Makeovers for men

Japanese is one of the more difficult languages one can study, it has 2 different syllabaries (sp?) one indicating meaning and one indicating pronunciation, and the grammar is quite different from English grammar. But if you wanted to pick up some conversational Japanese the easiest way to pick up a few words is to get a friendly textbook and some subtitled anime. Meanwhile I believe Gackt is part of the Visual Kei genre of Japanese music, and he is also considered a bishounen or bisienen (meaning beautiful boy or beautiful man) so plugging any of those words into google image search should give you a lot of similar images. I'm an anime fan and generally attracted to slender pretty men so that's why I've researched the topic and have a collection of bishounen pics lol.

sunandshadow said:

Japanese is one of the more difficult languages one can study, it has 2 different syllabaries (sp?) one indicating meaning and one indicating pronunciation, and the grammar is quite different from English grammar. But if you wanted to pick up some conversational Japanese the easiest way to pick up a few words is to get a friendly textbook and some subtitled anime. Meanwhile I believe Gackt is part of the Visual Kei genre of Japanese music, and he is also considered a bishounen or bisienen (meaning beautiful boy or beautiful man) so plugging any of those words into google image search should give you a lot of similar images. I'm an anime fan and generally attracted to slender pretty men so that's why I've researched the topic and have a collection of bishounen pics lol.

Click to expand...

Yes, I had a hard time with the little interjections - what should be "wa", "ga"... And the use of "ne" in conversational Japanese freaks me out completely!

Thanks for the advice - I think I'm going to get googling... Out of (purely academic!) interest, is there a hentai version of the genre?

I dunno much about visual kei. Bishounen/bisienen isn't really a genre, but the general term for gay anime porn is yaoi (at least that's the term the internet and english-speaking world uses, in proper Japanese they might use the term June). The Japanese term for a gay man is okama, top is seme and bottom is uke. You also sometimes see the term boylove (BL) or shounen ai (also meaning boy love). Shota/shotacon is the more pedophilic kind. Straight anime porn is just called hentai, H or ecchi, or loli/lolicon (from the name Lolita) for the pedophilic type. But it doesn't usually have androgynous pretty guys in it unless its fanart for a series where all the main male characters are pretty, or one of those series where everybody's bi like Utena.

sunandshadow said:

I dunno much about visual kei. Bishounen/bisienen isn't really a genre, but the general term for gay anime porn is yaoi (at least that's the term the internet and english-speaking world uses, in proper Japanese they might use the term June). The Japanese term for a gay man is okama, top is seme and bottom is uke. You also sometimes see the term boylove (BL) or shounen ai (also meaning boy love). Shota/shotacon is the more pedophilic kind. Straight anime porn is just called hentai, H or ecchi, or loli/lolicon (from the name Lolita) for the pedophilic type. But it doesn't usually have androgynous pretty guys in it unless its fanart for a series where all the main male characters are pretty, or one of those series where everybody's bi like Utena.

Click to expand...

Wow, S&S! You're giving me so much food for thought. Took a quick look at a site called "Bishounen Garden"... Nice!

Thanks for the definitions. I haven't previously over-indulged in anime as I've always found it a little too... sugary (even Hentai)? However, this is definitely opening my eyes, and to me it really shows what the art style is capable of - I could easily be sucked into that reality...

Funny, I've often been scared away from straight hentai because it tends toward rape (the tentacles I could handle lol). But anime can get extremely dark, for example Death Note is a hugely popular anime about a charming serial killer and the not-so-charming 'great detective' trying to catch him and send him to the electric chair. In addition to lots of crime genre animes there are also lots of war epics where most of the characters die by the end. Me personally though I watch mainly romantic comedies especially school ones. I like the sugary stuff as long as its not too lacking in IQ.

Anyway this is _the_ best anime recommendation website, you can read through them alphabetically or if you know of one you like it will suggest similar ones.
http://www.anime-planet.com/anirec/

Dunno whether you would be interested in this, but there are several animes which are about crossdressing. They tend to be more on the comic side of things - I My Me Strawberry Eggs and Princess Princess (both M->F) are rather fluffy, and Cheeky Angel (F->M) isn't much less so. There are also genderswitch anime - Maze is about a boy and girl trapped in the same body and switching at sunrise and sunset, and similarly Ranma 1/2 is about a boy cursed to turn into a girl whenever he touches cold water.

