A flower on his grave

[sovay]

Okay, I fail at content. Have some music instead. My soundtrack for the last several days has been a combination of PJ Harvey and the Pixies; I realized earlier that they are music I listen to both when I'm in a bad mood and a good one; sometimes the same songs. This one I just discovered tonight. It's ghostly.

Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to connect it with Saiyūki will be shot.

Who Will Love Me Now? (PJ Harvey)

In the forest is a monster
It has done terrible things
So in the wood it's hiding
And this is the song it sings

Who will love me now?
Who will ever love me?
Who will say to me
You are my desire—I set you free?

Who will forgive and make me live again?
Who will bring me back to the world again?

In the forest is a monster
And it looks so very much like me
Will someone hear me singing?
Please save me, please rescue me

Who will love me now?
Who will ever love me?
Who will say to me
You are my desire—I set you free?

Who will love me now?
Who will ever love me?

Comments

[setsuled.livejournal.com]

As albums, though, I really like Rid of Me and Is This Desire?

I have an mp3 of the song Is This Desire? and I quite like it. Have you heard any of her work with Nick Cave?

These are the B-sides I mentioned:

Thanks!

Explain? I am not approaching Saiyuki as a reader or writer of slash, for example, so I'm much more interested in the nonromantic aspects of the relationships between the four characters.

I wasn't talking about the romantic aspects, though I'll be interested in that too. Merely the idea of a story's characters being predominately one sex, something that interests me, particularly when it's written by a heterosexual of the opposite sex. I suppose it interests me partly because sexes usually have different ideals for the opposite sex than that sex has for itself. I don't mean to suggest the writing of a heterosexual about the opposite sex is inevitably skewed, but as Saiyuki's characters are clearly stylised as to be incredibly, visually pretty, I'm interested in seeing what sort of personalities and exchanges they have in contrast to older Japanese fiction exclusively about men, written by heterosexual men.

I'm not sure exactly why I'm interested in that sort of thing, except I find that I prefer to write about women.

I'm reading another comic right now called Maggie the Mechanic by a guy named Jaime Hernandez who apparently has a preference for writing female characters. So I'm looking forward to reading these two side by side.

At first glance, to me, Saiyuki appears to be shojo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sh%C5%8Djo). Though shojo I've been exposed to, like Fushigi Yuugi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fushigi_Yuugi), and Please Save My Earth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Please_Save_My_Earth), usually has at least one female protagonist from whose POV a number of pretty boys are observed. The idea usually seems less about an actual romantic relationship than about a sort of tentative coveting, which makes sense as they're generally aimed at adolescent girls. Though the best examples of the genre can even be appreciated by guys like me.

[sovay]

Have you heard any of her work with Nick Cave?

Only the murder ballad "Henry Lee," and then Marianne Faithfull's Before the Poison (2004), for which they both wrote songs.

Merely the idea of a story's characters being predominately one sex, something that interests me, particularly when it's written by a heterosexual of the opposite sex. I suppose it interests me partly because sexes usually have different ideals for the opposite sex than that sex has for itself.

Do you think women's characterizations of women, or men's characterizations of men, are more accurate? Or only, I don't know, inaccurate in different ways?

I'm not sure exactly why I'm interested in that sort of thing, except I find that I prefer to write about women.

Why is that?

[setsuled.livejournal.com]

Only the murder ballad "Henry Lee," and then Marianne Faithfull's Before the Poison (2004), for which they both wrote songs.

Then you've heard more than me, actually--I haven't heard that Marianne Faithfull album. Do you have Nick Cave's whole Murder Ballads album?

Do you think women's characterizations of women, or men's characterizations of men, are more accurate? Or only, I don't know, inaccurate in different ways?

I believe each sex is capable of writing very accurately about itself, I don't think one any better than the other, but it's hard to say. Part of me is inclined to think people draw on experience as their individual sex more than they necessarily realise. Like there are qualities to Merricat in We Have Always Lived in the Castle that are sort of defaultly feminine, even though there are many outward qualities of her character that many might consider boyish.

But I also think there's no fundamental difference between male and female minds, only differences that are crafted by environment--which are often very subtle. What do you think about an author's relationship with the sex of hisherit's character?

I ought to note there've been plenty of men written by women that seemed perfectly male-like to me--such as the writings of Ursula K. LeGuin and yourself. I think I actually notice more of a general, though not universal, difference in tone for an entire story, when it comes to the matter of the author's sex. I think male writers usually seem more like the narrative is jumping from log to log while female writers are dealing with a forest.

Why is that?

I'm not entirely sure why I prefer to write about women. It could simply be that I'm physically attracted to them, it could be because I had no real strong father figure growing up and the different households I lived in were comprised of women. For some reason, I find men actively boring, though. Most men I've met distinguish themselves from most women I've met through latent or overt homophobia and/or a general need to feel like other people see them as knowledgeable or capable. I suppose you could write about men without those qualities but, I usually figure, if you're going to do that, you might just as well be writing about a fairer sex.