flemmings: (Default)
flemmings ([personal profile] flemmings) wrote2007-10-20 03:36 pm

Here I stand, head in hand, turn my face to the wall

Ohhh, Rowling, Rowling, Rowling on the river: 'tis too much prov'd, that Rowling appeals to thirteen year old girls because she *thinks* like one.

"ONE TRUE UNREQUITED LOVE AND HE HAD TO KILL HIM BECAUSE HE WAS EVIL. AND NEVER LOVED AGAIN!!!"

I feel I should applaud a western writer who's as sincere about her romance novel psychology as many mangaka seem to be in theirs, except I'm never sure if the mangaka really buy the Grand Opera view of the human character they espouse, while I know as God's own truth that Rowling does. 'You have your mother's eyes!' Argh.

Otherwise, mhh, I finished Good Omens. It has several amusing lines but I forget what they were. I will also argue that Crowley/ Azriphael is yaoi and not slash. The difference by me is how arbitrary you have to be to see erotic vibes between the guys, where slash is less arbitrary ('Look, clear homoerotic subtext') and yaoi is more ('They're cute together.')

I also finished two Minami Megumu manga, Lying Lover which is a series of related stories, and Protect Me, which isn't. I was hoping it was, because the first story turns out to be by god Journey to the West, Gokuu and Sanzou if not exactly Gokuu x Sanzou, very much from the novel with lascivious demons and short-tempered Immortals and naked Sanzou ready to throw himself into a pot of boiling oil for naked (manly) Gokuu who's already in the pot and quite unharmed, thank you, because he turns himself into a nail that melts and then comes back together.

However, no, the other stories have Franks and Saracens, male brothels and naive samurai in Edo, and one of her open-ended tales set in Heian about oh cool the blind biwa-player Semimaru. Who is one of Minami's hapless long black-haired ukes. The reason the Sanzou story doesn't have sex, I swear, is because Sanzou has long *blond* hair and is thus disbarred from true finger-in-the-butt ukedom.

Lying Lover includes little vignettes she did about her fave slash couples, for lack of another term. One of these is indeed the threesome of Sanzou, Gokuu and Gojou, where Gojou has the hots for Gokuu, not Sanzou. This idea derives from 悟浄歎異, a work by Nakajima Atsushi (and note this useful page of Japanese authors). Someone sent me an extract from that a long time ago because Minami isn't the only one to see slashy subtext in the fanboy admiration of Gokuu that Nakajima gives to Gojou. Mind you, Nakamura didn't make Gojou a sad-faced third wheel either. (And this is how Gokuu and Sanzou look in colour. Not sure why part of the cover got cut off in scanning this time; am never sure why scanners hate the peach colours mangaka like to use for their skin tones.)

More to a western point, another of Minami's fave slash couples is ahem Poirot and Hastings. Urk, one says. No need to say urk. This is how she conceives of Poirot and Hastings.
doire: (Default)

[personal profile] doire 2007-10-20 09:05 pm (UTC)(link)
Ohhh, Rowling, Rowling It made the national news here. Radio four, flagship heavy weight news.

Daughter and I have been waiting with bated breath for an explosion, but I think it may have been overtaken by the world cup. We won't talk about that disallowed try any more, really we won't.

[identity profile] flemmings.livejournal.com 2007-10-20 10:37 pm (UTC)(link)
One must have a sense of proportion. 'I knew it all along' isn't in the same league (to-coin-a-phrase) with disallowed tries.
incandescens: (Default)

[personal profile] incandescens 2007-10-20 09:34 pm (UTC)(link)
Poirot and Hastings . . .

But where is the moustache? Where are the moustaches? I think my brain just imploded in a messy way.

Incidentally, who was Semimaru the blind biwa player? I have to confess that the only blind biwa player that I know of is Hoichi the Earless (from Kwaidan).

[identity profile] flemmings.livejournal.com 2007-10-20 10:35 pm (UTC)(link)
Moustaches! Pah, moustaches! An inelegant detail, best removed from the BL fantasy.

Semimaru is this guy (http://flemmings.livejournal.com/86281.html), also the guy in my icon. The Semimaru in the manga is the later redaction, the blind abandoned son of an emperor, as depicted in the noh play Semimaru (https://eee.uci.edu/clients/sbklein/images/NOH/nohmasks/pages/semimaru.htm) minus-the-tattooed-raping-demon.... (Oh- but plus the sister with the sticky-up hair! OK. Cool points to Minami all round.)
incandescens: (Default)

[personal profile] incandescens 2007-10-20 10:40 pm (UTC)(link)
Aha! Thank you very much.

[identity profile] rasetsunyo.livejournal.com 2007-10-21 04:07 am (UTC)(link)
...At least Poirot has the canon egg shaped head? D: Although I always had the (probably mistaken) impression that it was bald.

[identity profile] flemmings.livejournal.com 2007-10-21 09:21 am (UTC)(link)
I thought he was too, but evidently that's just Albert Finney. Christie's Poirot dyes his hair.

