Feeding Snarky by Eric Burns

So here’s the thing. I like porn.

I don’t talk a lot about liking porn, because you’re not supposed to come right out and say it. "Man, what a beautiful morning," you never say. "I think I’ll have a cup of tea, and maybe go down to the market, and when I get back I’m going to enjoy the bounties of porn that are my birthright as an internet consumer." People would look at you funny if you did, and your boss would stop letting you have complimentary coffee and donuts in the morning.

But I do like it. And most of you probably do too. We might not be cheerful about it – we might not march into gas stations with our head held high, grabbing the latest magazines off the rack and marching right up to the gas station attendant to make our purchases (that might be the one situation in life where you are that concerned about what a gas station attendant thinks of you) – but we do like it.

Which leads us inexorably to porn comics, which I don’t often talk about either.

I specifically decided, way back when, to rarely if ever talk about sexually explicit comics on Websnark. I’m something of a prude, perhaps, but it was just one of those things I realized would come up that I would give a bye. So, I don’t talk about Sexy Losers on Websnark, even though it’s damn funny and consistently high quality. I don’t talk about White Lightning Productions (even the PG stuff) even though they were one of the first sites to actually put up a permanent link to Websnark. I don’t talk about Ghastly’s Ghastly Comic even though I’m pretty sure he’s building a complicated summoning rite in the heart of the Internet designed to have an X-rated cthuloid monster rise up out of Cisco’s routers, point at us and laugh.

And I don’t talk about Slipshine.

Which means, among other things, I don’t often talk about Josh Lesnick.

Josh Lesnick’s old school. The first comic of his I remember was Wendy, which was frenetic and fun and often darn sexual, but wasn’t so much a porn comic as it was a webcomic where pornish things happened with startling regularity. (I don’t remember off the top of my head if we actually saw sex or not in the strip. And, being lazy, I haven’t bothered to look it up.) Certainly, Wendy wasn’t any ‘harder core’ than Exploitation Now, Michael Poe’s pre-Errant Story comic.

But, for whatever reason, Michael Poe wasn’t immediately equated with porn, and Josh Lesnick was. Of course, Lesnick being involved with a project called Orgymania probably had something to do with that.

In any case, Lesnick’s Wendy was popular, but clearly didn’t thrill him. I remember he actually "finished" Wendy twice. Once in the legendary "Wendy #300," which I can’t find archived on the internet in the four seconds it took me to type "Lesnick Wendy #300" into Google and check the first link that came up, so if you want to find it you’re on your own. If I remember correctly, Wendy #300 stopped in the middle of a boffo storyline, had some pretty depressed sounding dialogue, and Wendy took off her clothes and ended the comic. Several months later Wendy returned and… well, sort of petered out.

His second well known comic (not counting explicit pornography, which I’ll get to in a moment) was Cutewendy. Cutewendy (which suffered from having a character with the same name as Wendy who also looked clearly like a chibi version of Wendy). Cutewendy was funny, and crazy, and not at all pornish, and in a lot of ways represented Lesnick’s first giant leap into the style of comics he clearly wanted to move in. The art was sketchy – not bad, mind. It literally looked like he was just sketching instead of doing careful finishes – and the humor was absurdist, and he was clearly having fun. And that fun was infectious.

It’s probably significant that Wendy both had a dark and depressed "ending" and then restarted and petered out, but Cutewendy had a complete, proper series end, when he was finished with it. Lesnick clearly cared a lot about it, and clearly enjoyed it right up until the end. In fact, I suspect the reason he ended it was less wanting to just end the thing and more because he wanted to have a clearer break between his early Wendy efforts and his more current directions. I could be wrong, mind, but it’s what I suspect.

After the end of Cutewendy, Lesnick started Girly, which is technically a sequel (one of the characters is the daughter of Cutewendy and her Sidekick). The style of humor and the early art was reminiscent of Cutewendy’s, but from the very beginning there was added sophistication. Over the next several strips, we saw the style evolve and grow. It really seemed – and seems, to this day – like Lesnick had found the strip that reflected his passions, his sense of humor, and his artistic style. Which, given that he was a multi-year veteran of webcomics – Wendy was updating regularly back in 1999 – should have put Girly up front on everyone’s lists. Especially when we consider that, like Kurtz, Abrams, Gabe, Tycho, and all the other usual suspects we rattle off when we decide to equate artistic success with financial success, Lesnick makes his living off of cartoon art.

