Falling in love with comic-book characters

[robinturner]

On the bus yesterday I was sitting in front of a pair of teenage girls from the international school next door. They were Turkish but talking in English, so, ever the sociolinguistic observer, I pricked up my ears. Actually, there was so little code-switching (names of foodstuffs were mainly in Turkish) they could have passed for native-speaker Californians with imaginative word-building skills, e.g.

Y'know, those boots ... they look soooo cute on you. Like
.... blblblblbmm! ... all kinda .... balloony.

I was about to lose attention after a long discussion of the merits of different boot-types (apparently the 20-hole Dr. Martin's are the coolest) but then they started talking about falling in love withc omic-book characters.

Like, uh, when I was ten I was in love with that Ninja turtle ...
y'know, the red one.

Michelangelo?

Noooo, it was, uh, hang on ... Donatello?

Yeah, Donatello.

Yeah, but anyway, I reckoned my parents wouldn't approve.

Your parents wouldn't approve?

Yeah, so I went for, uh, the purple one instead. But I don't fall in love with
comic-book characters any more.

Not even the Sandman?

Oh, well, yeah, mebbe.

I was about to explode with laughter at the thought of almost-grown women falling in love with comic-book characters, then I remembered that in my twenties I was not only a big fan of The Sandman (along with Hellblazer, 2000 AD and Love and Rockets) but I also had a thing about his sister, Death, a really cute Goth-chick who would summon the souls of then early-departed. She made dying seem so romantic. I also had the hots for Halo Jones, not to mention about half the cast of Love and Rockets. In other words, probably the only thingt hat stops me from falling in love with comic-book characters thesed ays is the lack of a good supply of comics in Ankara. If I see those girls again, I'll ask them where they get their copies of The Sandman. "Sweet Death, kind Death."

Comments

[ex-fauxpas266.livejournal.com]

Maybe they were Turkish-American, which would explain the California English (except we never say "reckon" here) and easy access to comix. Hehe.

[solri.livejournal.com]

You could be right - we have a few childerne of retunring emigres here. In fact I had one who was a transfer student from Columbia. She had to take my first-year English/academic skills class, even though her English was perfect (apart from the bad influence of Emily Dickinson). Her problem was that Columbia had exempted her from composition classes because her high school writing was so good, but that wouldn't wash with Bilkent. I had to take her out of the class after a few weeks because her level of English was making the other students lose hope.

[asteriskhere.livejournal.com]

Yeah- I've noticed that whole crush on comic book characters thing myself. I think the weirdest thing is comic porn. Lusting after a cartoon just seems so...wrong!
Nevermind video games. It seems a lot of people have the hots for Lara Croft (even before she was played by Angelina Jolie).

I can't remember if I ever had a crush on a comic book character, though I used to dream about marrying my cat. I thought of him all dressed up like Puss 'n Boots at our wedding. I was about 5 or 6 at the time.

[solri.livejournal.com]

I think the weirdest thing is comic porn. Lusting after a cartoon just seems so...wrong!

Interesting point, but why, I wonder? I once saw a book on erotic Greek ceramics, and basically it was cartoon porn on vases, so it's obviously not a new thing. Maybe everyone has a different level of preferred abstraction. A totally realistc depiction of two real, normally proportioned human beings engaging in normal sex probably wouldn't be a turn-on for most people; at the other extreme it would be hard to get turned on by a cubist painting, no matter how erotic the subject-matter.

Maybe I could write a script for the GIMP which would turn computer users' porn collections into fine art when unauthorised people entered the directory. "Oh yes, that's just my collection of Kandinskys".