[identity profile] bladderwrack.livejournal.com 2007-10-20 09:52 pm (UTC)(link)
Hee. Also: Harry Potter, you are such a shounen blockhead. (doesn't really need saying, I guess, but I felt like saying it anyway)

[identity profile] flemmings.livejournal.com 2007-10-20 10:38 pm (UTC)(link)
He's a shounen blockhead but he angsts too determinedly to be a shounen hero. He's the guy who either gets raped or vigorously seduced in BL, depending on his uke. Raped if it's Ron, seduced if it's Neville.

[identity profile] bladderwrack.livejournal.com 2007-10-20 11:11 pm (UTC)(link)
Really? Wld not concur: he angsts, but it serves as a motivation rather than an impediment ~I mean, he's definitely more Ichigo than Renji (I forget how much you know Bleach, sorry, but it's the only example I can think of). Will take the second bit on trust as I have next to no knowledge of the semantics of BL.

...I can see that, actually. Except uhh, Neville /seducing/? And with Ron they'd have to be sufficiently pissed to tacitly not mention it in the morning, otherwise he'd only ever get to do it once, poor boy. Also, quidditch robes. ...although, I imagine I am missing the point here, trying to apply my puny standards of reality.

[identity profile] flemmings.livejournal.com 2007-10-20 11:34 pm (UTC)(link)
Harry's angst was a distinct impediment, for 500 pages, to OotP ever moving an inch towards anything resembling dramatic action.

Neville was kicking a fair amount of butt the last I saw him, which was book 6. I think he could take on sodden-as-a-sponge Harry. Quidditch robes- or Hogwart's robes- make it easier. No snaps buttons zippers and pantlegs to get in the way. Flip 'em up and in. / fan of historical yaoi (which ignores the existence of fundoshi, but so what.)

[identity profile] bladderwrack.livejournal.com 2007-10-21 02:41 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh, right. Haven't actually read OotP, so okay. (I have read the other books, I swear! I have some knowledge of what I am talking about!)

Neville is cool; seducing however is not his style, idt. Also I have some trouble getting my head around why he would want to seduce Harry, who probably wouldn't even notice.

Nonono, you misunderstand; sweaty quidditch robes n' groping n' stuff are the situation in which Harry and Ron wld have sex. Oh yes, and tangentially; how does one negotiate the hakama? (I actually have a pair that divide at the knee & wld be theoretically possible, although I imagine they'd still get in the way; but the ones in Bleach seem to divide basically as trousers, and they still have ever such a lot of ties.)


About Crowley and Aziraphale: no, I don't see it either. They seem to have a resigned and very deep friendship which means they know far too much about each other to ever have sex (and if they did it wld be a horbl one-night stand hahaha (http://daegaer.livejournal.com/477896.html) see 5th section)

[identity profile] flemmings.livejournal.com 2007-10-21 04:54 pm (UTC)(link)
How do you negotiate hakama while having sex? Well, historically they're kind of like... morning clothes, maybe? Swallowtail coat and striped pants. Only certain people wear them to work (bureaucrats, daimyou advisors) and no one wears them much when relaxing off-duty. (Meiji era is different, but then Meiji clothes are weird anyway.) Not all of them are divided- some are skirtlike and can be flipped up, but at what cost to the pleats I'd rather not say.

Otherwise I figure you just pull the strings and roll the guy out of them, like unwrapping a present.

[identity profile] rasetsunyo.livejournal.com 2007-10-21 04:13 am (UTC)(link)
Ohhhh Rowling. *wipes away tears of laughter* Love so doomed and tragic and unrequited, WHO CAN RESIST.

Crowley/Aziraphael read as completely arbitrary to me too. No homoeroticism to work with at all.

[identity profile] flemmings.livejournal.com 2007-10-22 01:37 pm (UTC)(link)
ME. But I am old.

This doesn't stop people working with the non-existent homoeroticism, of course, which is why I call it yaoi.

[identity profile] lebateleur.livejournal.com 2007-10-21 06:45 pm (UTC)(link)
Rowling appeals to thirteen year old girls because she *thinks* like one.


Whereas cynical little me heard the news and thought: Here's the arbitrary publicity stunt to keep this fading cultural phenomenon in the spotlight for as long as possible.

[identity profile] flemmings.livejournal.com 2007-10-21 08:22 pm (UTC)(link)
With the last book released less than three months ago, foreign translations possibly not yet complete, and two movies yet to go, I wouldn't call HP a fading cultural phenomenon in any sense. Whereas writing your happy ever after coda more than ten years back and putting it in, evidently unaltered since then, is so unchanging adolescent it hurts my head.

[identity profile] lebateleur.livejournal.com 2007-10-23 07:18 pm (UTC)(link)
Two unreleased movies and some forthcoming foreign language translations were not exactly keeping HP in the headlines now that we have achieved End of Series and know who dies and who survives to bonk whom.

Whereas the "Dumbledore is...gay!" announcement has certainly helped to do just that. Which isn't to say JKR isn't living her inner twelve-year-old, but it sure is helping to keep the buzz going, especially given the fact that the ending allowed little wiggle room for post-series speculation.