However… well, we don’t. Lesnick ends up being an afterthought (or entirely forgotten), because the way he makes that living is with porn.

Slipshine grew out of Lesnick’s participation in the aforementioned Orgymania. It is, however, a highly successful web concern. It features many artists contributing many different stories with many different themes, exploring both sides of the sexually explicit world. There are works on there that are clearly Erotica, and works on there that are clearly straight Pornography, and works on there that blend between the two. The thing that leaps out at a reader, however, is the cheerfulness of the whole affair. Not only isn’t Slipshine ashamed to be pornography… it’s downright enthusiastic.

In other words, it’s sex-positive.

And that’s not all that easy to find in today’s porn landscape.

Look, I’m not here to trash anyone’s fantasy life. I’m really not. If you get off on ultraviolent rape fantasies and humiliation fantasies, that’s okay with me, no matter which side of the equation you’re on. The thing is, over time the internet’s more accessible porn has pushed farther and farther into those more extreme fantasies. Things like Usenet’s alt.sex.* hierarchy are laden with pedophilia, non-consentual (and very violent) assaults, pain, and humiliation. Stories and comics where the victim is left sobbing and broken at the end. And like I said, if you like that, then good enough. But it’s really not my scene. It’s misogynistic. (Sometimes men are the victims in these stories, but more often it’s a woman. Often an ‘uppity woman’ who really ‘had it coming.’ Yeah.) Most of all, it’s based on suffering, and my brain isn’t really wired that way. It comes across as sex-negative. Sex is a weapon, used to master, not pleasure, in those stories.

And that’s not my thing. Apologies to you if it’s yours. I’m not looking for an argument.

Slipshine might have some of that somewhere on its site (I don’t pretend to have looked at everything on Slipshine), but the overwhelming message of Slipshine is sex-positive. Sex is a happy thing there. Everyone involved seems to be enjoying themselves. At the end of the scene, all the participants are pretty glad they were a part of it. If anyone’s smug, then everyone’s smug.

It kind of reminds me of XXXenophile, by the Foglios et al. XXXenophile was full-on porn, but it was full-on porn where everybody was pretty glad to be involved in sex. There was no guilt or pain or humiliation – just good clean dirty fun. That’s what Slipshine had going for it.

Why the Foglios aren’t forever associated with porn as a result, I’ll never know. Perhaps it’s the sheer joy of it all. Or residual affection for What’s New and Buck Godot: Zapgun for Hire. As it is, the Foglios produce new projects all the time and they’re always taken on their own merits (with Girl Genius making the leap from printed comic books to the web and printed compilations complete with monumental and enthusiastic fanbase intact). They’re invited to guest week Sluggy Freelance, do a week that features heavy amounts of Zoë in lingerie, and people say "yay! Hah hah! Those sexy, funny Foglios!"

For the record, I’m one of them. But then, Zoë looked good in lingerie. But the question remains… why is Josh Lesnick considered Josh "Slipshine" Lesnick, while Phil Foglio isn’t Phil "XXXenophile" Foglio?

It’s not as if porn hasn’t been supporting the growth of alternative and independent comics for a Hell of a lot longer than the World Wide Web has existed. Fantagraphics, who did more to promote independent comics in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s than pretty much all other independent comics outlets put together, for years and years paid for producing Eightball and keeping R. Crumb in print thanks to publishing pornographic comics. In fact, when Fantagraphics nearly went under, a couple of years back, I was pretty certain that a core reason was the sudden proliferation of free comic porn on the internet (often of significantly lower quality or actually pirated from Fantagraphics, but free and not involving having to be in the comics store buying porn comics from a guy who made the gas station attendant look wholesome) undercutting the sales figures from Eros Comix. Why should Gary Groth support The Comics Journal and Ghost World on the backs of porn and Josh Lesnick not support Girly the same way?

