(no subject)
Mar. 21st, 2005 11:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
reenkaSometimes (...a lot of times) it's almost impossible for me to be anything but negative; I just want to complain about things that annoy me-- and man, do a lot of things annoy me. And it's not that I feel self-righteous about it... usually self-righteousness is one of the things that annoys me most. Give me someone who questions rather than states things and I'm happy; funny, people think I state things too confidently all the time. Mostly it's that I'm often in the grip of emotional conviction, while my rational side is aware I'm just spewing hot air. Since my way of self-expression is halfway coherent(??!), people assume I'm being serious. This is like my curse, I swear to god. So I'm telling you all right now, okay: I'm almost never "serious" (if by that one means self-righteous conviction). If I am, I'm just pissed off, nothing more (which again isn't serious).
Anyway, that was a tangent. My point was that I keep wanting to rant about one thing or another, and I realize how lame that is-- well, actually 'cause it's about the same thing. Like: number one of the things that annoy me (recently) is using the language of rhetoric or propaganda of any sort-- obscuring the truth by over-emphasizing the point. Why does this make me so frustrated...? It's everywhere, though; exaggeration, advertising, trickery of all sorts-- basically, intentional use of misunderstanding to make people think in a certain way.
The point is, I really want to squee (you know, up my positivity) about some shoujo manga... even though the author I'm currently reading, Shimaki Ako, is both funny and depressing, but mostly kind of depressing. It seems to be that if a shoujo mangaka dares to be... I dunno, sober (rational?? ahahah) rather than melodramatic, the intelligence and daring is automatically higher. The pay-off is higher when the writer doesn't always give the reader what they want to see & hear-- well, if there -is- a happy ending. If there isn't, I for one just sort of pretend I never cared ^^;;
I'm learning about The Tale of Genji (from manga)... that's gotta be worth something or other, right...? Right??
My favorite thing about manga in general is probably the ability to add things up-- to see into real Japanese life by implication and slight exaggeration. If you see enough of what's ridiculous and outlandish in a place, you start getting a parallel idea of what's 'normal' too, sort of by contrast, right? That makes me happy-- seeing patterns of behavior start to emerge, making me feel familiar. I think I'm the sort of person who only feels familiar with things after getting to know them on a deeper level-- either by repeated exposure or just an information dump. I'd probably still be lost when/if I got to Japan, just because I'm naturally incompetent in social terms.
I really liked Merupuri, though, which is your basic fantasy fare about a prince from another world. The art is pretty intricate (for standard shoujo), and the idea of a little boy cursed by his brother to turn 17 in the dark, to be reversed by the kiss of the girl he loves-- that's pretty cute, I thought. Not much of the acculturation and more of the escapist fantasy, but so pretty! ...And then there's the one, also by Matsuri Hino, about the girl who ran off to be a pirate to save the boy she liked when she was little... that takes me straight back to my happiest childhood dreams.
The thing about shoujo, is that a lot of it sounds even sillier than it is when you summarize it. The appeal isn't the 'plot' but the naive sort of melodrama-- though I'm so happy when suddenly I get more mature drama-type stuff, hopefully with some humor in it... though the thing is, that tends to be depressing... though, well, real life is pretty depressing, though not always dramatically so, I guess. I'd rather be dispirited than annoyed by shallowness, anyway, though I have my lapses, clearly.
The trick is to find something that's merely romantic in the artistic sense rather than shallow; a lot of people don't get that distinction, though; so I wind up wading through tons of crude pandering to kinks to get to an author who understands romantic fantasy doesn't deny the real but rather embellishes it and uses a rich palette of intense color, sometimes soft, sometimes brilliant. The thing is to use real emotion in a make-believe setting; the problem is that basically, some writers/mangakas see reality in a way I find totally ridiculous (wrong? stupid? etc) But that is the way of things-- and here we come back to me being self-righteous(??) where I'm merely being sincere.
