Shaman Warrior, vols. 1-5 (Park Joong-Ki)

[chomiji]

Shaman warriors have the ability to transform their bodies in various ways, making them formidable war machines. As this series opens, a legendary shaman, Yarong, meets his death under circumstances that seem highly suspicious to his servant, the massive fighter Batu. Batu swears to defend his master's child, Yaki, but he soon finds this far more difficult than he expected: shaman warriors are being hunted down and killed, with the circumstances of Yarong's death being twisted to provide an excuse. Batu at last decides he must take desperate measures to ensure that little Yaki survives and becomes able to defend herself.

Thus far, this is playing out like an almost gender-blind shounen/seinen adventure. There are more male characters than female characters (especially in the first volume), but the female characters we've encountered thus far are fighting, doing magic, and adventuring along with the men. These female characters are also generally drawn with reasonable bustlines and amazingly modest clothing. The story includes betrayal, loyalty beyond the grave, a variety of non-romantic attachments (siblings, master-servant, parent-child, team mates, etc.), and complex politics. The artwork is gorgeous, illustration rather than cartoon, along the lines of Inoue's work on Vagabond and Samura's work on Blade of the Immortal (and when we do encounter grotesques, they're all the more unnerving because they're so well-drawn).

Oh, and telophase? Batu the Destroyer traveling with little Yaki is just your kind of thing!

Shaman Warrior, vols. 1-5 (review)

(FYI - that's teenaged Yaki in the icon.)

OK ... wild theories time. The Mr. and I don't think Yarong was Yaki's father. We think Yarong was Yaki's mother.

This may sound like total crack - after all, we have a number of pictures of bare-chested Yarong in vol. 1, and that's a totally masculine-looking torso, very much in the realistic mode: not tapered and bishie-ish, but compactly muscled and slightly stocky. But think about how Yarong has a tiny baby, and Batu keeps urging him to take it easy because "you can't fight anymore. Your body can't take it" and the General who sends Yarong off on his fatal mission apologizes that he had to "inform you of this while your body is still changing," and then later this same General thinks of Yarong with this statement:"I have plucked the most beautiful flower in all Kugai ... ."

I guess only time will tell.

Park gets a little weird with names: there is a character called Genji (female, and supposedly Batu's sister) and another called Aragorn (the tattooed warlord of a clan that's being forced out by the General). Genji is a lot of fun - frankly outspoken, a skilled fighter, and a master of disguise. Aragorn's a pretty good character too, but I keep twitching every time I read that name ... .

Yaki's experiences in the Butcher Camps are all too realistic, except in one area, and I think Park is actually to be commended for not going for the sexual angle in most of what happens to her. I also like how Yatilla gives her a reason to go on and be strong. He's a very promising character, and I hope we'll see more of him.

My only regret thus far is that Yarong was killed off so soon. He was just my sort of character.

Comments

[chomiji]

telophase introduced me to Mononoke, and I watched the first episode online. Again, I couldn't make myself sit for more than that. It was indeed very cool, what I saw of it.

I feel like I've been peeling off layers and layers of cocooning junk all my life, and the real me is only just emerging. I want people to love that person that I've become.

[chomiji]

Yeah, it made me think of Peter Max meets xxxHolic-style CLAMP, actually!

Yes, I want to watch Champloo with you sometime!

[chomiji]

I'll have to see if I can somehow fit that in before we go on vacation. Life is so messy at the moment ... it's making me rather cross.

[chomiji]

It's very different ... you feel all those are part of the real you. I feel that any masks I've put on - successful student, my parents' (especially my mother's) daughter, suburban mom, dutiful employee - aren't me, and I resent them, and only put them on because the alternative was worse.

And yet I also know that feeling - where you said "someone who can't deal with that is telling me that only a certain limited part of myself is acceptable" - that's the business with Red and her attitude toward both my slash habit and my fondness for books with male protagonists, all over again.

I'm cross with that poor girl right now, and she doesn't even know it ... she came out so negatively about The Forbidden Kingdom that I decided not to blog it because I didn't want to get into an argument with her. And now I feel angry and resentful about it.

Does it help to know that when I see you, I'm proud to know this elegant person, and to think that she tells me special things?

[avierra.livejournal.com]

It's very different ... you feel all those are part of the real you. I feel that any masks I've put on - successful student, my parents' (especially my mother's) daughter, suburban mom, dutiful employee - aren't me, and I resent them, and only put them on because the alternative was worse.