And let’s not pretend. A good number of popular and acclaimed writers supported themselves by writing porn under pseudonyms. Even in today’s world, the magazines need a steady supply of sex-positive happy stories that feed their audience’s kink. And I’d be lying if I said it never occurred to me that hey, I like money, and I could probably get some if I wrote a story that opened with "I was working at my job in the mall on the day that Trudi, whose firm mammaries are pert and yet the size and vague shape of casaba melons, went to work at the Orange Julius stand." I bet it’s crossed the mind of one or two of you out there, too.

For that matter… why is it that Clay/Hard/Whoever and Ghastly end up being the people referenced first and foremost when we talk about explicit webcomics? Is it purely the lack of a subscription wall? Is it because Sexy Losers and Ghastly’s Ghastly Comic are satires of porn where Slipshine is the real deal? I don’t know. I just know that I see a lot more people admitting to reading and enjoying Sexy Losers than even Girly, which makes no sense to me at all. Certainly, while they’re not the same thing, Sexy Losers and Girly are comparable in quality, in humor, and in vision. And you can tell your mother about Girly and not have her stare at you.

Regardless, Sexy Losers and Ghastly are usually on peoples’ link lists or discussed in places… well, like here at Comixpedia. But Josh Lesnick tends to only get brought up during a "Sex in Webcomics" issue. (And sadly, the main thing people remember from Comixpedia’s "Sex in Webcomics" issue was a woman humping an iMac in the cover art.)

In any case… Josh Lesnick has hit the wall. He is officially giving up porn, to focus exclusively on non-explicit comics.

(Can you imagine Gary Groth leaning back, looking at the sales figures for The Complete Peanuts Collection, and saying "screw it. Pulp the remaining backstock of Bondage Fairies. We don’t need them any more? We don’t want them any more?" Me either.)

Lesnick has clearly been increasingly disillusioned with drawing porn. In a recent public Livejournal post, he said he had been enjoying restarting one of the more popular porn features on SlipshineThe Story of the Pet Elf – and really enjoyed drawing it right up until he reached the sex scene. And then it was just tedious. Which I can believe.

He also mentioned he hit the breaking point when he wrote a superheroine porn comic. And that, I can believe, because I’ve seen superheroine porn comics before.

Look, I like porn. I said and admitted it. I like superheroes too. And I like superheroines. The majority of my City of Heroes characters are females. I like the whole concept of "hot powerful woman in skintight clothing fighting crime."

I am not a fan of superheroine porn comics. Because the vast majority of them – all I have encountered – take the whole violence/rape/breaking thing and turn the dial up to eleven. There is an entire fetish community devoted to this particular kink, and the stories are always essentially the same. An arrogant (and militantly feminist) superheroine attacks evil, but her hubris lets her attackers get the upper hand. They proceed to violently and horrifically beat her, then rape her, then "tame" her. A non-trivial number of those stories involve impregnating her, too. To me, these things aren’t about superheroines at all. They’re explicit versions of Spandex Babes of Gor.

(White Lightning Productions, I suppose, could be seen as sex-positive Superheroine Porn. At the same time… WLP is niche/fetish for the most part, and the fact that a superheroine trope or two works its way into it is really the least of what’s on your mind when you read it.)

And if you’re into it, that’s fine. I’m not here to harsh your buzz. But for me? It takes the misogyny of the standard "humiliation/NC sex-negative porn" I mentioned up above – which simmers at the ‘wow, that’s disturbing’ level for me – and jacks it all the way up to MY EYES! THE GOGGLES DO NOTHING! It’s mean porn. Hateful porn.

In researching this column, I actually read Lesnick’s superheroine porn comic. And it kind of followed that same formula. There was reader voting involved, so take that for what it’s worth. At the end of the comic, however, before it hit the point I mentioned, Lesnick stopped the reader votes and subverted the thing. It was glorious. And not misogynistic at all.

And I can totally see why Lesnick decided, "That’s it. I’m done," after he drew it.