OK, for all of you pizza lovers out there, the pizza recipe, this is a deep dish pizza, though really it will work on a cookie sheet or actual pizza pan if you don't try and toss it. The crust recipe is for a deep dish pizza so the dough isn't as workable as regular.

Crust: This is the cook book version, we've changed it slightly with practice.
2 packages quick rise dry yeast
2 cups lukewarm water (A little warm to the touch)
1/2 cup salad oil
4 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 cup cornmeal
5 1/2 cups flour
Dissolve the yeast in the water, add the oils, cornmeal and flour. Mix it all up so it's a rather offwhite ball and let it sit. It will rise, at which point you can either put it into an oiled pan like we do, or punch it down and let it rise again like the book says.

I'm going to pause and mention something, you can add stuff to the crust, generally makes it taste better. Usually we add salt and basil, though powdered onion can be used, in the right amount it gives the crust a rather sourdough flavor. Don't ask me how much is the right amount, he does it and measuring cups are a not used thing with him. Also it is perfectly fine to just use olive oil, or regular oil if you happen to be allergic or don't like it. Olive oil is used to add flavor in the recipe we started with.

Anyway, if you want it a flavored crust, toss stuff in, whatever you like in the way of added flavor. Though always add salt, it increases the flavor of anything you do add. Doesn't take much, a teaspoon or two is what we do.

Toppings: This is so a personal preference thing, I'll tell you what we put most of the time so you get an idea on how much it can take.
16 ounces of mozzarella cheese, we buy it whole and shred it ourselves usually, better cheese.
3/4 of the big spaghetti sauce can. We get the four cheese Kroger brand, it's pretty good tasting and cheap.
16 ounces I think of italian sausage. Over a pound is all I am sure on, the actual size varies.
One package of canadian bacon. Thinsliced ham if you don't know. Sandwich ham would work well for this though cheaper to buy the canadian bacon.
Half package of pepperoni. We buy the Ballo brand, it's not that expensive and tasty.
3 bell peppers, one red, yellow and green. They have different tastes, and not always three, sometimes half of each is closer depends on how big the peppers are.

Now when your putting it all together, keep in mind you want to oil the pan before adding the dough, makes it easier to get out though the first slice is always a mess. Pull the crust up the sides so you get a well. Pour the sauce in. At this point it will vary depending on what you want in your pizza. We put the bacon in next, lay it out to cover the entire bottom, then we add the sausage. Dice the peppers and spread them out. Normally the pan is about 3/4's full at this point, shred the cheese and place over everything, then lay out the pepperoni and cook.

The cook book says 475 for 35-40 minutes. He must of had a weak little oven, we use 350 for half an hour and get the same result. Anyway, pick a good temperature for your oven and watch over the pizza, check it after 20 minutes and then every 5-10 after. You want it to be browned, normally we pull it out when the cheese is turning brown and the crust is getting toward dark in spots. That would be the cheese over the crust cooking faster than the rest.

As you are I am sure imagining, this pizza can hold alot of stuff. The cheese actually ends up sitting higher than the pan in the middle to about halfway to the side. Don't worry there is still room with that, the cheese is thicker than it ends up being. After it is cooked the cheese is lower than the crust.

sunandshadow said:

Funny, I've often been scared away from straight hentai because it tends toward rape (the tentacles I could handle lol). But anime can get extremely dark, for example Death Note is a hugely popular anime about a charming serial killer and the not-so-charming 'great detective' trying to catch him and send him to the electric chair. In addition to lots of crime genre animes there are also lots of war epics where most of the characters die by the end. Me personally though I watch mainly romantic comedies especially school ones. I like the sugary stuff as long as its not too lacking in IQ.

Anyway this is _the_ best anime recommendation website, you can read through them alphabetically or if you know of one you like it will suggest similar ones.
http://www.anime-planet.com/anirec/

Dunno whether you would be interested in this, but there are several animes which are about crossdressing. They tend to be more on the comic side of things - I My Me Strawberry Eggs and Princess Princess (both M->F) are rather fluffy, and Cheeky Angel (F->M) isn't much less so. There are also genderswitch anime - Maze is about a boy and girl trapped in the same body and switching at sunrise and sunset, and similarly Ranma 1/2 is about a boy cursed to turn into a girl whenever he touches cold water.

