Another post on Noir.

Last year I mentioned my revisiting of Noir, and then on Tumblr I went through it in Japanese with Subs for the first time.  I did all of it but either I forgot to post about the rest on Tumblr or forgot to Tag them.

One thing I forgot to talk about was how Noir anticipated not only my interest in Anime, but also my French Pulp Fiction fascination as well.  It was years after I already loved Noir that I first stumbled upon Paul Feval, and started reading articles on CoolFrenchComics.com

And the Les Habits Noirs lore with the emphasis on Corsica made me think of Noir, but so did the Secret Society themes in other works like those of Sue and Dumas.  And since CFC was talking about this stuff in the context of WoldNewtonUniverse style crossover speculation. I quickly developed a Headcanon that the Bouquets were descended from the Bozzo-Corona clan somehow.

Something else I want to comment on is how Noir is an interesting Anime to watch as a Christian, and I'm one who's views have changed over the years, but certain core points have not.  What I've become is a Universalist, the unchanging core is that God's Love is Unconditional.

Many times my fellow Evangelicals like Chuck Missler like to observe how The World often seems to understand the Problem, the Bad News, but is just lacking the Solution, the Good News, The Gospel, like this quote attributed to Socrates though I've yet to find it verified in a primary source.

"It may be that the Deity can forgive sins, but I do not see how."

The thing about Noir, and it may spoil it somewhat to say this, is that the original Soldats and Altena seem to to be well aware of the Problem, but are seeking a Solution that is totally twisted.  This aspect of Noir is I think a major part of why it appeals to me personally, though that was probably not the creators' intent.  But that is the nature of Art.

Update January 2025: Thing is as time is passed i no longer agree as much about defining what the Problem is.  Sin is a big factor, but principally The Gospel is about salvation from Death.

The Mysteries of Gotham

I obtained the other day a Hardcover copy I ordered of Denny O'Neil's novelization of Knightfall.  As I often do I skipped to read the afterward before the actual book, in this case it didn't spoil anything since I knew the story from the BBC Radio Drama, and got a glimpse of the actual Comics in Robin Flying Solo, from various reviews I've read these adaptations of the story are improvements, or at least more polished.

The afterward I'm assuming is also written by O'Neil since no one else is credited and it seems like what he'd say.  In it he suggests that the ability of a Bat like creature which used to be a symbol of evil to become a modern Hero perhaps has it's roots in how the way cities are viewed changed in the middle of the 19th Century.  Dickens is the literary reference he cited, but I feel that theory provides good context for my desire to talk about how the roots of Batman and the genres he traverses stem from Eugene Sue and his French peers.

It was in Les Mysteries de Paris (The Mysteries of Paris) that Eugene Sue pretty much invented the modern Urban Crime and Mystery genres.  But key pieces that came before were Balzac's Human Comedy, Vidocq's memoirs and Lamothe-Lagon's The Police Spy.

I'm hardly the first to compare the protagonist of Sue's novel to Bruce Wayne, an Aristocrat secretly fighting evil by night in the Streets.  Key factors of who Bruce Wayne is are missing of course, but still he could be described as the first Dark Knight.

One of the evidences of the Dick Tracey influence on the Golden Age Batman stories is the commonality of villains with hideous scared or deformed faces, often explained by an accident involving Acid or Chemicals, like The Joker and Two-Face.  Well that trope also begins in The Mysteries of Paris with le Maître d'École (The Schoolmaster) who intentionally scared his face with acid to conceal his identity.

That novel was a massive hit and thus naturally spawned a slew of imitators, the most obvious of which tended to be called "The Mysteries of _____".  Stephen Knight's book The Mysteries of The Cities: Urban Crime Fiction in The Nineteenth Century talks about many of them.  Not all will be specifically mentioned here.  And I will mention here some he didn't.

Alexandre Dumas The Count of Monte-Cristo began from an editorial mandate to create another Mysteries of Paris.  But the final product is not really street level enough to make that connection clear.  I'd guess the most Suesque novel Dumas wrote was probably The Mohicans of Paris.

There were two novels called The Mysteries of London.  One by an actual Englishman, George Reynolds, which was vital to kicking off the Penny dreadful craze.  And there was Paul Feval's Les Mysteries de Londres which actually began serialization sooner.  It was also an overlooked influence on tCoMC, and it had an abridged English Translation in about 1847/8.  And later Feval made it part of a shared universe with many other Crime novels he wrote, chiefly John Devil and The Blackcoats series.

But we also can't overlook Sue's own next project, The Wandering Jew, which was about equally as big a hit, and carried on some similar themes.  And later in the last couple novels of Sue's Les Mysteries du People saga he made them part of the same universe.

In the 1850s, Ponson Du Terril sought to emulate The Mysteries of Paris with his Les Drames de Paris series, which inevitably morphed into the Rocambole saga.  Rocambole was so influential a French literary term was named after him, Rocambolesque.

In John Devil, the character of Gregory Temple very much anticipates Sherlock Holmes, but the influence seems to have been indirect.  The key middle man was Emile Gaboriou who started out working for Feval, but then wrote many detective novels of his own.  Chiefly the Monsieur Lecoq series, Lecoq is cited by name in the first Holmes novel.  Nick Carter who was created in America about the same time as Holmes also has about the same roots.

All of these French novels and writers were an influence on later writers like Gaston Leroux (Cheri-Bibi, Phantom of The Opera and Rouletible), Maurice Leblanc (Arsene Lupin) and Marcel Allain & Pierre Souvestre (Fantomas).  And in turn on early silent serials like the Fantomas adaptations, Les Vampires, Judex and Belphagor ect.

