polyamory in webcomics
The latest dinosaur comics - http://www.qwantz.com/ - uses the word polyamory, which I am rather pleased with as an example of how I've seen awareness of polyamory take off within the last year. I was aware of it for maybe three or four months before I started practicing poly myself, and it's very, very obvious how fast knowledge is spreading. Questionable Content has also had a polyamorous-minor-character storyline for a while, which is cool. And yet...both of them have a little bit of fail to them, too. Dinosaur comics is really just talking about having sex with three women, which, you know, could be polyamory, but more often isn't. And QC...well, Tai, who seemed to be a very happy poly lesbian, asked her girlfriend to be exclusive and got dumped because, duh, her girlfriend is poly. Tai told Marten she was fine with "casual polyamory" but got more possessive as things got serious. I was pretty disappointed in this, because a) we thought we had a poly character and they took her away from us, b) "casual polyamory" is called dating, c) if she was self-aware about not being poly it's not very nice of her to date poly people, and d) her girlfriend was described as "freaking out", as though it's irrational to decide you can't date someone who won't accept your relationship style. Sounds to me like she made a reasonable choice between dating Tai and being poly. Some poly people can decide to be monogamous, and some people can't or won't, and that's reasonable. I personally know that I'm poly and won't agree to being mono. Tai's gf sounds pretty reasonable to me.