Comments for Dru Pagliassotti

Comment on Writing and Other Projects by drupagliassotti

drupagliassotti — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 03:09:40 +0000

Awesome! Email me your NaNo ID so I can find you.

Comment on Yaoi Timeline: Spread Through U.S. by ninelegyak

ninelegyak — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 08:36:40 +0000

(October) North America’s Viz Media, in partnership with Japan’s Animate and Libre, announce at Yaoi-Con that they will launch a new “SuBLime” line beginning spring 2012. This will be a worldwide imprint in which some titles will be released in download-to-own format (http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2011-10-22/viz-launches-sublime-boys-love-manga-line-with-love-pistols"article)

Comment on Writing and Other Projects by ninelegyak

ninelegyak — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 05:38:50 +0000

“Can the beleagured inspector [...] stop his mechanical hand from jittering nervously around the handsome young criminal [?]”

Heh, funny.

…I’m going to attempt Nanowrimo this year.

Comment on Megane & Clockwork Heart by Tiger and Bunny – Episode 1: All’s Well That Ends Well « New Zealand Otaku

Wed, 19 Oct 2011 03:56:58 +0000

[...] He hasn’t had much screen-time this episode, but he seems very arrogant and awesome. He is also a megane – which is a character type that I thoroughly enjoy. Interestingly enough, he is voiced by [...]

Comment on Clockwork Heart 2 by ninelegyak

ninelegyak — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 13:30:16 +0000

Ha, I wondered if you’d give M/M a try, given your consumption of it. Also, I’m jealous of your productivity.

Comment on Evocative Objects by Mark

Mark — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 22:13:34 +0000

Perhaps a reason we respond affectively to certain objects is because of this boundary blurring / betwixtness.

Recognition is important. Gerald Figal writes that folklorist Yanagita Kunio (1875-1962) showed that “words used to refer to twilight in certain provinces [in Meiji Japan] were also used as a greeting when encountering at twilight a figure whose identity was indiscernible.” Moreover, for many rural people then, to invoke twilight was to invoke bakemono, monsters (literally, “changing things”), into discourse. (Figal, Civilization and Monsters: Spirits of Modernity in Meiji Japan, Duke U Press, 1999, p. 5)

In the West, monsters “deviat[e] from the natural or conventional order;” (OED) hence denying us the ability to classify. They are always beyond our ken and often our ability to control.

And boundaries themselves are inherently risky or dangerous places, in which border dwellers live precarious lives. In Boethius’s words, “Gif thift or reif wes maid vpon the bordour”, and many of the other quotations in the OED for “border” take a similarly negative tack. Gloria Anzaldúa described the border between the U.S. and México as “‘una herida abierta’ where the Third World grates against the first and bleeds”. (Anzaldúa, Borderlands / La Frontera: The New Mestiza, Aunt Lute, 1987, p. 25)

Whether monsters or steampunk artifacts, objects straddling borders can sometimes evoke powerful emotions in us. Following up your suggestion of transformation, perhaps it’s because they sit on the border of the pre- and post-industrial, symbols of an intersection in time when industrialization could have gone in any number of directions, dystopic or not.

Thanks, Dru, for having brought this up! I’m working on a paper about borders in boys’ love/yaoi, and your post has given me some new ideas.

Comment on Steampunkology by liakeyes

liakeyes — Sat, 21 May 2011 00:34:59 +0000

I’m so enjoying your blog at the Guild, Dru! It’s a relief and a delight to explore the genre through your thoughtful, informed perspective.

Comment on Yaoi Timeline: Spread Through U.S. by soundofsilence

soundofsilence — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 08:14:04 +0000

January 2000 – ComicsOne releases two volumes of shonen-ai manga as ebooks. (Thompson, Jason (2007). Manga: The Complete Guide. Del Rey. p. 417. ISBN 0345485904. .. via http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaoi#cite_ref-97 )

July 2005 – DMP begins release of Antique Bakery manga – a slashable shoujo manga which contains one gay character ( http://www.dmpbooks.com/books/51/ )

June 2006 – DMP completes release of Antique Bakery manga ( http://www.dmpbooks.com/books/54/ )

August 2006 – DQ announces Tyrant Who Falls in Love by Hinako Takanaga ( http://comipress.com/news/2006/08/07/574 – date, http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/review/the-tyrant-falls-in-love/gn-1 – for why this is important)

October 2006 – Blu begins release of Junjou Romantica

March 2008 – DQ again announces Tyrant Who Falls in Love is coming soon

14 April 2010 – NetComics removes Aurora Publishing titles, including those from Deux Press. ( http://www.netcomics.com/news/notice.htm?uid=368 )

May 2010 – Nozomi Entertainment releases season 1 of Junjou Romantica ( http://www.rightstuf.com/1-800-338-6827/catalogmgr/43-BBJNcITmCr6S6TM/browse/item/86679/4/0/0 )

August 2010 – Blu releases vol 12 of Junjou Romantica.
August 2010 – June Manga releases first volume of The Tyrant Falls In Love ( http://www.junemanga.com/books/670/ )

September 2010 – Tokyopop begins release of Hetalia: Axis Powers, a very slashable work.

April 2011 – Blu Manga site goes offline.
April 2011 – Nozomi Entertainment releases subtitled DVD of Antique Bakery. ( http://antique.rightstuf.com/ )

Comment on Gaslamp or Steampunk? by drupagliassotti

drupagliassotti — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 00:33:33 +0000

I could write a post about this; and I probably will. But my quick answer is that I instinctively balk from including magic as a form of technology. There is, in steampunk, an implicit link between the word “steam” and that which it powers, various forms of mechanical engineering. Steampunk usually focuses more on the mechanism than the energy source. It may make toss-off comments about real or imagined energy sources (steam, Tesla energy, aether, etc.), but a steampunk story’s problem revolves around the material ways in which the energy is used. Magic usually conceptualized as another form of energy, so in itself it’s not that interesting to steampunk unless it’s used to power a machine, in which case I agree that the term “steampunk” could apply.

For example, I used a kind of “magic” in my story “The Manufactory,” in which peoples’ spiritual force was used as an energy source. The description of a technology driven by spiritual force didn’t make the story steampunk; what made it steampunk was the fact that the upper class was literally surviving on the life of the lower class, deepening the economic divide and ultimately leading to a riot. The tech provided the steam, but the social problems it caused (and their reflection of the current, deepening economic divide between upper and lower class) was, I hope, the punk.

But a story that just includes magic in a Victorian industrial setting? Not steampunk, IMO. And re: the obsession with Victorian England, I agree entirely that more steampunk fiction needs to be written about other cultures!

One other issue to consider is more technical; a category or definition that is so broad that it includes everything ceases to be of much use. So we need to figure out some boundaries to steampunk, or else it becomes as useless a term as “fantasy” or “speculative fiction” — too broad to be descriptive.

Great comments … very thought-provoking. I will turn this into a better-thought-out post sometime soon!

Comment on Does Steampunk Have Politics? by drupagliassotti

drupagliassotti — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 00:13:15 +0000

Actually, H.G. Wells’ works seem to me to be a good example of protosteampunk, with their incorporation of science fiction to embed cultural criticism in a speculative setting. As far as inspiration goes, I’m not a literary scholar well-versed in the works of each, but I think Verne’s works were more fanciful, with exotic locales, gorgeous technology, and a sense of hope that technology could help society. H.G. Wells’ works were a bit darker, and technology was as much a threat as a hope. Maybe, overall, Verne is more steampulp and Wells is more steampunk? Except I still favor Captain Nemo as a “spokesperson” for steampunk much more than any of H.G. Wells’ protagonists….!