![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
prusik[Wow, I feel like I've spent the past month just blogging about gay or Chinese characters in genre fiction. In this case, I'm talking about gay characters,]
This is more like it. Again, it's not to say that "The Threnody of Johnny Toruko" was poorly written or unenjoyable. "Tio Gilberto and the Twenty-Seven Ghosts", however, had characters that made a more immediate and intense connection to me. James is gay whereas Johnny Toruko talks about gayness at a remove.
By this, I do *not* mean James gets to have sex whereas Johnny doesn't. (It happens to be true, but this isn't my point, For one thing, anybody having sex seems out of place in the Team Shikaragaki series. For another, "being gay" is not a synonym for "having sex with a member of the same sex.") Being gay is not solely who you have (or want to have) sex with. Being gay is ultimately a set of experiences that influence your decisions and reactions. It's pervasive and subtle. I saw it in what James worried about, in what James did. What I saw in Johnny Toruko is a heart fluttering and a declaration of "love" with little that shows it except one dream sequence that Johnny had to explain to us.
(Jeffrey R. DeRego made his job much harder when he decided Johnny was so good at being The Boy Who Flirts With All The Young Female Fans that no one caught any hint he might be anything else. If nothing else, it makes TK's assertion that she could see it in his stray glances utterly unconvincing, and to Mr. DeRego's credit, he has Johnny say so.)
Anyway, "Tio Gilberto..." is a lovely piece of slightly self-referential magical realism. Well worth the listen.
This is more like it. Again, it's not to say that "The Threnody of Johnny Toruko" was poorly written or unenjoyable. "Tio Gilberto and the Twenty-Seven Ghosts", however, had characters that made a more immediate and intense connection to me. James is gay whereas Johnny Toruko talks about gayness at a remove.
By this, I do *not* mean James gets to have sex whereas Johnny doesn't. (It happens to be true, but this isn't my point, For one thing, anybody having sex seems out of place in the Team Shikaragaki series. For another, "being gay" is not a synonym for "having sex with a member of the same sex.") Being gay is not solely who you have (or want to have) sex with. Being gay is ultimately a set of experiences that influence your decisions and reactions. It's pervasive and subtle. I saw it in what James worried about, in what James did. What I saw in Johnny Toruko is a heart fluttering and a declaration of "love" with little that shows it except one dream sequence that Johnny had to explain to us.
(Jeffrey R. DeRego made his job much harder when he decided Johnny was so good at being The Boy Who Flirts With All The Young Female Fans that no one caught any hint he might be anything else. If nothing else, it makes TK's assertion that she could see it in his stray glances utterly unconvincing, and to Mr. DeRego's credit, he has Johnny say so.)
Anyway, "Tio Gilberto..." is a lovely piece of slightly self-referential magical realism. Well worth the listen.
