Duck Eradication System
Dec. 15th, 2002 01:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
incandescensSometimes you hear the most astonishing lines while passing by an online conversation. No, I don't know what a Duck Eradication System is. The image of exploding feathers will probably stay with me, however.
Did some present-buying today. Bought small presentation tins of Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee for two uncles (she says, in the cheerful certainty that neither knows she has a lj, let alone reads it). Uncles are a nuisance to buy presents for, unless they actually have a known hobby which one can cater to in some way. Right up there with fathers, brothers, sisters, mothers, aunts, grandmothers, grandfathers, and in fact every known form of relation. And don't get me started on cousins.
Manga faces. Bishonen are beautiful, that's part of the whole thing. Same for biseinen. But -- and this is my but, personally commented and adduced -- they are still very often male faces, even when dressed in female clothing and with long hair (as so often seems to happen to certain bishonen). You look at the picture and say, "Beautiful," but you don't say, "female". It's "beautiful person," or "beautiful man in woman's clothing", and not "beautiful woman".
Yet there is the occasional face (such as, to my mind, Kanzeon Bosatsu in Minekura's Saiyuki, and moreso in the manga than in the anime) which is truly gender-neutral. (For the curious, se's the one in my icon, and a hermaphrodite). You can look at the face with a pair of bouncing breasts underneath and a gauzy gown and a long pair of legs, and think, woman. You could change the style and put the face with different clothing and a different hairstyle, and it would be male. Beautiful either way, but not definitely male or definitely female. I'm probably putting this badly, and in a way that wouldn't make sense unless you've seen manga with such faces and figures, but there really is that neutrality and androgyneity.
Fascinating.
---
Hope
I want to let go -
so I don't give a damn about fine writing,
I'm rolling my sleeves up.
The dough's rising...
Oh what a shame
I can't bake cathedrals...
that sublimity of style
I've always yearned for...
Child of our time -
haven't you found the right shell for your soul?
Before I die I shall
bake a cathedral.
-- Edith Sodergran
Did some present-buying today. Bought small presentation tins of Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee for two uncles (she says, in the cheerful certainty that neither knows she has a lj, let alone reads it). Uncles are a nuisance to buy presents for, unless they actually have a known hobby which one can cater to in some way. Right up there with fathers, brothers, sisters, mothers, aunts, grandmothers, grandfathers, and in fact every known form of relation. And don't get me started on cousins.
Manga faces. Bishonen are beautiful, that's part of the whole thing. Same for biseinen. But -- and this is my but, personally commented and adduced -- they are still very often male faces, even when dressed in female clothing and with long hair (as so often seems to happen to certain bishonen). You look at the picture and say, "Beautiful," but you don't say, "female". It's "beautiful person," or "beautiful man in woman's clothing", and not "beautiful woman".
Yet there is the occasional face (such as, to my mind, Kanzeon Bosatsu in Minekura's Saiyuki, and moreso in the manga than in the anime) which is truly gender-neutral. (For the curious, se's the one in my icon, and a hermaphrodite). You can look at the face with a pair of bouncing breasts underneath and a gauzy gown and a long pair of legs, and think, woman. You could change the style and put the face with different clothing and a different hairstyle, and it would be male. Beautiful either way, but not definitely male or definitely female. I'm probably putting this badly, and in a way that wouldn't make sense unless you've seen manga with such faces and figures, but there really is that neutrality and androgyneity.
Fascinating.
---
Hope
I want to let go -
so I don't give a damn about fine writing,
I'm rolling my sleeves up.
The dough's rising...
Oh what a shame
I can't bake cathedrals...
that sublimity of style
I've always yearned for...
Child of our time -
haven't you found the right shell for your soul?
Before I die I shall
bake a cathedral.
-- Edith Sodergran
no subject
Date: 2002-12-14 09:32 pm (UTC)-mjj
no subject
Date: 2002-12-15 07:07 am (UTC)As to duck (or duct) tape, I have another friend who gets all metaphysical over it, and swears that it unites the dark and light sides of the universe -- well, when she's in a cheerfully expostulating mood. ;)
no subject
Date: 2002-12-15 02:21 pm (UTC)-mjj