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Tweak says, "Wuddup?"

dejadrew (dejadrew) wrote in scans_daily,
@ 2009-04-12 22:07:00

Entry tags:

creator: fumi yoshinaga, medium: manga, theme: homosexuality, title: antique bakery

Amazon-fail and Yoshinaga-win within.
As many of you already know and are rightfully and righteously freaking out over, Amazon.com has started de-listing books with GLBT content from the Amazon rank sales charts. (Google-bombs away!)

Upon hearing this, with a sinking feeling, I started surfing Amazon's selection of graphic novels, and yup, they appear to have de-listed one of my favourite shounen-ai manga, featured below the cut.

"Oh, Miss Ito, you've got some cream on you..."

Yep, Sherlock Holmes he ain't. But that's no reason to drop his book from the charts. Bastards.

The truly WEIRD thing is, many of the same creator's less popular but far more explicit works are still in the rankings. Antique Bakery is actually more of a slice-of-life drama/comedy than a pure yaoi. The drawings of the cakes are more pornographic than any of the sex scenes. Seriously. I think I gained like twelve pounds just reading the damn thing.

(Post a new comment)

	mullon 2009-04-13 12:04 am UTC (link)
	Weird, I wonder what would provoke such a policy change. I would feel a bit better if I saw a more official news source report this, though. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	dejadrew 2009-04-13 12:20 am UTC (link)
	More official news sources: The Washington Post and the L.A. Times. Amazon is calling it a glitch. A very, very specific glitch. Which they already previously identified to the authors of the books in question as a new policy to remove "adult content" from bestseller lists and some searches. But yeah, TOTALLY a glitch. Really. Honest. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	mullon 2009-04-13 11:30 am UTC (link)
	The sad thing is that I don't think this is going to affect their sales that much. I mean, where else is anyone going to go? (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	filbypott 2009-04-13 03:52 pm UTC (link)
	barnesandnoble.com? (Reply to this) (Parent)

bluefall
2009-04-13 12:42 am UTC (link)

It's kind of astounding to me that a web-based company, a corporation born and raised on the internet, thought that it could get away with this.

This page you've scanned highlights one of the most interesting problems in the translation game to me, and the reason I prefer subs to dubs - what do you do when you go from a language with a complicated formal/informal system to a language that has none? Russian names and Japanese titles are two of the most nuanced and difficult to get across, and even the best attempts always seem to stick out a bit to me.

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kamino_neko
2009-04-13 06:37 am UTC (link)

This page you've scanned highlights one of the most interesting problems in the translation game to me, and the reason I prefer subs to dubs - what do you do when you go from a language with a complicated formal/informal system to a language that has none? Russian names and Japanese titles are two of the most nuanced and difficult to get across, and even the best attempts always seem to stick out a bit to me.

And to tie this back into the LGBT thing - try translating something about a character whose gender is obscured, or otherwise ambiguous from Japanese, and see how screwy the resulting translation gets. (Does anyone know of another language that makes this as easy as Japanese does?)

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	dejadrew 2009-04-13 09:18 am UTC (link)
	I think I read that some First Nations (North American Aboriginal) languages have gender neutral terms and pronouns. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	gwalla.livejournal.com 2009-04-13 01:01 pm UTC (link)
	AIUI lots of languages do not use gendered pronouns. Noun class systems based almost entirely around gender are a very Indo-European feature. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	suzene 2009-04-13 01:32 am UTC (link)
	And yet 'Valley of Horses', half of which is about a super-model cro-magnon and his epic quest to find a woman who can take in every inch of his enormous dong, still has a sales rank. Bad form, Amazon. I hope this stings. (Reply to this) (Thread)

balbaroy
2009-04-13 02:21 am UTC (link)

My favorite part was in Clan of the Cave Bear (I think,) where Jean Auel took a page and a half to describe the ***SPOILERS FOR, Y'KNOW, YOUR APPETITE*** lichen-covered, S-shaped member of a wooly mammoth.

It was required reading in my sixth grade English class, though I'd already read it two years prior. Reading it on my own was fine, because I was being mature and transgressive! Reading it again for school was kinda creepy.

