Thursday, May 31, 2001
Mother of pearl. I have truly reaped what I have sown, boys and girls.
A month or two ago, I wrote a silly blog that was meant to drive more lame search engine hits to my site. This blog was liberally studded with loaded phrases like 'DRAGONBALL Z HENTAI' and 'GUNDAM WING YAOI', all capitalized for the amusement of people who knew what I was doing. But nothing happened; my search engine hits remained exactly the same as before, and so I laughed and dismissed it. Heck, it had been funny.
Little did I realize the lag time involved.
About a week ago, this blog actually started showing up on search engines. My hits went mad. I'm getting about twenty extra hits a day on my blog, and they're ALL looking for things that I capitalized in that blog. I'm suddenly seeing people looking for 'sailormoon vagina'. 'naked vegeta'. 'gundam wing naked yaoi doujinshi'. Every possible combination of stupid pornographic terms that I trolled in that blog is showing up. If you're one of the people who came here looking for anime porn: I'm sorry, I don't have any. I didn't realize how far out of hand this was going to get. Although I AM kind of happy with the extra hits.
Still haven't gotten any hits off the 'DR. PEPPER' part, though.
Posted by Mie Tsukikoushi @ 04:28 AM EST
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Tuesday, May 29, 2001
Warning: Continuation of yesterday's blog; contains many, many references to homosexuality. You have been warned.
If there's one thing that yaoi fangirls love, it's to speculate about the possibilities inherent in their favorite anime/manga/RPG/whatever. Exactly what they prefer, allow, and like differs wildly. Almost every anime, manga, or video game that exists is probably also the source of constant speculation. There are 'canon' couples (yaoi pairings that seem so obvious or so attractive that it's damn near official) and people who enjoy stranger couplings. (Double entendre entirely meant, thank you.) Once you've become familiar with the concepts inherent in yaoi, it's really easy to pick out the couples for yourself. Some characters just scream 'uke', and that's all there is to it.
So, what are popular 'canon' couplings? Listed in seme x uke order:
1). The main villain x the plucky young hero that vanquishes him.
Examples: Sephiroth x Cloud, Treize x Wufei.
2). Slightly older/more knowing hero x innocent and/or prettier hero.
Examples: Irvine x Zell, Xelloss x Zelgadiss, Trowa x Quatre
3). Boss x flunky.
Examples: Rufus x Reno, Treize x Zechs, Sydney x Hardin
4). Reversible couples.
Example: Both Heero x Duo and Duo x Heero are common. Reasonably enough, most reversible couples are also the closest to 'equal' couples, with the least emphasis on seme/uke.
So, are you screaming in outrage yet? So are a lot of yaoi fangirls, believe it or not. To clear up another common misunderstanding: yaoi fangirls all have different tastes. Sometimes radically different.
To put it simply: say that you know a mid-twenties guy who collects nude b&w pinups of mid-twenties black women. If you show him a full-color picture of an nude eighty-year-old white woman with multiple piercings, he ain't gonna like it.
Similarly, if you show a conservative yaoi fangirl (like me) an incestuous coupling, she's not gonna like it either.
There are plenty of other division lines in the yaoi community, as well, based on taste. Basically, every kink that exists in normal porn (normal pornography - what a phrase!) exists in yaoi, even the sick, evil, and generally gross ones. But if yaoi is an acquired taste (and it is), then hardcore extreme yaoi is an even harder taste to acquire, and many fangirls loathe the more extreme forms. We're not ALL sickos, see.
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Half the fun of enjoying yaoi is arguing about it with other yaoi fans. It's quite possible to see passionate arguments over such things as: whether Quatre is better suited to being a seme or an uke, whether Sydney is better paired with Ashley or with Hardin, and whether Viktor and Flik are actually in a long-term relationship or not. (My answers: uke from hell, Hardin, and yes, eventually; by the beginning of Suikoden II they bicker just like an old married couple.)
