Slip on your yuri goggles and just let the imagination flow.

"Imagination" flowing, yeah....

So THAT'S what you kids are calling it these days!

As a dude with a daughter, the idea of Papa creeping on his little girl kinda gives me the squeebs. Aside from that, I laughed my way throughout.

I like RADWIMPS, too.

You kids today, with your music and your hair...

That moment when you're sitting in the back of a semi in a truck stop in Ohio, discussing literary critical analysis theory on a website dedicated to Japanese lesbian romance comics. They never covered this in truck driving school!

How can you say no to -that-

I know, right? I'D be totally convinced!

I think this is the crux of our disagreement. My viewpoint does not invalidate other interpretations for not being the correct ones. That doesn't devalue them in the least and definitely doesn't mean they're suddenly no longer interesting. It's just arrogant for someone to claim they know what was intended better than the person who wrote it though.

But that's not (or shouldn't be) the claim.

When I watched Pixar's The Incredibles for the first time, I came away with the belief that I'd just watched a very thorough Objectivist parable. Subsequent viewings and the heated arguments of my friends have not changed my mind in the ensuing years.

Mind you, I'm not saying that The Incredibles was intended to be an Objectivist parable. But that's definitely what I took away from the work. It's not the most common interpretation, but it's also not rare.

Andrew Stanton says that The Incredibles has nothing to do with Objectivism. But Andrew Stanton is a staunch libertarian. It's certainly possible that he unconsciously allowed those views to color the film in various ways.

I'm not saying he did or he didn't. I'm just using that as an example of how an author can truthfully say "I didn't intend this meaning" while nonetheless having that meaning wind up in his/her work.

Man, we take our vampire comics really seriously around here. ^_^;;

Yeah, no, still ain't that convincing.

shrug

The notion that the author's intent isn't privileged is one of the cornerstones of modern literary critical theory. This ain't just me, some guy on the Internet, making shit up.

She's got the Al Bundy Hand Thing goin' on.

Vankomycin posted:

Nobody (not even the author) gets to say "THIS is what this work means, and all other interpretations are wrong." (Most days I'm a firm believer in the death of the author.

I cannot disagree with this more. It doesn't matter that your own personal interpretation is wrong. You are free to interpret it however you like. The author definitely does, however, have the right and authority to say you are interpreting it incorrectly. After all, they kinda wrote it. Nobody knows what was intended better than they do.

The author may have intended to convey a certain meaning. That doesn't mean he/she succeeded in doing so. The author is not infallible.

The author may have also created additional meaning he/she never intended to create. See "author not infallible" above.

In addition, all commuincation is mediated. Or, to put it another way, interpretation of a work is an active act, not a passive one. Each person brings their own personalities and experiences and biases and prejudices to the table when they interpret a work. A person raised in rural Zimbabwe is not going to take away the same interpretation of Romeo and Juliet as a person raised in urban London. So even if the author were infallible, he/she still wouldn't be able to convey his/her thoughts with 100% accuracy, because reasonable people with good intentions can still come away with wildly varying interpretations of the same piece of media.

Certainly, there are common and uncommon interpretations of a given work. And authors with talent and skill can usually create a work such that the common interpretations of that work jibe with his/her intentions. But the uncommon interpretations are just as valid (and occasionally more interesting).

I ship these ships.

/r/cringe material right there. So hilarious. To quote Fran Drescher, "I'M DYIN' OVAH HEAH!"

Ah, one of the three best Maki pairings. Gotta love it.

The other two are HonoMaki and MakiPana.

I know you're not a fan of tsun-tsun pairings, but I do have a soft spot for NicoMaki since that was my first exposure to LL shipping.

Well, yes. I do agree. I don't think the author did it intentionally. At worst, I think the author may have been a bit careless. And I certainly have written a frankly excessive amount about this. But I didn't get the creepy feeling by analysing it, I got the creepy feeling by reading it for the first time with no expectations and reacting to it naturally. The analysing came afterwards, when I wanted to know exactly what I found off-putting about it

And that's fine. I'm certainly not telling you that you're wrong, nor that your analysis is invalid. Death of the author means that there are no privileged interpretations. Nobody (not even the author) gets to say "THIS is what this work means, and all other interpretations are wrong." (Most days I'm a firm believer in the death of the author. There are, however, days when I harbor a black suspicion that it's just something literature professors came up with because they were tired of having their analyses challenged with "Well the AUTHOR OF THE WORK says that she meant...")

My point was simply that this work probably doesn't benefit from too much thought. Which is hard to avoid if you're the kind of person (like me!) who likes to think about stuff. So I get it. Really, I do. (Seriously. Ever seen the kiddie show "Meteor and the Mighty Monster Trucks". There are clearly cars in the world of the Mighty Monster Trucks, because every episode features the monster trucks driving over some. Are they sentient like the monster trucks are? Is their world one of never-ending horror? Are they hunted down by roving bands of monster trucks?)

and whether it really was just an irrational fear of yuri dudes, which is apparently an awful scourge of yuri comments sections everywhere. So even if I'm told not to think about it so much, that only gets me as far as being unable to identify why I felt uncomfortable, if I should expect more of whatever it is from the story in the future, or if the problem is actually me and some weird hangup that I need to get over by myself.

