Thanks for that comprehensive answer! Unfortunately it really is difficult to avoid being âproblematicâ with the vocabulary. As I was writing the question I was like âhm maybe feminine and masculine are not the best wordsâ but it gets so difficult to get your point across. Thanks for the arca quote too, it was very helpful to better understand her work and vision. I specifically mentioned prada because she goes from slow soft âtraditionally feminineâ vocals to hard-hitting aggressive lower âtraditionally masculineâ vocals while singing about being the top in that encounter, which really seems like a statement like âIâm a trans woman and I can top and be a tomboy and change my voice etcâ. Sheâs such a great artist
Yes, a great artist and a brave person. I canât wait to see what her next album will be, pretty sure it will defy our expectations :) I might be repeating myself - her art is very personal so it will reflect who she is and what she wants now, which is different from the arca of kick which was different from the arca of self-titled etc. I do appreciate as you say that she is using her voice (natural or exaggerated through effects) to represent the different possible âselvesâ and the choice that we have in any situation to manifest one or the others. This kind of fluidity is not easy to achieve. Her most recent non-musical work (aka the photo shoots, the catwalks) has been following the âdollâ script. I wonder if that will continue to be her comfortable space as an artist as well. I am not commenting on Alejandra Ghersi, Arca as a person not a persona, I want that to be clear; of course she should pursue whatever she thinks is a condition for her happiness. But, I still have a soft spot for the past Arca of the âbothâ and âin-betweenâ.
I love your takes on arca and in gender/transition in general. What do you think about songs like prada where arca seems to assume both a very delicate feminine and dominant masculine approach to sexuality? Iâve seen reviews talking about how thatâs arca challenging the views of femininity especially for a trans woman and I was curious to know what you make of it
Dear Anonymous,
First - I'm glad you find something interesting in what I wrote about Arca. I am a recent fan and still in the grips of a very powerful crush :)
Second - why are you asking such a hard question? :) I tried to answer it concisely a couple of times and didn't succeed. So please be patient with me for a bit longer, or send me a direct message for a more fluid conversation.
For now, here is a partial answer:
There's an Arca interview that I keep going to: buttmagazine.com/interviews/arca-2 (August 31 2022). Short quote: "I'm continuing to explore the question of what my womanhood looks like, and how to convey it without it becoming a caricature. [...] It's been a slow process of not wanting to renounce any extreme. Tomboy mode is as important to me as being able to get dolled up. I don't want to replace one script with another script. [...] I'm constantly asking myself certain questions that never go away. The answers change over time." There's a lot to unpack in the interview, and I'd love to return to it in a longer post.
I'd give away years off my life if we could just stop using the words 'feminity' and 'masculinity'. Do you remember Mary Poppins' nanny bag in which everything and anything can fit? This is how I see these words. We stuff in them neat collections of concepts/adjectives ("delicate", "dominant"....), forgetting that their contents is time/culture dependent, and that it is not a given - we choose what is put there, and we don't necessarily agree what fits best in each of them. I'd love to hear from you what is in your bags.
On the shelves of my physical home there is a great number of blank journals. Different sizes, papers, and intended uses. They are blank because I suffer from choice paralysis: "ah, I've been churning this thought / image / emotion for a while now, it's time to get it out of my head. But where should it go? This notebook is the place for quick sketches, and this one for very private matters, and this for stuff that i think it's interesting enough to share with others..." It doesn't take long for the scrutiny necessary for proper categorization to block any emerging expression.
After keeping my digital footprint to a minimum for years, I now have a rapidly increasing number of social media accounts due to an absurd but powerful crush on an artist. The challenge of matching content to medium has thus increased. As an additional difficulty, whereas I know my papers, I'm not familiar with the norms for the different platforms. Is it obnoxious to post a very personal reflection on Tumblr, and expect someone, anyone, to react and engage? I have no clue - I guess I'll find out!
