Dave Fried @ 31, while I was typing:
To elaborate and answer your question, I don't have a problem with fanservice as a rule. If you like a character, you might also find them attractive! And you might want to see them in less clothes! I don't think that's exploitative by definition. In practice it becomes a bit more complicated, but I think you can enjoy fanservice and like the character for other things that don't have anything to do with lust.
Dave Fried @ 28:
Yeah, I know she gets drawn in various states of undress a lot, and that's clearly fanservice. Probably the reason that doesn't register that much with me is that I read/watch anime and manga, where that's pretty standard. In a fantasy fighting manga about team work and psychological issues, you're suddenly treated to a scene in the girls' showers. And then the boys' showers too, if you're reading the manga I am.
I am sure a lot of guys do find Kimiko attractive, and I don't mind that! I think she's pretty and cool, after all.
But that's a long way from her entire character being designed as an object of lust. You say she's "a Superman for geeky/techy girls" and that's... kind of true? Although she definitely doesn't do much that's actually heroic, so 'Superman' seems a bit out of place. But more than that, I would hope that she's a compelling protagonist for anyone geeky, and that being a girl doesn't make her just a lust object if the people reading the comic happen to be male.
Dave Fried @ 18
Probably so. Thank you for apologizing - yeah, Solomon's comments were definitely a lot worse than yours, and I think his comments say a lot more about him than Dresden Codak or its audience.
I mean, "dressing like the fine-ass piece of bitch she is," really? When in the linked comic she is... in a bathrobe, while alone and in her own house?
Somewhat related and perhaps interesting no matter what, when I mentioned something like this on Dresden Codak's forums (probably a couple years ago now; I don't frequent the forums much), Aaron Diaz mentioned that Dresden Codak's readership is, in fact, largely (mostly?) female, especially when you compare it to things like Penny Arcade.
I'm also a bit unclear on how selling t-shirts and updating the comic occasionally is failing to run a business, considering that "selling t-shirts" is a perfectly fine business on its own. Lack of a regular update schedule can be annoying, yes, but if a comic irregularly updated every few months maintains enough interest that he's selling shirts (or prints, or recently, a collected Hob book), I would think he's doing pretty well, whether or not he's putting in what some guy on the internet deems to be sufficient effort into it.
Man, internet confluence is always fun. I love Dresden Codak a lot and lurk here a lot. Possibly it should have occurred to me that these two things should be connected if they were not already.
The thing that always bothers me about people commenting on Kimiko is that, well... as a female computer geek who read a lot of science fiction when I was younger, I identify with Kimiko pretty strongly. So the idea of her being just "a stylized object of male internet nerd/gamer lust" in any sense is... a bit squicky. People more or less like Kimiko do actually exist! And I believe Aaron Diaz said that she is loosely based on someone he knew. (I forget whether said someone was actually female or not.)
Not to mention that I just don't really understand it - Kimiko is not actually immensely physically attractive so far as I can tell. Not to mention that while I like her a lot, I am aware she is a bit over the top and maladjusted and lacks social skills pretty much entirely.
From Kate's post on Samurai Champloo linked above:
[Episodes] 22 and 23, "Cosmic Collisions" and "Baseball Blues," which apparently take place in an alternate universe where the writers were smoking the really, really good crack.
Ha! So, so true. Sometimes I imagine they suddenly noticed they were two episodes short of 26, and rather than stretch out the plot the writers said, "...Damn. Well, how about we throw in some zombies? And baseball?"
Trigun! There we go. It's been years since I watched Trigun, and yet it has come up in two independent conversations independently in the past week. This makes three, thus continuing in my trend.
(This happens often - things which you would think come up pretty rarely do so in clusters of three - see also: William Henry Harrison and Luden's cough drops.)
Anyway, I also love Trigun lots, despite initial misgivings during the first few episodes.
A coworker of mine has mentioned getting requests for more anime "like Cowboy Bebop," and having no answer. Mine would be Samurai Champloo - anyone else have an opinion?
Woo! Other people recommending FMA! This is good, because I would have had to otherwise, and I have a feeling I'd have lost all objective credibility after I said "You know, Asian Kung-Fu Generation did the new Bleach opening song, too. I watched the fansubbed version last night."
Agreed on "There is Evil there that does not sleep" re: FMA fandom, though. And I'm in FMA fandom, to a certain degree. I have friends who do really good stuff, but the huge majority of it is focused on a couple of pairings I want nothing to do with.
The thing that amused me most about that article was Livejournal making it onto the list of "fan fiction websites." True, that's where most of fandom lives these days, but that's hardly the site's primary purpose, obviously.
It has a sort of bitter irony to me, considering that a lot of fan writers/artists (including all of my immediate circle) moved away from Livejournal a few months ago in disgust at the administration's unfriendliness toward fandom.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2009 | 5 |
| 2007 | 4 |
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