Seimaden Vol 3
Aug. 17th, 2008 04:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I must confess, I don't know that I like Laures that much. The incredibly popular "manslut because of angst" trope has absolutely zero mileage with me (I think the only character ever where it didn't cause my opinion of them to drop is Gojyo) and it loses even more ground when it's because of romantic angst. Still, he seems to be laying off that. My main use for him, though, is saving Hilda and angsting over her and doing dramatic things there. He does those in ways my inner 13-year-old likes.
This is Higuri You manga. Like Kaori Yuki manga I have nothing but spoilery exclamations:
LAURES BECOMING THE COUNT'S SLAVE TO SAVE HILDA!
LAURES IN A CAGE!
ZADEI BRINGING HILDA TO LAURES IN HIS CAGE!
HUGGING THROUGH CAGE!
KISSING THROUGH CAGE!
LAURES ENTERING INTO DEMON GLADIATOR FIGHTS FOR HILDA!
DRAMATIC CONFESSIONS OF LOVE!
There's also Roddrick and Hilda's whole "I am the hero and you are the heroine and we were meant to be from birth and destroy the demon lord except you are the reincarnation of the demon lord's True Love and so you love him and I must accept it and I will always protect you even though I'm off to kill your True Love now!" aaaaaaaannnnnggggggsssssttttt. It kinda makes me feel guilty that I'm not a fan of Roddrick, what with his being the good guy and all, but he's just kinda...dull, next to everyone else.
Tetius and Zadei are like an extreme "nice girl/violent bad boy and the nice girl is hung up on the other bad boy" shoujo cliche only as slash. Which, as the main thing, would alienate me like nobodies business for my usual reasons, but as a side pairing in a gothic shoujo crack manga I read primarily to satisfy the dark urges of my inner 13-year-old who likes gothic shoujo cheese in spite of the adult's opinions.
Cheryl and Tetius are a mass collision of cute. I'm sure any fandom this has hates her for distracting Tetius from the angsty evil demon lords. (I don't get the impression they like each other that way anyway, though Tetius would probably be much better off redirecting his attentions to a nice girl like her. Or boy. Whatever.)
And Hilda goes around bashing windows in the duke's castle, looking for a way to escape I love you Hilda.
And finally: ROOM OF STUFFED CORPSES! HILDA BEING TOLD HOW SHE'LL BE POSED WHEN SHE'S ONE! lAURES! RODDRICK! THAT WAS YOUR CUE!
LAURES BECOMING THE COUNT'S SLAVE TO SAVE HILDA!
LAURES IN A CAGE!
ZADEI BRINGING HILDA TO LAURES IN HIS CAGE!
HUGGING THROUGH CAGE!
KISSING THROUGH CAGE!
LAURES ENTERING INTO DEMON GLADIATOR FIGHTS FOR HILDA!
DRAMATIC CONFESSIONS OF LOVE!
There's also Roddrick and Hilda's whole "I am the hero and you are the heroine and we were meant to be from birth and destroy the demon lord except you are the reincarnation of the demon lord's True Love and so you love him and I must accept it and I will always protect you even though I'm off to kill your True Love now!" aaaaaaaannnnnggggggsssssttttt. It kinda makes me feel guilty that I'm not a fan of Roddrick, what with his being the good guy and all, but he's just kinda...dull, next to everyone else.
Tetius and Zadei are like an extreme "nice girl/violent bad boy and the nice girl is hung up on the other bad boy" shoujo cliche only as slash. Which, as the main thing, would alienate me like nobodies business for my usual reasons, but as a side pairing in a gothic shoujo crack manga I read primarily to satisfy the dark urges of my inner 13-year-old who likes gothic shoujo cheese in spite of the adult's opinions.
Cheryl and Tetius are a mass collision of cute. I'm sure any fandom this has hates her for distracting Tetius from the angsty evil demon lords. (I don't get the impression they like each other that way anyway, though Tetius would probably be much better off redirecting his attentions to a nice girl like her. Or boy. Whatever.)
And Hilda goes around bashing windows in the duke's castle, looking for a way to escape I love you Hilda.
And finally: ROOM OF STUFFED CORPSES! HILDA BEING TOLD HOW SHE'LL BE POSED WHEN SHE'S ONE! lAURES! RODDRICK! THAT WAS YOUR CUE!