On the Penny Dreadful connection.  One character who's existence is probably just a coincidence but still worth noting is The Human Bat.

The known and confirmed immediate artistic influences on Batman were 1, Superman who DC wanted a repeat of, 2, Kane being visually inspired by Silent films like The Bat, and The Man Who Laughs which was in turn an adaptation of one of Victor Hugo's later novels (Brian Stableford suggests that novel owes a slight debt to Paul Feval).  3. Bill Finger who actually wrote the stories was mainly drawing on Sherlock Holmes, Zorro, Dick Tracey, The Shadow and similar pulp character like The Spider, and perhaps a bit from hard boiled Detective novels like those of Hammett and Chandler.

Zorro's name being a Spanish word for Fox is further evidence to me his roots go back to Paul Feval's Le Loup Blanc, and it's prequel La Louve.  The former had three English translations in the mid 1800s all called The White Wolf.  Other swashbucklers Feval wrote that are similar and had English translations were Le Bossu and The Three Red Knights: or, The Brothers' Vengeance.  As well as Bel Demonio which even had an English Language stage play adaptation performed in London.

I agree with Rick Lai that the immediate roots of The Shadow lie chiefly in The Phantom of The Opera, Arsene Lupin, and Judex.

Let's talk about Batman's villains a bit.  Professor Hugo Strange actually appeared first of the recurring villains.  In his very first appearance he wasn't mainly a Mad Scientist which modern depictions focus on, he was explicitly a Professor Moriarty figure.  And Moriarty was inspired by criminals Lecoq faced and in turn by Feval villains.

I actually did a post about The French History of The Femme Fatale, in which I mentioned French predecessors for both Catwoman and Poison Ivy, chiefly Irma Vep of Les Vampires for the former.  Thing is however, Catwoman didn't wear a costume at all in her first appearance, the original Catwoman has been described as being like a female Arsene Lupin.  The Lupin novels themselves arguably more then once toyed with the idea of a female Lupin, as I also hinted at in the Femme Fatale post.

The Penguin has also been compared to Dick Tracey villains like Broadway Bates.  But I feel a key predecessor of The Penguin was Gutman from The Maltese Falcone, who looks more like The Penguin in the 1931 film version then he does in the more well known 1941 film. 

Batman and Superman have both changed a lot from how they were in the earliest of their Golden Age stories.  I personally think that's for the best with Batman yet lament it with Superman.  I certainly love all the expansions of and additions to the Superman mythology to come from later writers, but I feel a core piece of the soul of Siegel and Shuster's character has been lost.  Which is why I still feel the best Live Action Superman is George Reeves and the best Animated are the Fleischer Shorts, but even there what I'm referring to is already fading, The Champion of The Oppressed.

I think my justification for that different perspective is partly because Batman was a more blatantly derivative character.  Siegel and Shuster had to fight for years to get a publisher to take a chance on Superman, while Batman was the product of an editorial mandate to recreate the success of Superman, just like so many works made in the wake of The Mysteries of Paris.

Not to say Superman wasn't also influenced by earlier fiction/mythology.  Comparisons to Pulp adventurers like Doc Savage and the one Cracked.com accused Superman of ripping off are common.  And Siegel and Shuster's goal was partly to create a modern Samson but with an origin that was a SciFi version of Moses.  The connection to Samson in turn causes comparisons to other mythical strongmen from Herakles/Hercules to Machiste.  And the origin story I feel happens to resemble Sargon and Perseus more then Moses.

But the point is Superman was from the start clearly distinct from his literary ancestors, while Batman's distinctive characterization had to be developed by later writers.  Writers like Frank Robbins, Denny O'Neil, Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, Gerry Conway, Chuck Dickson, Jeph Leob, Greg Rouka and Gail Simone.  And while they're a mixed bag we can't overlook Frank Miller, Alan Moore and Grant Morrison.  And plenty of what's been done in other media was important too.

But of course it's not just the Golden Age writers who drew on earlier stories.  Later Batman writers first off drew on earlier Batman stories.  But also in the 70s there was a lot of James Bond influence, Ra's Al Ghul is a product of that.  And later Nolan cited James Bond influence for Batman Begins (which was also novelized by O'Neil), Heat and Clockwork Orange for The Dark Knight, and Joseph Campbell and Star Wars for TDKRises, and also A Tale of Two Cities, so Dickens was relevant after all.  But I feel the James Bond books themselves owe a debt to Batman, particularly the villain Goldfinger who has a very Penguin vibe to me, or at least based on the same earlier characters as The Penguin.

Jeph Leob's The Long Halloween was in Batman canon a simultaneous sequel to Miller's Year One and reworking of aspects of Eye of The Beholder.  But he was also drawing on The Godfather films, Raymond Chandler novels like The Long Goodbye which inspired the name, and Silence of The Lambs.  And Tim Burton shared Bob Kane's love of old German Expressionism Silent Films, thus we see plenty of Cabinet of Dr Caligari in Batman Returns.

And even those influences can still be traced back at least partly to these French Authors I'm seeking to draw more attention to.

I haven't read Gotham by Gaslight yet, but from the premise I'm already disappointed.  Things like using Jack The Ripper rather then normal Batman villains isn't what I want.  For starters I would like these 19th century literary roots of Batman to be looked at in how to adapt him for a period piece.  And then the fact that Teddy Roosevelt was once New York police Commissioner makes using him as inspiration for Gordon seem natural.