Click to expand...

Checked Anime Planet! It's a really nice site, though not for the absolute beginner - without your help, for example, I'd never have guessed what shounen ai or yaoi was, and that it might be what I was actually there to look for! It looks as if I'm going to have some exploring to do.

Thank you, once again, for all this. This thread is starting to become a bit of a goldmine, and heading off on some great tangents - speaking of which...

emap said:

OK, for all of you pizza lovers out there... After it is cooked the cheese is lower than the crust.

Click to expand...

... Thank you emap! This sounds absolutely gorgeous. I'm veggie, but I'm sure I'll be able to find substitutes for the bacon and pepperoni; also, not sure whether all the items are freely available over here - but I'm certainly going to have a look!



AS

Mmm pizza. I adore ricotta cheese pizza with sweet italian sausage, mushrooms, and black olives myself. Haven't yet made it from scratch, maybe I should try. 1 question, approximately how long does the dough have to sit and rise?

Anime planet, I think it works fine for beginners if they know a single anime they like or are willing to read through the alphabetical listings. If you're specifically looking for yaoi and shonen ai series there are only about a dozen of them translated to English anyway. Well, if you include printed manga it would be more like 30. IMO the hard part is figuring out how to get ahold of the anime. Sometimes you can watch it on youtube, its usually available by filesharing if one isn't afraid of getting sued, and some of its available on dvds or vhs if you have hundreds of dollars to spend.

Here's a specifically gay focused review site, not just anime but also movies with live actors:
http://www.boysonboysonfilm.com/

sunandshadow said:

Here's a specifically gay focused review site, not just anime but also movies with live actors:
http://www.boysonboysonfilm.com/

Click to expand...

Do bishounen and gay live action film overlap? If so, that may be well worth finding out about!

I love the way shounen ai seems - from everything I've read - to be virtually mainstream culture in Japan. Makes it, for some reason which I couldn't even begin to guess at, something I just have to see!

I wouldn't say shonen ai is mainstream - it's played for humor for the mainstream audience the same way as homosexuality often is in the west, and it's played for romantic potential for a teenage and adult _female_ audience, which is more of an underground phenomenon in the west occurring mostly in the realm of fanfiction, although it had become more widely known in the past 15 years and will continue to do so. On the other hand male homosexual entertainment intended for a male audience is viewed similarly in Japan as in the west, very mixed depending on whose opinion you ask but irrelevant to 80% of people.

Gay live action films tend to use whatever actors match the local standard of beauty, so ones made in japan, china, hong kong, singapore, etc are likely to have at least one pretty or cute male character, and even more macho characters are going to be clean shaven and slim although they probably have broad shoulders, muscles, and short hair. Whatever country they are made in, there also tends to be an overlap in film between homosexuality and crossdressing way out of proportion to the small amount of overlap it has in reality. As a side effect of this whichever character is the TV is probably a bishounen when in male clothing.

Me, I find bishounen actors most often pop up in fantasy/historical movies, like Jareth in Jim Henson's Labyrinth, several characters in the movie versions of Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream and Romeo and Juliet, anything about dashing duelists (musketeers or mercenaries) or pirates (yum johnny depp) or elves (DiCaprio and others in the Lord of the Rings). Sometimes vampire movies and martial arts movies too.

Sorry I forgot that part, it takes half an hour to an hour to rise, depending on how warm your kitchen is mostly.

Sun thank you for the anime planet link, I am so going to have to check that out. I like anime and I like crossdressers.

Dicaprio is not in Lord of the Rings, unless your talking a different one, that talentless sod would demand to be in a starring role and he isn't. I don't like him if you haven't noticed.

I also have to take offense, elves are not crossdressers, they are a bit feminine yes but not that much. I can only think of one crossdresser in a martial arts movie, though I can't remember which, he likes them so I watch because I can usually get sex out of him.

Oops I think I meant Orlando Bloom lol.

sunandshadow said:

Oops I think I meant Orlando Bloom lol.

Click to expand...