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Date: 2008-08-17 10:46 pm (UTC)Mmm, yes, that's a type that often doesn't work well for me either -- I think a lot of the difference with Gojyo, from my POV at least, is that he's fairly honest about it: a lot of the rogueish Duke of Slut types seem to be the sort who will say or do ANYTHING to get a woman into bed, never mind the consequences, whereas Gojyo never really seems to seriously pursue anyone but fellow barflies who are in on the game. He's not promising marriage or eternal love, just a no-strings short-term fling -- and if you want to add in the handful of anime scenes as canon, he seems to have his own personal code of honor about not going along with anyone who isn't completely into what they're doing. He definitely doesn't come across as the sort who'd insist that no really means yes, or a reluctant girl just means you need to get more pushy and insistent. And a lot of his come-ons are more about flattering the girl and less about the hey baby, let me tell you what you can do for ME type of approach that's all too common in RL...
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Date: 2008-08-18 12:57 am (UTC)He also doesn't seem to have the "I have sex with a string of people to distract myself from my angst, but I discard and forget them right after. With Gojyo, it seems to be actively looking for a connection in the wrong way, instead of using it to avoid deeper connections.
In the case of Laures, he was visiting Hilda and being alpha guy protective "but now I think about how you are too pure and good for me and go to whores to distract me from the angst of losing your and then having you be reborn too good for me" which is a bit different. I think what saved it for me was that when she made him come clean about the act (as much as she could) in the first volume, she was "yeah, you may be hot, but screw you, you loser, you don't get to make those choices for me." (Which, come to think of it, seems to have had the desires effect as the only indications of any action on his part since is the possibility of him letting the count have sex with him to protect Hilda, though the count seems to be into kinky things that don't involve actual intercourse.)
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Date: 2008-08-18 01:16 am (UTC)He also doesn't seem to have the "I have sex with a string of people to distract myself from my angst, but I discard and forget them right after. With Gojyo, it seems to be actively looking for a connection in the wrong way, instead of using it to avoid deeper connections.
Hmm, interesting -- see, I would have said that to my eyes, there is definitely an element of "sleep around as short-term distraction from pain" to the kappa, but he doesn't angst about it constantly and openly. That's a big plus for all the Saiyuki characters to me, honestly -- pretty much every last one of them has massive reasons for angst, but except when it's necessary to plot they mostly just do their sometimes dysfunctional best to just get on with their lives, instead of sitting around whingeing endlessly about how much their lives suck.
I would agree that he's longing for a deeper connection while going about it all wrong, but at the same time I also tend to think there's a (possibly quite unconscious) level of self-sabotaging avoidance of deeper connections going on at the same time; those same bargirls he focuses on seem like they're a lot more interested in finding Mr. Right NOW rather than Mr. Right. The "nice girls" like Shunrei, he seems wistfully interested in but always seems to have some excuse not to do more than his baseline casual flirting: the boy's got enough self-esteem Issues that I really tend to see him not feeling like he's got anything to offer a nice girl who's looking for a nice long-term prospect she can take home to meet her family, and sticking to girls who are only interested in one-night stands neatly lets him sidestep that whole issue.
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Date: 2008-08-18 01:33 am (UTC)Gojyo, I think, is just messed up. There's the "looking for a good relationship" (romantic or otherwise) thing, but it mixes with the fact that he only really has examples of bad relationships to go by, as far as we know. I think he does the "Short term distraction" thing, but unlike most of the type, I don't think he does it deliberately.
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Date: 2008-08-18 04:26 am (UTC)There's the "looking for a good relationship" (romantic or otherwise) thing, but it mixes with the fact that he only really has examples of bad relationships to go by, as far as we know.
*nods* His childhood models are obviously deeply messed up, and as Cho pointed out in one of our endless metas, pretty much all of his teen and early-adult exposure seems to be drunks and barflies and petty toughs like Banri, which also doesn't exactly seem like the best place to go looking for models of healthy behavior, romantic or otherwise! And heck, you know I love Hakkai to bits too, and love the idea of Hakkai and Gojyo together, be it platonically or romantically -- but at the same time, even I have to admit that when the most positive relationship in your life is with an incestuous mass-murderer of extremely dubious sanity...yeah, you're officially a total mess.
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Date: 2008-08-18 04:37 am (UTC)Gojyo's past is the the biggest mess of screwed up signals ever. As far as Issues go, his probably interest me the most, I just like maintaining a safe little distance. I also figure that any ideas he has of a healthier relationship are whatever he managed to gather of Hakkai and Kanan's relationship. Which, you know, may not help matters much...
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Date: 2008-08-18 04:32 am (UTC)