But also I saw Gangs of New York a few weeks ago, and it has some things in common with how I'd imagine a 19th Century Batman story.  Daniel Day Lewis character could make a good model for The Penguin, and Cameron Diaz for Catwoman, and Twede for Rupert Throne.

Years ago I saw a documentary on The History channel about Crime in Ancient Rome, the main host/narrator of the show seemed similar to me to Keith Scott from One Tree Hill, but I don't know if it was really the same actor.  That naturally got my mind spinning about how you could do Batman in Ancient Rome.  But now I'm well off the main subject of this post.

Prequels are a long established part of Genre Fiction

An ongoing thing that comes up in discussing the Star Wars Prequels are arguments against doing Prequels in general.  I already did a post on Why I Like Prequels.

What I want to talk about here is that they are not some inherently new gimmick devised by Hollywood executives who ran out of Sequel ideas.  They are just as much an established part of Literary tradition as Sequels are.

I could go on a long diversion about the ambiguities of applying modern terms like Sequel, Prequel and Reboot to ancient, medieval and renaissance literature, poetry and theater.  But I don't think that's necessary.

The Sequel in the sense of how we mean that in talking about modern Nerdy Genre Fiction was probably invented by Alexandre Dumas, as he and his French peers laid all the foundations of modern Popular Fiction.  He wrote sequels to many of his works but by no means all (he never did a follow up to The Count of Monte-Cristo).  But the ones that probably most mark the birth of the modern Popular Fiction Sequel would have to be his sequels to The Three Musketeers.  In fact you could even call the D'Artagnan Romances the first modern Trilogy.

The Three Musketeers novels are among other things literary ancestors of Star Wars.  The Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon style serials that inspired George Lucas, and the Pulp Fiction they were based on, were largely predicated on taking the tropes of the Swashbuckler genre codified by The Three Musketeers as well as Paul Feval and placing them IN SPACE.  Star Wars Rebels I feel was very much acknowledging this.

The Three Musketeers sequels are at least to the English speaking world not quite as popular and well known as the original.  But Dumas also wrote Prequels, and it was his Prequels that had a tendency to surpass their original.

Le Chevalier de Maison-Rouge was the first written but chronologically last of what are called the Marie Antoinette Romances.  It was successful and influential enough on it's own to be a direct inspiration for The Scarlet Pimpernel.  But the chronological first two books, Joseph Balsamo aka Memoirs of a Physician and The Queen's Necklace were a far bigger deal, as relatively unknown in English as everything of Dumas but his big two, but in the French World they have come to define the legacy of Count Cagliostro.  And like the Star Wars Prequels they were the story of a Villain more so then of a Hero, they played a vital role in creating the modern Super Villain, and I see much of Joseph Balsamo in Darth Sidious, (an argument can be made that Althotas is the prototype of the Tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise).

Also The Whites and the Blacks is a prequel to The Companions of Jehu.

Next in line is Eugene Sue.  His Les Mysteries du People series was his intended magnum opus.  The volume set during the original French Revolution, The Sword of Honor, became also a prequel to both Les Mysteries de Paris and The Wandering Jew, setting up the hero of the former and villain of the latter.  Then the next and last book of the series set during the 1848 Revolution, became a sequel to both said novels, creating perhaps the first Shared Universe.  So his main Prequel came before his main Sequel.

Paul Feval's first significant success was Le Loup Blanc (The White Wolf), which is arguably the first masked vigilante.  Later Feval wrote a prequel to that called La Louve (The She-Wolf), which is pretty indisputably the first female masked vigilante.  So that is a pretty important literary innovation that was done in a prequel, he retroactively made his Heroine predate his first Hero.

Later Feval wrote Salem Street and The Invisible Weapon to be Prequels to the main narratives of the original three novels of The Blackcoats saga.  However the continuity divergences make them more like an alternate continuity, or a different timeline created when Superboy Prime punched a wall.  The Invisible Weapon is generally considered the best Blackcoats novel, by modern fans at least.

Emile Gaboriau created in his 1866 novel L’Affaire Lerouge the character of Monsieur Lecoq, in this first novel he was a supporting character but he became the lead in later stories, he was a French Master detective who predated Sherlock Holmes.  In 1869 he wrote a prequel novel titled Monsieur Lecoq about his first major case.  This prequel quickly became the most successful of his novels, so much so that many think the reference to Lecoq in A Study in Scarlet was based on that novel alone.

The Holmes stories were not written in chronological order ultimately.  So much so that all four full novels are set before The Final Problem even though half were written later.  None are a prequel in the traditional sense since none give Holmes an Origin Story or set up any story-lines we'd already seen the ending of.  Still Hound of the Baskerviles tends to be labeled the best Holmes story, yet the reader knew even when it first came out that Watson will live to witness The Final Problem, so he was never truly in danger, according to traditional anti-Prequel logic.

The son of Paul Feval wrote a series of interquels to the D'Artangan saga, set between the first two novels.  Known as the In Between Years series. 

However with Arsene Lupin we again have a prequel origin story novel, La Comtesse de Cagliostro, that becomes possibly the most popular of all his adventures, it's the main basis of the 2004 movie and a superficial influence on the Lupin III Anime film Castle of Cagliostro.  And fittingly this novel's lore is largely derived from Alexandre Dumas' most important Prequels.  I highly recommend the English translation done by Jean-Marc & Randy Lofficer for Black Coat Press titled Arsene Lupin Vs Countess Cagliostro.

