"Oh no," I can just hear you saying. "Mako, you're not weighing in on the 50 shades thing, are you?"
Sorta.
My gratitude today is for sex-positive, well drawn, adult webcomics. I love them. I'm a fan of a few of them in particular.
Before I tell you about any of them though, a small warning.
Any of the links you click beyond this point might have nudity, and are most likely NSFW. Granted, it's drawn, cartoon nudity, but that's on you, ok?
Ok, now that we've got that out of the way...
First off, I love the comic Oglaf, which is this sort of smutty, not-quite-a-story series about ridiculous and often sexy goings-on in a medieval fantasy world. There are recurring characters, talking sperm (seriously), and one particular strip had maybe the funniest and most spot-on skewering of submissive entitlement I've ever seen.
Then there's Questionable Content by Jeph Jacques. It's not smutty per se, but it deals with adult, mature things. Characters have real relationships, real problems, too. There's alcoholism, co-dependency, social awkwardness, yet also wonderful stuff like sex-positivity, realistic transgender characters, and anthropomorphic butt-obsessed miniature robots (yes, seriously).
It's fantastic. You come to love these characters, and want to know about their lives. They're very, very real.
Lastly, there's Erika Moen & Matthew Nolan's Oh Joy, Sex Toy, which is a webcomic about sex-ed and sex toy reviews. It's great. That link leads to their comic about how 50 Shades of Grey is basically the "Big Mac" of kink.
Which I agree with, utterly. I haven't read the book myself. I do plan to see the movie. Several people I know, including my wife and our girl Kate, adore the book. They find it hot.
Listen, it's totally okay if you don't. It's also totally okay if you think it's tripe. I'm not going to go off on a rant here, and won't spin this in a negative way, either. After all, this is a blog mostly about what I'm grateful for. I'm not a fan of negativity. I do my very best not to be negative in my life, to be for things as opposed to against them. I think spending energy on anger, and a contrarian position are a waste of time. "This shouldn't be that way" or "This thing is bad" aren't action. They're complaints.
To put it in food metaphor terms, if you go to a restaurant and they have something you really dislike on the menu, don't order it. If you saw other people ordering it, and went over to their table to tell them you don't like it, they'd look at you like you're a lunatic.
Now that's not to say that things which you're against in the world you shouldn't work to change. But I think that there's a positive, good way to inculcate change. That's by doing positive things. Instead of bellyaching about how things shouldn't be, we always have the option to actually make changes in the world to how we'd like it to be. The people who draw all these comics do just that. I do that with my own writing, work on the podcast, advocacy, and such.
I'm grateful for people who make positive changes in the world. I'm grateful I can be one of them. I'm grateful anyone can be one of them.