Unborn devil
Sunday, March 28th, 2010 at 8:03 pmWords are still heavy. Even thinking in words is heavy. It might not be just the smoke. It’s very hot, and a four-storey derelict building near me is being demolished in slow motion with what I call drilldozers — bulldozers with pneumatic drill heads, which make a juddering mechanical noise from 9-ish till 6-ish (with a break for lunch). There are no adjacent buildings and there’s a huge vacant lot next door, so you’d think they could use explosives to bring it down quickly, but maybe the Skytrain is too close, or maybe the drilldozers are just cheaper. I think I’ll be taking my computer into school next week and trying to work there. (And if the people who’ve been lobbing grenades around Bangkok recently want to come down and chuck a few into that building, it’s ok by me!)
Anyway, while words are heavy, images are light, so have a devil child:
I really need to stop drawing faces in half profile! And start drawing them showing some emotion. I’m pretty sure this picture was obscurely inspired by this, via Alankria. Girl. Tempting object. Never-to-be-developed person. It would be a shame not to take a bite out of her. Vessel for male ego. Mother is lurking inside. Girl will never be human. What the hell would she become if she was allowed to grow up naturally, on her own terms?
March 29th, 2010 at 6:01 am
Your art is moving someplace nice. Yamamoto influence.
March 30th, 2010 at 2:11 pm
While I agree with most of the sentiments in the argument you link to, this kind of thinking has a way of getting blown out of proportion as well … I see many women and women’s groups going to the other extreme where they start claiming every friendly advance of a man – casual flirtation, attempts to start a conversation, offers to buy drinks, etc. – is an attempt at rape. There are many men out there capable of just being friendly and who don’t deserve to have women scream at them before giving them other indications they are not interested. (but, yes, men are dense so I do encourage a woman to be fairly clear in demonstrating her disinterest … but here I disagree with the poster in that I believe it is possible to do so while remaining polite … I remain polite when turning people down until they fail to accept the message; then is the time to tell them to their face they are not wanted and – if that does not work – tell them loudly and more than once to leave them alone.)
As a Psych major I will note that merely getting loud won’t get people to assist you in most circumstances … if you genuinely feel threatened you need to pick someone who looks capable out of the crowd and say “Sir, can you help me?” Because people will – and this has been proven through studies – walk right past a man having a heart attack unless he actively gets their attention. Kitty Genovese is a good example of this as well – the woman murdered over half an hour in front of her apartment in the ’60s while upward of 30 witnesses failed to call the police. (the whole diffusion of responsibility, or “bystander effect”)
This line of thinking that men are taught “rape is okay” has also led to some misleading theories about men being “genetically prone toward rape” – which has never been proven by legitimate psychology and has been shot down as bad science by genuine experts in the field of psychology and women’s studies.
I have a little sister and fully encourage women to be strong and communicative, but fear that too often you get groups who don’t understand the difference between that and treating all men like insatiable predators. (and these women give off more of a “victim” feel than other women – I have met a few myself and noticed the difference)
But, yeah, books like the Twilight series and this just piss me off … women have worked hard over the last century and some to be taken more seriously and break away from sexist stereotypes – now we have actual female authors teaching our sisters and daughters it is romantic and acceptable to allow that kind of behavior?
Perhaps you should write a story about an empowered girl who turns the tables on this tripe … oh, and I’m still hoping I’ll see something with a good lesbian character/romance in anything other than an erotic novel. (books of all sorts have heterosexual romances depicted in them without it becoming pornographic, why can’t books with lesbian romance? Not that I mind a little pornography, mind you, but each in its place and proper dose)
March 30th, 2010 at 4:35 pm
That is deliciously creepy and awesome.
March 30th, 2010 at 5:54 pm
D – I wish I knew how he gets those even skin tones. I tried painting the ink drawing of this with watercolour and bollocksed it right up.
W – Yes, it can get blown out of proportion. But I think the problem of girls not being certain that they have a right to assert their own needs is more urgent.
I’ve never personally seen a woman scream about a man’s flirting or the offer of a drink, but if it happens, perhaps there’s a reason? I imagine that if I had, for instance, ever been raped, I might find even friendly flirting uncomfortable and give flirters short shrift.
It can be hard to tell the predatory male from the gallant flirt. It takes experience, and even then one sometimes makes mistakes. And of course, men can misjudge the meaning of women’s friendliness and flirting, too. I’m sometimes less friendly than I’d like to be for fear of being taken the wrong way.