Other Lupin books written after WWI were also set before some of his earliest adventures, like The Damsel with the Green Eyes.  But in fact the first Lupin Prequel was The Crystal Stopper, written after 813 but set before his major Holmes crossovers.

Now applying the term to Tolkien's Legenderium can be controversial because the first age stories were what he began writing first just never published.   Regardless creating Numenor, then The Hobbit and then LOTR caused him to change things about the first age.  Sauron was really created for those later stories, in the oldest version of Beren and Luthien, the only First Age story Sauron is important to, his role was played by a sort of WereCat.

Regardless the basic argument against prequels still applies, when they were finally published the readers knew Morgoth would be defeated in the end and that Galadriel wouldn't die, and that Numenor would end up being Atlantis, and so on.  Because the LOTR books told us so.

All of these are parts of sagas and from writers that laid all the foundations of modern Popular Fiction, in more then one way I could argue we'd have no Indiana Jones without Arsene Lupin.  So Prequels were a part of the kind of fiction Lucas was making long before he made the decision to call his 1977 film Episode IV.

So let me clarify my premise.  Without certain Prequels that were popular and influential before George Lucas or his critics were even born, we would not have Star Wars or Indiana Jones at all.

Some sagas shouldn't have prequels because arguably doing a Prequel is a symbolic betrayal of what it's about, like Star Trek, I never supported Enterprise, or the 2009 film even before I heard it was an alternate timeline Reboot rather then a Prequel, nor the new series being set before TNG.  I want a 25th Century Enterprise with a Pansexual Korean Woman as the Captain.

But Star Trek and Star Wars are in many ways opposites (one is SciFi and the other is Fantasy) including on this very issue.

Star Trek begins with

"To boldly go where no Man has gone before".

Star Wars begins with

"Long Long Ago".

Star Wars is about the past, it always has been.  Therefore I never really cared what happens post ROTJ, hell I barely care about post ROTS.  The only spin-off idea thrown around I'm interested in is the Young Yoda film, because that can take us centuries into the past, to what was "Long Long Ago" to the people of Episode 1.  And Maz Kanata is older then Yoda so you can throw her in there to appeal to the New Trilogy fans.

1838 is the most eventful year in the fictional history of France

You might have noticed this if you've been studying 19th century French Popular fiction and the French WNU.

Since real life history doesn't seem to mention much happening in France in 1838 at all.  I figure this is likely to have happened from later authors homageing the first who probably picked that year at random.

It begins with Eugene Sue who effectively founded several new genres when he wrote The Mysteries of Paris, originally serialized in 1842-43.  It's events are all set in 1838, and it was wildly successful.

Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte-Cristo was a project that began when he was prompted by his publisher to write something to copy the success of Sue's Mysteries of Paris.  While the Novel's story spans from 1815-1844, the bulk of the main narrative, Dantes actually carrying out his revenge plan, pretty much everything that the Anime Gankutsuou adapts, is set in 1838, (as well as all the scenes featuring Eugenie Danglers and Louis d'Armilly).  So pretty much everything people actually want to see.

Much later Paul Feval would write his Blackcoats saga.  The second half of Salem Street and the entirety of The Invisible Weapon are set in 1838.

In the introduction for his translation of The Invisible Weapon Brian Stableford talks about how that novel is perhaps the most Suesque of Feval's novels, echoing many things Sue did but also doing them very differently.  Most of the parallels he mentions are to The Wandering Jew besides that it features a character locked up in the same Paris prison as The Mysteries of Paris.  But I think that it's being set the same year as The Mysteries of Paris is not likely to be a coincidence.

Spoiler for The Blackcoats novels ahead

Especially since setting those events in that year caused one of the major continuity hiccups of the saga.  What we're told about Saladin in the original novel and Heart of Steel (written before) and The Companions of The Treasure (written after) place Saladin's birth in 1840, this novel alone contradicts that by featuring him in 1838.

There's no major reason you couldn't move the events of the novel up two or three years to fix that issue.  But it'd still be a problem that it effectively depicts the break up of Echolat and Simolor before we ever meet them in the original novel.  And makes one wonder why Maman Leo is completely absent for their story-lines in the events set in 1842 and early 43 in the first two novels.

Sue's second major novel was mostly set in 1832, that year was also of interest to later writers.  But it has more real life historical significance due to the June Rebellion (fictionalized in Les Miserables by Victor Hugo) and other lingering aftermaths of the July Revolution.  Dumas's novel set then (She-Wolves of Machecoul; The Last Vendée) was also based on real history of that year, and for Feval's secret history it's only the extended prologue of Heart of Steel, Marguerite's origin story, that is set during 1832, and is early in the year during Lent.

I am guilty of an Anachronism in my story The Piano Maidens.

Published in Tales of The Shadowmen Volume 12.  But that I've also made available online.

The anachronism is that the story is set in 1839, yet I refereed to the existence of Eugene Sue's The Wandering Jew, which didn't begin serialization till 1843.  My mind I guess just focused on that when that Novel takes place was in 1832 so it's already part of Father Rodin's history.  I made this mistake and I'm amazed how long it took me to notice it, I proof read it several times before sending it to Jean-Marc.

I should have known better, I wrote this as I was obsessing over every minutia of the development of French Popular fiction in the mid 19th-early 20th centuries.

In the past I have felt annoyed at other writers making such mistakes.  Now I've made one myself that I should have known better and thus forfeited my right to complain.