This question of there being a 'wrong' way to see life-the-universe-and-everything... it's an interesting tangent (to me). Perhaps it's at the center of what's unclear in my dialectic in general; I'm not sure. On the one hand, I really do find certain things utterly ridiculous-- on the other hand, I really don't think it's a judgment in the sense that I'm certain I'm right and there should some consequences to my opinion. I almost never believe in consequences-- that is, I think it's often sheer arrogance to assign value to things that don't concern one's own well-being. This is a pretty arrogant statement in and of itself, perhaps. It's not so much live-and-let-live as, 'know really well what you're talking about before speech becomes an imperative'-- and I rarely feel like I do. Basically, I believe that those who know best should really know best. If they do, then it's not their judgment but rather the truth. If there's no truth, then there can be no right or wrong; if there is a truth, then there can be no judgment, only ignorance and knowledge. And if there is partial ignorance, there is partial truth, because no human truth can be absolute seeing as how we're all limited in our understanding.
So yes... my instinct is that there's right & wrong ways to see things-- but deeper thought holds me back. I dislike people claiming something is 'wrong', no matter what it is, and yet I myself have an instinct to say 'this is ridiculous! it's wrong! it's crazy!'-- so it's not as if I'm better, I'm just more self-aware (to a sad extent, believe me). In the end, it's not that I think some people's views of life are 'wrong' but rather incomplete or exaggerated, and that's what annoys me the most; being able to see that of course we all hold a measure of truth, and many of us are on the right track, but it's not enough. That one little imbalance, that one crucial blindness, and the whole thing becomes a castle of cards, and people say things that really make no sense. It makes me pretty pissed off.
On the romance-manga front, I really like Hot Gimmick (...which sort of lives up to its name); I'm just easily hooked by arrogant-bullying-boy-who's-not-what-he-seems. Ahhh, though the protagonist is just so... so... ahh, timid and easily intimidated. I think even though I hate that, I forgive it easier in females than males, which is just pathetic of me, isn't it? Regardless, one of the major things I've noticed is that there's not a wide range of types of leading characters that are written (at least in girls' manga)-- and if you have a type (say, self-confident popular girl), she's going to have a certain type of personality and outlook. Like, she's going to be positive and uh, 'genki' pretty much no matter what (that is, no bitches need apply). If you have a more melancholy, weepy girl, she's going to be naive and pretty much a push-over. Tomboys are in short supply, or girls who stand up to boys-- to the point where if it does happen, I go on some sort of love overload through sheer shock.
I think this comes back to the reason I dislike a lot of fanon characterizations, actually. People just don't seem to understand my position, it feels like... maybe I'm just weird. It's not that I'm against fanonization, it's that the more a writer lets go of canon complexities, the more they rely on the stereotype behind them, or they need to rebuild the complexity themselves (at least as well), which very rarely happens. The fact that it happens sometimes is why I love a number of OOC fics-- basically, the character got remade. Most people just slap together a stupid stereotype out of nowhere, and on top of that, one that doesn't fit in the situation or with the other characters (meaning, the new type of interaction between them-- from resentment to admiration, say-- makes no sense). Yes, it all comes back to fanon!Draco, yes. I have to put in a dig at him anytime I can, or else I'll get rusty, see. It's all very scientific.
Anyway, that was a tangent. My point was that I keep wanting to rant about one thing or another, and I realize how lame that is-- well, actually 'cause it's about the same thing. Like: number one of the things that annoy me (recently) is using the language of rhetoric or propaganda of any sort-- obscuring the truth by over-emphasizing the point. Why does this make me so frustrated...? It's everywhere, though; exaggeration, advertising, trickery of all sorts-- basically, intentional use of misunderstanding to make people think in a certain way.
The point is, I really want to squee (you know, up my positivity) about some shoujo manga... even though the author I'm currently reading, Shimaki Ako, is both funny and depressing, but mostly kind of depressing. It seems to be that if a shoujo mangaka dares to be... I dunno, sober (rational?? ahahah) rather than melodramatic, the intelligence and daring is automatically higher. The pay-off is higher when the writer doesn't always give the reader what they want to see & hear-- well, if there -is- a happy ending. If there isn't, I for one just sort of pretend I never cared ^^;;
I'm learning about The Tale of Genji (from manga)... that's gotta be worth something or other, right...? Right??
