Forum - View topicInterview: Princess Principal Director Masaki Tachibana
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HeeroTX
Posts: 2046 Location: Austin, TX |
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Sorry, I do get forceful with my replies.
I could say the same for Princess Principal (but with girls). As I noted previously, I got "love" vibes between the characters also, but that could have just been how people read it. I note this because as I went to lunch I was thinking about WHERE a season 2 could go. It would be perfectly logical (considering their physical similarity) to say that they are SISTERS and their "love" (while existent) is familial, not romantic love. To go back to the "official art" thing, there's PLENTY of suggestive "official art" of Ram & Rem (re:Zero), but 1) they're sisters and 2) we KNOW that Rem loves Subaru (romantically speaking). I guess my antagonism is because this whole thread went down that "Death of the Author" road. I don't care about "standard" vs yaoi vs. yuri or whatever, but I HATE fanfiction. You have every right to READ or imagine fanfiction (debatable legality on WRITING it), but you don't have any right to tell me your "vision" for a property (that you did NOT create) is "more correct" than what the creator says. If you want a story where two girls fall in love, either find that or create your own, don't appropriate someone else's story JUST to fulfill your fantasy. I imagine EVERY LGBT person or fan would crucify me if I wrote stories of Uranus and Neptune of Sailor Moon "figuring out that what they really want are happy marriages with men, keeping home for the nuclear family", and rightfully so IMO. (and no, I don't think that level of "interpretation" is remotely justified in Sailor Moon, but that's how far off the rails some people's "vision" goes) |
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Merxamers
Posts: 720 |
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Never really occurred to me to interpret their relationship as romantic, considering the events of the actual story. spoiler[They meet as kids and get along really well, but then don't see each other for a very, very long time. For most of the story, it seemed like their devotion to each other stemmed largely from guilt; one for supplanting the other's life of security and status, and the other for leaving her only friend as a sheep among wolves. This comes to a head in a big way towards the end of the series, and to reduce their character arc to "they were totes hot for each other" seems like drastic over-simplifying]. This isn't Flip Flappers (where the romantic subtext is very clear), characters are allowed to care for each other without having romantic intentions. More power to you if you want to ship it or w/e, but claiming the author is somehow "wrong" about it is silly.
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relyat08
Posts: 4125 Location: Northern Virginia |
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I feel like I'm truly witnessing the power of shipping. I did not expect people to take this so far or so seriously.
Death of the Author clearly applies to both of these and both are different types of interpretations. If an author says point blank that two characters are not in a relationship where tons of textual material supports their relationship, that is literally EXACTLY what Death of the Author is meant to address.
But they didn't textually write this as non-romantic as far as a lot of people are concerned, he's just saying they did in hindsight with literally no textual evidence to support it. How is this fact? What you're doing is feigning subscription to Death of the Author while rejecting almost every aspect of it. It's okay if you don't like or subscribe to Death of the Author, but stop pretending you do. An author saying someone is in a relationship with textual evidence to the contrary is, once again, exactly the kind of thing Death of the Author is for. And is no less valid of a reason to utilize it than the author saying their work is an allegory for war when many people view it as one for the passage of time, or whatever. All of these are valid interpretations. You simply don't agree with Death of the Author dude. |
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someooone
Posts: 9 |
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Ah o well i have some disagreements with what u said on the first part, but never mind that, i dont want to argue over a fictional work that really doesn't affect our real lives. But yea what i do agree is to let people interpret stories however they want and ship whoever they want. Fanfiction are just extensions of simple personal interpretations of animes/manga, and they are targeted to people with same personal interpretations, so really if u dont like it just avoid it. How one interpret an anime/manga is simply just their opinion, and if they want to write a fanfiction for it, go for it. If its something i dont agree with, then i simply wont read it. If u really want to write those stories of Uranus and Neptune in such a way,go ahead,tho honestly the prompt sounds really offensive as in ur sayin lesbian relationships are just a phase and not real, but hopefully its just an example you are using and not what you are really thinking. I know i wont like it,so i wont read it,as simple as that. Sure it may be contradicting the material, but ultimately, it is ur opinion and as far as i know it isnt illegal to express it and its not really hurting anybody(unles ofc that is ur intention). Isn't that why all fanfictions are tagged?to show whats the content?to tell what people what to expect? U make fanfictions sound bad, but really its just all opinions. They're FANfiction.by FANS.By no means they are official.Its all done in fun.thats what devoted fans who can write do. By the way, Im not a fan of how ur choosing small sections of my quotes and then arguing against them,ignoring the rest and not considering my quote as a whole. Last edited by someooone on Fri Dec 15, 2017 6:39 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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someooone
Posts: 9 |
