By the Numbers

We all have off-days. There are times when you just can't write a good, original story. That's when you do by the numbers. Of course, the other word for 'by the numbers' is 'classic.' These old standbys get done and done again because they have some basic appeal. It may be a stock situation, but you haven't ye seen Your Guys in it and you want to.  And so we have, in the slash world, things like

a) Hypothermia ex machina: A the supercool guy with the impenetrable defences is caught in a snowstorm with B in an isolated mountain hut where it's necessary for A and B to take their clothes off and lie together for warmth. Variation 1: A has been injured and is suffering a high fever so he doesn't know`what's happening. Variation 2: A has been raped by enemy agents and is escaping with B when overtaken by the snowstorm. In all cases, plenty of opportunity for B to angst about Is it fair to screw him? for 20 pages before doing it.

b) Let's have a baby. Best done in sci-fi shows where gee, whoda thought it, Avon is really a hermaphrodite alien capable of having Blake's baby. Failing which, we do Dead Girlfriend Syndrome (any slash hero's wife or girlfriend is likely to get hit by a car or to die of a brain tumor so the slash hero's buddy can then comfort him) + She Left A Baby, so you can watch Starsky and Hutch change diapers. Cuuute. Or we do Never Explain, Never Apologize. Mulder gets pregnant and has a baby. End of story.

c) The quickie: A is catatonic with grief. B revives him with rape. A realizes B loves him and decides to live.

   Well, if we can do it, so can the Japanese. Their version of By the Numbers is, as ever, shorter than ours. Ok, here's a useful word stolen from the English lit guys: topos (plural topoi. Because it's Greek, if you have to know.) A topos is like a theme but more concrete. Themes are abstract: the theme of intergenerational conflict, the theme of the absent father. Topoi are the actual details that occur again and again as artists explore a theme. So in a) above, the theme is of mutual approachment. The topos is of two snowbound guys taking their clothes off.
   Because djs are a visual form, they're all topoi and the topoi are in your face. It takes time to realize 'I've read this before' but only a second to think 'I've seen this before oh geez not again.' Often the BTN topos takes the form of a single 'cut', a picture separate from any story. But the same thing happens as in slash. There's a topos that's applied indiscriminately to characters, regardless of series or psychology, because somehow the djkas feel this need to draw their charas in this way

   And the all time winner of the By the Numbers topos is (flourish of trumpets):

The Sailor-fuku.

   OK, let's move quickly through this unsavoury aspect of the Japanese mentality. To Japanese men the sailor uniform is what nuns' habits are to western guys: symbols of virginal innocence demanding to be ravished. The djka aren't men, so the gestalt may be a little different. I'm guessing it's the absurdity of guys in the uniform of young girls that does it, though I'm sure there's a background idea of innocence and dawning sexuality to it as well. The sailor-fuku topos is complicated by the enormous
popularity of

Sailor Moon-fuku

   Here we're in a slightly different ballgame. It's actually a quite respectable one called aniparo- animation parody. Aniparo was the original form of dj, and a lot of it involved taking characters from one series and either a) turning them into characters in another series or classic work: so that the Seiya guys become Monkey and his friends from the Chinese classic The Journey to the West or, to do it in western terms, Koji and Izumi are presented as those two from Titanic, standing on the prow to lyrics by Celine Dion. Or b) you draw your characters in the style of the other series, especially if it's very different from your own. Back when Hokuto no Ken was the last big anime influence, characters as diverse as Rose of Versailles and Papuwa were drawn in its steroid-bloated black-ink style. Hence Koji is still Koji and still slashing bits off himself, but he's drawn in the style of Pokemon. And sometimes c) it's both. Hence we have mountains of You-name-it drawn as Sailor Moon, with gloves and jewels, going 'Tsuki ni kawatte, oshioki yo!'

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