I am of course free to re-write the story in a way that corrects the problem, it would be perfectly intellectually and morally consistent as I defend George Lucas by pointing to the precedent of Tolkien and Mary Shelly.  But I'm unsure how.

One option is I could change when it's set to a later date.  I don't want to do that because I wrote this story imagining Eugenie and Louise as teenagers or very early 20s, my ambition here is to write a YA Lesbian Romance in a Shadowmen setting,  But more directly important the Blakccoats lore tie in depends on The Colonel being alive and were made with it being the same year as Coriolani's rebellion as a subtle backdrop (the character of Gian-Paolo dies before the end of 1839).

And I also want the lead Heroines to have not aged much since they left the narrative of TCoMC in 1838.

The second option is to remove the reference.  Problem there is first that it's a decent chuck of the conversation with Rodin though not what's important to the direct plot-line I'm setting up.  And I was particular on how I handled the topic changes in the conversions.

But also thematically I wanted to set up that in this fictional universe some fictional novels exist even though events they depict also happened.  So that the references to the Jane Austen novels do not rule out those characters also existing.  I realize that's already a given for the TOTS fan-base, but I also want to this to work as a possible introduction for my own fictional shared universe.

Thing is I will probably be least faithful to Eugene Sue's among all the Public Domain characters I use.  His moral outlook was often to simplistic and did not usually do well by female characters.  My Rodin I intend to have be a more nuanced character, even though I do share Sue's anti-Catholic sentiment for a different reason.

Which is why I was deliberately ambiguous about if we should view Sue's novel as a reliable account of the events in question (but equally on how reliable a source of info Rodin himself is).  I kind of don't want the title character to be real since that myth is Aniti-Semitic in origin.

I've been meaning to look into exactly when Father Rodin would have been born, Sue also had him pop up already during the French Revolution.

I'll probably decide in favor of the second option, but I'll need to work on that, and I'm trying to write this story's sequel (might not be a direct one, but it'll also star Eugenie and Louise) right now.  I will remember to ignore the discussion in question.

Why does Japanese Media seem more Liberal then Japanese culture?

If you spend a decent amount of time in Anime fandoms and also talking about Anime and it's connection to the culture that produces it.  You've no doubt seem people point out that Japanese culture is much more conservative and traditionalist then a casual viewing of it's media will let on.  For example Japanese culture is not nearly as tolerant of Homosexuality as watching Strawberry Panic might lead you to believe.  In fact Japan is probably the only "developed" nation that is currently more socially conservative even then America.

So why is that? people like to ask.

Well I feel the answer is pretty simple.  Entertainment Media is always to the left of the mainstream of society (Liberal by the standards of it's time at least, any significantly old work may seem Conservative to someone reading it now), at least in any Society that has Freedom of Speech.  The Poets and Playwrites have always lead the way in making the world more progressive.  And sometimes the more Conservative a culture is the further to the Left the artists swing.

From Euripides who's plays were filled with Social Commentary, to Lord Byron who was a member of the Carbonari.  Also Charles Nodior and Victor Hugo who were close friends of Nicolas Bonnevile, and early mentors of Alexandre Dumas.

Even the old Hollywood Biblical Epics that a lot of Conservative Christians idealize actually had a subversive agenda if you pay attention.  DeMille defied McCarthyism in casting Edward G Robinson in The Ten Commandments.

Now often these Liberal works of Media are not satisfactory to other Liberals and get criticized, sometimes fairly sometimes unfairly, by Liberals who spend their time critiquing Media rather then writing it.  The modern SJW bloggers who get unfairly accused of being impossible to please are not the first to do this, Karl Marx was critical of Eugene Sue.  I think it'd be absurd to suggest Sue wasn't a real Socialist just because Marx was critical of him.  Modern Liberals probably have more valid reasons to be critical of Sue then Marx did, since Sue is definitely problematic on gender issues.  And Dumas was much better then Sue at being nuanced in their approach to fictionalizing the French Revolution.

Now exceptions have existed, there have been Conservatives writer who've written stuff and even been successful and influential.  Paul Feval and Ponson du Terril were the main conservatives in 19th Century French pulp fiction, you can find all kinds of Conservative alternative media in modern America, most of which is inferior to Feval at being enjoyable to people who'd disagree with them.  And Chuck Dixon as a Comic Book writer.  And some Japanese Media actually does come off as conservative, mainly Attack on Titan is what I can think of.

The issue with Japanese Media is the way it's critiqued by western viewers misinterprets a lot of things about it.  A lot of that misinterpretation comes from not knowing how Conservative Japan is.  But on the other hand a lot of people who think they're smarter then the average Western Anime viewer because they read up a little on Japan, keep insisting on interpreting Japanese media in the context of how Conservative Japan is, rather then in the context of the long human history of artists being to the left of the mainstream.

This comes from both sides, from Liberal critics choosing not to trust anything that looks Liberal in an Anime unless the writer is outright beating the viewer over the head with how Subversive they're trying to be, like Ikuhara.  And even Ikuhara has critics, Utena is nearly universally praised by Feminists, but his more recent works like YuriKuma Arashi are about as divisive as Zach Snyder.  It might be fair to call him the Frank Miller or Alan Moore of Anime.

A number of these critics basically think the handful of Anime they really like are the good progressive ones and the rest are the problem.  While other critics have other responses to the very same works.  Like Evangelion, loved by Vrai but mostly hated by the comment leavers at TheMarySue.