Actually, as far as talent goes, you might as well have been right first time... But yes, Orlando is definitely - in that context (and perhaps in most) bishounen, as is Hugo Weaving... Don't get me started on elves in LOTR, though!

Wow! I didn't realise until you brought them together how much of a bishounen thread IS running through Western cinema. Is it deliberate, I wonder? I know Disney initially threw a hissy fit over Johnny Depp's portrayal of Jack Sparrow... (while I love Jack's aesthetic ambiguity, do prefer Johnny in "Secret Window" for hotness, though...). And David Bowie in "Labyrinth"... Yeah!!!!

Elves in Lord of the Rings aren't bishounen so much as that is how they are described in the books. They are apparently a fairer race, with blonde hair light skin and light on their feet. More or less the standard men's version of a goddess, without breasts of course.

Not to say it is the right description of them, try looking up the Irish Elf sometime, rather different. Not to mention the German or French, well actually I think the French are more or less the same as the English. Really makes you wonder if we are talking about the same dang thing.

Just cause I like being silly, think about this one, elves are alot like the Amazons, except Amazons are just women who fight, while elves are men and women who fight and are all light footed blonde and pretty. Funny thing though, Amazons are supposed to be blonde, light footed and pretty. Anybody else catching a similarity?

Bishounen just means pretty boy, so its entirely possible to have a fictional race be described as being beautiful. Its not like men who are more beautiful than handsome are imaginary lol, they certainly exist in real life, they're just not common in western society since some time in the 1800s when it became the fashion for all men to have short hair and wear boring clothes. There are other cultures, some african and native american ones for example, where it is traditional for men to wear jewelry, body paint, feathers, quill-embroidered clothes, oiled and braided hair, etc. Pre-1800s you can see the same thing in western fashion with men wearing velvets, silks, jewels, feathers, and curling their hair. I don't think fashion will ever go back that way since ornamentation on men has come to imply effeminacy, which for the most part neither straight nor gay men want to seem feminine. But it seems like every subculture that pops up goes for more ornamentation and flashy clothes to try to mark themselves as different: hippies, whatever you call that disco-afro-platform shoes group, punks, goths, emos, etc.

Well, if they're as pretty as this there's something to be said for a return to effeminacy!

Well, this weekend, I begin taking the plunge. Since the photo I posted was taken, I've had 3-4 weeks' extra hair growth time; it's beginning to get to a length I like, but because it was originally cut to be a short style, I'm going to need to have the sides tided up considerably to suit. I'm steeling myself to ask for a more feminine styling, in order to soften the angles of my face a little; however, I hope that the salon is reasonably quiet at the time - Sheffield is very blue-collar, and tolerance doesn't stretch far. I'm also going to start stocking up on rudimentary make-up, and over the weekend - depending on my condition - I'll have a go at trying a look or two. Whether I post photos or not depends very much on the level of success I have!

Wish me luck!

Luck!

Your silly, you don't have to say I want a feminine look, tell them you want a goth style. If they go huh simply describe what you want.

I've seen people bring a picture with them or point to a picture in one of the stylebooks most salons have laying around. Just make sure you're going to a place and a person who regularly does women's hair, not a barber shop that does almost all men and boys.

*blush* Thanks S&S, emap... *gulp* Deep breath...!

Or just tell them you want to soften your look and this is how you want it this way. Never feel scared about challanging the way you look. I think it would suit you anyway from the face pic. And Image is right, those lip are begging for some colour. And as for pizza recipes, I'll leave MY low fat, healthy wholemeal pizza recipe later.

luv1 said:

Or just tell them you want to soften your look and this is how you want it this way. Never feel scared about challanging the way you look. I think it would suit you anyway from the face pic. And Image is right, those lip are begging for some colour. And as for pizza recipes, I'll leave MY low fat, healthy wholemeal pizza recipe later.

Click to expand...

Thanks, L1! I appreciate your support... Thanks for dropping by! That's 2 votes on the lips (I think, unless it's people's senses of humour commenting on the general lack of colour in the photo ); question is, what colour? COULD go black/blue, I suppose (especially against white); COULD just gloss... Reds? Maybe something deep, dark...

Ewww. Blue/black? Unless you have bleached white or jet black hair I'm not too sure that would work. Very 80's retro.