Clamp Questions

[sharpeslass]

Okay, so my return to LiveJournal didn't take off quite with the momentum I'd planned. I just don't know where my time goes. I looked at my e-mail today and realized that two months had passed since I'd received an e-mail from a very good friend and that I still hadn't responded. I'm sure she is cross, but the time... it just sprints in epic

Comments

[7veilsphaedra]

Ugh. Honestly, my reaction to all of it is mostly emotional recoil and throwing up in my mouth a little. I don't know.

Graphically violent video games are really far out of my personal experience. It gives me a kind of 'picking up dogshit with bare hands' feeling. Hell, graphically violent action films are also out there for me. Batman just doesn't cut it for me.

But, again, I'm going to the emotional reality that a person takes away from the experience. So, in dreams, art, lit and other fantasy, a depiction of rape is not necessarily rape. It can be about a different sort of experience, like reversal of power for example, or just not wanting to have to be responsible for initiating or turning down the sexual act all the time. But is that the same for a game in which the satisfaction comes from murder and mayhem? I don't know. My gut inclination is to say that the only emotional reality a person can walk away from with those would be satisfaction at having murdered someone with impunity, or some sort of desensitization to violence. Because killing someone in a game is about being callous to the cessation of another person's existence. We're kind of getting into American Psycho territory here.

But then again, these aren't 'other people' we're talking about. They are programmed cyphers personified to represent something that is hated that needs to be destroyed - maybe an old and outdated way of thinking - or an obstacle that prevents the gamer from reaching their somewhat more transcendental goal, and it could be the people who play those sorts of games may be able to clearly make that distinction.

What I don't agree with are soldiers or mercenaries or killers who reduce real people, especially civilians, to cyphers who represent something which is hated and needs to be destroyed. I hate the game-boy view they have on the world through their gunscopes and other ordnance.

[helliongoddess]

One of the things I love about you, Phae, is that you make me THINK. Sometimes when you talk, I feel like the Far Side cartoon of what the guy says, and what the dog really hears (me being the dog) - you are so much brighter than I, my tired old brain has a hard time wrapping itself around some of your logic trails and conceptual nuances. But I have a helluva lot of fun trying, and you always do it with such style and panache!

Only you could write such a complex summary of that issue, and include throwing up in your mouth and picking up dogshit, and make it all work so seamlessly!

Of course, the bottom line, if I can trust this tired old brain (and it really is tired at the moment - it's been a momentous day) is that I believe I agree with you pretty much completely here, which I usually do, when all is said and done. ^___~

[7veilsphaedra]

Hahaha! There is a little bit about this that makes me think about that raunchy old joke (and not a particularly funny one at that) where a fellow asks the woman he's just finished screwing, "Why is it you'll only sleep with guys from the Bureau of Measurements?" And she says, "Because I have to have some standards."

Human beings are flawed and messed up enough as it is that I think we should let ourselves off the hook for where we aren't flawed, and where we have no real control, which is the irrational stuff. The only control we have over that is the ability to turn our attention toward or away.

[helliongoddess]

I agree wholeheartedly! That's really one of the most important lessons I have been learning (sometimes the hard way) over the past several years - often with the help of you and others from of my f-list - that I was referring to in my little birthday rant. I'm learning to let go of all the many, many things I cannot control (and that illusion of ever having control), and only worry about the one thing I can control, which is how I react to things and let them affect me.

[7veilsphaedra]

I think you've done amazingly well! I was serious when I said I think you're an inspiration. You are the least bitter person I know.

[helliongoddess]

You didn't know me four or five years ago. I was pretty bitter then, really, Phae. I didn't like much of anything or anyone. That's part of what the f-list and writing has helped me pull myself out of. I was not a happy camper.

[7veilsphaedra]

Oh, I better say this because things can be so easily misunderstood online: the joke referred to me and my "smut is hokay, but nuh-unh violent games" thing. That could be so badly misinterpreted. So ... umm, thanks about the thinking thing. It's quite mutual. Not that I've been reading the Far Side recently.