So here it is, the stuff I wanted to say, and someone to hear.
Not long ago, I was able to put a label on a feeling of unhappiness that has been bugging me for almost a year: envy.
Without anything momentous happening, I've had a gradual realization of how very average I am in my abilities and my aspirations. Not that it should have come as a surprise, since I'm well into adulthood without having achieved much; but I must have held the belief that accomplishments are not the full picture of a person, since at some deep level I felt myself to be a special treasure. I was aware of my limitations, but managed to successfully ignore them by carving out a smaller space for myself inside them, so that they didn't bother me. An easy example: as someone with poor hand-eye coordination I'm terrible at playing ping-pong; however this was never an issue, because I don't care about being a ping-pong champion.
As it turns out, I do care about a lot of other things: publishing critically acclaimed books, enjoying the freedom of travel, meeting new people, making stuff that others are interested in, being eye-catching, having sexual magnetism, speaking and reading five ancient languages and another five modern ones, .../../.. etc. etc. It's quite a long list! And if these things didn't happen, it's not because life simply took me in a different direction; it really is because _I_ don't have what it takes. Not enough smarts/talent/courage/persistence. But other people do: on the scales that I care about, they are better than me. And seeing that truth hurt.
I could not whisk my disappointment away by becoming the fox who tells herself that the grapes she cannot reach are sour -- after all, I wanted the grapes in the first place because I was convinced they were sweet. I also could not find comfort through that one super-special valuable trait that belongs to a lucky few including me and compensates for everything else that's lacking -- I simply don't have such a thing.
For a while I just stewed in the amorphous bitterness of my chopped up self-image, until, eventually, some primordial instinct of self-preservation shook awake and mutated that mess of feelings into an emotion I could recognize and name: envy.
I was happy to discover that because envy has an antidote, equanimity: living by the truth that at some fundamental level - which perhaps is culture/belief/worldview dependent - all human beings are the same.
I struggle to define what this "same" should be. At first I was seeking to find the "correct definition", one which would be universally agreed on. Then I started to think that it does not really matter if someone disagrees with me on what makes a human a human. I don't need to convince anyone else. I just need to find whatever medicine works for me. And for me, right now, what makes all humans the same is that we all die, and at some point in our life we all feel the fear of death; we all have to breathe, to drink, to eat, to move; we seek companionship, purpose, praise; we feel lust, loneliness, envy, pride. This list is really very long too! Which is a good thing, because practicing equanimity is hard, and at different times different thoughts will make it easier.
It would be nice if one could escape once and for all the hell of a strong emotion: get out, and lock the gates behind. Alas. I still have moments of torture when a vise tightens around my heart until all that remains is self-loathing; but also, thankfully, moments of peace, when I can sincerely admire other people's accomplishments knowing that I will not be able to do what they do, no matter how deeply I desire it. I just have to keep practicing; as long as I have the medicine for what ails me, it would be a bit silly to complain about having to continue taking it.
when was that Arca's photo taken? I had never seen it but it looks quite early in her transition as her face is completely different now after the surgeries. What an interesting photo and post
August 27, 2020. https://www.glamcult.com/articles/in-conversation-with-arca/
I might compile a chronological list of interviews/pictures if I donât find one. Thereâs some very dedicated archivists out there! r/arcamusic has an awesome master post on all the music.
I really like the photographs from this stage of the transition. Theyâre seductive, and challenging in the best sense of the term.
PS: thank you for the ask! grateful you found this post interesting, as I was considering deleting it :)
As far as Iâm concerned, this [see under the cut] remains the most subversive and rich in meaning picture of a non-binary Arca. The amount of electricity it sends through me comes close to being harmful. However much posing and setup was involved, somehow in Leo Adefâs final photograph I see a direct, spontaneous confrontation emerging from graceful beauty.
