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Aug. 4th, 2004 07:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickI am back from *the con* but my voice hasn't shown up yet. I think I'm done staffing, which is kind of a shame. Far too many of my friends are on staff and I don't see a lot of them outside of staff meetings. I could maybe claim that I see some of them at the actual con, but only if 'seeing them' is taken quite literally. Most work in different departments and I saw them in the hall, for three or four minutes each. The con itself seems to have gone well and I had a doozy of an idea for fixing the one big headache in my department, so I guess that was good. Pity I won't be there in person to see how it comes out.
I did enjoy the fan parody track, with the voice of my friend Matt as one of the bad guys. I have *got* to find out how to do that whole video thing. It looks interesting. Also, I took the time to explain to Matt about the sorts of things that make for a successful yaoification experience (not that he cares, but I'm vaguely interested in the topic and he was kind enough to listen to me yammer about it in the lobby of the Days Inn at 0-dark-hundred one evening) and I promised to provide him with some samples of suitable and unsuitable material (eg. WK, PoT, HnG) with notes and a more involved scholarly examination of the material at hand. The PoT and HnG episodes I have are AVI files because neither is licensed, but for WK, I have VHS fansubs and the full run of legit DVDs from the nice people at Media Blasters. Research continues on how to get the episodes off of the DVDs and onto a CD for Matt to look at. I really don't want to hand him the whole series on DVD -- nobody should feel obligated to spend time with the florist-assassins, and particularly not straight men -- but a couple of sample episodes would be helpful for the purposes of my discussion.
So that all ya'll coming late to the discussion do not feel left out (Mitch, feel free to skim, you've heard this one already), the general theory here is that chicks do not particularly yaoify stuff that is good at being itself. From the original email to Mitch on this subject, we have the following inkling of a theory: Anyway. Potential for Hikaru no Go anime... there is some. While not as lushly rife with possibilities as PoT, it's not a desert of impossibility. However, Hikago is probably a better anime than Prince of Tennis. The plot is stronger, more honest, and emotionally more effective. This is not *about* which of them is a good anime. This is about which of them is more entertaining to reimagine as a yaoi soap opera. It makes sense that more effective anime are less interesting to reimagine as something other than what they are -- if canon represents the most effective, most useful employment of the characters and situations, why bother with a do-over? The stones, as it were, are already in their best positions. Given something like Weiss Kreuz, though... I could write better plots than that. My cats could write better plots. Reimagining the show as a more pleasing whole is entertaining and not entirely difficult.
Anyway, when I presented this theory to Matt, he nodded and smiled and looked interested. He even agreed with me that Revolutionary Girl Utena, which seethes with sexual undertones and has many gorgeous, angsty, fucked-up bishounen in dysfunctional relationships, is largely missing from the fanfic landscape because it is *already* as lush and sexy as it can possibly be. Matt's gentle, polite enthusiasm for my grand theory of fangirl yaoification is going to require him to watch at least three episodes of Weiss Kreuz, with commentary, after which he will probably never talk to me again because he'll be too busy screaming "Ah, my eyes! My eyes!"
The biggest laugh I had at *the con* was when a young, male staffer said (with a straight face) "Yaoi is mostly gentle cuddling, right?"
I did enjoy the fan parody track, with the voice of my friend Matt as one of the bad guys. I have *got* to find out how to do that whole video thing. It looks interesting. Also, I took the time to explain to Matt about the sorts of things that make for a successful yaoification experience (not that he cares, but I'm vaguely interested in the topic and he was kind enough to listen to me yammer about it in the lobby of the Days Inn at 0-dark-hundred one evening) and I promised to provide him with some samples of suitable and unsuitable material (eg. WK, PoT, HnG) with notes and a more involved scholarly examination of the material at hand. The PoT and HnG episodes I have are AVI files because neither is licensed, but for WK, I have VHS fansubs and the full run of legit DVDs from the nice people at Media Blasters. Research continues on how to get the episodes off of the DVDs and onto a CD for Matt to look at. I really don't want to hand him the whole series on DVD -- nobody should feel obligated to spend time with the florist-assassins, and particularly not straight men -- but a couple of sample episodes would be helpful for the purposes of my discussion.
So that all ya'll coming late to the discussion do not feel left out (Mitch, feel free to skim, you've heard this one already), the general theory here is that chicks do not particularly yaoify stuff that is good at being itself. From the original email to Mitch on this subject, we have the following inkling of a theory: Anyway. Potential for Hikaru no Go anime... there is some. While not as lushly rife with possibilities as PoT, it's not a desert of impossibility. However, Hikago is probably a better anime than Prince of Tennis. The plot is stronger, more honest, and emotionally more effective. This is not *about* which of them is a good anime. This is about which of them is more entertaining to reimagine as a yaoi soap opera. It makes sense that more effective anime are less interesting to reimagine as something other than what they are -- if canon represents the most effective, most useful employment of the characters and situations, why bother with a do-over? The stones, as it were, are already in their best positions. Given something like Weiss Kreuz, though... I could write better plots than that. My cats could write better plots. Reimagining the show as a more pleasing whole is entertaining and not entirely difficult.
Anyway, when I presented this theory to Matt, he nodded and smiled and looked interested. He even agreed with me that Revolutionary Girl Utena, which seethes with sexual undertones and has many gorgeous, angsty, fucked-up bishounen in dysfunctional relationships, is largely missing from the fanfic landscape because it is *already* as lush and sexy as it can possibly be. Matt's gentle, polite enthusiasm for my grand theory of fangirl yaoification is going to require him to watch at least three episodes of Weiss Kreuz, with commentary, after which he will probably never talk to me again because he'll be too busy screaming "Ah, my eyes! My eyes!"
The biggest laugh I had at *the con* was when a young, male staffer said (with a straight face) "Yaoi is mostly gentle cuddling, right?"
