~~ Makino: feminist icon.
Jan. 29th, 2005 06:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
reenkaI get the weirdest feeling of... relief, watching my favorite Hana Yori Dango vid (to `With You'), 'cause... this is exactly the breathless sense of... non-gendered power balance I get from the best of slash. You -can- have stories where the girl can totally stand up to the guy without making it be another guy, without making the girl submissive, without making the girl uber-pretty or superhuman.
And it's not that I like slash -because- it's some sort of superior het substitute... but it's weird to realize that really I like (and dislike!) the same things about both. Whether it's het or slash, I dig on the violence... the sense of uncontrolled anger/jealousy/fear/need. It's like... so important, right, that slash is about characters of the same gender... that it's almost forgettable that in the end, it's all about romance stories, and love works the same way with any gender, doesn't it? Emotionally, it adds up to the same emotional pay-off, though... uh, well, the boy-on-boy action thing tips the scale a bit for me, usually. It doesn't matter if I'm really involved with the characters, though-- it doesn't matter what their gender is to how real they are to me. Why should it?
I've heard before that if you had a boy and a girl fighting, you'd have issues of abuse come up, and basically the (female) readers would sympathize with the girl a lot more (or less), or something. But those are traditionalist stories that don't count on the presence of strong female characters which aren't any more conducive to pity than strong male characters. And the fact that a fic is about two boys doesn't mean their roles will be balanced, especially given the huge feminization phenomenon both in fanfiction and shounen-ai. The average writer's approach to power issues doesn't seem all that dependent on the characters' gender at all, actually. It seems more like relationship roles defining gender than the other way around.
I don't think it's a question of misogynism (heh) so much as a prevalent attitude to what romance should be like. There's a cultural norm of a passive, possessed party and an active, possessing party, and it follows beyond gender roles though it clearly originated there. And as much as I dig the boylurve, it actually makes me happier on some level to see a girl who's as strong as the boy, just because it's inspiring, isn't it? This is me, being a girl, and so instead of looking up to superheroes with amazing powers, I look up to girls who don't need a man's help or admiration to move forward. I don't care about misogynistic fic because once one starts looking, one could find it everywhere and anywhere-- what I really bloody want is feminist fiction, and it could be het or slash or femslash.
And it's not that I like slash -because- it's some sort of superior het substitute... but it's weird to realize that really I like (and dislike!) the same things about both. Whether it's het or slash, I dig on the violence... the sense of uncontrolled anger/jealousy/fear/need. It's like... so important, right, that slash is about characters of the same gender... that it's almost forgettable that in the end, it's all about romance stories, and love works the same way with any gender, doesn't it? Emotionally, it adds up to the same emotional pay-off, though... uh, well, the boy-on-boy action thing tips the scale a bit for me, usually. It doesn't matter if I'm really involved with the characters, though-- it doesn't matter what their gender is to how real they are to me. Why should it?
I've heard before that if you had a boy and a girl fighting, you'd have issues of abuse come up, and basically the (female) readers would sympathize with the girl a lot more (or less), or something. But those are traditionalist stories that don't count on the presence of strong female characters which aren't any more conducive to pity than strong male characters. And the fact that a fic is about two boys doesn't mean their roles will be balanced, especially given the huge feminization phenomenon both in fanfiction and shounen-ai. The average writer's approach to power issues doesn't seem all that dependent on the characters' gender at all, actually. It seems more like relationship roles defining gender than the other way around.
I don't think it's a question of misogynism (heh) so much as a prevalent attitude to what romance should be like. There's a cultural norm of a passive, possessed party and an active, possessing party, and it follows beyond gender roles though it clearly originated there. And as much as I dig the boylurve, it actually makes me happier on some level to see a girl who's as strong as the boy, just because it's inspiring, isn't it? This is me, being a girl, and so instead of looking up to superheroes with amazing powers, I look up to girls who don't need a man's help or admiration to move forward. I don't care about misogynistic fic because once one starts looking, one could find it everywhere and anywhere-- what I really bloody want is feminist fiction, and it could be het or slash or femslash.
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no subject
Date: 2005-01-29 03:50 pm (UTC)i am looking for a particular kind of romantic relationship in both het and slash, i came into slash because it is so rare in het, and i hate most fanfics that are very popular because they pander to the same power dynamics that het romances to.
phew, i think i expressed myself clearly and thematically correct. you must always write without lj-cuts *nods*
no subject
Date: 2005-01-29 04:15 pm (UTC)I'm so easy, too. I think I dig on any romance where the girl kicks the boy's ass, even if it's got little else going for it (even if it's FuriKuri, where the girl is actually this mad person with a killer guitar and she's way older and....) Oh man :)) Well, given the boy is not a wilting flower himself. Ahhh, am so predictable ^^;; Woe. It's still surprising and like, 'yeay' when I remember that not -all- het romances are like... Harlequins. I just had to post in glee (though Hana Yori Dango is an old happy button, you'd think I'd be used to it by now.)
Butbutbut... my lj-cuts spare people from my rambling ^^;;; It can't be that people actually -want- me to ramble, could it :))
hyd?
Date: 2005-01-29 04:19 pm (UTC)so, this sounds like i should really get hana yori dango from ... somewhere?! once i made space on my hd? *eyes last disc*
i don't like clicking :S it's exhausting. carpal tunnel syndrome. oh woe is me! *hand on brow + swoon*
Re: hyd?
Date: 2005-01-29 08:55 pm (UTC)If you have/want to get streamload (http://www.streamload.com), which is like, $4.95 a month for a gig of space, I could send you HYD :>
Re: hyd?
Date: 2005-01-30 02:57 am (UTC)well, i am still my old self enough to see how ze slash would greatly please old sigmund. all those young girls, who'd otherwise think themself the beautiful sex, being taught penis envy!
no, really.
hmmmmmmm, thank you! *thinks* how big is it? would yousendit.com not work? or is it anime and not manga *forgot*
Re: hyd?
Date: 2005-01-30 11:54 am (UTC)Well, my HYD manga folder is 844mb & my HYD anime .rm media folder is 1.83 gigs & the .avi folder version is 3.01 gigs, so :)) Mind you, yousendit allows up to a gig in email, but no resumed downloads ^^;; So streamload seems like the better choice ^^;
Re: hyd?
Date: 2005-01-30 02:30 pm (UTC)eeep, that is big. more in regards to my harddrive as yousendit (that would probably work without resuming dl, also they have that new link at the bottom about resuming?). i must clear some space :S then maybe some manga please arigato gozaimasu!
Re: hyd?
Date: 2005-01-30 12:13 pm (UTC)