Even common canon couples can come under fire from certain elements of yaoi fandom. You see, some yaoi fangirls adamantly insist that the couplings be totally possible within the confines of the anime's plot, and some run rampant over facts to create 'pretty' couples. And, of course, there's always derivations to annoy you further: far-future/far-past plotlines, cheating on obvious mates, one-night stands, et cetera. Basically, if a fangirl WANTS two guys to sleep together, it can be engineered. So get over it. No matter how much sexual tension exists between Heero and Relena, there are still plenty of ways to get Heero together with Duo. (And I like Duo better in any case, thank you.)
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Okay, so if you've read this far and you're NOT a yaoi fangirl, you're a trooper. And I bet you're wondering what all this has to do with you. Well, basically, I'd like to plead with you. IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT, DON'T LOOK AT IT.
If you don't like yaoi, that's perfectly okay, and I can't blame you at all. Yaoi is an acquired taste, like escargot, and it's most definitely not for everyone. But, please, please, if you don't like yaoi, leave it alone.
Please don't look at yaoi if you don't specifically want to see it. Only the most irresponsible of webmasters will fail to warn you about possible yaoi content, and webmasters like that should be reprimanded and whipped. Er, reprimanded. If a webmaster takes steps to warn you about yaoi/shounen ai content, and you still look at it, you have no right to be outraged/write flames/take action.
Please don't write to the webmasters to proclaim that 'such-and-so is not gay' or 'yaoi is gross, why do you have it on your site'. Those are your opinions. The webmaster also has opinions, and it's her site. Guess who wins?
Personally, I'm disgusted by most of the cheap porn that litters Geocities, but I acknowledge its right to exist, and I don't attack the webmasters.
And, for crying out loud, if you're underage, don't look at yaoi. I don't care how much you want to. Yaoi fans really CARE about their hobby and their websites, and losing your site to an outraged parent is a horrible, horrible experience.
If you're underage and you just HAVE to look at yaoi, then at least be CAREFUL, okay? Your parents aren't just going to punish YOU.
Respect yaoi and its right to exist. In turn, I wish that yaoi fangirls would respect your dislike and keep discussions of the topic away from you. Many of them don't, and I'm not particularly happy about that. Yaoi, just like anything else that exists, can be overdone/abused, and it's those rabid obsessed fangirls that give the rest of us a bad name. We're not all the same, and we're not all crazy/immature/obsessed, either.
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QUICK GLOSSARY:
DOUJINSHI: (abbr. dj): a fan-made or amateur manga. Huge, huge cottage industry in Japan, with their own convention; a fair percentage of these djs are yaoi/yuri/shounen ai/shoujo ai, often featuring popular characters in 'fangirl's-dream-come-true' stories. There seems to be no tendency to sue over these doujinshi, and large companies often recruit new talent from dj writers/artists.
SEME: the dominant partner in a yaoi pairing. I have no idea if there's a comparable term in yuri.
UKE: the submissive partner in a yaoi pairing.
x or /: the shortcut to designate the yaoi couple in question. Always listed seme first, uke second. If there's more than two people, there will generally be some sort of 'pecking order' (meant that double entendre too). Some poor guy will always be the uber-uke: Sephiroth x Zack x Cloud, Iori x Kyo x Shingo.
The 'x' is generally preferred and more 'Japanese' in tone. Reserve '/' for slash pairings (see below).
SLASH: Yaoi, but concerning real human beings instead of fictional characters. Most slash deeply, deeply disturbs me. It seems libelous, and real human beings just aren't as attractive as fictional ones. Which is probably why most slash is written, instead of drawn.
SHOTACON: Yaoi involving pre-pubescent males. Reasonably popular in Japan. Makes my skin crawl.
LOLICON: Like shotacon but involving pre-pubescent females. Makes my skin crawl more.
