Something that comes up a lot is the fact that there's no sex in Just Juliet. I get it. I really do. Queer women often get the short end of the stick - they're either too sexualized, or not sexualized at all. Like they have to be porn stars or some image of 'look, gay is okay, all they do is hold hands' and nothing in between, or realistic. Or that they can't even be queer if they aren't having sex with another girl.
This topic only grew with Loving Lakyn, which has a lot of sex in it because - well, let's be real, it's Lakyn. But the question stopped being 'why isn't there any sex in JJ?' and became 'why does Lakyn get to have sex, but Lena doesn't?'
The short answer - because Lena didn't want to. The long answer - because I didn't want to write it. The truth is, I could ramble for hours about:
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How young I was when I wrote JJ, my inexperience, my discomfort, with anything close to erotica. (We called them 'lemons' in my day.)
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I could tell you how I went to a small school where very few teens were having sex, how we were all acne covered and awkward and lucky if someone even wanted to take us out. So the idea of Lena and Juliet jumping each others bones didn't even cross my mind.
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I could tell you how JJ started out on Wattpad and I could view my demographics and know that my readership was 12-15 year old girls (and how the only people writing smut for 12 year olds are other 12 year olds).
But here's what I'll actually take the time to say: the characters made the decision about which book got smut, and which book didn't. Juliet's 'virginity status' can be up for debate, but Lena's can't. She's a virgin when she meets Juliet, she's a young baby bisexual, still learning about herself. As for Scott and Lakyn, neither of them were virgins when they met, and neither of them were going to start acting like they were after they met.
TLDR; There's no sex in Just Juliet because Lena was a questioning teenage virgin who wasn't ready and her girlfriend respected that, while there was sex in Loving Lakyn because Scott and Lakyn are ho's and very gay for each other.
Have a question? Leave it in the comments and I'll add it to the next Q&A post!
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