And you got Conservatives of various kinds, like a blogger user-named Ex-Army who calls himself a "Libertarian Nationalist", whatever that means.  He is supporting Trump right now but I was familiar with his blog before Trump took off.  He primarily uses Anime Images with right wing quotes of dubious veracity slapped over them as his thumbnails.  He basically thinks the fact that Japan has a Nationalist Xenophobic culture means all that Anime that entertains him must reflect that.  In fact a pretty good chunk of Japanese Media is actually trying to be critical of that Xenophobia just as America's media tries to fight against our Xenophobia.

Code Geass I've just recently seen accused of having a Nationalist message.  I think a distinction needs to be made between being Patriotic and being Nationalist in the sense of what a Fascist or Mr Ex-Army means by Nationalist.

One thing that generally both the conservatives and liberals of Japan tend to agree on is Western Imperialism is the source of much of the World's problems (while in the West that is thought of as a uniquely Lefty thing to say that) so indeed Code Geass begins with an Evil Empire that is pretty clearly an Anglo-American stand in.  But it makes a strong effort to Humanize and not demonize the Britanians.  It's a very Anti-Racist work and Zero was adamant that the Black Knights were not fighting to bring back old regressive Japan but a new Progressive one.  I actually think there are few Anime's I've seen harder to interpret as being conservative, some I already mentioned, another would be Gundam 00.

But perhaps the biggest focal point of this dispute is the Yuri and Yaoi genres (Girl's Love and Boy's Love).  It's mostly Yuri I'm familiar with.

Part of Japanese Culture is a thing called the Class S Relationship.  A tolerance of quasi Romantic Relationships between young School Girls, that they are expected to grow out of, sometimes viewed as practice for eventually marrying a man.  Similar attitudes toward Lesbianism used to exist in the West but are now considered outdated.

Understanding what Class S is is absolutely vital to understanding the context of the Yuri Genre.  The issue is the then simplistic assumption that most Yuri is nothing more then a ficitonalization of that and has no desire or ability to make viewers in Japan rethink their general attitude towards Homosexuality.

Now I'm not going to say all criticisms of the Yuri Genre are invalid, thing is Western media made with the best of intentions towards the LGBT community often gets things wrong too.  The old Lesbian Pulp Fiction novels of the 50s and 60s were very problematic especially in how they ended, but they also meant a lot to the contemporary Lesbians who read them and it'd be disingenuous to discount that.

The first thing that I feel gets overlooked is that your typical Yuri absolutely does go further then what is tolerated in a real Class S relationship which is not expected to be physical in even the most mundane way.  Really it's Anime that are not officially Yuri but have a strong Yuri fanbase because of the very Femslashable female friendships they depict, like Maria-Sama and PreCure, that give a better picture of what a Class S relationship is actually supposed to look like.

Now maybe Yuri only goes further because of the natural tendency of fiction to exaggerate, but it's an important fact to note.  Or maybe it's because more girls then mainstream society admits do in private go further then what is acceptable.  But in the Yuri genre it's all pretty public.

The perception however is that with anything in a School setting, no matter how far they go they're playing it safe because conservative viewers can always just assume the characters will "Grow out of it".  But the thing is viewers are equally as free to imagine the opposite, and clearly most of Yuri's actual fandom (male or female) does just that.

A lot of the criticism is about the lack of actual Sex, and focus on Crushes that seemingly go on forever without being resolved. Yuru Yuri is a really fun Anime I watched just recently, where the criticism is mostly that.  Thing is it's not even High School, it's Middle School, most Middle School fiction doesn't go beyond that in it's romance regardless of orientation.  The hesitance of fiction to acknowledge that Middle Schoolers sometimes have sex can be viewed as a problem, but it's not an entirely unique to Homosexuality problem,.  And tension not being resolved is a natural product of being ongoing.

Erica Friedman has pretty much said a Yuri needs to be about adults for her to really like it.  And more Adult Lesbian relationships are needed.  But younger LGBT people are often the ones who depend on representation in fiction the most.  [Update Correction, she said prefers stories about Adults].

To a large extent, the difference between whether or not a School Girl set romance is liked by the Yuri Critics is if it actually talks about what being Gay means.  And while I agree having that conversation is important, I also like Escapism, I think stories that pretend it's not an issue at all make a lot of ground in normalizing it.

The Ikuhara approach to being subversive is important, we need a good deal of that.  But in the long run I think the more casual approach to putting progressive ideas in what you write actually does more to change minds.  Pretty Little Liars is a show that started out very casual in how it Incorporated it's feminist ideas, but become more overt over time.  Now it slipped up big time in Season 6, but for the first 5 seasons it really was the best inter-sectional show on television.  Watching PLL has certainly done more to change my thinking to the left then almost anything else, the other factor being actually studying The Bible.

Now I'm aware that as a Cis-Het male my ability to understand these issues is limited.  But all the use of the term "Real Lesbian" I see among Yuri critics I fear has the potential to be unintentionally hurtful to a lot of people, it echos actual discrimination that exists within the Gay community towards Bixexuals and Pansexuals and people who identify as Fluid.  And the condescending attitude towards real life women in High School and Collage who "experiment".  Conventional wisdom says even most straight people don't end up marrying who they dated in High School, but if your future Spouse isn't the same Gender as your Highschool sweetheart, then it's assumed one of those two relationships must be invalid.

