*bows back* No, that's okay. I'm really not an insider when it comes to dojinshi, I've only researched commercial boys' love manga and I've never studied or been actively involved in Japanese fandom. And in the unlikely event that I am more of an insider than you (whatever it is we mean by 'insider'), that really doesn't matter a thing. With most of the people I've talked with online, I have no clue whether they've been studying fandom for three decades or just heard of dojinshi last week, and it doesn't matter, because it certainly doesn't seem to make their observations any less or more valid or interesting. While insiders may be better at making educated guesses, they can lack information, misinterpret it, or just plain screw up. They do so all the bloody time. 'Outsiders' are just as capable of finding holes in arguments as 'insiders', maybe better at spotting promising connections or possibilities from left field, and know if not more, then certainly different things about the topic at hand. And I'm not an insider as far as dojinshi go, though aiming to rectify that, of course.
So thanks again for commenting. When people say they smell stupid, there usually is some actual stupid somewhere, in the content or the presentation or both. I am tackling this too much from the fanfic perspective and not considering yaoi-based possible explanations enough. I've read way more fic than yaoi manga/dojinshi during the last couple of years, and my yaoi intuition -such as it is- obviously isn't as keen as it used to be. The nasty seme thing just didn't jump to mind at all, and it should've. *headdesk* I'm going to re-read all those things about yaoi that I thought I knew by now, and then add some more questions/speculation.
Re: the canon scene thing, I've been thinking, and one thing that's more relevant might be the medium. With manga, fannish originality is harder to maintain, because in fic a quote is a quote and that's obvious, but with manga-style dojin work that's not based in a visual-medium canon(*), it's hard to try not to duplicate other people's idea, composition, frame angle, etc., of a popular scene by accident.
That sounds like a likely explanation. So maybe it's all right to draw a scene that was in the movies pretty much the way it looked on screen, because it's obvious where the 'quote'/inspiration came from, but drawing something that's overly reminiscent of another fan's work isn't nearly as acceptable. It's ever so much easier to spot resemblances between two pictures than two texts. (I don't draw much, but I do have to make a conscious effort to let other pics inspire me but still make my version of the characters different. Wouldn't want to be accused of copying someone else's Snape or Harry. It never occurred to me before now, but I never had this problem of actively having to avoid copying back when I still wrote fic.) A shame the underpants scene was so different in the movie, that rather complicates judging fans' interpretation of it. English-language fanwork seems to be uniformly ignoring the movie as far as that scene is concerned, but maybe that's different with djs. I'm going to look for djs that do reference it.
I've been wondering how to distinguish between movieverse and bookverse fanwork. It seems like a very significant distinction to make, particularly for dojinshi, but I'm not sure if it would be practically doable. Unless the djka actually says somewhere that it's bookverse or movieverse (some do and some don't, it seems), I doubt I'd ever be one hundred percent sure one way or another. Oh well. Trying to figure it out won't hurt.
Or maybe, another relevant thing is that the dojins you have tend to be less "canonically" (?) kichiku-ish.
Sorry, could you maybe phrase that differently? I'm not sure I follow :)
Also, very sorry for the late reply. Innate slowness and evil translation deadlines. I'm definitely joining fujoshi, though I'll lurk for a while first. It's tempting to jump in now, but I'm going to do that yaoi refresher course first.
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momijizukamori
no subject
Date: 2009-02-12 11:08 pm (UTC)So thanks again for commenting. When people say they smell stupid, there usually is some actual stupid somewhere, in the content or the presentation or both. I am tackling this too much from the fanfic perspective and not considering yaoi-based possible explanations enough. I've read way more fic than yaoi manga/dojinshi during the last couple of years, and my yaoi intuition -such as it is- obviously isn't as keen as it used to be. The nasty seme thing just didn't jump to mind at all, and it should've. *headdesk* I'm going to re-read all those things about yaoi that I thought I knew by now, and then add some more questions/speculation.
Re: the canon scene thing, I've been thinking, and one thing that's more relevant might be the medium. With manga, fannish originality is harder to maintain, because in fic a quote is a quote and that's obvious, but with manga-style dojin work that's not based in a visual-medium canon(*), it's hard to try not to duplicate other people's idea, composition, frame angle, etc., of a popular scene by accident.
That sounds like a likely explanation. So maybe it's all right to draw a scene that was in the movies pretty much the way it looked on screen, because it's obvious where the 'quote'/inspiration came from, but drawing something that's overly reminiscent of another fan's work isn't nearly as acceptable. It's ever so much easier to spot resemblances between two pictures than two texts. (I don't draw much, but I do have to make a conscious effort to let other pics inspire me but still make my version of the characters different. Wouldn't want to be accused of copying someone else's Snape or Harry. It never occurred to me before now, but I never had this problem of actively having to avoid copying back when I still wrote fic.) A shame the underpants scene was so different in the movie, that rather complicates judging fans' interpretation of it. English-language fanwork seems to be uniformly ignoring the movie as far as that scene is concerned, but maybe that's different with djs. I'm going to look for djs that do reference it.
I've been wondering how to distinguish between movieverse and bookverse fanwork. It seems like a very significant distinction to make, particularly for dojinshi, but I'm not sure if it would be practically doable. Unless the djka actually says somewhere that it's bookverse or movieverse (some do and some don't, it seems), I doubt I'd ever be one hundred percent sure one way or another. Oh well. Trying to figure it out won't hurt.
Or maybe, another relevant thing is that the dojins you have tend to be less "canonically" (?) kichiku-ish.
Sorry, could you maybe phrase that differently? I'm not sure I follow :)
Also, very sorry for the late reply. Innate slowness and evil translation deadlines. I'm definitely joining fujoshi, though I'll lurk for a while first. It's tempting to jump in now, but I'm going to do that yaoi refresher course first.