So. Slipshine isn’t going away, which is a good thing. Losing an unremittingly sex positive porn site would darken the landscape that much more, and besides, there are a lot of other artists who make money working on the site. They’re going to continue doing what they’re doing, and I imagine Josh will still be involved with administrative details behind the scenes. However, Josh Lesnick is moving to put his own porn behind him, and move forward with Girly and – one assumes – other projects. Maybe he figures if he closes his Slipshine output down, he’ll get to move into the Foglio-space where people remember he was involved with porn, but remember it fondly and focus on what he’s doing. Maybe he just wants to prove to himself that he can make it purely on the strips he loves to do, not the strips that "pay the bills." Maybe he just wants that part of his life to be over, and see what happens next.

I’m not sure what will happen. However, Josh Lesnick’s been a part of webcomics too long and too completely to do anything he’s unhappy with. Where he goes from here, I don’t know. But I’ll be reading.

And whether you’re a fan of Slipshine or not, you should be reading too. Because Girly is a lot of fun.

Wednesday White

31 Comments

  1. Um… actually I never really thought of his stuff as primarily pornographic. I mean, I knew he had drawn porn (and read some of it), but I also read Girly (and Wendy, but not CuteWendy), and enjoyed those.

    In fact, when I think of Lesnick’s works, I think of Girly, not Slipshine.

    Maybe I’m just more innocent than most readers. And maybe it’s because while I started reading web comics back in 2000, I was one of those “reluctant readers” who resisted reading Sluggy Freelance even when Maritza Campos *insisted* that I had to start reading it to be a proper Boardie. 😉 Well, it wasn’t that bad, but still, she did insist I read it. *grin*

    It took Tangents before I started reading a large number of comics (and even so, I’m currently in a holding pattern before expanding my reading further). Before I did the reviews, I only read maybe 40 comics… and most of those were 3x or weekly strips.

    Still, to me, Lesnick is about Wendy and Girly (and CuteWendy, though I’d only seen ads for that and never read it), not Slipshine. And if we’ve had Winter and Otra naked on the pages of Girly, having just had sex… well, that’s part of what Girly is about. It’s not pornographic… it’s just a sexual part of a larger story.

    But then again, my taste in porn is tame. 😉 So calling me an innocent is probably not off the mark. 😉

    Robert A. Howard, Tangents Webcomic Reviews
    http://www.tangents.us

  2. Well to anyone who recognises the username, you can attest i know my way round pron and pron comics on the web. And yet when it comes to josh, he’s not even on my “Rantin’s big list of sites to poke when it’s time to spend some quality time wiht miss palmer”. Nope, he’s on my list of sites to hit when i need a laugh or else someone dies. I’m delighted that ther will be more funny, less cunny from him in the future.

  3. The timeline’s a little screwy here. Orgymania actually came after Wendy: it was meant to be a porn romp featuring the Wendy girls and characters from other Lesnick projects, because Lesnick’s fans (who called themselves “LESbians”) had been clamoring for explicit Wendysex for a long time. Wendy always had a strong sexual component, due to the way they were drawn, lots of T&A teasing, and lesbianism (you never saw anything, but there sure was a lot of giggling coming out of the Squirrel Tube when Wendy & Yumi were in there). So, people’s opinions of Wendy couldn’t have been tainted by Orgymania, at least not until very late.

    I think Josh got into porn because he felt that was what people wanted out of him. And I think that’s what a lot of his fans thought they wanted. But goofy humor with a sexual component is what he’s good at; porn puts the emphasis on the wrong side of that equation.

    Cutewendy, meanwhile, did not strictly speaking follow Wendy; it was contemporaneous with later installments. Wendy didn’t come out all that often (compared to other Keenspot strips), so Josh came up with Cutewendy as quick “filler” for the off-days. It just so happens that his anarchic sense of humor is well-suited to quick, off-the-cuff strips, and Cutewendy got reasonably popular on its own as his interest in the original crew of Wendy, Yumi, Lucy, and Miki waned.

  4. I realize Wendy came before Orgymania. And didn’t mean to imply otherwise. 😉

  5. Well, see… porn is designed for masturbation. And admitting that you like porn is much along the lines of admitting that you like nothing better than a good long pull on the pud. (For you ladies: A romantic evening with your Hitachi magic wand)

    Now, we all know that even the Pope has spanked the monkey a few times in his life, but society still puts your verility/feminimity into question when it comes up.

