently ruinous and corruptive towards anyone that encounters it. Whereas on the other end of the spectrum, it’s treated as something flippant, carnal and not that impactful at all. Depending on the individual, both can be true and none can be true. In the case of Laila and Darius… it’s the former.
The eventual catalyst for their relationship has a premise of deliberate seduction and manipulation. The two are quite aware of the influence they have over one another. They know that they are both individuals of great physical beauty who are used to getting their own way with others, enthralling them under their will. Their sexual relationship begins partly as performance and manipulation. What interests me is the moment the seducers become the masks they’ve been wearing: when performed intimacy produces genuine vulnerability, and neither is entirely sure when the game stopped being a game.
The night they finally have sex is definitely a pivotal moment in their relationship. Yes, they get to enjoy each other physically but they also communicate with each other on a deeper level. Laid bare. Their pretences gradually slipping away. Even though Laila is fully intent on seducing him to her side, she can’t keep herself from exposing the extent of how vulnerable she is while taking on a new male partner after her lacklustre experiences with her first. Something that Darius is eager to reassure her on.
Darius is unable to keep himself from exposing the extent of how vulnerable he is in that he has developed feelings, of some sort, a fondness that runs deeper than the games they’re playing. He’s not content with just having one night of this, he wants more. Darius’s attachment to Laila becomes morally complicated precisely because his capacity to value her doesn’t extend automatically to anyone else. I explore that contradiction further in Too Special to Die: Why I Hate the Damsel in Distress Trope.
Unfortunately, in the latter case, Laila is a bit slower on the uptake and doesn’t quite respond as quickly to his needs as he does hers. But they eventually do manage to find themselves on the same page after another tryst, and it’s that they both feel something very deeply. It’s not quite love but it’s more than lust. Let’s just jump headfirst and figure it out on the way down.
Prioritising Female Desire
When The Stars Alight is a book that focuses a lot on Laila’s active desire. Not just her romantic pursuits but her goals and ambitions in life. It was important to me to write a proactive female protagonists who knows what she wants and isn’t afraid to take it. If I had created a society in which women supposedly understood their bodies as their own and then wrote my heroine experiencing the same sexual shame expected of women in our world without explanation, the worldbuilding would ring hollow.
Fantasy has historically been comfortable reproducing intensely patriarchal societies, sometimes treating misogyny as an almost inevitable feature of a vaguely premodern setting. It feels especially pertinent in our current wave of feminist backlash where women are once more encouraged to eschew ambition, to focus on finding a wealthy man to take care of them, to lower their standards in order to find heterosexual romantic fulfilment. Rather than creating another heroine whose agency must emerge solely through resisting those restrictions, I became interested in what a heroine might look like if some of those restrictions had never been imposed upon her in the first place.
This is one reason I’ve always been more interested in romantic plots built around active female choice than those in which marriage is imposed upon the heroine. Arranged and political marriages can obviously produce fascinating stories—TEOTE itself engages with political marriage—but what interests me about Laila is that desire belongs to her. She isn’t waiting to discover whether she can learn to love the man selected for her. She looks at the people around her and decides whom she wants.
Sex in The Essence of the Equinox isn’t there because I believe every adult fantasy novel needs explicit sexual content. It doesn’t. Nor do I think sex automatically makes a story mature, transgressive or interesting. It’s there because these particular characters are sensual people whose desires affect the decisions they make. For Laila especially, desire is inseparable from agency. Her sexuality reflects the world that raised her: one in which her body belongs to her, pleasure carries no inherent moral stain, and wanting something is not itself a source of shame.
But freedom doesn’t protect her from consequence. She can choose whom she desires without choosing what that desire eventually costs her. She can enter intimacy intending to manipulate and discover herself transformed by it. She can be sexually experienced and still emotionally vulnerable.
Laila’s desire doesn’t corrupt her. It reveals her.
And that’s why I couldn’t write around it.
Ready to enter Vysteria?
When the Stars Alight is the first novel in The Essence of the Equinox, my completed gothic fantasy trilogy about a star-born princess, the future king of demons and a love affair that collides with politics, power and the fate of their worlds.
Start with When the Stars Alight →
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Previous: #7 — Why I Hate the Damsel in Distress Trope: Who Gets to Be “Too Special to Die”?
Next: #9 — Upcoming
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