Thereâs so much dynamism in the pose, in the formal balance of long curves and sharp angles, in the way the coy side view hides the back while revealing a shadowed front (really the only time Iâve seen a pic of Arcaâs *that*), and then twists the torso in a transition to the full frontal gaze. One nipple is profiled in explicit glory and the other partly hidden by the arm guiding you upwards towards lewd fingers in a position Iâve seen a hundred times in boysâ love manga stretching an anus not a mouth.
All the parts emblematic of male and female sexuality are brought together in a queer gesture, so direct and unapologetic. Iâm crushing so hard.
One of the occasions when I strongly feel like my opinion is at odds with other peopleâs is when Doumekiâs jealousy comes to the surface. I am not sure if maybe this is a result of how unacquainted I am with romance literature or portrayals in media of romantic relationships, heterosexual ones mostly, since I have always been very impatient with those tropes. And thatâs maybe what it is, that many readers of Saezuru are more comfortable or acquainted with straight romances and are used to read jealousy or possessiveness from the male partner as a sign of interest and proof of affection or love. I canât take it like that tho, personally, honestly I canât see a man being jealous of his partner or potential partner as a positive. Jealousy is a sign of insecurity for me and men being insecure? Potentially bad news, my alarm bells are going off and I donât get any enjoyment from that part of the story. So is Yoneda Kou using Doumekiâs jealousy uncritically and just as a romantic motif?
Again what Yoneda-sensei did with the yakuza plot in the first half of Saezuru is very interesting to me, because within the whole Hirataâs debacle jealousy was a very central theme. Yashiroâs thoughts about the relationships between men in the yakuza are also quite revealing, and he tends to think about those men as behaving in their relationships like they would in romantic situations. The first we see of one of Hirataâs passive aggressive behaviors towards Yashiro, he is taking his wakagashira to a function at the Matsuhara groupâs place. That place is tied to a period of Yashiroâs life when he was completely adrift, those arenât good memories, here is Yashiroâs unreliability again in revisiting the past and always downplaying it or seeing it in the lighter way possible. In this case, being in a room full of men, yakuza men, those types of violent and ruthless men tied together by either exclusion from normal society, or money interests and money debts, or complicated emotions under the surface waiting to shift the uneasy balance, Yashiro is thinking of them and of their dynamics in homo erotic terms. The fantasies that he has here, in my opinion, surge from anxiety, as part of his normal coping mechanisms and part of the pattern where he is being fucked all the time and the best he can hope for is to enjoy it or find some form of empowerment in it. When Misumi comes in and sits beside him and not at the front of the room, where his place should be, and Hirata and the others notice, Yashiro is uneasy about it, like he was when Doumeki reported what was being said at the other office by the manager Kirishima (the one in charge of collecting money from debtors and that hired Doumeki in the first place). Yashiro interrogates Kirishima only about those rumors that could potentially become a threat due to jealousy and resentment in a highly hierarchical environment.
Yashiro correctly understands that a manâs jealousy is an open door for trouble. Hirata is keeping track of his movements and of his interactions with Misumi. Rumors are spread widely across the group, but again it is more troubling that these rumors involve Misumi now that a succession process is underway in the Doushinkai. Sexual relationships between men in the yakuza canât have a legitimate place because of this fear of a perceived unfair competition and advantage, because a sexual relationship has the power to potentially build intimacy and trust in a way that isnât like any other (thatâs the primary function of sex in a marriage, and that is a unique type of relationship protected by several laws and where the bond is considered so strong that each party is exonerated from having to report confidential information exchanged between them to any other authority). That is why men in these environments tend to prefer a very strong unbalance of power in sexual relationships and to keep women separated from their business relationships. Hirata breaks many rules considered fundamental in the yakuza, having betrayed a sworn brother (Kurobane) and having ordered the killing of a sworn son (Yashiro) and remarkably letting his men use sexual violence to gain information from Ryuuzakiâs girlfriend. In the yakuza all those things are strictly forbidden, and the need for protection of the membersâ women is another sign of the place these women have in this world, a position of inherent weakness where no one expects them to stand on their own and where they have no power.
