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I know this is the wrong way to read the books, and yet...
A boyfriend who sabotages your car in order to prevent you from seeing one of your friends, because he says it is dangerous, is
(a) Perhaps a good boyfriend anyway, if the danger is real, but it's still worth yelling at him about it.
(b) Not a good boyfriend.
(c) Get away from me you controlling bastard, I'm going to date someone with a pulse.
(d) Sigh... he's so pretty! And he sparkles!
(This is not a poll, because I do not have a paid account. I don't approve of LJ enough to have a paid account, frankly).
Yes-- I got my hands on Eclipse, the third book of Stephenie Meyer's vampire trilogy.
Controlling, overprotective, and awesomely romantic is a trope of shoujo manga, I know, I know. But in even the most paint-by-numbers of them, doesn't the girl at least get to yell at the guy some, and stubbornly insist that she can take care of herself and doesn't need to be protected? Doesn't the girl at least get to think, "This guy quite possibly poses a danger to me! And yet, I like him!"?
But maybe I'm looking at the wrong thing here-- maybe I'm just better at reading manga than English novels through the "This is fantasy and needs not be evaluated in light of reality" lens. I was reading Scott McCloud's "Making Comics," and he had a little essay in the back on just how strongly manga are oriented towards the subjective rather than the objective, with the montages of fragments, and serial close-ups of faces. They're oriented to atmosphere and feelings and interiority.
A story about wish-fulfillment fantasy has to be read with that sense of interiority, or it falls apart, precisely because it's impossible to transplant to the real world.
Two weeks ago, I was at the bookstore looking for anything that would be as id-ish, as button-pushing, as unabashed and brazen, as a good manga. Not in a smutty way, even. There are a lot of ways to make me go "Eeeee!" Didn't have any luck. That's the way the American publishing industry runs. There are certainly exceptions... and that's exactly why the Meyer books are so popular; how rare is it for a YA book to be sensual and irresponsible and totally devoid of moral content? And I mean that in a good way! Ursula LeGuin makes the distinction between garbage and plastic, saying that children will and should eat garbage, it's good for them... but we have too much plastic, and too little garbage. That's why I loved Tripping to Somewhere for all its technical faults, I think; it wasn't cautious writing, and it wasn't plastic.
I'm not very good at that kind of unabashed and brazen and risky and enthusiastic writing. I am, myself, too abashed, too careful, and while I love Wish You Were Here and think it is going to be a good book, I also think it's proper, and moral, and lesson-y, in a way that... well, there's nothing wrong with it, but all the other YA novels are doing the same thing unless you look at Gossip Girl and so on.
And yet it has made me a more unabashed writer.
Maybe next time.
So this is why I need to order my weight in manga from Japan. I think I've just succeeded in justifying it to myself. But I will put it off until I succeed in getting some transportation.
(Also, I really really really want one of the new iPods. How I hate being a responsible adult.)
(a) Perhaps a good boyfriend anyway, if the danger is real, but it's still worth yelling at him about it.
(b) Not a good boyfriend.
(c) Get away from me you controlling bastard, I'm going to date someone with a pulse.
(d) Sigh... he's so pretty! And he sparkles!
(This is not a poll, because I do not have a paid account. I don't approve of LJ enough to have a paid account, frankly).
Yes-- I got my hands on Eclipse, the third book of Stephenie Meyer's vampire trilogy.
Controlling, overprotective, and awesomely romantic is a trope of shoujo manga, I know, I know. But in even the most paint-by-numbers of them, doesn't the girl at least get to yell at the guy some, and stubbornly insist that she can take care of herself and doesn't need to be protected? Doesn't the girl at least get to think, "This guy quite possibly poses a danger to me! And yet, I like him!"?
But maybe I'm looking at the wrong thing here-- maybe I'm just better at reading manga than English novels through the "This is fantasy and needs not be evaluated in light of reality" lens. I was reading Scott McCloud's "Making Comics," and he had a little essay in the back on just how strongly manga are oriented towards the subjective rather than the objective, with the montages of fragments, and serial close-ups of faces. They're oriented to atmosphere and feelings and interiority.
A story about wish-fulfillment fantasy has to be read with that sense of interiority, or it falls apart, precisely because it's impossible to transplant to the real world.
Two weeks ago, I was at the bookstore looking for anything that would be as id-ish, as button-pushing, as unabashed and brazen, as a good manga. Not in a smutty way, even. There are a lot of ways to make me go "Eeeee!" Didn't have any luck. That's the way the American publishing industry runs. There are certainly exceptions... and that's exactly why the Meyer books are so popular; how rare is it for a YA book to be sensual and irresponsible and totally devoid of moral content? And I mean that in a good way! Ursula LeGuin makes the distinction between garbage and plastic, saying that children will and should eat garbage, it's good for them... but we have too much plastic, and too little garbage. That's why I loved Tripping to Somewhere for all its technical faults, I think; it wasn't cautious writing, and it wasn't plastic.
I'm not very good at that kind of unabashed and brazen and risky and enthusiastic writing. I am, myself, too abashed, too careful, and while I love Wish You Were Here and think it is going to be a good book, I also think it's proper, and moral, and lesson-y, in a way that... well, there's nothing wrong with it, but all the other YA novels are doing the same thing unless you look at Gossip Girl and so on.
And yet it has made me a more unabashed writer.
Maybe next time.
So this is why I need to order my weight in manga from Japan. I think I've just succeeded in justifying it to myself. But I will put it off until I succeed in getting some transportation.
(Also, I really really really want one of the new iPods. How I hate being a responsible adult.)
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There's not enough going on outside the FANTASY part to ground anything. And I suspect that she's just being magically dominated by him, and now her mind is mush. And I couldn't ever stand Edward, and the description of him sounded plain.
And what you say about things needing to be insular to be understood, Tamora pierce does a much better job of total fantasy with much better writing. The emotional fantastic is what drew me to Meyer's stuff, but there wasn't enough stuff there to hold on to. It was a girly pleasure until the killed the romantic suspense.
You gotta be careful when you do that, you have to find a way to make it suspenseful in other ways. Once the couple gets together your story is on a countdown clock of how many things you can do before you lose your readers to bordem :)
Unless they are DBZ fans, and then they will read/watch anything a million times. lol