    And one thing I MUST disagree with is giving “The Pet Elf” a thumbs up as a sexual positivity comic, being an extended rape fantasy with pedophilic overtones in the grandest of Japanese traditions.

    But boy fantasies are dark, scary things, so I accept it for what it is.

  6. William — my point is more that the Pet Elf actually seems to enjoy what she’s doing. D/S doesn’t automatically equate sex-negative. If every issue ended with the Elf sobbing her eyes out, broken and bloodied on the floor….

    Well, I wouldn’t have written this column. 😉

    (You’re stroppy this month, sir. 😉 )

  7. One of my pet peeves but the word you’re looking for is hebephilic not pedophilic. Pedophilia is strictly a sexual attraction to pre-pubescent children. Hebephilia is a sexual attraction to post-pubescent adolescents (ie. teenagers between the ages of 14 and 19).

    Pedophilia is one of those words the media throws around haphazardly because it gets an instant emotional reaction. Some guy sleeps with a 16 year old cheerleader and he’s called a pedophile in the media even though in all likelyhood he is not a pedophile at all. Why, because when he’s labled a pedophile the readers will automatically imagine him as a monster laying in wait to molest toddlers and first graders.

    Depending on age of consent laws hebephilia isn’t even illegal. Here in Canada AOC is 14 (provided the partner over the age of 18 isn’t in a “position of authority” over the minor (ie. pastor, teacher, police officer, councilor, coach, employer, etc)), in some states in the US it’s 16 without even a “position of authority” qualifier. Japan’s entertainment media is also hardly the only one to push hebephilia. Hollywood has been glorifying teenage sexuality for decades. Really there’s no real shame in hebephilia. All of us, provided we were normal, healthy human beings became sexually aware as teenagers. The very concept of “teenager” is a 20th century construct anyways.

    Of course Japanese entertainment does indeed take a disturbing venture past the hebephilic into the pedophilic however to the best of my knowledge Josh has never done so in any of his comics. Indeed there’s plenty of hebephilia in some of Josh’s work but there’s plenty of hebephilia in plenty of our mainstreme entertainment too. So I beg you please be carefull when using charged words like pedophilic.

    As for the “porn” debate discussed in the article. Why is it okay to mention Clay’s work and my own in polite society but not okay to mention Josh’s porn-o-rama?

    Well, neither Clay nor myself describe our work as “porn”. Personally, I think “porn” is a work designed with the sole intent of getting the buyer to exchange monies for explicit sexual material to be used as an aid in masturbation. I seriously can’t imagine anyone masturbating to any of my work. For one, I’m not that good an artist, and for another the sex is meant to be funny not titilating (although it is sometimes both). I haven’t seen much on Slipshine so I can’t really comment on the work there. Orgymania seemed rather porn like. There was zero plot just lots of slippery, oiled lesbian sex (not that there’s anything wrong with that). The Pet Elf had some plot from what I read but it seemed to me mostly a tool used to get to the slippery, oiled ogre/elf sex (not that there’s anything wrong with that). I didn’t read all of The Pet Elf. The only other Slipshine comic I’ve ever read is Tang Ho’s Hot Cake Theatre which in my opinion is the best work of Tang’s I’ve ever seen but I really wouldn’t classify it as porn. Explicit sexual content it had in spades but it has much much more than just sex going on for it.

    I definetly think its the fact that Clay, Tang, and myself use sex as a tool and not an end result that not only makes our works acceptable to discuss openly but also what makes us some of the most successful adult content webcomic artists going.

    I know there are critics a’ plenty who accuse us of simply catering to the rumpled raincoat crowd but the truth is there are literally thousands of websites out there in internet-land that link to our comics and these sites also link to mainstreme, PG rated comics like MegaTokyo and Sluggy Freelance.

    I think what has happened is that people are simply no longer afraid to admit they like sex. Sex is no longer the dirty secret of society. Women are no longer supposed to simply lay back and think of England. Men don’t have to feel ashamed a cleaning the pipes while taking a shower. We’re starting to accept the simple fact that sex and sexuality is a normal and most importantly healthy part of being a human being.