Another thing I like about Yuru Yuri is how the characters are kind of Nerds, Yui is a Gamer and Kyoko goes to Comic Book conventions.  Maybe the perception that those things aren't for women isn't as a big a problem in Japan as it is in America, but I doubt it.

Another objection to the Yuri Genre is the emphasis on Purity it often has. Which can tie into the perception that Lesbian Sex isn't real Sex and so Lesbians can technically claim to be Virgins. Those are understandable concerns, and ones I may talk about more in the future.

The gist of this is, Japanese Media is very much Liberal by virtue of what that means in Japan.  If you're watching an Anime and it seems liberal to you, it probably is.

My story The Piano Maidens is now online

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11852987/1/The-Piano-Maidens

http://archiveofourown.org/works/6333346

http://shadowmenfrench.livejournal.com/1029.html

http://theshadowmenlounge.tumblr.com/post/141439984006/the-piano-maidens

http://jaredmithrandir.tumblr.com/post/141440240198/the-piano-maidens

I have now made my story The Piano Maidens available online for free.

If you like it even mildly I ask you to still buy the Anthology, Tales of The Shadowmen Volume 12, to show support for BlackCoatPress, they are doing very important work and not yet had nearly the success they deserve.  

I’m planning to write more stories with these characters in the future, any constructive criticism I wold greatly appreciate.

My Eugenie Danglars story will be in TOTS 12

Tales of The Shadowmen Volume 12

12. CARTE BLANCHE edited by J-M. & R. Lofficier READ AN EXCERPT

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US$22.95/GBP 14.99 - 6x9 tpb, 304 p. - ISBN-13: 978-1-61227-447-8

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Contents:
Jason Scott Aiken: Ardan at the Pole starring Doc Ardan, The People of the Pole
Matthew Baugh: The Lament of the Duke and the King starring Doctor Omega
Adam Mudman Bezecny: The Revelation of the Yeti starring Doctor Omega, Nora, Ki-Gor
Nicholas Boving: The Evil Among Us starring Dr. Watson, Maigret, Father Brown
Nathan Cabaniss: House of El Hombre Loco starring Count Waldemar Daninsky, Dr. Génessier
Christophe Colin : Of Beasts and Men starring Felifax, Dr. Moreau
Matthew Dennion: Turning Point starring Sâr Dubnotal, Werewolf of Paris
Peter Gabbani: A Bond between Gentlemen starring Arsène Lupin, Raffles
Brian Gallagher: The Stake and the Sickle starring Captain Vampire, Von Bork
Martin Gately: Rouletabille on Mysterious Island starring Rouletabille
Travis Hiltz: The Case of the Curious Cadaver starring Spiridon, Van Helsing, Doctor Omega
Rick Lai: The Tomb of the Veiled Prophet starring The Phantom of the Opera,
Nigel Malcolm: The Adventure of the Orcival Rain starring Lecoq, Sherlock Holmes, Gourroull
Jean-Marc Mouiller: Behind the Mask of the Ripper starring Sherlock Holmes, Harry Dickson
Christofer Nigro: Justice and the Beast starring Judex, Doctor Cornelius, Professor Tornada
Pierrick Rival: The Inn of the First Voyage starring Long John Silver, Surcouf
Frank Schildiner: Ancient Space Lizards and Other Visitors starring Jean Kariven, Gussie Fink-Nottle
Sam Shook: The Eldritch Stones starring Sar Dubnotal, Chandu, El Borak
Michel Stéphan: The Submarine "Gustave Le Rouge" starring William Boltyn, Dr. Moreau
Artikel Unbekannt : Leonox Meets Mephista starring Mephista, Leonox
David L. Vineyard: The White Star of Atlantis starring Arsène Lupin, Terence O'Rourke
Jared Welch: The Piano Maidens starring Eugenie Danglars, The Black Coats

Once again I am last by virtue of the Alphabet.

The Piano Maidens is much more like the kinds of stories I generally like to write then my prior two TOTS contributions.  Because I generally like to write female leads/POV characters, and also really like including LGBT representation in my stories.  This story is also a dialogue driven one, no action.

The story stars Eugenia Danglars and Louise d'Armilly from Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte-Cristo.  They are Lesbians who were removed from the oldest English Translation of the Novel as well as most adaptations.  But they are fully restored in the Penguin Classics translation.  And in Matthew Baugh's The Vampire Count of Monte-Cristo.

I am depicting both of these characters as exclusively Monosexually Homosexual.  In my Headcanon for these characters, and actual Canon of any stories I write, neither ever has or ever will be intimate with a man.

Like all TOTS stories it's also a crossover, It features and mentions a lot of both fictional and historical figures.  It's a very Nerdy story.

I include a number of little Easter eggs only fellow PLL will get.

I hope actual Lesbians will be able to enjoy how I write these characters.  So if any LGBT people read this story and has any criticism of it, please feel free to let me know.  I'd really, really appreciate it if by some off chance Heather Hogan did a review of it.

The Book will come out this December, please buy the book, BlackCoatPress does a lot of important work, they deserve more success.

Other works from the same Publisher that should interest those of us who want more Female representation in Genre Fiction include Rick Lai's Shadows of The Opera and Sisters of The Shadows series.  And Nina Cooper's translations of some early female lead detective and spy stories.  And I of course always recommend Paul Feval as translated by Brian Stableford.