[helliongoddess]

No worries on this end - I totally understood what you said with that regard. (But I also completely understand what you mean about online comments getting so easily misinterpreted. I often wonder how many of the dust-ups that occur in fandoms could be avoided if people could see and hear the body languge and tone of voice when people say what they are saying when they post a comment. I think a lot of the kerfluffles come initiate from simple misunderstandings that blossom into fullbown shitstorms before anyone bothers to ask,"was that what you REALLY meant there, or was I imagining it?" *shrugs*

[sharpeslass]

So true... But I think we all like each other and so are more likely to take the time to figure out what the other person is saying before going Ker-plow! (at least I hope so). For example, this post was meant more as an attempt to understand cultural differences than to argue about censorship or fantasy vs. reality. But, possibly because the fantasy vs. reality discussion is the most common, and a sore point for many in fandom or the arts, that was where it immediately went. My fault, for not being clear of course, but my point here is that your points are well taken!!

[helliongoddess]

Actually, I was hoping it would go in the cultural direction, myself. Having my own shota issues (I get Phae's "throwup in my throat") reaction to just about any stuff between older adults and anyone 13 and younger. It just rubs me the wrong way - I can't stop thinking about what my kid was like at that age and how much I would have wanted to FUCKING KILL and mutilate any man or woman that touched her at that age.

So I am constantly struggling with the underage sex issue when I encounter it in fandoms, and I avoid having to read it, write it, or RP it. There are some issues where I can do that seperation, that "it's just a fantasy" thing with, but not that one. So trying to understand the cultural phenomena behind it is something I have grasped for too, to see if it might help me understand why there is so much of it throughout anime.

And - just from the little I know, and I admittedly know so little - Japanese society seems to be full of contradictory and paradoxical attitudes and mores about sex. I mean, you can buy used panties from vending machines, but it's considered rude and outrageous just to kiss in public????? It just doesn't compute to my little gai-jin mind. And don't even get me started on all the sex... toys, for lack of a better word, that are apparently for sale, just everywhere (the "c*nt in a cup" things just blow my mind... it's like ramen noodle sex, but with celebrity... endorsements? endowments? @____@)

So any cultural insights would have been welcomed, from my muddled corner...

[sharpeslass]

LOL! Yes. Japan baffles me. So much to love, so much to hate. Probably true of every nation, but we are so used to what surrounds us.

Lauand gave me some interesting insight into the world of CLAMP love (see below). I thought that was interesting and helpful. It aided my understanding of some of the material a bit... (in the case of these stories, not of shota in general and these stories are VERY innocent about "love").

[sharpeslass]

I know some really decent chaps who play violent video games. They've described it to me as a way of getting out all of the hostility so they don't yell at a check out clerk or their wives after a hard day. And these are truly nice guys (you know I don't let men off the hook easily, if you know me at all) who wouldn't hurt a fly and are kind to their kids and pets. I think the problem (just like with pornography, or really violent films) is when a child or just someone emotionally immature, who is still forming a world view, can't separate the game/movie, etc. from reality and decides that violence is cool or just becomes numb to it. I think that is where the game ratings thing comes in and it is probably a good idea... it just doesn't work. Caveat: I don't play, nor have I really looked at, any of these "super violent" video games, but we did stories on the subject when I worked in news and so I've heard at length from both sides on the issue.

[suanz]

Totally unrelated but your 'picking up dogshit with bare hands' is just so eloquent. LOL!!

Ignore me, please. ;)

[helliongoddess]

On the one hand I agree with you in general, about being wary of automatically inferring causal relationships. It's just that I worry a little about these kids that start fairly young (and of course, it's parental responsibility being abdicated if they start too young) with the really graphic violent games, and play them, with escalating violence, for years and years... I can't help but wonder if they don't develop a sort of conditioning to tolerate that kind of violence as ok, just from over-exposure. Didn't (or doesn't) the military use similar conditioning techniques for combat training, to make sure soldiers don't choke in combat when faced with the necessity to kill? Obviously, you would know far more about the neuro-psychiatric aspects of it than me... I just sort of have an intuitive concern about it, somehow.