    Bravo us!

  8. Well, the thing about rape fantasies is that they always wind up enjoying it. Sort of a form of justification.

    As I said, I know that male sexual fantasy is dark stuff… and I know that it is just fantasy. I accept it for what it is. As the old saying goes, better it’s being drawn than done. Not that I think Lesnick is a kidnapping/ serial rapist waiting to happen. But the content needs to be viewed for what it is, despite the smiles.

  9. Ghastly’s got a point there; Clay actually gets a little perturbed when people call Sexy Losers pornagraphy, which I understand, for the reasons Ghastly already mentioned. Thus, I don’t have much trouble understanding why more people talk about their comics than Slipshine, myself.

    I know William G is just being William G here, but those “pedophilic” comments are a little hard to understand. I admit Wendy was a bit hebephilic (Ghastly taught me a new word! Yay!), but I DID create the character when I was 19. The Pet Elf, on the other hand… do the characters really look young??

  10. Its been a little since I’ve reread the entire storyline, but IIRC the “Pet Elf” is the sexual aggresor. Which makes the fantasy a bondage/S&M sexual fantasy rather than a rape fantasy…

  11. I’d say the characters (given their non-human and also vaguely manga attributes) look to be either late teens or early 20s. Either way, I’d say their young adults…

  12. You can also use the word ephebophilia which means the same thing as hebephilia both words having the same root ephebe which was ancient greek for youth.

    That this is a new word to so many people is a blame I lay at the feet of the sensationalist media and politicians who throw the word pedophile around far too casually and carelessly for my liking as a means to push an agenda.

    Although I doubt William G truly believes you to be a pedophile it is very likely that he simply didn’t know that pedophilia and hebephelia do not mean the same thing. It’s very likely that he my not have even known the word hebephelia even existed.

    You’ll see pedophelia being thrown improperly at different works depending on where they rank on the porn-o-metre too. Let’s face it, William G would hardly be the only person to lable your work pedophelia, or my work too for that mater as there is hebephilia galore to be found in GGC (such as the whole Schoolgirl/Salary Monster storyline). The general population would not be inclined to lable hebephilic works such as “Fast Times At Richmond High” or “American Beauty” (which was a pretty intelligent examination of hebephilia insted of the usual “teenage tit flick” Hollywood usually produces). There are many, however, who have no problem with those movies who would be quick to lable another movie exploring teenage sexuality as “pedophelia” if it crosses the line between mainstreme entertainment and pornography. Things like porn flicks featuring legal aged adult women dressed in Catholic schoolgirl uniforms spanking each other’s white cotton panty clad bottoms with hair brushes, or a webcomics featuring nubile young teenage elves (although technically for all we know about elves she could be 500 years old) being sodomized by horny young ogre studs would be eagerly and angrily labled “pedophelia” by those wanting to see its eradication. Why? Because since the general public has no real problem with movies like “American Beauty” and “Fast Times At Richmond High” they probably wouldn’t have any problems with hebephiliac porn provided no real underaged teens are exploited in it (look at the proliferation of “barely legal teen” porn sites on the internet).

    The word pedophile, though, doesn’t bring to mind some guy who finds long legged, tight bodied, pert breasted teenage girls hot (and really, who doesn’t). No it brings to mind the monster we all fear is laying in wait to pray on our little 8 year olds. By effectively erasing the word hebephile from the english language and replacing it with pedophile they’ve made it much easier to rally support to have works such as yours and mine banned. It’s scary and it’s effective.

    As a parent (a fact that seems to catch so many people by surprise that a guy who does a naughty sex comic could also be a father, probably because it brings up the unpleasent realization that their own parents did not cease to exist as sexual beings once they procreated and lets face it nobody wants to think about their own parents getting it on) I can tell you I’d sell all 6 billion of you out there inhabitting this globe out in an instant if I thought it would protect my children from harm. Seriously, the bond between parent and child is one of our strongest, most primal instincts going and it causes us to be capable of all manner of sacrifice we’d never dream we’d actually be capable of. Yeah, you’d all be toast if I thought that was what it took to protect my children and had the means to do so. No doubt about it.