While I’m happy to write about empowered girls, I have a slight problem with the table-turning in that I love demon lovers. I wouldn’t enjoy writing one as a creepy stalker who doesn’t respect women, just so that a woman could slap him around. I see these dark male figures in literature as not just the external predator but also as, secretly, the internal animus. It’s one reason why they’re so attractive. I think they represent particular powers and qualities that a girl isn’t supposed to possess within herself. They’re aggressive, consciously seductive, puissant, and often authoritative (when they’re vampires, their age gives them a mantle of authority). They know who they are and what they want. And if a girl outright rejects them, on an interior level she refuses to possess those qualities; she chooses to be the ‘good girl’ and to limit her self-knowledge to a prescribed area. So when the animus is presented as a creep, the girl is in a bind. She can’t give in to him without giving in to a predator, but if she rejects him she symbolically cuts off a powerful part of herself. (Edit: I think a good example of how to do a women + dark animus story is in Hellsing, if you’ve watched or read that. Alucard is ludicrously dangerous, but he serves Integra and mentors Seras, who becomes more confident and badass while maintaining her own essential nature, i.e. he helps her mature, and is at the beck and call of Integra, the already mature, “integrated” woman.)
Alankria – I’m glad you think so! <3 I have the oddest urge to draw two of them kissing. (What that would be about, I don’t know!)
I’m wondering where you are. Somewhere in central Victoria? Cute old gold rush town? Roadstop with Chiko rolls and dim sims? In my mind’s eye I can see the gum trees turning black in the clear indigo twilight and the truckies popping their pills under the southern stars…
March 31st, 2010 at 5:52 am
You make a good argument about the animus; something I hadn’t considered. The problem, of course, arises from the fact that while this might be an insightful look at the woman writing the book, the readers aren’t going to get the same thing from it and will merely see the author encouraging them to give in to predators.
I have noticed that the vast majority of women who write men portray them as either predators or unrealistically effeminate heterosexuals – women with penises, really. In much the same way men write women as probably too masculine or too vulnerable. (I get sick of seeing even strong women in film and literature becoming the convenient victim when it is time for the man to save them)
Not all writers have this problem, obviously, but it occurs often enough that it is worth remarking on.
March 31st, 2010 at 5:56 am
To follow your idea that it may be difficult for a woman to shoot down her overly aggressive male characters for fear of denying that part of themselves, men seem far more comfortable with the idea of demonstrating the weakness of their female characters – thereby denying that it is a part of who they are. (the masculine character[istic] conquers the feminine as many men are taught their masculine nature should conquer their emotional weaknesses)
March 31st, 2010 at 7:24 am
W – Some of the readers might look at it on a symbolic level. But even if it is seen symbolically, the symbolism is borked if the dark animus is a predatory creep and the girl is powerless in herself and has no guiding figure to get her through the “initiation”. Thinking of a girl’s time of puberty, it’s a time when nature takes over your body and makes you into this thing called a woman, about which your culture has told you all kinds of stories. I think these demon lovers can represent the external, natural and social powers that have a grip on you and that want to claim you for a certain role, as well as an internal power you could learn to access. They can be initiatory figures, but they initiate female protagonists into power or powerlessness, depending on how the story is written.
Women and men no doubt both inject something of their own fantasies into their writing of each other. I doubt that’s likely to stop, either. But we could try to be more aware of when we’re falling into completely self-indulgent fantasy — or get a beta reader of the other sex to check our work. But some men really are “effeminate”, just as some women are “butch”. The realities are there. And I’m no doubt biased, but I find women’s fantasies of womanly men quite harmless, ditto men’s fantasies of manly women — these fantasies address (and redress on the mental level) the false polarisation of gender well beyond any difference that may be natural to sex.
Men are taught, perhaps, that certain emotional weaknesses are not weaknesses — anger, greed, hatred, lust, overweening pride, even grasping neediness. When we talk about women being more “emotional”, I laugh hollowly and think of the emotionalism of the Nazis. When men make female characters weak and symbolically conquer the feminine, if that means a symbolic denial that “emotional weakness” is part of man’s nature as much as woman’s, perhaps it serves as a kind of magical denial that the abovementioned emotions are anything to worry about, and sanctions them as manly and even takes them out of the despised category of “emotion”. (Maybe?)
But yeah — in our world, a woman doesn’t represent power or the free self. A man does. So it’s got to be more problematic for a woman to reject her “male aspect” than for a man to reject his “female aspect” if he’s afraid of what he thinks it represents and doesn’t see some of the goodies it might actually represent — certain freedoms and pleasures that he might not know he’s been missing out on.
March 31st, 2010 at 10:04 am
Men are quite emotional, as you say, but they are taught that anger, lust, pride, are “strong” emotions for a man to have, and therefor acceptable.
While there is no harm in either men or women engaging in a little fantasy fulfillment while writing the opposite sex (and/or gender) it does tend to weaken the story for the readers of that sex … I know it does for men at least.
And, sure, you have effeminate men and masculine women in the real world; and for characters designed with those qualities in mind that is fine. When it is done accidentally or out of laziness is when it becomes an issue – at least in my mind.
