Board Thread:The Last Sovereign Discussion/@comment-39332473-20190808194309/@comment-39332473-20190814092127

NoelMittUns wrote:

Gender studies are irrelevant to the TLS-verse. The world's made of two principles, lust and purity, which are like TLS' yin yang duality. Being asexual means something deep about her being. It's the fundamentals of her being that are at play. And it seems like an asexual human is an abnormal thing, since humans are supposed to be balanced, and everything is supposed to be made of both, according to Alonon. I wouldn't say irrelevant. TLS frequently explores and is clearly interested in issues of consent, domination and ethics. Simon is a deliberate contrast to other more typical harem-corruption-domination protagonists (like Estaven). But, perhaps that isn't what you mean.

I do recall Alonon talking about the lust/purity dichotomy, and your point about what that could imply about asexuality is well taken. However, when I consider your conclusion, I am frankly sceptical, for several reasons.

The first is that Alonon might not be telling the truth. I think he believes what he's saying, but we have no way to verify or investigate this for ourselves (or, at least, we haven't had the opportunity yet).

The second is that, as Alonon describes, while the fundamental dichotomy exists, a great deal of emergent properties are built on top of that. Somehow this whole mess percolates into a logical system of arcane magic, which frankly makes no sense, but it is so. Alonon's description of races being influenced by their lust/purity quotient is almost certainly only true in the broadest strokes. I say this because how this dichotomy manifests itself evidently varies by individual (because not everyone perfers the exact same things), which implies 'you have 50% lust, therefore you have X desires' simply isn't true. To me, at least, it doesn't appear to be that simple.

The third is that the implication of what you're saying is that Alonon and his sister, because they are aesexual, are actually not even humans, but some other kind of 0/100 lust/purity creature entirely, birthed from normal humans, and that this new species of asexual Ardan royalty has birthed a new generation (in Tyna) which are normal humans with 50/50 lust purity split. This doesn't make any sense to me. It makes more sense that Asexuality is just an orientation, without any deeper implications, and that it's one that sucks to have in a world built around sex.

It could be worse I guess. Imagine if you were a teetotaler and you found out that the world was fundamentally split into scotch and whisky.