This Ship stuff sounds like shojo (semi-OT)

[sashibuya at hotmail.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 11609

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "Jim Ferer" <jferer at y...> wrote:
> I'm curious about the slash pairings we talk about here -- 
Ron/Harry, 
> Harry/Draco (!) and so on.

Hmmm. I'm not a slash fan myself, but I'm an anime fan as well as a 
HP fan, so I'll try to help you answer these questions. In Japan, 
slash is known as "yaoi" or "shounen-ai" (literally boy-love). This 
can take the form of same-sex relationships in the canon of shoujo 
(literally girl, vs. "shounen" or boy anime/manga) manga/anime, or as 
doujinshi (fanproduced comics) depicting non-canon shounen-ai 
relationships between characters. (The companies, for some reason, 
allow this copyright violation). There are, as they come out of 
different cultures with different takes on sexuality, some 
differences between yaoi and slash, but it's confusing. Some yaoi has 
lots of emotional exploration or angst, other yaoi is plot-what-plot 
sex. Most Western fans like the emotional aspects of it, though, 
IMHO. 


> A lot of the ship discussion here is sounding more and more like a 
> Japanese phenomenon, "shojo": Anime and manga targeted to young 
girls 
> and women with strong themes of relationships and friendship. A 
> frequent theme of this style are close -- very close -- and 
sexually 
> ambiguous relationships between androgynous male characters, called 
> "bishonen", the sense being "beautiful boys." [Most fic Dracos 
would 
> be classic bishonen] An example: if anybody here is familiar with 
the 
> first "Sailor Moon" series, which is shojo, there's two bad-guy 
> characters, Jedite and Malachite. Here in the US, Malachite is 
female, 
> but in Japan, both characters are male.  One of them even has 
> Draco-silvery hair!
> 
> What's the dynamic for this?

There's actually lots of variety in shounen-ai relationships in 
shoujo. But for a good runthrough of how the yaoi fans themselves 
explain what they feel it to be about, go to this site:  
www.aestheticism.com. (WARNING:  includes discussions of same-sex 
relationships; includes "slash" archive of anime fanfiction) I think 
you'll find some stuff that helps under "glossary."

Another site that may be interesting is this:  Matt Thorn's shoujo 
manga site at http://www.ky.xaxon.ne.jp/~matt/. He is a cultural 
anthropologist living in Japan and studying manga/anime. Look under 
essays to see some stuff about the phenomenon. 

Charmian
(Just trying to be helpful....)