While Yashiro correctly perceives jealousy as a threat, he also shows a certain disappointment when Doumeki denies that he is angry after discovering his relationship with Ryuuzaki. Yashiro shows many contradictory behaviors, signs of his decision to hide himself and his vulnerability. But he has been effected by the way Doumeki keeps looking at him and the possibility that maybe this person might care. On the other hand, Doumeki is alerted early on to the fact that showing his true feelings now that he regained potency (remarkably by watching Yashiro while recounting his time with the nurse) is potentially going to cost him his position as Yashiroâs bodyguard. From this moment on Doumeki is misguided by this insecurity. After the reunion, Doumeki discovers that Yashiro is in contact with Inami and he is taken by anger and jealousy, and he is misguided once again by those emotions.
Yashiroâs feelings towards Izumi are so complex that we canât really conclude if he is jealous or not, only that he is suffering, and that he canât quite manage to picture himself beside Doumeki. Both scenes played between the entryway of his building and the elevator have shown a Yashiro yearning for Doumeki, a Yashiro who doesnât want to let him go. These scenes happen before he witnesses Doumeki and Izumi together. Yashiro really struggles with this new and assertive Doumeki, a full yakuza now. He entertains the desire to be chosen, but he feels like that is probably no longer a possibility if his competitors are women.
I do understand what Doumeki wants and why he keeps pushing Yashiro. Doumeki wants him to admit out loud what is it that he really wants: whether the truth has always been the same and Yashiro hasnât changed - he canât have a normal relationship, he likes to be treated roughly, gentle sex makes him nauseous and so on - or whether he has been lying all along - he might have wanted to be embraced by Doumeki and treated gently, since that time in the bathtub when Doumeki asked for the first time, he ultimately wanted what happened between them at Doumekiâs house and he still wants it. Why Doumeki has to torture this information out of Yashiro is what I have a problem with. Doumeki senses that Yashiro is lying, but canât be sure. He wants the truth, but he never quite understands in the first place why Yashiro is lying, why the mask was there in the first place. He hasnât asked the right questions yet, in my opinion, since the very start. And I believe that Yoneda has been very consistent in showing the readers that Doumeki is misguided. Does it matters that he cares for Yashiro, that he loves him if he acts like that? Is jealousy a good sign? Yashiro knows that the person closer to you has the power to really hurt you. Other people donât have the power to hurt Yashiro in any way that matters to him, even if they beat him, or rape him again, even if they kill him, they would do him a favor. But the ones he let close to his heart have suddenly all the power. Yashiro is a liar because lying is tied to his survival instinct and Yashiroâs survival instinct is tied not to the preservation of his own life, but of his sense of self. This is trauma at its most deep level, something I always thought Doumeki, like most people for that matter, never has been fully equipped to understand. Which is completely normal, but it is all the more important that people become aware of how important are boundaries and dialogue. And those are the areas where Doumeki is a dog with a bone, or more of a policeman with a suspect than a sympathetic character or a younger man blinded by love or infatuation. As I said in a previous analysis, I truly believe that Yoneda is so clever that it is actually an intentional subtext that Doumekiâs motivations arenât all about selflessness. That he needs to prove to himself that he didnât rape Yashiro back then, because he himself isnât so sure about it.
Replying here so that I have more space to elaborate on this. I completely understand your feelings about the abundance of sex scenes that can be a characteristic of bl manga: people are expecting them, even complaining when the story takes its time to develop a believable world building and a plot, what an outrageous thing to do! When a story becomes popular then a lot of people will start to pay attention and have something to say, but I think there are many different nuanced approaches and people having varying expectations and being invested to different degrees.
From my perspective, Yoneda has an unique sensibility. There is the hot read you can do, as soon as a chapter is out, that will have your immediate reactions and all the good or bad or conflicting emotions that a sex scene can evoke in us. I usually go through a stage of repulsion. You see, I identify a lot with Yashiro. Sex is a place of trauma but not a taboo for me too, so I have my contradictions. My peers, society, they say that sex is a wonderful place full of pleasure and love, but my earliest memories and experience warned me of other ugly, scary and unpleasant things. But in Saezuru there is much more than âsex with feelingsâ.
The care Yoneda puts into this manga is priceless for me. The subtle expressions, as we were saying, the masterful use of shading to bring out emotions so beautifully. There is a second read you can do, a colder one, when you think about the scenes and the progression. These characters are driving the story more than any genre conventions. These two characters donât understand each other, they had very different fears and expectations. The manga plays into their sexual attraction but also doesnât let making love be the solution, as we see how the sex caused more conflict. But also, Yashiro, especially, but Doumeki too, they had to confront themselves with things they were not ready to face. Doumeki to me is more close to a younger reader: he thought by falling in love and giving himself fully to another person he could escape his past and lack of direction after being severely disappointed by life. But Yashiro couldnât possibly carry both of them towards some sort of happiness. At the start of chapter 27 we see this: Yashiro being re-traumatized and also be the one to console Doumeki, by putting his hand on his cheek and trying to reassure him. And I completely understood that the best thing to do was leaving.
Frankly, I am glad that other readers, especially younger readers are taking this story in a less complicated way and taking it romantically. Missing the deeper details related to a type of trauma I donât wish for anyone else. This manga is still saying them that yes love can motivate you greatly into facing your own unresolved issues, but you need to work on yourself. And maybe you wonât be on the same page with the other person. You take your time.
In the previous chapters since their reunion and when they had sex in Doumekiâs apartment, Yashiro kept having intrusive thoughts about Doumeki and a woman, an imaginary one first and Izumi after he met her. This is another compelling element that clearly states âhere is your sex sceneâ but also âhere is a character confronting all the unsolved issues he carriesâ. [By the way, understanding what Yashiro is facing here is very interesting and engaging to me].
I donât think you can say that this is exactly playing out uncritically the idea of romantic love. Gratuitous sex scenes are everywhere in bl manga, even crazy set ups for characters to have sex in the first chapter (or you wonât have enough readers to publish). But Yoneda managed to find the perfect balance for me. How these characters act and think is pretty believable to me. And that she has this sensibility and also those skills in storytelling and building a scene is so special and fortunate to have. Yes, we donât know how the story will end, but I am trusting this particular author and I donât really trust people easily lol I only hope she doesnât grow tired on gets pressured into rushing to the end. But the recognition that Saezuru continues to have should help her stay faithful.
We can get weirdly hang up on genres. Manga for girls, bl manga, they only tell you the intended readers (for commercial purposes) but not if it will be actual romance or how the story will be. As I previously commented, Yoneda to me is more realistic, and with that I mean realism as a genre different from romance. And thatâs why the world building and the yakuza plot are very important to the story too. Sorry if I couldnât keep my answer short but I took the opportunity to praise Yoneda-sensei a little more.
@swallowerofdharma let me continue this conversation for a bit longer :)
A Greek philosopher* once said that you can only determine whether you've had a happy life on your deathbed; similarly, there is a lovely wisdom story in the Chinese tradition that builds a sequence of "good" and "bad" outcomes all starting from the same event, with the same implied moral that you cannot really put a value judgement on something until the very end:
A man lost his horse on the mountain - what a misfortune, said his friends. The next day his horse came back with a mare - what good luck, said his friends. The man's son rode the mare and broke his leg - terrible! if only the horse had never found her! But then the emperor's envoys conscripted all able-bodied young men in the village, while the lame son was allowed to stay - what good fortune...
... and so the story goes on for as long as the storyteller's skill can stretch it.
I wish I had the fortitude to quit reading Saezuru until it is completed, because the serialization is skewing how I react to and interpret the story. I'd like to add another measurement mark to your reading scale: hot, cold, and 'freezing cold'. If the 'colder' engagement you describe so eloquently is one where the reader has emerged from the fictional world and can see the story as a work of art to be appreciated as such - for the skill with which it is put together, the technique used to create different effects, the way in which it compares with other works of its kind, etc. - the 'freezing cold' state is one where the reader becomes so detached emotionally from the fictional world of the work that they can no longer enter it; the work does not affect them anymore, and, in consequence, any interpretation they are now capable of becomes miserly and narrow.
For all that Yoneda Kou deserves all our praise as an 'auteur' (I don't mean it sarcastically, somehow I think the French captures the meaning better that 'author'), there is an undeniably commercial element to the serialization itself and the promotion of each chapter on twitter. I'm pretty sure that Yoneda Kou did not compromise her artistic vision because her editor commented "there isn't enough heat in this chapter, how about you draw Doumeki without clothes for a change?" - I put my trust in her just like you did :) But I am a lot more cynical about the choice of panels for the sneak peak, or the choice about whether to publish something every 2 months or skip an issue and present a longer chapter that articulates a full movement from the symphony that is this story. And I find that the way I perceive the context of the work, its presentation, pushes me in the 'freezing cold' zone.
Off the soapbox now! I was spoiled to discover this manga last year and be able to read in one sitting up to chapter 52. It was an intense experience that moved me to seek a community for dialogue - I felt that there is so much meaning in this work that I don't fully grasp. That feeling has not changed, though I have postponed trying to understand before the story ends.
*with the power of the internet, identified to be Herodotus in the story of Cresus and Solon
Many sharp and insightful posters in this Saezuru fandom have commented over the years on how Yoneda Kou spins around BL conventions to create something that ultimately transcends the genre.
I could not agree more - and yet, I've been thinking whether there remains, nevertheless, some sacred boundary that cannot be crossed.
Love that just peters out, I'd hazard a guess, is firmly out. A main character's falling out of love seems to happen in the BL canon only when there is someone else around with whom to fall into even deeper love.
I haven't encountered yet in this fandom the speculation that perhaps Doumeki has fallen out of love with Yashiro in the four years that they have been apart. What if the passionate scenes between our idolized yakuza boys, rather than being proof of Doumeki's unchanged feelings, represent D's meticulous revenge plan of rejecting Yashiro after getting him to fall in love head over heels? After all, Saezuru tells us over and over again through Yashiro's character that sex does not equal love; maybe Doumeki is simply having really good sex with Yashiro rather than making love to him. I wouldn't be able to tell just from what we are shown.
But at the end of the day, it would make me rather sad to see the trope of undying love subverted in Saezuru. I'm ok with love remaining unrequited, with it finding another target, with there being a tragic Romeo & Juliet ending, but for it to have died of old age or withered away due to neglect? Too close to real life for comfort...
A breaking curse manifested during the past several weeks at our house. Beloved cups, bowls and plates slipped out of hands, mysteriously knocked against each other in the drying rack. More than once, we fished around in the garbage can for remains that were prematurely dismissed and superglued them back together. Our aspirations were modest: bring back âmanyâ into âoneâ. We didnât attempt repairs that could have made the object more beautiful than before it broke.
But I do have that ambition for one particular repair. I started thinking about ârelationship kintsugiâ when I realized that the bond I had with someone very dear to me had broken. I wanted neither to discard the pieces, nor to fix things as if nothing hurtful had ever happened. I longed for a repair with gold dust, slowly, carefully, lovingly made, unashamed of keeping visible a painful history.
I cannot wait to see how Yoneda Kou sensei, mistress of the universe, will perform kintsugi for Yashiro and Doumekiâs relationship.
If you or someone you know has been following Saezuruâs serialization since the beginning of itâs publication, please write to me so I can ask how you kept your heart from crumbling into pieces over 10 plus years of pure exquisite teasing torture.
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