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Ah yea its me mr anon i know different name now. I wrote that when i was really pissed after reading the director's response and some of the threads here. So if that passage comes off as really "in ur face, come fight me bitch", i apologise. Calmed down alot now and trying to look at it from other angles. But still, I really believe that the shoujo ai is obvious. As for the game profile, im sorry i dont know the details of every girl, but i do know that part of Beatrice character profile is true. Yeah, i dont have proof but seeing as in the link you provide support my claims, hope it convinces you that i wasn't just spouting lies. |
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Wtv
Posts: 157 |
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Anime is promoted to the fanbase who welcomed it, even if that was not the intention. Every series yuri fans tend to follow just get gayer in the next seasons, with the only exception being when the author really hates the idea of it (and he clearly don't), or when it's an adaptation of another media (like Hibike). I'm sure PriPri will get gayer, just like Yuuki Yuuna is, or Rebellion, or Love Live, and much others. Of course, it'll never be more than subtext, but it'll probably be pretty intentional. |
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nargun
Posts: 925 |
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Essentially: the author's opinions on the meaning of a text are opinions, of no greater worth -- in principle -- than anybody else's. I mean, in reality the author works closely with the text so they've got more insight than the casual viewer. But equally an author can misunderstand what they were trying to do, and just 'cause they wanted to do X doesn't mean that they'll succeed or that they'll recognise their failure if they didn't. So we can't treat author statements as dispositive; texts are more complex than that. [there's also the framing that texts have meaning when they're read, so that only the meanings in the heads of the readers matter; the message that matters is the message that is received. You get the same result either way.] Anyway. Take the relationship between Bilbo and Frodo in LotR. I don't know if anybody actually asked him, but I don't doubt that Tolkein would have denied that it was sexual. BUT... it's been argued that Tolkein that he based it on real-life relationships he encountered that were -- unbeknownst to Tolkein for obvious reasons -- actually sexual relationships as far as the participants were concerned. What's the "true meaning"? Or. Princess Principal is drawing from well-established japanese literary traditions of female relationships... but those traditions were established by, well, lesbians. "Normal" Female-friendship tropes in japan are pretty damned queer unless you take deliberate effort to distance yourself from your literary tradition. |
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Mojave
Posts: 178 |
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Haha, you're right that I don't subscribe to Death of the Author for the most part, although I believe it does have its uses and have written plenty of papers using it. But no, I'm not feigning subscription to it. I'm pointing out that you're trying to expand it beyond what it actually is. "Interpretation", as far as Death of the Author is concerned, refers only to deeper meaning. It was right there in the wiki quote you brought up, it concerns itself with deeper meaning. I'm not rejecting its core tenets in my debate with you. I'm pointing out that it is by definition only applied to specific things, and you're attempting to incorrectly apply it to an area outside of that. Death of the Author never disputes events, it only disputes deeper meaning. So if the author says that they are canonically not in a relationship, Death of the Author doesn't actually provide a way to dispute that like you think it does. There could be other tools of critical analysis that provide a means of disputing that, but Death of the Author isn't one of them. |
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HoboSoup
Posts: 361 |
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I find your perspective interesting even if I don't entirely agree with it. I personally think they have a deeper connection to each other than just guilt, as I've explained other comments in this thread. It's not unlikely that there is guilt there, but I think you're over simplifying the perspective of people that think there are also romantic implications. You're simply saying our perspective is "they were totes hot for each other", when our explanations have thus far throughout the thread been more in depth and less valley girl. So it feels more like you're attempting to invalidate the perspective of anyone that sees romantic connections, when your own perspective isn't anymore valid or any less valid than our own. |
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relyat08
Posts: 4125 Location: Northern Virginia |
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We're not talking about facts or events here at all. We're talking about a deliberately subtle relationship that many people see as romantic and have textual support to prove it. And like I've noted over and over, if there are no textual "facts" or "events" that support something that the author says, than their interpretation, using Death of the Author, has no more value than anyone else's. In this case, we have a relationship that has textual support, and one staff member denying that textual support, with literally no textual support to back their side of the argument. This is not expanding Death of the Author, it's a very basic usage of the concept. It's not me who's expanding its use, it's you who are attempting to diminish it. |
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Mojave
Posts: 178 |
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If it's not something relating to deeper meaning, Death of the Author can't apply to it. That's why I'm saying you're incorrectly expanding it. The relationship status of two characters falls under "fact" or "event", not deeper meaning. Since it cannot apply to this, if the author says they are canonically not in a relationship, then Death of the Author can't be legitimately used here to argue that they are in fact canonically in one. |
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relyat08
Posts: 4125 Location: Northern Virginia |
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No, that's simply not true. Anything that can be interpretive can apply. Nothing in the essay refutes that even remotely.
