On the subject of shoujo manga...among other things

Whenever I read shoujo manga, I have this irritating, but mostly involuntary, habit of comparing myself with the female protagonist. The problem is when the character acts in such a way that I start thinking: omg, I would never in a million years do that, what is wrong with you, woman -- I have to remind myself to stop waving my fist at the computer screen because it makes me look like a lunatic. There's something about shoujo that repels me yet attracts me at the same time (though with many titles, it's mostly, *repelrepelrepel*).

I was reading Lovely Complex yesterday (I went through all of the scanlated manga in one go -- I had an awful headache afterwards XD;) -- it was a really fun and cute manga. The issues I had with it were the same as the issues I have with most other shoujo titles: at first the main character acts against the traditional female role (in the case of LoveCom, Risa is taller than most girls, she's loud and generally unfeminine in terms of her actions), but when she realizes she's in love, she immediately reverts to tradition (again, with LoveCom, Risa starts mooning after the guy, she cries all the time, she wishes she were "cute and quiet").

( cut for length )

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Some other random things I have been thinking about include the following (they cannot be considered to be full rants intellectual discussions because I have run out of gas. Need to work on that stamina, Meemo.)

-If there's one thing that all those sociology classes have pounded into my head it is the notion that just about everything is socially constructed. If such is the case, human nature is neither fundamentally good nor evil because these are socially constructed concepts and the meanings of such terms are thus susceptible to the change of time and space.

-On the subject of human nature...it occurs in predictable ways at times. In a given situation, not everyone will act in the same way, but the same pattern of interaction will occur each time. There are several recent incidents (confined to my little corner of Livejournal) that come to mind. Let's take that anonymous (a.k.a. "honesty") PoT meme thing for example. I don't remember how many times variations of that have cropped up, but if you look at the comments from each one of them, they're really along the same vein. Fics, characters, people...anything bash-able gets bashed. I think this illustrates a certain side of human nature: when the opportunity to vent without the risk of having one's identity revealed arises, many people will take that opportunity. I'm a big advocate of the yin-yang concept (y'know, a bit of light in every darkness, and all that). In this case, in every group of ass-kickers there will be ass-lickers. You can probably come up with a list of categories that you'd place each commenter in these honesty memes, and this list would be consistent for every meme. In other words, it's just one big cycle (that can rival the Energizer Bunny in its "goes on and on"-ness).

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Okay, my fuel meter is pointing to empty now. *ran out of coherence* Perhaps it's time to get off my soap-box and rejuvenate through sleeping.

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One last note though: in the case of both rants (I will admit it! They were simply rants and not much else ;__;), I cannot stop myself from reading shoujo manga or stop myself from skimming those damn honesty memes (sometimes I agree with the hate -- it's just another weakness, don't judge me!) -- the same way that I can't stop my teeth from grinding from seeing traditional gender roles in all its glory and feeling disgust at some people's behaviour. Maybe it's analogous to car crashes -- in all reason, they're awful things, but as a spectacle, they're quite spectacular.

On the subject of shoujo manga...among other things

Whenever I read shoujo manga, I have this irritating, but mostly involuntary, habit of comparing myself with the female protagonist. The problem is when the character acts in such a way that I start thinking: omg, I would never in a million years do that, what is wrong with you, woman -- I have to remind myself to stop waving my fist at the computer screen because it makes me look like a lunatic. There's something about shoujo that repels me yet attracts me at the same time (though with many titles, it's mostly, *repelrepelrepel*).

I was reading Lovely Complex yesterday (I went through all of the scanlated manga in one go -- I had an awful headache afterwards XD;) -- it was a really fun and cute manga. The issues I had with it were the same as the issues I have with most other shoujo titles: at first the main character acts against the traditional female role (in the case of LoveCom, Risa is taller than most girls, she's loud and generally unfeminine in terms of her actions), but when she realizes she's in love, she immediately reverts to tradition (again, with LoveCom, Risa starts mooning after the guy, she cries all the time, she wishes she were "cute and quiet").

( cut for length )

--
Some other random things I have been thinking about include the following (they cannot be considered to be full rants intellectual discussions because I have run out of gas. Need to work on that stamina, Meemo.)

-If there's one thing that all those sociology classes have pounded into my head it is the notion that just about everything is socially constructed. If such is the case, human nature is neither fundamentally good nor evil because these are socially constructed concepts and the meanings of such terms are thus susceptible to the change of time and space.

-On the subject of human nature...it occurs in predictable ways at times. In a given situation, not everyone will act in the same way, but the same pattern of interaction will occur each time. There are several recent incidents (confined to my little corner of Livejournal) that come to mind. Let's take that anonymous (a.k.a. "honesty") PoT meme thing for example. I don't remember how many times variations of that have cropped up, but if you look at the comments from each one of them, they're really along the same vein. Fics, characters, people...anything bash-able gets bashed. I think this illustrates a certain side of human nature: when the opportunity to vent without the risk of having one's identity revealed arises, many people will take that opportunity. I'm a big advocate of the yin-yang concept (y'know, a bit of light in every darkness, and all that). In this case, in every group of ass-kickers there will be ass-lickers. You can probably come up with a list of categories that you'd place each commenter in these honesty memes, and this list would be consistent for every meme. In other words, it's just one big cycle (that can rival the Energizer Bunny in its "goes on and on"-ness).

--
Okay, my fuel meter is pointing to empty now. *ran out of coherence* Perhaps it's time to get off my soap-box and rejuvenate through sleeping.

--
One last note though: in the case of both rants (I will admit it! They were simply rants and not much else ;__;), I cannot stop myself from reading shoujo manga or stop myself from skimming those damn honesty memes (sometimes I agree with the hate -- it's just another weakness, don't judge me!) -- the same way that I can't stop my teeth from grinding from seeing traditional gender roles in all its glory and feeling disgust at some people's behaviour. Maybe it's analogous to car crashes -- in all reason, they're awful things, but as a spectacle, they're quite spectacular.