My favorite thing about manga in general is probably the ability to add things up-- to see into real Japanese life by implication and slight exaggeration. If you see enough of what's ridiculous and outlandish in a place, you start getting a parallel idea of what's 'normal' too, sort of by contrast, right? That makes me happy-- seeing patterns of behavior start to emerge, making me feel familiar. I think I'm the sort of person who only feels familiar with things after getting to know them on a deeper level-- either by repeated exposure or just an information dump. I'd probably still be lost when/if I got to Japan, just because I'm naturally incompetent in social terms.
I really liked Merupuri, though, which is your basic fantasy fare about a prince from another world. The art is pretty intricate (for standard shoujo), and the idea of a little boy cursed by his brother to turn 17 in the dark, to be reversed by the kiss of the girl he loves-- that's pretty cute, I thought. Not much of the acculturation and more of the escapist fantasy, but so pretty! ...And then there's the one, also by Matsuri Hino, about the girl who ran off to be a pirate to save the boy she liked when she was little... that takes me straight back to my happiest childhood dreams.
The thing about shoujo, is that a lot of it sounds even sillier than it is when you summarize it. The appeal isn't the 'plot' but the naive sort of melodrama-- though I'm so happy when suddenly I get more mature drama-type stuff, hopefully with some humor in it... though the thing is, that tends to be depressing... though, well, real life is pretty depressing, though not always dramatically so, I guess. I'd rather be dispirited than annoyed by shallowness, anyway, though I have my lapses, clearly.
The trick is to find something that's merely romantic in the artistic sense rather than shallow; a lot of people don't get that distinction, though; so I wind up wading through tons of crude pandering to kinks to get to an author who understands romantic fantasy doesn't deny the real but rather embellishes it and uses a rich palette of intense color, sometimes soft, sometimes brilliant. The thing is to use real emotion in a make-believe setting; the problem is that basically, some writers/mangakas see reality in a way I find totally ridiculous (wrong? stupid? etc) But that is the way of things-- and here we come back to me being self-righteous(??) where I'm merely being sincere.
This question of there being a 'wrong' way to see life-the-universe-and-everything... it's an interesting tangent (to me). Perhaps it's at the center of what's unclear in my dialectic in general; I'm not sure. On the one hand, I really do find certain things utterly ridiculous-- on the other hand, I really don't think it's a judgment in the sense that I'm certain I'm right and there should some consequences to my opinion. I almost never believe in consequences-- that is, I think it's often sheer arrogance to assign value to things that don't concern one's own well-being. This is a pretty arrogant statement in and of itself, perhaps. It's not so much live-and-let-live as, 'know really well what you're talking about before speech becomes an imperative'-- and I rarely feel like I do. Basically, I believe that those who know best should really know best. If they do, then it's not their judgment but rather the truth. If there's no truth, then there can be no right or wrong; if there is a truth, then there can be no judgment, only ignorance and knowledge. And if there is partial ignorance, there is partial truth, because no human truth can be absolute seeing as how we're all limited in our understanding.
So yes... my instinct is that there's right & wrong ways to see things-- but deeper thought holds me back. I dislike people claiming something is 'wrong', no matter what it is, and yet I myself have an instinct to say 'this is ridiculous! it's wrong! it's crazy!'-- so it's not as if I'm better, I'm just more self-aware (to a sad extent, believe me). In the end, it's not that I think some people's views of life are 'wrong' but rather incomplete or exaggerated, and that's what annoys me the most; being able to see that of course we all hold a measure of truth, and many of us are on the right track, but it's not enough. That one little imbalance, that one crucial blindness, and the whole thing becomes a castle of cards, and people say things that really make no sense. It makes me pretty pissed off.