HENTAI: This one is surprisingly difficult to classify. Generally covers everything from pin-up pictures to hardcore heterosexual sex pictures. Basically, as long as it is sexually suggestive, it is hentai. Yaoi and yuri are, technically, subdivisions of hentai, although this definition seems to be losing popularity.
ECCHI: 'Ecchi' is how the Japanese pronounce the letter 'H'. Technically, this is just a shorthand term for hentai (H), but gradually it's come to mean lighter softcore hentai: nude pinups, suggestive pictures, semi-nude shots, and so on.
LEMON: An American term. Used to designate a fanfic/story with explicit sexual scenes. I personally hate this designation; it's a very coy term for a very explicit genre.
LIME: Also an American term. Used to designate a fanfic/story with sexual overtones/implied sex, but containing nothing explicit.
PWP: 'Plot? What plot?' Coy Americanism for yaoi at its most abstract. A story/picture that exists solely for the sex.
YAOI: a genre of Japanese anime/manga that involves two men having sex with each other. Generally there is very little plot, just lots of nudity and fluids.
YURI: like yaoi, but it involves two women, instead of two men.
SHOUNEN AI or SHONEN AI: two men or two boys being romantic towards each other, but there's no sex involved. Mostly kissing, cuddling, and minute examination of their emotions and feelings. Shounen ai is much more likely to contain a plot.
SHOUJO AI or SHOJO AI: like shounen ai but involves two women or two girls.
Granted, these are all just my takes on things, and many diehard yaoi fans would argue that I got some of these wrong. And I did, in many cases. There are subdivisions of yaoi that I glossed over or lumped together for the sake of simplicity. I didn't even go into the differences between yaoi and june, for example, or talk about the concepts of 'bishounen' and 'biseinen'. It's only a blog, for crying out loud. Furthermore, except when talking to diehard, humorless yaoi obsessees, the terms above will carry you through just fine.
For a much more in-depth look at the terms, go to aestheticism.net and look in their 'References' section. Their glossary is invaluable and fascinating, and you won't be forced to look at anything explicit. Astheticism is an excellent source for yaoi in all its forms, and very helpful to the newbie or the curious.
Thanks for listening to my rant. I'll try and write about something that doesn't involve sex soon.
Posted by Mie Tsukikoushi @ 09:25 PM EST
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Monday, May 28, 2001
I'm going to talk about yaoi now, which may bother some people. So, right at the start, I want to warn you. This blog WILL contain numerous references to homosexuality, although I'll try REALLY hard to refrain from being salacious about it. If any of that bothers you, you might be happier elsewhere. Okay?
Anyway.
So what is yaoi anyway? I'm SO glad you asked. The answer... differs, depending on how picky you want to be. Okay okay, I'll stop prevaricating.
YAOI refers to a genre of Japanese anime/manga that involves two men having sex with each other. Generally there is very little plot, just lots of nudity and fluids.
YURI is just like yaoi, but it involves two women, instead of two men.
SHOUNEN AI or SHONEN AI refers to two men or two boys being romantic towards each other, but there's no sex involved. Mostly kissing, cuddling, and angst. Lots of angst. Also, shounen ai is much more likely to contain a plot.
SHOUJO AI or SHOJO AI is, surprise surprise, just like shounen ai but involves two women or two girls.
(I won't actually be talking much about anything but yaoi, but I wanted to get all that straight.)
So yaoi is gay porn? Er... sort of. The significant difference is that, while Western gay porn is popular with gay men, the fans of yaoi tend to be heterosexual women.
I've noticed that this tends to bother a LOT of men. Some people (who don't think it through too well) assume that if a girl likes yaoi, she must be a lesbian. The illogic behind this baffles me.
After all, millions of heterosexual males admit that they really, really enjoy 'lesbian' porn, and that doesn't make them gay, does it? Far from it. A male friend of mine was trying to explain that particular fixation to me once. Eventually, the explanation he came up with was this:
"See, it's just as arousing as normal porn, but you don't have to put up with some guy in the shots, or worry that you enjoy looking at the naked guy TOO much. Instead, there's a whole extra girl for you to look at! It's, like, two for one!"