Yeah, I was the good, dutiful daughter (until I wasn't, then I was crap), the good student, my husband's "enfrau" (his mom is German), and now I am "Victoria's mom." I guess I don't resent them so much as regard them with bemusement It seems like I have spent a substantial portion of my life trying to not live up to other people's expectations, only my own, which started with my refusing to be the dutiful daughter anymore. Of course, when you abandon that type of mask, then there are consequences for that too.

that's the business with Red and her attitude toward both my slash habit and my fondness for books with male protagonists, all over again.

This bothered me a bit... at the risk of speaking out of turn, I don't think one should self-censor based on someone's possible reactions. I also like m/m, and guys as protagonists. I am a straight woman, and I already know what it's like to be a woman and have a female perspective. It's like Jerry Seinfeld saying, "Why would I be a leg man, I HAVE legs." Plus, hot guys, doing hot guy things. Mmmmmm. But I digress, I was gonna say, I think if people don't like what one writes, they are free to hit the back button.

Although, I guess I should practice what I preach, my only filter has one person on it, my neighbor, who is a pagan who lists polyamory on her interests and so on; and yet the thought of her reading some of my more lurid entries makes me squirm a bit. I never have used it, but I still kind of wonder what she thinks when I review/discuss some of my yaoi books or manga. ;P Still, we're still friends, our kids play together, and she hasn't said a word about it one way or the other, so I guess she doesn't judge.

There was an interesting discussion over at Smart Bitches Trashy Books about f/f, slash and het and so on. It started off as a discussion about f/f romances being discriminated against and not published and quickly morphed in other directions, one of which was why many women prefer m/m to f/f. I do for the reason above... hot guys are hot to me; hot women are not so hot, that's just the way it is. For me. I also read trashy romance books (one of my dirty not-so-secrets ;) ), so het also works, haha. :D Although, I think recently I have become more interested in m/m. Perhaps it has an air of the forbidden about it that also appeals. (I hate people telling me what to do.)

Smut and Sexuality (makes it easier to find ;D)

[avierra.livejournal.com]

For me, since I'm bi, I think a lot of the extra fascination of m/m comes down to it being different. M/f, f/f, I've been there and done that, while m/m is something that I'll only ever know by way of imagination. And that gives it a little extra oomph, I think it appeals to the same bit in my brain that really likes SF/fantasy dealing with the thought processes and emotions of distinctly non-human creatures, the same part that was disinterested as a child in all the age-appropriate stuff featuring kids my own age doing mundane everyday stuff -- I wanted to read about strange places and creatures I'd never seen, not something as familiar as my own everyday life! I like to read about things that are different from my own familiar existence.

Yes, exactly, that was what I was trying to convey (quite possibly poorly, since I was pretty tired)... it's all about imagination. I am not a guy, I will never be a guy, and I will never know what it's like to actually be a guy. Which brings up sort of an interesting point, I wonder how "guy-ish" m/m slash really is. I mean, I know that about 90% of it is written by women for women, but I wonder if it is actually very guy-ish at all, or more or less what women think guys are like.

And actually, that is exactly where I was coming from with my comments: I think I like slash (aside from the pr0n aspects) for the same reason I prefer fantasy and sci-fi in my reading tastes. And when they are deliciously combined (as they were in Wicked Gentlemen, well, that puts me entirely in my Happy Place. Although there was only one *really* sexy scene in it. ;_;

Also: One can never have too much smut.

Re: Smut and Sexuality (makes it easier to find ;D)

[avierra.livejournal.com]

I mean, I'm sure we've all seen stuff where one or both of the guys is so feminized that you could pretty easily just go through and swap the pronouns (and body parts, if necessary) and it'd read EXACTLY like bad het or femslash.

OMFG I hate that. To me, it's just SO insulting to men (and by extension to men I care about, even), and I can totally see how real-world gay and bi guys would protest against that. The "girly" uke and the super seme cliche just really punches my buttons, and not in a good way.

Maybe that was why I liked the Ropeman, Fistman and Loveman stuff that was posted in Yaoi_daily one or two weeks or so ago (aside from it being utterly unmitgated crack). In that, one of the partners was *quite* feminine and was the "uke," but in reality he was the (extremely) dominant partner. It was a really nice change of pace from the wimpy uke thing. And also I thought it was hysterical for some reason (the monumental kink and crack probably had something to do with it, I am sure). But yeah, I can't bear the Chitose Piyoko stuff (for example), it just literally turns my stomach.

Btw, I ordered Smilla's Sense of Snow a few days ago, because you had mentioned how much you enjoyed it. It sounded pretty interesting from the blurbs and such.

