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hmpfYou, there! Get your mind out of the gutter! This is not what you think it is.
You've probably noticed the new addition to the list I posted recently. I discovered “Finder” last Monday, when I should have been working for university. I was bored with the archaeological reading I was doing and took a break online, meaning to look into the background of the “Mysterymen” movie – find out what the comic behind it was (turns out “The Flaming Carrot” by the same creator, Bob Burden, might be more worthy of my attention.) Well, one of the websites I found had a review about this comic called “Finder” which sounded... kinda neat.
So I checked out the website. And a few reviews. And went from zero to obsessed in about thirty minutes.
Why, you ask? Well, I could rave about wonderful world building and an intriguing story, and I wouldn't be lying. Both is present in “Finder”, and from what I could see it's there in abundance. (That was what caused my sudden desire to write, documented in my entry a few days ago.) But the two alone probably wouldn't have been enough to make buying “Finder” such an absolutely urgent priority to me. No, the truth is simpler and far less inspiring. You really want to know what sent me over the edge? Well, two words:
Hot guy.
Very hot indeed.
I've read about three dozen reviews of the series by now, and quite a few of them were written by women (and, in one case, a gay man) - who often added, almost like an afterthought, “it doesn't hurt, of course, that the protagonist is hot.” Those who didn't say it outright said it between the lines. (The gay guy also added that “he runs around in very little clothes. A lot.” *g*).
Quit trying to fool the audience, girls (and guys). “Doesn't hurt?” *snert*
There is a reason comic shops are dominated by things like life-size, scantily clad super-heroines with atomic breasts. To quote John Crichton: “guys dream about this!” Okay, so he was talking about having breasts of his own, but you know what I mean. Hopefully.
My housemate A., living away from his parents for the first time, often tries to hide his (sort of tame) pin-up magazine from us girls. Maybe he thinks we're somehow purer and more innocent than guys... something along those lines. Well. If I have learned one thing on the internet it's that women have their minds in the gutter just as often (or almost as often – it's hard to compare these things) as men. We have our own dreams. It's just that our pin-ups are less obvious. We're just not that excited to look at a guy's private parts.
So, to get back to “Finder”... “Finder” is written and drawn by a woman, Carla Speed McNeil. She says in interviews that its hero, Jaeger Ayers, is “something of a wish-fulfillment character” for her. I am pretty sure she does not mean it in a *purely* erotical way – but he sure as hell works well in that respect! I would go as far as to say that he is a near-perfect example of a male pin-up. The thing is, I am not necessarily talking about just looks here. Looks are nice, but looks alone don't do much for most women (or maybe they just don't do it for me, who knows).
So what exactly does McNeil do to create a near-perfect pin-up for us girls? Basically, she combines eye candy (one reviewer mentions Jaeger's “lovingly drawn chest hair” - *snert* - I must add here that that is not usually one of my turn-ons, but it's a nice change from all the androgyny that has been invading fandom since the popularisation of anime and manga) with story. Or maybe I should say 'character', although character, to me, implies story, and certain types of character imply certain types of story. I still haven't quite figured out what I really fall for: the character, or the story.
Carla Speed McNeil mentions that in older comics, Wolverine was “the only *guy*” - meaning, I suppose, that he was the only character that behaved like guys do in real life. The implication of course being that Jaeger is a 'guy', too. And I guess he is. (My multi-fannish mind supplies quotes from Methos: “Come on, Joe, I'm just a guy!” and John Crichton - replying to Zhaan's wondering what is going on in his head: “Not a lot; I'm a guy.”)
All the same, Jaeger is also an archetypical character. He's the lone wolf, the self-sufficient social outcast, the tough guy - with a bit of the trickster thrown in, interestingly. He's Philip Marlowe in a far future, alloyed with a healthy dose of tribal mysticism to counter the excessive cynicism that is usually associated with the role. - Note that I only know what I could glean from reviews and a few excerpts on the net, so I may be in for a surprise. Of course, I *expect* McNeil to employ the archetype with subtlety and original variation. Otherwise I'd be bored.
