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Mundanities
'You had the flu,' my doctor says about my cough and dark-night-of-the-soul last week. 'Good thing you got a flu shot so you didn't have the whole high fever and ache routine.' Yes, I had that when I got the flu shot itself, but oh well. 'You'll feel better next week.' In fact I feel better now, and prove it by staying two hours past closing to babysit for a co-ordinating cttee meeting, which for the first time in anyone's memory involves sitting babies. Two of them. I won't flaunt my specialist's knowledge by explaining in detail why one person sitting a pair of year-old not-quite-walkers (who are not her own) from 6 pm to 8 is a virtuoso feat, but it was a virtuoso feat, and I'm never doing it again thank you very much.
Yesterday's melt did indeed become oceans of glare ice covering the sidewalks inches thick. This winter has sucked so hard it probably strained its cheek muscles.
I was talking to A the other day about slash and BL. She said something to the effect that even with the most mundane shoujo romance you double the erotic interest merely by changing the girl character into a guy. I see what she's saying (Basara for instance becomes much more interesting if Tatara is, well, Tatara) but at the time my mind insisted that there was an exception right in front of me. There is, but it's not shoujo. It's Hellsing and Alucard.
It's a dilemma I never encounter in any m/f scenarios. I want to slash them and I can't: the givens simply will not allow of it. The erotic tension comes very much from the fact that she's a she and he's a he but circumstances work against the natural order that makes m/f inevitable. Both are the other's equal but in spheres so different there's no comparison between them and hence no judging which one is marginally the weaker. Neither is a romantic so the possibility of the romantic out can't be invoked. We're left with two people who have a great respect for each other and a special relationship that simply can't be sexualized. To do this in a m/f context is a high achievement.
But it seems to me that if you make Hellsing male you lose the erotic tension and the erotic impasse. It goes into by the numbers yaoi probably, and it certainly doesn't have the same frustrating punch. I think the reason is that Hellsing and Alucard are both of necessity seme. One has to bottom to the other; neither is likely to do it; but in my world the experienced seme who knows the moebius nature of the state is more likely to turn uke than the naive seme, who fears being uke. Which means Alucard bottoms to Hellsing. Which is hard to do m/f but quite possible m/m. If Hellsing were a principled man untrusting of vampires with a vampire among his servants, Alucard could do seductive-uke for his own reasons and lure overconfident Mr. Hellsing into bed and his doom-- or whatever doom Alucard had in mind. (Can something not human teach a human being lessons about the state of being human?) But Ms Hellsing has too much to lose to allow a male to entice her into a sexual situation, and certainly not a male vampire.
This suggests that when the female character gains the authority and autonomy of a fully-fledged male character, sex somehow becomes less likely, not more. Because of yaoi, not in spite of it.
Yesterday's melt did indeed become oceans of glare ice covering the sidewalks inches thick. This winter has sucked so hard it probably strained its cheek muscles.
I was talking to A the other day about slash and BL. She said something to the effect that even with the most mundane shoujo romance you double the erotic interest merely by changing the girl character into a guy. I see what she's saying (Basara for instance becomes much more interesting if Tatara is, well, Tatara) but at the time my mind insisted that there was an exception right in front of me. There is, but it's not shoujo. It's Hellsing and Alucard.
It's a dilemma I never encounter in any m/f scenarios. I want to slash them and I can't: the givens simply will not allow of it. The erotic tension comes very much from the fact that she's a she and he's a he but circumstances work against the natural order that makes m/f inevitable. Both are the other's equal but in spheres so different there's no comparison between them and hence no judging which one is marginally the weaker. Neither is a romantic so the possibility of the romantic out can't be invoked. We're left with two people who have a great respect for each other and a special relationship that simply can't be sexualized. To do this in a m/f context is a high achievement.