Re: Smut and Sexuality (makes it easier to find ;D)

[chomiji]

Some authors are just really good at portraying members of the opposite sex. One of my favorite bits of anthropological SF is Courtship Rite by Donald Kingsbury, where there are several participants in a group marriage, and he writes from all of their viewpoints (as well as from those of several other characters) and has an amazingly good grasp of what it's like to be female - in a society that is mostly pretty equitable. The youngest of the wives, Teenae, is a brainy tomboy, and I feel completely at home with her viewpoint: she can be pretty brash and arrogant, it's her husbands and co-wife who worry about dressing her up when the occasion demands it, but when she gets a rifle, she's delighted that the artisan who made in put an inlaid design on the stock - no one else has as pretty a rifle as hers!

In an interview, Kingsbury says that he had several sisters, and that's why he can write these characters. I think he must also be pretty observant and good at putting himself in others' skins.

Re: Smut and Sexuality (makes it easier to find ;D)

[chomiji]

I keep thinking I need to be bolder about trying to find real-world biographical stuff about gay guys. I have read Paul Monette's autobiography Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story - which I heartily recommend - and his heartbreaking chronicle of his lover's battle with AIDS in the 1980s, Borrowed Time. They were interesting (and very sad) books and gave a lot more context for some of this.

I think some of the better fic works reasonably well for guys who are interested in manga ... freeradical9 just had a fic rec where one of the comments was from a gay guy, as far as I could tell (looked at his LJ).

No, I can't be a guy - but I love guys and have had guys (including a couple of gay guys) tell me all their troubles, including some pretty intimate bits. It's the sparring/dominance stuff (which covers a lot of the 535 "hate sex") and the completely casual sex that feel the most alien. The Mr., who's pretty damn straight, once commented (quite recently) that "young guys are always really horny ... they'll sleep with anything!"

[chomiji]

"I've never quibbled
If it were ribald!
I would devour
Where others merely nibbled ...!"

With you, I've already been over my thoughts on why I like m/m, and the fact that I like boy-type books.

I mentioned to avierra (somewhere here) that my lack of intrest in f/f fanfic may have to do with the relatively small number of female characters with whom I identify. This may be worth considering as an idea. I have been known to give attractive girls a second glance, and there was a beautifully curvaceous African-American woman in a gym locker room with me once who caused me to literally have to turn away, because I wanted to look at her much more than was socially acceptable, so it's not that the basic idea of f/f is problematic.

[chomiji]

The thing was, I didn't try very hard on any of those roles. They all chafed horribly. My younger sister was the dutiful daughter. But I was very conscious of others' disappointment in me. I hid a lot - sometimes literally, as I've told smilla (there was a closet under the basement stairs that I used as my little wounded-animal den), mostly just by acting as though I were invisible. And I didn't like it.

I simply don't want to argue about a movie - not important enough. But I would have liked to talk about it. (And of course, now I'm feeling a bit squirmy because I've earned your disapproval ... some days one can't win.)

This is a constant theme for me - I want to be me, but I want to be loved. I won't cave for the sake of approval, but then I'm unhappy because I don't have that approval.

With the slash, I finally just refused to argue with her. I know what turns my crank sexually, and I know what type of people I like to read about, and I don't think it's hating my sex to say that I enjoy books with male protagonists and I enjoy m/m sex in stories.

I will say that I use a separate account for my fic simply because I don't necessarily want everyone who might enjoy my book reviews reading my more explicit fic. I don't want to have to explain myself to some otherwise very nice people whose idea of a civil servant and mother of a teen doesn't include that. These remarks here are sufficiently buried that I dont imagine any casual reader will find them very easily. It's a bit different than having an NC-17 entry right in the main page of a blog.

I actually find a wide variety of smutty stuff to be pretty hot, regardless of the exact sex of the participants. But I do tend prefer m/m. I actually wrote a mild f/f story early on in my LJ career, and had fun with it, because someone was complaining that there wasn't enough of it.

I firmly believe that my interest in m/m has to do not only with the idea that guys are hot, but also that I identify with one of the guys every time - and 585 is especially great because I identify with both of them.

I think most of my problem with f/f is that there are relatively few female characters with whom I identify ... that's something to think about, actually.

[avierra.livejournal.com]

I simply don't want to argue about a movie - not important enough. But I would have liked to talk about it. (And of course, now I'm feeling a bit squirmy because I've earned your disapproval ... some days one can't win.)

