The forbidden degrees of relationship

[flemmings]

I'm currently reading the Ze that kickinpants sent me, about guys who do it with animated pieces of paper, and that Chinese-set one of paleaswater's about the guy who falls prey to a peony. Truly, Japanese manga does alter the west's settled and disapproving notions about what constitutes a permitted, or even possible, sexual partner. If nothing else you're dealing with the culture's reflex animistic assumption that everything is a spirit, which means in our terms that everything is a person. Dogs? People. Goldfish? People. ('I wouldn't use the verb 'yaru' when talking about feeding fish. It's disrespectful to the fish.') Parakeets? People: and in 100 Demons they'll kill you if you put a foot wrong. Trees? People for very sure. Even here they're people. Look at the unsavoury personality of willows in various English fantasy writers.

Maybe we wouldn't write stories where people are raped by randy tree branches, but that's 'cause we're puritans. Minami Ozaki did because she's Minami Ozaki. (Me, I always figured there was a good kink story inherent in the Whomping Willow.) Since rocks are people too, especially in Shinto shrines, I confidently look forward to a manga about someone doing it with a rock. Actually I wouldn't be at all surprised if back in the day people did do it with rocks. There are enough of them around of the right shape. And if Ima Ichiko hasn't yet done a story about a rock spirit (hasn't she? memory is pinging lightly) she will, Oscar, she will. (I'm also flashing here to Marianne Dreams, about menacing rocks with eyes in them (and whatever happened to my copy, huh?) and Edward Gorey's Black Doll, that always looked like it was made of stones to me.)

paleaswater, your box arrived. The shawl is stunning. The card is stunning (and red!) And Yamane Ayano is stunning too: I'd never realized how much so. Maybe the squee is justified after all. And I look forward to seeing what Aoneko Tantei is up to now. Of course someone should do an Aoneko/ PMT crossover, but it won't be me. Too obvious, obviously.

Many many thanks for all.

Comments

[mikeneko.livejournal.com]

Somewhere along the line I got used to the notion of people throwing down with everything and anything under the sun. But I don't know if it was manga so much as Certain People who pushed me down that slippery slope. Anyway, I've already read Whomping Willow/Ford Anglia slash. With this sort of thing, if you seek, you'll without doubt be rewarded.

Storr's Marianne Dreams is a very cool book. ("Not the light, not the light!")

[xsmoonshine.livejournal.com]

Hm. I wonder if Christmas trees have personalities?

I am not Certain People. I am fairly sure she was already skipping along the brink, and just tripped herself up.

Marianne Dreams sounds very interesting.

[tammylee.livejournal.com]

I once did a comic where Farfarello was raped by a bouquet of roses.
I am unapologetic for that.
XD

I quite like the idea of all things having the potential for sex wtih humans. Of course, walking in the forested ravine behind my building will now have me nervously wondering if I needed to wear a chastity belt...

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

How can a willow tree do it with a car, she wonders, perhaps ill-advisedly. Someone has just instructed me on how pear shaped Teletubbies could do it with each other, which I don't think I wanted to know.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Well sheesh, if the pine trees and the rose bushes are going to go around jumping your bones, iron-plated knickers seem more what's needed.

[paleaswater.livejournal.com]

I've read a story where one of the evil & seductive minions is a shawl. :P A scarf, to be more precise, who absorbed enough of the human spirit to take on human shape. Hehe...

(Also, there is vol 5 of Aoneko, which of course I could not find for the life of me when I was putting together the package, but now I see it sitting on my shelf. Will send that along later)

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

(Chinese BB story I assume?)

Well yeah, that makes sense. A scarf wraps about the neck where pulses uhh pulse and a lot of life energy concentrates. Naturally something in contact with such an area would suck in human essences. I always wondered why people like Hatsu Akiko made it kimono that pine for their quondem owners, because kimono barely touch you at all.

That said, I'm having flashbacks to MR James' sheet-thing with the crude outlines of a face... aghh!

[paleaswater.livejournal.com]

Ima Ichiko has done a story about that little spirit made of mud, hasn't she -- though I suppose that's not really a rock story.

Aoneko and PMT, what an excellent idea! Maybe it is obvious to you, but it just never crossed my mind until you mentioned it now. But I don't think the story need to be obvious at all, in fact, there would be all sort of interesting stylistic possibilities, for example where you really have two parallel stories developing seperately -- Aoneko also being a fictional character in the PMT world, whose exploits are detailed in the monthly/weekly pulp novel magazines which are read by the characters in the PMT world.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Mud...? No bells. Why is there so much Ima and why doesn't it stick better in the mind? (Because her stories all have at least two plotlines twisting around each other so I remember the main one and then wonder Where was that scene where...?)

And *I* would never have thought of making the Aoneko world a fictional one that the PMT charas were reading. I was assuming pure one on one congruence, given how often the police show up in the PMT world. Stylistic- or rather, narrative- possibilities. Hmmm....

[paleaswater.livejournal.com]

That's the one where the poor chap has to find progressively more pitiful containers for his spirit over the centuries, until he ended up a little mud figurine, which was eventually buried by Ritus's mother. Somehow he just stayed with me.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Only the vaguest of vague bells. And somehow I think drums are involved in there as well though I'm sure they're not. Early end of the series? Middle? Recent? aaagh...