    But as a rational human being I have to think about what harm I have to protect my children from. Harm isn’t just the monster hiding in the bushes to prey upon them. Harm isn’t just the gym teacher who may take improper liberties with their bodies. Harm isn’t just the internet child-pornographer. Harm can also be the future we’re all building for them to live in. My duty to protect my children doesn’t end when they turn 18. It doesn’t end until I am dead and gone. My duty to protect them means I have to ensure them a future that affords them liberty, opportunity, freedom, and justice. That’s why I can’t sell you all out.

    If I deny anyone liberty and justice now to protect my children I end up creating a society that will deny my children liberty and justice when they become adults. If I deny anyone liberty and justice I harm my children.

    This is why it’s important that we all remain vigilant against a media that wishes to sensationalize events to sell more copy and politicians who wish to replace rationality with emotional reactionism. “Won’t someone think of the children” is a powerful rally cry as any parent will admit but the key of that phrase is “won’t someone think of the children”. Thinking is not the same thing as a knee-jerk emotional reation.

    Language is a virus. You control the way people speak and you control the way people think. This is why I strongly believe it is vitally important that emotionally charged words like pedophilia must be used correctly. That’s why I had to leap in to set things straight on the whole “pedophelic” thing.

    Plus, you know, I consider Josh to be an e-friend and I respect his work as a peer. But mostly I was thinking of the children.

  13. The character was attacked by two ogres in the woods, she noted the erection on one of them and consigned herself to being sexually assaulted, and then lept into it.

    As I said, it’s basically a rape fantasy with a happy ending. That the story continues into a bondage/S&M tale is understandable.

  14. do the characters really look young??
    Aside from the obvious size differences, the fact that the elf acts like a child whereas she was somewhat mature in the beginning, she does come across as a bit too young.

    Ghastly pointed out, pedophilic is the incorrect word for me to have used. Hebephilic is fine, but it is socially awkward, I think you can admit. As I said, it’s an understandable guy fantasy; NSA sex, a position of total power, and with a youthful female at the start of her breeding years.

    However, I did not condemn it.

    I know William G is just being William G here
    Since I know that saying anything to webcomics folk short of “I love you and everything you do” is a wasted exercise, I’ll just promise you that I’ll do my best next time to avoid expressing an opinion you don’t like.

  15. GHASTLY!

    That was very well said. I might have to steal one of Eric’s tasty biscuits and hand it to you.

  16. It’s cool. I have no hard feelings about it. It just came across like I was being dismissed out of hand, and that always gets up my ass. Sorry for snaping at you.

    WE’RE COOL LIKE FONZIE NOW!!!

    (Gotta stop reading The Truth & Beauty Bombs board. The allcaps thing is infectious.)

  17. Hmmm… I know what you mean, but… Should we really be looking for politically correct in a porn comic (or on porn at all)? Ain’t that a little like looking for porn in a politically correct comic?

  18. She went into the woods to commit suicide after her boyfriend cheated on her, saw the ogres (who were in the woods hunting elves for food), changed her mind about wanting to die and essentially seduced them…

  19. I certainly would trust myself into a group hug with pedophiles like you all. 😉

  20. Hey! When I want to hear from you I’ll tug on the skirt of your schoolgirl uniform. And then take discreet photos upwardly with my cell phone.

  21. Did you knpw, that at least here in Korea, they passed a law a few years ago that said all cameraphones had to make a noise of some sort when they took a picture. Just to keep perverts from taking upskirt photos.

  22. Snarky, Josh Lesnick, I salute you. More power to egalitarian, positive-attitude porn. Down with misogynists, /b/tards, closet woman-haters, and all the rest.

    But to be honest, I came in later to J.L.’s works, and I never knew Josh Lesnick drew porn until he started advertising Slipshine on Girly. I think since many people knew his Girly first (started around when webcomics’ popularity began to expand), they might share this view.

    In conclusion, Go Josh, and Go Snarky. >: )

  23. I believe they passed the same law in Japan. Saw a thing on the news with some guy getting busted for taking upskirt photos recently at a shopping mall in the US.

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