That, in essence, is yaoi's appeal to hetero women. Granted, there's a LOT more to it, but that's pretty much what it's ALL based on... two for one and no damn girls. Of course, they're usually also men of unearthly beauty, astonishingly well-drawn... plus, since most yaoi artists are female, they have a very good understanding of what manipulates the female libido. I'll be the first to admit that well-done yaoi pushes my buttons.
(Also, it makes me laugh when guys complain that there's too much yaoi out there, and there needs to be more yuri. There's about ten times as much yuri out there; it's just that most yuri exists in those immense, scary pay hentai sites that litter the Web like cigarette butts, while most yaoi sites are small, fan-run operations created by people you know.)
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Okay, so now that I've discussed that, it's time to make a Counterintuitive But True Statement:
The men portrayed in yaoi are not necessarily gay.
Yes, it's true. This is why people who appreciate yaoi laugh when you complain that 'such-and-so is not gay!'. Because he's not.
Confused? Okay, more terminology.
The SEME is the 'top', if you will. Basically, he's the man in charge of the action. Look for the smirk.
The UKE, then, is the 'bottom', or the guy being taken advantage of. He blushes and screams a lot.
Almost all yaoi is based on a 'master/minion' relationship. It's very seldom that equal couples exist. The uke is usually smaller, younger, prettier and/or angstier. He's also much less likely to be gay.
You see, hardcore yaoi is, at heart, about taking advantage of weakness. (This has always bothered me, frankly. But more about that later.) The seme, at heart, is not gay, but rapacious enough to have sex with anything that he finds reasonably attractive, because seduction is a power trip; the uke is not gay either, but does not have the strength and/or the willpower to resist.
But what about when they are, in fact, assumed to be gay? This proves to be a much kinder form of yaoi, containing a fair bit of shounen ai as well; in these stories, the couple is an actual couple. They love each other, and we just happen to... uh... spy on their activities. Of course, there is still a dominant partner and a submissive partner. This is by far the most popular kind of yaoi, and when girls talk about 'couples', this is what they mean.
Yeah, so I think about this a lot. I've also been known to overanalyze the concept of sugar cookies. I'm just that philosophical. (Any of you buying that?)
Coming soon: part 2, because this is long enough as it is.
Posted by Mie Tsukikoushi @ 10:50 PM EST
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Saturday, May 26, 2001
It's a fact of life: if you live in Columbus, Ohio, like I do, you will never pass a single day without seeing at least five Canada geese. Even if you don't SEE them, you'll HEAR them, flying over your apartment honking like electric scooters on steroids.
Up here in northwest Columbus, where I live, there are literally thousands of them, carpeting the lush corporate parks and enjoying the manmade lakes. And of course, people FEED these little monsters incessantly. The geese are so used to humans that they've lost all fear. If you try to eat outdoors at a nearby restaurant, they will swarm over the patio towards you and literally stand on your feet, demanding bread. If you don't succumb, they'll bite your arms.
I hear that the local Max & Erma's restaurant loses three servers per year; they get swarmed by hungry geese, and within ten minutes are skeletonized, leaving behind only gleaming white bones, a chewed-up serving tray, and perhaps a few shining shards of china. Well, perhaps I exaggerate. But not by much.
Me, I think it's a subtle and terrible invasion. Note that they're called CANADA geese. It's the second stage of a massive, secret plot. First those crafty Canadians infiltrated our money supply with their coinage... don't we all have a couple of silver coins with beavers and maple leaves on them by now? Suddenly we're nervous American consumers, checking our change obsessively to make sure we don't have one of these strange coins... and yet still they appear, frightening our children, destroying our moral fiber!