It is amusing you should mention the beta reader concept, as the last book I read on the subject of male/female relations was written by a husband and wife team with that very idea in mind.
March 31st, 2010 at 4:42 pm
I think that would look really cool in a a jarish sort of pendant
April 1st, 2010 at 7:01 pm
I skipped the debating part. This is awesome.
April 2nd, 2010 at 5:25 am
W – That said, I know far more men who aren’t dominated by those emotions than who are… Can you name a couple of female authors who you think don’t write sufficiently masculine men? I’d kind of like to know what actual writing we’re talking about. (The “effeminacy” of men in the women’s writing I’m thinking of is really petty blatantly there out of desire.) “Feminine” and “masculine” standards change across cultures, too, obviously, so while the basic drives may be there, the surface behaviour can be radically different.
Colin – yeah, in a jar could work. Better if it was a sculpture, though.
Michael – thanks, mate! I think I’ve gotta do another one…
April 3rd, 2010 at 1:20 pm
I would want them kissing at the more unusually placed mouths.
I need to blog about the drive! Am now in Sydney, with my uncle and aunt and cousins, including a troublesome 5yo boy who decides he hates his provocative big sister several times a day. I took the mountain route from VIC to NSW: lovely windy roads, through various types of trees, most strikingly fire-dead gums with the new ones growing up among the old grey limbs which looked like ghosts of trees. Stopped in Canberra then took the road that’s near the coast, but sadly doesn’t go right alongside the coast.
April 3rd, 2010 at 1:51 pm
I’m so glad you’re there safely. I was kind of worried. The Hume can be a tiring road to drive on, plus it’s haunted. My dad had a friend who wouldn’t drive on it at night because of the apparitions he’d seen.
Currently I’ve got them sucking thumbs and tails in the other mouths, but kissing would also be good. I think these drawings are going to multiply!
April 4th, 2010 at 5:45 am
I didn’t actually drive on the Hume at all; took some nice back roads, some unsealed (but very nicely graded) and others sealed but narrow. I didn’t drive at dusk or night. Kangaroo collisions would have incurred a high cost to me.
By the time I see you next, you’ll be drowning in unborn devils! (I arrive in Bangkok very late this Friday but fly to Chiang Mai the next day to celebrate Songkran with several friends, including Penny, who sadly is not passing through Bangkok at all. I return to Bangkok on the 17th, I think, and will likely stay there a week or so before wandering off to my first new Asian country, which I think will be a journey through Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. I want to see your pretty Chinese The Etched City! As well as, uh, you and Stu, obviously. >.> <..> )
April 4th, 2010 at 6:21 am
Sounds like you drove the best way!
Noes, I’m going to miss you! I’m leaving for Oz on the 12th and won’t be back till late in May. If you want a copy of the Chinese version, pop up and get one from Stu, or I can send you one.
(Actually, what time do you get into BKK on Friday?)
April 8th, 2010 at 7:54 pm
I get in at 11pm on Friday, but perhaps we can sneak in a quick morning drink on Saturday? Tori and I fly to Chiang Mai sometime in the afternoon; I know we arrive at 5pm in Chiang Mai, so presumably we depart around 4pm.
If not, I’m going to be popping back into Thailand a couple of times before I set off to the UK in September, so I’m sure our paths will cross after your return from Aus.
April 8th, 2010 at 9:15 pm
Let’s try for that Saturday drink — Tori has my number. If no go, look forward to seeing you on one of the crossing paths.
April 9th, 2010 at 5:02 am
I am currently phone-less, so I shall orchestrate via Tori tonight/tomorrow morning!
April 11th, 2010 at 10:23 pm
you are discovered. i have just finished “the etched city” and was transported. many thanks.
despite your dismissals, your interviews, the few i’ve read, are well considered and involving.
is your short work available still?
my house was on soi 72 and then there was jungle. what is it like now?
April 12th, 2010 at 1:10 pm
Daniel — glad you liked Etched City & thanks for dropping by. Thanks also for the reassurance about interviews.
Yup, short work is available online here and there:
The Heart of a Mouse
Saving the Gleeful Horse
The Art of Dying here and here, two slightly different versions, neither of which I’m now happy with.
I’m currently revamping old stories and writing a new one for a collection which I hope to find a publisher for later this year.
Here’s a picture of soi 72 nowadays — you can see the Skytrain extension, but so far trains only run to On Nut.
April 12th, 2010 at 8:06 pm
sky train! the ground was hardly fit enough for samlars! seems the town has grown up, not at all like me.
thanks for the memory and the fiction. not to be too coy, but you are my new favorite author. i shall look forward to your new work.
d
April 14th, 2010 at 5:50 am
I haven’t been there for very long, but I’m told it has changed a lot in the last 10-20 years.
Thanks for the compliment!