On the romance-manga front, I really like Hot Gimmick (...which sort of lives up to its name); I'm just easily hooked by arrogant-bullying-boy-who's-not-what-he-seems. Ahhh, though the protagonist is just so... so... ahh, timid and easily intimidated. I think even though I hate that, I forgive it easier in females than males, which is just pathetic of me, isn't it? Regardless, one of the major things I've noticed is that there's not a wide range of types of leading characters that are written (at least in girls' manga)-- and if you have a type (say, self-confident popular girl), she's going to have a certain type of personality and outlook. Like, she's going to be positive and uh, 'genki' pretty much no matter what (that is, no bitches need apply). If you have a more melancholy, weepy girl, she's going to be naive and pretty much a push-over. Tomboys are in short supply, or girls who stand up to boys-- to the point where if it does happen, I go on some sort of love overload through sheer shock.
I think this comes back to the reason I dislike a lot of fanon characterizations, actually. People just don't seem to understand my position, it feels like... maybe I'm just weird. It's not that I'm against fanonization, it's that the more a writer lets go of canon complexities, the more they rely on the stereotype behind them, or they need to rebuild the complexity themselves (at least as well), which very rarely happens. The fact that it happens sometimes is why I love a number of OOC fics-- basically, the character got remade. Most people just slap together a stupid stereotype out of nowhere, and on top of that, one that doesn't fit in the situation or with the other characters (meaning, the new type of interaction between them-- from resentment to admiration, say-- makes no sense). Yes, it all comes back to fanon!Draco, yes. I have to put in a dig at him anytime I can, or else I'll get rusty, see. It's all very scientific.
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no subject
Date: 2005-03-21 10:57 pm (UTC)I'm just easily hooked by arrogant-bullying-boy-who's-not-what-he-seems.
GEE, I WONDER WHERE THAT CAME FROM?!
I'd post a comment more substantial, but teh sick0rs is depriving me of brain function.
no subject
Date: 2005-03-22 05:28 pm (UTC)<-- NOT AT ALL CONCEITED SHUT UP >:O
...But was it the chicken or the egg?? 'Cause like, I liked Tsukasa before Draco, y'know. And I think in some ways I STILL LIKE HIM MORE AND WANT HIM TO BE MY BOYFRIEND, MUWAHAHALKJSFla;kjfdlkjkljkk
*coughs*
<-- little enough brain-function even as is ^^;;
no subject
Date: 2005-03-22 06:18 pm (UTC)Pfff, I stopped doing that a long time ago when I realised that people only listen to you when you're angry/ranty/passionate.
no subject
Date: 2005-03-22 06:23 pm (UTC)Actually I'm just not controversially/hot-buttony enough in my ranting. If you rant about obscure/convoluted stuff or even just stuff no one cares about... or you sound too sane... YOU'RE OUT OF LUCK. All in all, I guess I should try harder ^^;;;
no subject
Date: 2005-03-22 07:22 pm (UTC)YOU NEED MORE CAPSLOCKS USEAGE LIKE HARRY!!!1one
If you rant about obscure/convoluted stuff or even just stuff no one cares about... or you sound too sane... YOU'RE OUT OF LUCK.
Unles you do it in a way that makes other people feel stupid. That tends to work well, I find. :D
no subject
Date: 2005-03-22 07:29 pm (UTC)You know, people have told me that uh, they shut up BECAUSE they feel intimidated and/or stupid o_0 o_0
However, CAPSLOCK I CAN DO, BABY!!1
(...that wasn't very Harry-like of me, was it?? MUST
WANKWORK HARDER! HARDER!! LONGER!!1)no subject
Date: 2005-03-22 07:42 pm (UTC)But no. *looks at you with big pleading "OMG I AM SO IRC STOOPID YOU KNOW I AM" eyes*
no subject
Date: 2005-03-22 07:49 pm (UTC)Apparently she cocreated (an untranslated) fantasy yaoi manga about uh... the prince of moonlight... YES DAVID BOWIE :)) No, okay.
no subject
Date: 2005-03-22 08:07 pm (UTC)Personally I prefer the one of hers where the goldfish turns into a pretty uke. And by "Pretty" I mean "This uke beats every single version of fanon!Draco, hands down".
no subject
Date: 2005-03-22 08:27 pm (UTC)Hee, I remember the goldfish one, though I was dissatisfied with the ending... I mean... I sort of thought it was sad & slightly pointless, anyway. But yeah, pretty is the word :>