There’s a kinky couple. (And they are SO cute.)

Now, my recollection is that the way that the authors fade-to-vagueness for their sex scene is kind of awkward, and kind of shows that they don’t really know what the specifics of their kinkiness should actually be, but– still!

How many other published-by-a-major-publishing-house books have I read that had any kind of kink in them, much less a happy, functional relationship?  As far as I can remember, one of the Burke books by Andrew Vachss.   (There are some kinky things in other books by him, but they’re pretty dysfunctional.  Poor Shella.)

I guess this isn’t something I think about a lot, because I get so much representation out of fanfic, and online original works.  So the Burke series basically occupies the same space in my mind as Tales of MU, in terms of representation.  But in retrospect– what a thing that series is!  A trans woman, a Deaf man, a kinky lesbian couple, assorted former and current sex workers, lots of people of color, of various races including “Jesus, can’t people just stop trying to guess my race from my apperance?” mixed… all of them with these things a legitimate part of who they are, with an actual effect on them, but not the only thing about them.  It’s pretty fucking glorious.  And the plot and the message are so compelling and so forceful that these books have been a part of my life for most of a decade but it never occurred to me until yesterday that the author was probably deliberately trying to write a diverse cast.