But it seems to me that if you make Hellsing male you lose the erotic tension and the erotic impasse. It goes into by the numbers yaoi probably, and it certainly doesn't have the same frustrating punch. I think the reason is that Hellsing and Alucard are both of necessity seme. One has to bottom to the other; neither is likely to do it; but in my world the experienced seme who knows the moebius nature of the state is more likely to turn uke than the naive seme, who fears being uke. Which means Alucard bottoms to Hellsing. Which is hard to do m/f but quite possible m/m. If Hellsing were a principled man untrusting of vampires with a vampire among his servants, Alucard could do seductive-uke for his own reasons and lure overconfident Mr. Hellsing into bed and his doom-- or whatever doom Alucard had in mind. (Can something not human teach a human being lessons about the state of being human?) But Ms Hellsing has too much to lose to allow a male to entice her into a sexual situation, and certainly not a male vampire.
This suggests that when the female character gains the authority and autonomy of a fully-fledged male character, sex somehow becomes less likely, not more. Because of yaoi, not in spite of it.
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(And you have got the older-seductive-uke with younger-brash-seme dynamic with her and Seras -- at least, that's how I read the scene where she gives Seras some of her blood.)
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I've herad mention of the blood-giving thing. I wait to see (if I see) what spin is given that: Serras the vampire humanizing the unhuman Hellsing or what.
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(Aoki Soh once blogged that she thought Batou should be uke, but I never know if Aoki Soh means the same thing when she says "uke" as when I say "uke". Motoko would be more likely to do a seductive uke - she's very comfortable with her sexuality - but she won't, for all the obvious reasons why a major would not sleep with a lieutenant under his/her command. I'd still find it easier if it were two guys.)
Hilariously (or not), when I watched Hellsing with my usual anime buddies all the males refused to believe that Integra Hellsing was a woman. Because a character like that must be a man of course, even with the long blond hair and female VA which are par for the course in anime anyhow.
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(And the Queen -- well, like Read Or Die, with the British Library Secret Service. I find it oddly pleasant that the English are considered worthy of being romanticized with such, um, vigour. Then again, I hate it when Celtic stuff gets romanticized. Hm. Writing self into a corner here.)
When I read the blood-giving thing in the manga, it seemed mostly a case of Seras beginning to accept her new nature. The first blood she'd taken consciously and knowingly and aforethought. (Though if you want to see it as initiation-into-sexuality, it gets even stranger when you bear in mind it's the virgin who's performing it -- Hellsing's virgin blood being a vital part of it.)
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This is what makes me think sometimes that Takamiya has the right of it when she says that eventually people won't bother with yaoi anymore. She meant it in a very limited sense, of course. But in a general sense if you come into a situation where the character does not conform to any gender expectations at all in any way then there really is no need for yaoi(in its normal sense of m/m).
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But the Japanese version of us is a gumbo of misconstrued visual references, misconstrued religious symbols, Japanese emotions transferred whole-scale onto westerners, and so on. Mutatis mutandis it's a teenage fanficcer's version of Japan, but it's usually done with such panache and visual ability that one can only find it charming, like Hong Kong subtitles. Ditto of course for the Japanese romanticizing Japan: when it takes the form of good NHK drama and refrains from taking the form of blowing up other people's subways, why not?
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However creating situations where 'characters do not conform to any gender expectations' is fiendishly difficult. The defaults will always be at work- or being worked against- if not in the creator's mind then in the eye of the beholder. See Sabina's anime buddies above.
Hellsing doesn't read male to me, not even bishie male. The mental athletics needed to see her as male stun me, but they did it without trying. Mind you they're probably too young to know what the older male culture does with Females in Power; I see the marks of that all over Hellsing, which is why I prefer the doubtless antiseptic anime version to the probably very not manga one.
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I've actually muttered to rpg-associated friends before now that I wish I could approach some of my writing with the sheer style and drama and lack of concern that the Japanese show when mining from us for their work. They manage to produce gold out of dross, albeit sometimes a rather baroque Tiffany-esque gold. I want to be able to do that. Dammit.
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Under the circs, baroque Tiffaney-esque gold is kind of a guarantee of sincerity. Weirdness means it's obviously not a case of the Japanese trying for accuracy and failing pathetically to achieve it: though given some people's humourless response to Fake et al, maybe it's not as obvious as all that.
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