And now... the shock troops! Cleverly disguised as large, vicious birds, they steal the food from our very mouths, driving us indoors to eat, so that not a single red-blooded American will remain outside to witness... THE INVASION.
Fear.
Posted by Mie Tsukikoushi @ 01:30 AM EST
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Thursday, May 24, 2001
Alas. It turns out that someone beat me to the concept of Munchausen's Syndrome by Internet by several months. Plus he's an actual accredited person, unlike me, the random journaler. Granted, that makes me feel a little better. If a psychiatrist can come to the same conclusions that I did, well, hey, I was ON to something. Even if I was just being derivative of his ideas.
However, I note that he mashes the concepts of MSbI and MSbIP together, which gives me a shred of pride to hang on to. I was even more picky than he was!
All thanks due to Ed for destroying my pride in being the first to document the phenomenon.
Posted by Mie Tsukikoushi @ 11:12 PM EST
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RECENT STEREOTYPICAL MOMENTS:
1. I was in the kitchen, cooking dinner for myself and my hard-working boyfriend, who was upstairs relaxing after work. As I stood at the stove stirring the spaghetti sauce, I was startled by a large bee, buzzing around the kitchen.
Since I have an unreasonable phobia of flying insects, I immediately dropped the spoon, screamed, and raced out of the kitchen. I then refused to set foot in the kitchen again until Boyfriend came downstairs and killed the bee. In fact, I stood in the living room and looked nervous until he did so.
Then I went back into the kitchen and finished fixing dinner.
2. I was at a local craft store, picking up a yard of purple cloth to finish off a shirt I was making. After I got my fabric, I wandered around the rest of the store, browsing the art supplies. I would happily have spent an hour there just shopping.
Boyfriend, on the other hand, wanted to pay and go home. He doesn't like shopping.
So we paid, and went home.
Okay, so maybe I'm not the ultimate submissive Fifties wife. But I seem to be capable of really retro behavior... shame on me!
Posted by Mie Tsukikoushi @ 03:14 AM EST
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Wednesday, May 23, 2001
Okay, folks. I'm seriously hoping that no one that reads my blog is this dumb, but I have been following recent Internet events, and it seems important for me to say this:
MIE TSUKIKOUSHI IS NOT A REAL PERSON.
WELL, OKAY, SHE IS, SORT OF.
What I mean is, that is NOT my real name. It's actually the name of the mascot of my main site, and I appropriated the name when I began writing the blog. For lack of a better word, she's my alter ego, or my pen name, but she doesn't have a real existence off the web. In the real world, there IS no Mie Tsukikoushi. Neither I nor my fictional alter ego are dying of anything, except possibly the entropy that affects us all.
If by some miracle there IS a real person out there named Mie Tsukikoushi, she's not me, and Ms. Mie, I'm really bloody sorry about snitching your name.
So please don't send money or presents, okay? We don't need them, we don't want them, and we sure as hell don't want to be sued for mail fraud.
Don't base your life on mine or find inspiration in my life, either. I'm just a crotchety old crone and I don't want to be responsible for inspiring anybody to do anything. Read my blog, laugh, and maybe watch the movies I recommend, but anything else you do is NOT MY FAULT.
If you go out and kill someone and then tell the police Mie inspired you to do it, you're a fucking idiot and your brain is broken, and I refuse to take any responsibility for your breakage.
You know what? I meant to write this in a humorous fashion when I started, but I'm not laughing any more. I'm completely serious. This is an official disclaimer. The things you do are not my fault. The things you do are also not the fault of heavy metal music or video games, but that's a WHOLE different rant.
The only things I will take responsibility for are inspiring people to watch animation and view the world with a certain calm, rational cynicism. You know, the kind of rational cynicism that prevents you from committing evil acts.
So please don't sue me or anything. It wasn't my fault, whatever it was.
And it CERTAINLY wasn't Mie's fault. She's NOT REAL. Okay? Okay.
Posted by Mie Tsukikoushi @ 04:08 AM EST
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