Gender Inequality and Why Yaoi Exists

[labingi]

Happy New Year, All!

I have been reading Anne Rice's The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty, the first of her erotic/porn series, and it has made me realize anew why yaoi exists. This book prompts comparisons to Ai no Kusabi: both have protagonists who are forced to be sex slaves for implacable social superiors whom our protagonists find irresistibly

Comments

[metarudogu]

Actually I only have 1 View Finder book. The reason for not wanting to read more is the same as not owning any of the erotica by AR; these stuff just gratify the entire BDSM process, I really am not a fan of this genre. On the other hand View Finder belongs to the category of Yaoi manga that is more professionally drawn.

I think it's difficult to compare between languages especially since Yoshihara's was being translated by some person of unknown credentials. And if we look at the Spaniards who did the first fan translations, AnK seemed a great heap of confusing recaps, going to and between timelines. It can be easily understood that Yoshihara was writing for short stories, then when AnK became a success, she developed it into longer installments.

I don't know about the Taming of Riki concept... maybe the invention of an entire universe of BDSM tools and characters just makes the "concept" more realistic to some people ('.'; but to me, it just doesn't fly; you know, getting the hamster to run a whole range of different souped up, exotic, pretty and cute or colourful exercise wheels doesn't make them any more than what they are, they are just hamster wheels.

For all the misgivings in Beauty, AR's later Vampire Chronicles books were a sorry excuse for making money. I think all of us devote fans kept hoping AR would snap out of it but she just keeps getting worse; the last she talked about taking up the vampires (when she adamantly said she would not) again in a future book.

[labingi]

I actually find "The taming of Riki" to be very psychologically realistic. The way he's utterly broken down, even after he returns to the slums, carries a weight that is too often missing from BDSM-style stories. Maybe I don't understand your hamster wheel allusion. If Riki is the hamster and the his various torments are the wheels, what effect would you expect (not) to see?

My ears perk up to hear that AR is considering writing vampires again. It would be interesting to see what she produced.

[metarudogu]

Oh sorry, I was talking about that fanfic Taming of Riki by Kira Y not the real story. Well, the hamster wheel, just an analogy of repetition ad nauseam that the fic author goes through with a huge cast and seemingly high tech BDSM equipment.

I think it's mostly ambivalence when I read that AR wanted to a VC in the "Christian way", about Lestat finding redemption or something- last she wrote that Lestat met the pope and all that. Have you looked at any of her recent Jesus books?