reenka

Hee! I always love to read your thoughts about Draco. Gareth is very Draco. Do you read a lot of comics? Manga? I know lots of folks who read both, but I'm for some reason uncomfortable asking them if there are such things as slashy comics or manga. I'm not talking about graphic sex, just slashy plots. Any ideas?

(BTW, I think I'm uncomfortable asking my comic friends because most of them are guys who work at/hang out at the comic store and I don't want them to think I'm any weirder than they already do. Plus, I know none of them read slash (well, I kind of assume, you never know)and wouldn't know if it exists.)

Thanks. And please keep thinking and writing about Draco. I don't comment often (something I'm trying to rectify), but I always read and think about what you say. You have an interesting brain.

From:

Well, I do read some comics, but not as much as I used to, and I always just read a few titles continuously, like Sandman and Books of Magic and Strangers in Paradise, and others on an off-and-on basis, with some random things that looked good and I never read again. I don't have a steady stream or anything. But as far as I know there's few slashy comics in the US, though Strangers in Paradise by Terry Moore is sort of femmeslash. Apparently there's some sort of queer storyline in the X-Men right now.

I do know that there's a whole subgenre of manga for slashiness-- that is, yaoi & shounen-ai as well as doujishi which are basically fan-comics for series like say, Gundam Wing has lots of Heero/Duo manga & such. I don't read manga much, but I'd say read X (by a group called Clamp), Revolutionary Girl Utena (which is femmeslashy), Yami No Matsuei, Getbackers, Gravitation, Song of the Wind & Trees, Ai No Kusabi, Bronze/Zetsuai, Fake, Fujimi Orchestra, Mirage of Blaze... um, well, these are just the ones that had anime made of them, I'm sure there are lots of others :>

Oh, and, um, my brain thanks you >:D

From:

I shall have to investigate these. Thanks for the info.

I used to read comics back in college--I had a boyfriend introduce me to the pleasures of Mr. Gaiman if not many others--and then I just sort of quit. A few years ago I wandered into the local shop and have been back at it ever since. I'm steadily working my way through some stuff I missed, like the complete Books of Magic. You should check out the new storyline of Tim Hunter in Life During Wartime. It even had a wee bit of slash! The new Amazing X-Men is being written by Joss Whedon and well worth a look too. I've seen nothing slashy in that one though, but I'll give anything Mr. Whedon does a look at least. It is very good so far even if you're not extremely well acquainted with X-Men back story.

From:

Hehe, my first boyfriend was a comics nut, but I found out about Sandman way back in the day, when they had little ads for it in the Science Fiction Bookclub :D I also remember seeing/browsing things like the Silver Surfer back when my college bookstore carried comics. Ahhh, those were the days. The best way to find things is to browse and be brave and see what the industry is talking about and what's the hot new thing :> The newer and hipper it is, the more likely it's to be slashy. However, I'd think there's more queer stuff in the independent press comics publishers (Strangers in Paradise is independent). So check out the independent section in the comics store-- there usually is one. Hey, Batman is also slashy ;)

I resent the new Books of Magic 'cause I resent new, cool, goatee-possessing Tim :P I mean, my love for Tim rivals my love for Harry, so naturally I'm rather picky about how people write him :> The writer they got for the new Books kind of... he doesn't even suck, he's so mediocre. And that never struck me as Tim, also. He wasn't even very sarcastic :>

And it wasn't necessarily that one line of X-Men comics... since there are several, which is primarily why I don't keep up with them :>

From:

Tim is SO Harry to me. I'm struck time and again by that. I'm always wondering if Rowling read those comics. And are you talking about the Hunter books, or the newer Life During Wartime? I never read Hunter Age of Magic, or whatever it was, but this weird Tim stuck in a make-believe world sort of works for me. He's still a geek. Bless the geeks.

Too many X-Men! Agreed. I only got interested because of the Whedon. I'm like a sheep. Maa!

From:

Argh, yes, I mean my burning hatred for Age of Magic. Though the writer is different for this new series, so I'll definitely check it out >:D Yeay. I'm not holding out too much hope (as in, I don't even like Neil's Tim like I love John Ney Reiber's Tim), but still. Oh Tim <3333333333

From:

zedmeister.livejournal.com

I'm sure you're going to get at least a thousand replies to this question, but hey, I can be one of the first! :D

There is, in fact, an entire genre of manga devoted to slashy stuff. Mild stuff, with slashy plots as you say, is referred to as shonen (or shounen) ai, meaning 'boy love', while the graphic, porny stuff is called yaoi. Much of it is original, but there are also a lot of slash doujinshis (fan mangas) out there, some even featuring Harry and Draco :)

Of course, the obvious problem here is that manga is in Japanese and a lot of shonen ai and yaoi stuff doesn't get translated. However, some series *have* been released in States, while for others there are translations and scanlations available online. So don't worry about asking your friends who work at the comic store - they've seen this stuff for sure and have probably sold tons of it. Unfortunately, I've been out of the manga/anime world for a couple of years now, so I couldn't tell you what's popular now. In fact, most of the sites I used to frequesnt have shut down since, so I don't think I can help at all :(

One very helpful general info site that's still up is Aestheticism.com. You'll definitely want to check out their Yaoi Glossary (they don't permit linking to it, but you can find it from the main page).

From:

I shall check it out. Thanks for the start.

From:

Word to the ninth! What that person above me said.

Also, if you feel brave, joining the LJ comm yaoi_daily will bring you all your pornographic boylove manga daily dosage. And most of them are original stories, though there are some fandom ones posted. Raw and scanlated mangas get posted there, for no other reason than because we like sharing the man~~juices~~love. They're obviously all the Japanese kind of comics, though.

Also, online scanlation groups are your friend. Scanlation is when an amateur group scan the manga or doujinshi, translate it, edit the pages into an English version then post them in .zips online. You can get the porny ones or just the regular ones, or both, depending on what you're looking for. If you want some links to scanlation groups or any kind of help in this department, I can lend you a hand, if you like?

From:

Oooh! I'm a fan of your art! Thanks for the suggestions. I'm not opposed to the porn, I just like a little plot with my sex, you know. I shall check out the community you mentioned. Mmmm, boylove.

From:

Oooh! I'm a fan of your art!

Oh, um, thank you ^^. *blush*

I just like a little plot with my sex, you know.

I hear ya loud and clear.

From:

http://users.livejournal.com/_inbetween_/

hey, i have this comic ... which volume is this from?

From:

This is Volume One :D Yeee, I'm really enjoying it :D

From:

http://users.livejournal.com/_inbetween_/

yep, i checked, me too. i hope i will get any further issues as well, should they come out.

From:

The art style if this comic scares me a little, but I do see the resemblence. And I take it he's under the spell as well?

From:

Heee, yeah, the art style is scary. One gets used to it, though. And... he was under the spell along with everyone else >:D Man, I hope I don't write girl!Harry/Draco one day as original fic. I'll never live it down~:))

From: