Protocols

[larryhammer]

Short shameful confession: I do not think of All's Well That Ends Well, Troilus and Cressida, and Measure for Measure as comedies -- they're problem plays, on the same lines as problem novels in YA. This analogy won't survive critical scrutiny, but thus my brain works.

For my next trick, I will assert that Shakespeare's sonnets are not a Petrarchan sonnet sequence but a problem sonnet sequence.

---

There's a type of manga that bemuses me when I stumble upon it. It's not a genre -- these seem to cross all genres. I've no better name for it but didactic manga -- seeming to exist to instruct, with story and fanservice and soap-opera-y bits tossed in to keep you reading on to the next nugget of information. Or maybe the audience just wants to learn how to cook curries (a recipe in every chapter!) or the mechanics of sex (set-up for that one's a couple married by arrangement who are both virgins -- the page of diagrams explaining how to remove a bra was especially amusing) and are skipping over the plot. Though not, I suspect, the fanservice.*

I've no doubt that somewhere out there are manga that teach automobile maintenance, or all about the natural history and hunting of whales. Uh, wait, that last's a those two are Western comic books and novel. Never mind.


* Random bits of titillation. Poorly motivated nudity and gratuitous panty-shots are especially common forms.

---L.

Comments

[marith.livejournal.com]

Where do you find all this instructional manga? It sounds fascinating. (Also a perfectly valid method of instruction. I wonder how common it is in educational design, and where, and if it's catching on here.)

[larryhammer]

Wandering scanlation sites, mostly. The curry one is translated as Addicted to Curry -- I actually liked the recipes there, but the treatment of the cook's obsessive peeping on his schoolgirl employer as a harmless irritation was too much to take. The newlywed sex manual, I met with the title untranslated, Futari Ecchi.

Some of the instructional designers in our company have been including light storylines in the courses, but the characters don't carry over from lesson to lesson.

---L.

[stevendj.livejournal.com]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Eisner#American_Visuals_Corporation

[larryhammer]

And we have a winner! In the auto maintenance department, anyway.

---L.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_twilight_/]

Bwahahaha!

[larryhammer]

Is that evil laughter I see upon my screen?

---L.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_twilight_/]

I don't know, if it's evil, but I'm laughing at the problems in your post. Erm, I mean comedy. ;)

Also, weird and messed up marketing of interest to those who read/write YA:

http://adage.com/article?article_id=110520

[larryhammer]

I saw that. "Are these real kids?" indeed.

There's probably a good YA novel to be had, in the story of being a kid who helps create viral marketing content.

---L.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_twilight_/]

I really liked So Yesterday! ;)

[larryhammer]

Which I still haven't read, darn it.

Maybe I should have written, "another good YA novel."

---L.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_twilight_/]

It was pretty fun. :) I finally read Peeps, which I've since suggested to others.

[larryhammer]

A sequel to Peeps is supposedly due out Any Day Now. I'm not quite sure how one would sequel it, but that's why I'm not Westerfeld.

---L.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_twilight_/]

What I like most about his writing is that he takes it in directions that you'd think someone wouldn't do, but he does and it works.

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

Indeed. You should write it. That could have strong crossover (sell to adults, or to older young adults anyway) possibilities! The issues of authenticity, identity, self, betrayal... thrown in cancer, sex, and a dead pet and you're a bestseller.

[larryhammer]

No no, the dead pet is if I want to make it a classic that kids are forced to read. The sex will do for bestsellerdom.

(I'm not sure what to make of the fact that I doubt the couple of my current project will get past kissing, though I've gotten some good gratuitous nudity in. Not to mention a wet nose in intimate places.)

---L.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_twilight_/]

"No no, the dead pet is if I want to make it a classic that kids are forced to read. The sex will do for bestsellerdom."

Bwahahaha! That line would work well in a YA book, if it isn't already in something I haven't read.

[larryhammer]

Eventually, I'll have a YA character who writes slashfic. She's never fit in any story yet, though.

---L.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_twilight_/]

That'd be entertaining.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

There's also the Army version, PS (https://www.logsa.army.mil/psmag/psonline.cfm). Started by Will Eisner in WW2, it's been directed by Joe Kubert lately.

That link may be suspect. It's supposed to go to the US Army, but I get a "we're suspicious of this link" message when I click it. The time I tried it, I got a PDF of the latest issue of PS (which is all about preventive maintenance, since I didn't say so up above). Caveat clickor.