This scene is remarkable for how unlike the rest of the series it is.

We didn’t do steamy content in Guilded Age very much, objectively speaking or compared to some of my other projects. Frigg (with Best, E-Merl, and others) has the most developed sex scenes and sex-related scenes of the bunch, but they’re usually more comically blunt than arousing. We gave Byron and Syr’Nj just enough attention that readers knew their sex life was satisfying… and along with this scene here and one later echo of it, that was about it. Bandit, arguably the most conventionally attractive of the lot, doesn’t get near the subject; E-Merl and Rachel, for all their obvious hormonal energy, don’t get past kissing in fact or in any on-panel dream sequences. Gravedust is a literal monk. Villains? Incidental characters? Pretty much nada. Harky and Gondolessa held hands on-panel, all of once.

Partly that’s because what’s hot can be as elusive a topic as what’s funny, and it was one on which Phil and I were less likely to agree. Partly it’s because I think sexy stuff comes more naturally to some of my other artist partners, so I could play with the subject elsewhere (see: Gisele Lagace). But I think fantasy that tries too hard to be sexy is often cliched fantasy, hitting the very tropes we were looking to avoid, from chainmail bikinis on down to “two innocent peasants get up to a bit o’ fun in the back woods, and then suddenly THEY’RE SLAUGHTERED BY A RAVENOUS MONSTER!”