Not when there is NO TEXTUAL EVIDENCE for it, it doesn't. Furthermore, anything stated externally of a work can have Death of the Author applied to it. This is a fundamental aspect of the essay. George R.R. Martin can't just say something in an interview that has no textual basis and that be the new fact(he actually can, of course, but the idea is that Death of the Author means that whatever he says doesn't overwrite what has already been textually established and interpreted by the audience on an individual basis)
Death of the Author does not argue that they are canonically in a relationship! It simply means that if you, as the consumer, as the end recipient of a piece of work, interpreted them as being in a relationship, that is a valid interpretation. Death of the Author does NOT establish a strict canon, which seems to be something that you're struggling with, it is meant specifically for personal interpretation. You can think they are in a relationship while I don't and both can be perfectly valid under Death of the Author. You dislike Death of the Author, we've established that. We've also established that you want to diminish the value it has by imposing totally unfounded limits on what it entails. Sorry, but you are wrong. Death of the Author is for any interpretation, and while it is generally used to apply to situations where substantial textual evidence refutes what the creator has stated externally(such as this case), or where thematic, metaphoric or allegorical interpretations are involved, almost anything can be included. |
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Mojave
Posts: 178 |
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We're not gonna get any further. From someone with an academic background in this, I'm telling you that "Interpretation" doesn't apply to something like relationship status, as far as Death of the Author is concerned. Interpretation means only relating to deeper meaning for the purposes of Death of the Author. Your understanding is wrong, it cannot be expanded beyond that. I'm not diminishing Death of the Author, I'm trying to keep it from being applied outside of where it can actually be applied. It's a highly specified tool, you're trying to apply it broadly, which is wrong. It's good that you have a basic understanding of the principle, but you're missing the specifics of it. |
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kotomikun
Posts: 1205 |
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Wow, this really blew up.
It's true that it can happen with straight couples. Social phenomena are never absolutely consistent, which can make biases hard to notice. But I do think it happens more with gay or otherwise unconventional pairings, simply because it's not what people are used to seeing. This problem is a bit more obvious in cases where the author did intentionally write a romance, but chose to keep it subtle. If they're opposite genders, there will be little to no discussion of whether it's "really" romance; if they aren't, things get... fuzzier. Some will say they're a couple, some will say they aren't, some will say it's open to interpretation, and then we have a giant argument pretty much exactly like this one. The fact that people argue about straight shipping doesn't mean this problem isn't real. Madoka isn't quite the same situation as Princess Principal, since both of the potential couples are, as far as the text itself goes, one-sided, and not necessarily healthy. Kyouko has a weird "I hate but also love how you remind me of when I was younger and more idealistic" thing for Sayaka, and Homura is downright obsessed with Madoka because she hates herself and, ironically, dedicated her life to saving Madoka from her own self-loathing-associated desire to sacrifice herself to save other people. Whether there's any romance-esque feelings in the other direction is much less clear; there's some in Rebellion, but that whole movie is very metafictional and convoluted so it's hard to know what to make of it. Even so, if one of each pairing were male it would be seen almost universally as a tragic romance instead of a tragic "it's totally romance / no it's not / you're stupid / you're a homophobe / etc." In a general sense, though, I think the sheer size of this debate proves my point better than anything I can come up with. Somehow it's stretched into arguing over whether death of the author is even legitimate. You're allowed to take what the author says as gospel; death of the author just means you aren't required to. |
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Wtv
Posts: 157 |
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It's funny how these comments turned out when we think about it.
Author says: "I don't mind that people see them as a lesbian couple." Everyone: "Stop seeing them as a lesbian couple! You're disrespecting the author's work!" |
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