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	suzene 2009-04-13 02:56 am UTC (link)
	I'm not sure that was in Clan, because from what I remember of that scene, it was Canon Sue and Dongdalar watching the mammoths rutting and getting off on it. Of course, this is Jean Auel. It's entirely possible that several such passages are scattered throughout the series and OHGODWHYDIDIREADTHOSEBOOKS?! (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	lieut_kettch 2009-04-13 05:38 am UTC (link)
	Musth (heh) have been The Mammoth Hunters/I>. Also, Dongdalar? Nice. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	suzene 2009-04-13 03:41 pm UTC (link)
	Thanks. I'm almost certain I picked that one up from 'Smart Bitches, Trashy Books'. (Reply to this) (Parent)

bluefall
2009-04-13 10:59 am UTC (link)

Heh. The first book was pretty sane and appealed to my incredibly unsophisticated inner proto-feminist when she read it for school, which is why I read the second one. Which was the very first erotica (I use the word loosely, but still I use it) slowly-blooming little thirteen-year-old-me had ever seen, which is why I read the rest of them. Sex! In detail! That had an emotional component and which the participants enjoyed! They weren't even filed in the romance section of the library, it was totally safe to check them out! Nobody knew!

Which in retrospect should probably make me embarrassed or something but mostly it just makes me really sad for my culture, that fucking Jean Auel was pretty much the full extent of what was available or offered to me at thirteen to explore or explain my sexuality beyond "sex is how disease is spread and babies are made, so don't do it." I feel kind of robbed, and profoundly thankful that I discovered fanfic soon after.

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besamim
2009-04-13 05:31 am UTC (link)

A "glitch" that just happens to disproportionately target LGBT works. Uh huh.

It seems Amazon is taking lessons from the Canada Border Services Agency, which has for many years been notorious for disproportionately confiscating gay/lesbian erotica as "obscene" while allowing most straight erotica through. (Although to be fair, Lost Girls, which IIRC mostly depicts hetero situations, got delayed at our border for some time due to its rather hardcore nature.)

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	mizuno_youko 2009-04-13 07:19 am UTC (link)
	What a cute scene! Thank you for posting it. (Reply to this)

	morgana006 2009-04-13 07:28 am UTC (link)
	Aw, that was adorable. (Reply to this)

	mechanicaljewel.livejournal.com 2009-04-13 07:57 am UTC (link)
	Strangers in Paradise lost its ranking to. Amazon, you suck. (Reply to this)

	I don't get it? proteus_lives 2009-04-13 02:03 pm UTC (link)
	Why would Amazon take them off? Do they think GLBT people don't read books? Political pressure? (Reply to this) (Thread)

in a nutshell: people are stupid. Particularly about sex.

bluefall
2009-04-13 07:24 pm UTC (link)

Looks like a couple things are going on. There's the whole "please be my mommy cause I can't do it myself" bullshit, wherein someone at Amazon decided it would be a spiffy idea to implement a SafeSearch feature so nobody ever has to be bothered by accidentally being reminded that sex exists while looking for some other type of story ever again, thereby ghettoizing any book that has anything to do with sex into the virtual equivalent of a back room behind the counter. Hence, in order to, say, find a book on how to have a sex life as a disabled person, you'd have to know the title and author of the book already and specially request it.

Then there's the old conflation of "queer" with "sex," such that something like Heather has two Mommies or the memoirs of a transman or an academic consideration of the political and military ramifications of DADT are automatically interpreted as the equivalent of hardcore porn, because of course if it's about gay it must be about sex.

Hence why the YA and academic GLBTQ world has been the most glaring victim, but any number of other stories have also been ghettoized (from feminist lit to self-help and erotica).

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	Re: in a nutshell: people are stupid. Particularly about sex. proteus_lives 2009-04-13 11:38 pm UTC (link)
	Well, that's just silly. I fucking hate nanny-ism. Treating people like children does not fly with me. It's the cousin of censorship. Then there's the old conflation of "queer" with "sex," That is so fucking high school. People seriously to grow up when it comes to sex in general and GLBTQ issues. (On a sidenote, people should put that on a belt buckle. Like TCB.) (Reply to this) (Parent)

	Doubleyew. Tee. Eff. freeman333 2009-04-14 01:28 am UTC (link)
	Fucking fail, Amazon. Anyone who is interested can sign this petition, asking Amazon to offer a better explanation of just doubleyew-tee-eff is going on here. http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/in-protest-at-amazons-new-adult-policy (Also, this manga is adorable. Want!) (Reply to this)