It's a powerful archetype. It is, probably, one of the most masculine of masculine archetypes, and I am not the only woman who falls for it easily. (See all those reviewers. Isn't it depressing how predictable we are? But then, so are men. *g*)
However, for me – and I'm not sure if I'm speaking as a fan or simply as a woman here - one part of the appeal of this particular archetype is that there is always the implication of a story behind it. The 'lone wolf' archetype is *only* interesting when the lone wolf perceivably has a past. (Otherwise it's just a pretentious attitude.) And you want to find out about that past. That is part, a large part, of the thrill.
Also, there's context. By context I mean the fictional universe a character 'lives' in. For me, erotic attraction is often intertwined with context, and I'm sure it's similar for many fannish women. We invest a lot of emotion in *stories*. Having a crush on John Crichton also means, in most cases, having a weird sort of crush on the universe he lives in, and who can say whether one without the other would have the same effect on us? Would I be obsessed with John if he didn't live on a spaceship in the Uncharted Territories? Very probably not. I am pretty sure that I wouldn't have gotten the urge to buy the “Finder” comics had they promised *only* an appealing protagonist, and not the fascinating future universe (and also the web of just as fascinating social relations) that surrounds him. Because, really, tough guy heroes are a dime a dozen. It's finding them in an appealing context with the potential for interesting confrontations that seals the deal, for me.
Fan fiction as a form of (often, though not exclusively) more or less subtle female porn of course follows logically from this infatuation with stories/universes. It is simply not enough to look at a nice, sexy picture (I'm tempted to use the old HL fan coinage 'fru', but nobody but the BABEs on my friends list would understand). We need context, we need a story, we need character that reveals itself in speech and interaction and movement and expressions. The importance of character is underlined by the fact that I have actually managed, on several occasions (not just the ones listed in my previous entry) to get crushes on characters from books that weren't even described in much detail in regards to looks. A certain kind of behaviour or a certain character type is often quite enough to send me drooling.
How about you?
(PS: Sorry for having changed this entry about a dozen times just now. I *think* I'll leave it as it is, now. *g*)
You've probably noticed the new addition to the list I posted recently. I discovered “Finder” last Monday, when I should have been working for university. I was bored with the archaeological reading I was doing and took a break online, meaning to look into the background of the “Mysterymen” movie – find out what the comic behind it was (turns out “The Flaming Carrot” by the same creator, Bob Burden, might be more worthy of my attention.) Well, one of the websites I found had a review about this comic called “Finder” which sounded... kinda neat.
So I checked out the website. And a few reviews. And went from zero to obsessed in about thirty minutes.
Why, you ask? Well, I could rave about wonderful world building and an intriguing story, and I wouldn't be lying. Both is present in “Finder”, and from what I could see it's there in abundance. (That was what caused my sudden desire to write, documented in my entry a few days ago.) But the two alone probably wouldn't have been enough to make buying “Finder” such an absolutely urgent priority to me. No, the truth is simpler and far less inspiring. You really want to know what sent me over the edge? Well, two words:
Hot guy.
Very hot indeed.
I've read about three dozen reviews of the series by now, and quite a few of them were written by women (and, in one case, a gay man) - who often added, almost like an afterthought, “it doesn't hurt, of course, that the protagonist is hot.” Those who didn't say it outright said it between the lines. (The gay guy also added that “he runs around in very little clothes. A lot.” *g*).
Quit trying to fool the audience, girls (and guys). “Doesn't hurt?” *snert*
There is a reason comic shops are dominated by things like life-size, scantily clad super-heroines with atomic breasts. To quote John Crichton: “guys dream about this!” Okay, so he was talking about having breasts of his own, but you know what I mean. Hopefully.
My housemate A., living away from his parents for the first time, often tries to hide his (sort of tame) pin-up magazine from us girls. Maybe he thinks we're somehow purer and more innocent than guys... something along those lines. Well. If I have learned one thing on the internet it's that women have their minds in the gutter just as often (or almost as often – it's hard to compare these things) as men. We have our own dreams. It's just that our pin-ups are less obvious. We're just not that excited to look at a guy's private parts.