Look, for what it's worth, my comments to you specifically have been essayed in a congenial and collegial tone. That was how I intended it, at any rate. If they've caused you distress (and it seems that maybe they have), my apologies. You seem like a sharp cookie, and I enjoy this kind of discussion, as evidenced by my ability to ramble on and on about it. (You should see the three paragraphs I deleted!)

Also a good illustration of semiotics/death of the author. My intent don't mean beans. Communication is mediated. You bring your own personality and experiences to the table when you interpret a given work. Even a work like a message forum post.

As Sigmund Freud (allegedly) said, "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."

And sometimes a vampire has been a metaphor for sexual politics ever since it was first put to paper and this actual manga used its second chapter to explicitly connect its own form of vampirism to sexual desire and pleasure, as if it was a central theme of the manga. But I guess that's looking at it too deep.

Sure, vampires have been used as a rape metaphor since God wore a serafuku. Though these days I think that has been thoroughly surpassed by the "Vampires as superheroes with an unusual diet" approach.

I guess my question is: Would the vampire in this manga still be a rape metaphor if it were female?

And it ain't the alien who's the opportunistic predator here, amirite?

Then they had lots of [REDACTED]

You got it wrong! They actually had lots of messy [omitted]

I'm glad we cleared that up.

Someone had to turn Irie into a bloodsucking fiend of the night. If it'd been a girl vampire, it would've complicated the yuri romantic picture. Hence: Comic Relief Dude Vampire.

I'm... Not sure that follows?

Is it plausible? That's the real question you should be asking. We're not doing a mathematical proof here. This is Kremlinology. We're second-guessing an author's intentions based on indirect info.

I'm mainly confused about why the author made all these deliberate, intentional, and entirely optional decisions about the story and the very first thing that happened in it, if they were just going to say "Actually, forget about that, it's not important at all, let's get to the lesbian vampire schoolgirl thirsting after her buddies already".

I think it's very, very likely that you are putting waaaaaaaaaaaay more thought into this than the author did. You are overanalyzing something that was never meant to be analyzed, much less overanalyzed.

And don't get me wrong: That's great fun. I do it myself. I can entertain myself for hours asking questions like "In the Ice Age movies, who does Diego eat?" He's a feline, so he's an obligate carnivore, which means he must eat meat to survive. And yet all the animals are sentient and sapient. So who does he eat? What are the implications for Sid and Manny? Surely they know that he's off eating some sentient creature whenever he gets hungry. Does that make them willing accomplices to his acts of murder? Are they turning a blind eye simply because they like him?

But I recognize that I'm pondering ramifications that were never meant to be pondered. It is almost a 100% certainty that Diego the Sabre-toothed Tiger was put in as a character because someone thought it would be cool to have a sabre-toothed tiger as a character, and for absolutely no other reason.

So while it's fun and enjoyable for me to ponder these things, I also know that I'm spinning my wheels for no reason other than my own amusement. I think you're probably doing the same thing with your analysis of Vampire Slacker Dude. He seems to exist as (A) a catalyst for the main plot; and (B) a source of cheap comedy. I would be very surprised indeed to discover that the author put much more thought than that into him.

The alternative is that the author did indeed consider all of the things you're considering, and thought about all the ramifications you're thinking about, and put in the Vampire Slacker Dude anyways. Which, I think you'll agree, would imply some mildly ugly things about the author. Since I have no reason to believe the author is guilty of those ugly things, I think Occam's Razor suggests that the author is just going for cheap laughs.

As Sigmund Freud once (allegedly) said, "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."

last edited at Feb 14, 2017 9:43AM

Another unrelated question:

Let us say PURELY HYPOTHETICALLY YOU UNDERSTAND that I wanted to recommend an upload or two (or...um...23?) to Dynasty Scans. Is there a format that's more useful to whoever has to look it over and decide whether to accept it?

The few times I've suggested an upload, I've just uploaded it into an Imgur picture album. But I was wondering if maybe uploading it to the web in a zip file would be better.

This is like Reverse Wingfic.

Hmm. Not sure if Gay Boats tag is warranted in this case.

Maybe she was really really REALLY determined to wait for the right one.

Can someone explain why so many of the character bios in these manga mention the character's blood type? I assume there's some cultural significance, but I dunno what it is.

I've read Vol. 1-3 of Futaribeya and the yuri level is so low there that you can basically say it's your average CGDCT subtext manga with some fanservice here and there.

i think you can tell from reading like 1-2 chapters that its just subtext and an average CGDCT.

EXPN CGDCT?

Aside from how unutterably hot this is, possibly the hottest sex in any of Rukuroichi's pieces...

I've seen a lot of sex portrayed in mangas, both hentai and yuri. Rukuroichi conveys the female orgasm better than pretty much any other mangaka I've read so far. There's that one scene in Keep Your Heart Closed where the MC asks her cousin/lover if she wants to have another orgasm. And when she does, the art completely conveys the intensity and the desperation of her desire.

You want to cry, I am crying, and smiling, and laughing, and I have the hiccups, and I just sneezed... weird combination.

@Kurosaki has experienced a loss of cabin pressure.