The strong Women of French Pulp Fiction, and their unexpected authors

[Update 2026: When I made this series of posts I was still mistaken about some aspects of Political terminology are used.  I called myself a Liberal but I was actually already a Socialist.]

http://z13.invisionfree.com/The_Shadowmen_Lounge/index.php?showtopic=54

The struggle to gain better female representation in Genre fiction is an interesting and complicated one. Recent years have seen a lot of progress with the success of movies  like The Hunger Games, and Divergent and Frozen  and Wonder Woman finally coming to the big screen (First in Batman Vs Superman, then finally a solo movie). But also lots of developments that demonstrate how much more work needs to be done, like the recent controversy with the latest Assassins Creed game announcing it won’t have any female playable characters.

What continually interests me is how surprisingly ahead of their time many older authors were. Both the frequently revered classics, and the more obscure ones, both English and French. In this post I’ll be discussing mainly what I see as an interesting observation about 4 of the major feuilletonists, but I’ll be making more posts on other characters.

I want to point out something interesting I've observed about the four major feuilletonists of the Golden age of the Romans-Feuilletin. Alexandre Dumas, Eugene Sue, Paul Feval and Ponson Du-Terril.

Brian Stableford spends a good deal of  time in the Introduction and Afterward material for the Feval and Ponson translations he’s done for BlackCoatPress talking about the political alignments of those four authors. What I find curious is that the two who were the “Conservatives” in the contexts of post Revolutionary France (in being devout Catholics and Royalists) Feval and Ponson. Seem to me to have over all been more inclined to write surprisingly well written strong independent women.

Dumas arguably invented the modern Femme Fatale, between both writing the Le Tour de Nesle play and the character of Milady d’Winter in The Three Musketeers, but like many firsts I feel they pale in comparison to their more fleshed out literary descendants (both the well known and less well known). I of course love the heavily implied Lesbian characters of The Count of Monte-Cristo, Eugenie Danglars and Louise d'Armilly. And I find Ziska from his Le Vampire play fascinating. But beyond those examples, Dumas’s women conform to the stereotypes you expect, still well written characters because Dumas was a great writer of Melodrama, but not too innovative.

Sue is admittedly the one I’m currently least familiar with. But still, plenty of what I've heard about what transpires over the course of Les Mysteries du People wouldn't sit well with Feminists.  And I've read the stage play he himself made of The Mysteries of Paris (Translated by Frank Morlock).  And the two main female characters are a typical Ingenue (clearly part of the inspiration for Cossete in Victor Hugo's Les Miserables), and Countess Sarah who's a fallen woman desperately seeking redemption (I think the play makes her ending happier then the original Novel based on what I read in Shadowmen).  I feel for the character, she's not horribly written, but also not subversive like I'd expect from France's top Socialist writer.  The character of La Chouette (The Owl) is only mentioned in the play and doesn't appear directly.  She at any rate was an ugly evil old crone.

Ponson was seemingly more inclined then Feval to let his political-religious views influence his writing in a very obvious and, intentionally or not, preachy way.  I've often found myself thinking “really? that’s what’s honorable to you Ponson?”.

But none the less, in what would become known as the Rocambole saga, Bacarat proves to be a very formidable woman. In the first novel she’s an important but minor role, however in the second and third novels she proves to be the real Hero of the story. And Torquise proves to be a very mesmerizing Femme Fatale in the second Novel. The two Ponson Vampire novels Stableford has translated for BlackCoatPress both have compelling women as the title Vampires. In his introduction-afterward material for The Vampire and The Devil’s Son Stableford discuses how Ponson kind of innovated a lot of the tropes common in modern Romance Novels. (Update: more on Rocombole here)

Paul Feval’s characters are endlessly fascinating.  Plenty fit the norms you’d expect of the time, but many do not. I personally think two of the greatest Femme Fatales ever written are Countess Marcian Gregory of The Vampire Countess and Marguerite Sadoulas of The Blackcoats saga. But Sarah O’Neil of John Devil is also an interesting early experimentation with that archetype. The saga of the Habits Noirs also has some strong heroic women. Rose de Malvoy is the real hero of The Heart of Steel, Valentine (Fleurette) and Maman Leo are the core protagonists of The Invisible Weapon. Regina from Bel Demonio is bound to gain conflicting responses from a modern feminist reader, I’d dare say she’d fit in as an Anime character quite well. Susannah gets an opportunity to show some impressive courage in Les Mysteries de Londres.

In Le Bossu our young female lead is allowed to actually save herself from an attempted Rape, something Stableford suspects Feval might have originally intended to do again in The Sword Swallower. Vampire City has both Anna Ward (Anne Radcliffe) and Polly Bird, (warning though, the desire of some modern reviewers to describe Polly Bird as transgender is very misleading).

And there are still so many Feval works not available to me yet. Among them La Louve (The She Wolf) the prequel to Le Loup le Blanc (The White Wolf), and quite possibly the first depiction of a masked female vigilante.  The novel it prequels was the first depiction of a Masked Vigilante period, well before Zorro or the Scarlet Pimpernel.

I want to go back a bit now.  Stableford describes The Heart of Steel as "Unintentionally Proto-Feminist".  I've suggested elsewhere it may not be as unintentional as you'd think.  But by no means do I think Feval would be a cheerleader of modern Feminism.

In the case of the Invisible Weapon.  I'm not sure, but I think it may very well pass the Bechel Test.  Considering how rare passing that still is, I think it's really fascinating to consider that a forgotten work of 19th century literature (a sequel to a prequel) by a man fighting the tides of a change could be capable of passing it.  (Update 12/23/2015, since I've seen it argued The Force Awakens passes, The Invisible Weapon certainly would by that standard).