So, to get back to “Finder”... “Finder” is written and drawn by a woman, Carla Speed McNeil. She says in interviews that its hero, Jaeger Ayers, is “something of a wish-fulfillment character” for her. I am pretty sure she does not mean it in a *purely* erotical way – but he sure as hell works well in that respect! I would go as far as to say that he is a near-perfect example of a male pin-up. The thing is, I am not necessarily talking about just looks here. Looks are nice, but looks alone don't do much for most women (or maybe they just don't do it for me, who knows).
So what exactly does McNeil do to create a near-perfect pin-up for us girls? Basically, she combines eye candy (one reviewer mentions Jaeger's “lovingly drawn chest hair” - *snert* - I must add here that that is not usually one of my turn-ons, but it's a nice change from all the androgyny that has been invading fandom since the popularisation of anime and manga) with story. Or maybe I should say 'character', although character, to me, implies story, and certain types of character imply certain types of story. I still haven't quite figured out what I really fall for: the character, or the story.
Carla Speed McNeil mentions that in older comics, Wolverine was “the only *guy*” - meaning, I suppose, that he was the only character that behaved like guys do in real life. The implication of course being that Jaeger is a 'guy', too. And I guess he is. (My multi-fannish mind supplies quotes from Methos: “Come on, Joe, I'm just a guy!” and John Crichton - replying to Zhaan's wondering what is going on in his head: “Not a lot; I'm a guy.”)
All the same, Jaeger is also an archetypical character. He's the lone wolf, the self-sufficient social outcast, the tough guy - with a bit of the trickster thrown in, interestingly. He's Philip Marlowe in a far future, alloyed with a healthy dose of tribal mysticism to counter the excessive cynicism that is usually associated with the role. - Note that I only know what I could glean from reviews and a few excerpts on the net, so I may be in for a surprise. Of course, I *expect* McNeil to employ the archetype with subtlety and original variation. Otherwise I'd be bored.
It's a powerful archetype. It is, probably, one of the most masculine of masculine archetypes, and I am not the only woman who falls for it easily. (See all those reviewers. Isn't it depressing how predictable we are? But then, so are men. *g*)
However, for me – and I'm not sure if I'm speaking as a fan or simply as a woman here - one part of the appeal of this particular archetype is that there is always the implication of a story behind it. The 'lone wolf' archetype is *only* interesting when the lone wolf perceivably has a past. (Otherwise it's just a pretentious attitude.) And you want to find out about that past. That is part, a large part, of the thrill.
Also, there's context. By context I mean the fictional universe a character 'lives' in. For me, erotic attraction is often intertwined with context, and I'm sure it's similar for many fannish women. We invest a lot of emotion in *stories*. Having a crush on John Crichton also means, in most cases, having a weird sort of crush on the universe he lives in, and who can say whether one without the other would have the same effect on us? Would I be obsessed with John if he didn't live on a spaceship in the Uncharted Territories? Very probably not. I am pretty sure that I wouldn't have gotten the urge to buy the “Finder” comics had they promised *only* an appealing protagonist, and not the fascinating future universe (and also the web of just as fascinating social relations) that surrounds him. Because, really, tough guy heroes are a dime a dozen. It's finding them in an appealing context with the potential for interesting confrontations that seals the deal, for me.
Fan fiction as a form of (often, though not exclusively) more or less subtle female porn of course follows logically from this infatuation with stories/universes. It is simply not enough to look at a nice, sexy picture (I'm tempted to use the old HL fan coinage 'fru', but nobody but the BABEs on my friends list would understand). We need context, we need a story, we need character that reveals itself in speech and interaction and movement and expressions. The importance of character is underlined by the fact that I have actually managed, on several occasions (not just the ones listed in my previous entry) to get crushes on characters from books that weren't even described in much detail in regards to looks. A certain kind of behaviour or a certain character type is often quite enough to send me drooling.
How about you?
(PS: Sorry for having changed this entry about a dozen times just now. I *think* I'll leave it as it is, now. *g*)