This is a constant theme for me - I want to be me, but I want to be loved. I won't cave for the sake of approval, but then I'm unhappy because I don't have that approval.

*hug* Awww, I don't disapprove; I know I use my LJ to vent sometimes, and I would feel annoyingly constrained if I didn't post about something that was making my fingers itch to start writing. So perhaps I was projecting that onto you! :D And I totally understand what you mean about not wanting to argue about something minor, especially on your own blog.

I actually wondered why you had a separate fic acct. Like I said, the only person I actually physically interact with on my LJ is pretty open minded, but I DO wonder what she thinks of it all :D

With the slash, I finally just refused to argue with her. I know what turns my crank sexually, and I know what type of people I like to read about, and I don't think it's hating my sex to say that I enjoy books with male protagonists and I enjoy m/m sex in stories.

I like books with both male and female protagonists, or I wouldn't have liked Buffy, urban fantasy, my trashy books, and any other of the other stuff that has women as the main character. But I like the menfolk that way as well. Personally, I think it is quite possible to be sexist the going other way too, that you shortchange the very valuable things that men bring to a story (or a person's life, for that matter).

I think most of my problem with f/f is that there are relatively few female characters with whom I identify ... that's something to think about, actually.

Well, that is true for me as well, but I know why it is, in my case. While I was growing up, I was judged by my female peers, and not by males. That is, the girls were very frequently catty, cliquish bitches, and the guys would interact with me as if I was a fellow human being. Consequently, all of my friends throughout my childhood and adolescence (and even now, really) were male.

[chomiji]

(Sorry to be coming back to this so late ... sometimes there really aren't enough hours in a day, and we had a busy weekend, with house guests.)

Well, if I want to vent about someone who might read it, or about work, I f-lock it. Generally, if discussing things or arguing won't make the situation better, I don't want to do it. And there are a number of really sweet, wonderful people here on LJ who get firmly attached to their particular soap-boxes, and nothing I can say or do is going to change that.

Thanks for being understanding. Sometimes I feel like a wimp, but this is something I do for fun, dammit, and arguing isn't something I enjoy (took years for my husband to really understand that).

I like books with female protagonists sometimes ... it depends on how they're written. Are you familiar with Rumer Godden? Her China Court is one of my favorite books ever, and yet it's a romance/family history: on the face of it, one of the girliest types of things one could imagine. I'm also very fond of National Velvet, a typical adolescent girls' fave.

>> Well, that is true for me as well, but I know why it is, in my case. While I was growing up, I was judged by my female peers, and not by males. That is, the girls were very frequently catty, cliquish bitches, and the guys would interact with me as if I was a fellow human being. Consequently, all of my friends throughout my childhood and adolescence (and even now, really) were male.<<

Oh, you too, huh?   :-)   Yes, that was pretty exactly my situation. I sometimes had a single female friend at a time, but that was very special and rare when it happened. (And then she'd move away, or go to another school, or something - it never lasted long.) But usually it was guys - guys who treated me like one of them, or guys who decided they could confide in me, and told me all their troubles, or both. Honestly, it feels so weirdly good to have female friends to talk with about this stuff - I'm afraid to breathe, sometimes, because maybe all of you will evaporate without warning!

[chomiji]

As I told avierra, I just don't feel like arguing with Red about something as trivial as a movie. And anyway, it's not fresh in my mind anymore. It's not always about right and wrong in an absolute sense. Of course the right thing to do would be to write the review.

I've tried to get Karl to say what he likes me to wear ... the only preference he's ever expressed is that he doesn't like things that hide the fact that I have boobs ... he's also pretty sensible about "I think it's more important for you to wear things that make you feel sexy."

Elegant!!! You are elegant! Even with kitty-cat ears on! You are not trashy! I am so working on a bit of a girl crush on you, so don't talk nonsense, smilla!

[chomiji]

Well, the point about the clothes-preferences, of course, is the opposite - he was open-minded about anything except that!

Hey, stop second-guessing my taste, you opinionated elegant thing! Just because I don't like most conventional girl-stuff doesn't meant I don't know elegant when I see it! We can go over the People mag Oscar gowns issue together sometime - you'll see!

I like those earrings, although they're larger than I can usually make myself wear. I like that kind of peacock-effect with black. Did I ever show you the silk scarf Kat got me - iridescent turquoise and deep magenta and black, all shadow-striped with alternating solid and sheer bands?

> shrug <   Part of me is actually afraid she'll think less of me if I support something she's already branded as sexist. If the stuff hits the fan, I'll try to explain it to her. Otherwise, I'm letting that puppy snore.