Alien Drugs, Alien Sex Hormones, or Magic Made Them Do It As Allegory

I wonder if anyone's ever written anything about the allegorical meanings of the various fantasy and science fiction tropes used in romance for physical-proximity-or-die plotlines (telepathic and magical bonds, X-is-a-Veela-or-other-supernatural-creature-with-animalistic-qualities and Y-is-his-[soul]mate, pon farr/sex pollen/sex drugs).

I mean, the ones where they can't step more than five feet away look like a variation of a handcuffed together story on the surface, but the alien/magical compulsion elements usually have the effect, intended or otherwise, of parodying in exaggerated fashion some genuine relationship dynamic. Veela-and-mate stories sometimes have both partners feeling the magical effects of dying to have sex all the time/logical abilities leaving them, which I guess is a fairly straightforward Love Makes You Do The Crazy moral. Or else about being teenaged. But then there are the ones that primarily emphasise how the magical element makes one partner possessive and/or jealous; or unable to sustain anger at the loved object and in short, completely unreasonable; or vulnerable, in that the affected partner will become ill/crazy/dead if denied sex/physical proximity/affection. The allegory in this type of story is usually blindingly obvious, but it is rather interesting that the animalistic kink element is so widespread, and that the main themes are so variable.

Love is externalised and characterised in this type of story, which makes it inevitably easier to examine the message about it than in many other types of romance. In all the stories love is portrayed as a deus ex machina, an alien force imposed on the human consciousness and affecting it in strange and troublesome, if not always unwelcome ways which are usually seen as positive in the end, but the nature of love itself - essentially pleasant or painful and vicious; highly mutual or the automatic creator of power imbalance - is still highly variable.

her name wasn't actually leeloo

I don't have a lot to say except that my baby got stuck in Tampere last night, spending the night on the couch of a strange woman named Leeloo with a lesbian roommate.

But I do have one other thing to say, which is Sarah Jessica Parker's outfit at the Sex and the City premiere, let me show you it. Now, I loathe SATC and I'm not crazy about SJP's style choices in general, so this isn't a case of Et tu, Brute.

No, it's just that if I see a picture of a woman with a gigantic neon green silk rose-and-pineapple on her head, unless she is in a commercial for bananas, I'm going to point and LOL. This outfit looks more like the hat you'd wear to one of those sex/liquor-all-night-in-the-street Carnivals, like Vappen/Vappu (Valborgs natt, if that means anything to you people acquainted with European pagan traditions) where everyone who hasn't graduated from high school wears the silliest hat they can find. It certainly doesn't seem at all like something you could wear anywhere with a straight face, while pretending to glamour. This is leagues beyond the point-and-LOL potential of the run of the mill stupid British spectator hat - worlds, even. Multiverses. I mean... NEON GREEN. PINEAPPLE. Why? Fire that stylist, my friend. Stat. (And if possible, hire Cynthia Nixon's.)

false alarm

This song has a very faint and high-pitched beeping in the background that sounds exactly like a Nokia phone receiving a text message, muffled and very far away. I almost always get up and go look for it. Since I'm listening to the actual CD on the stereo I'm pretty sure this isn't a case of someone ripping a sound into the file like that one mp3 I got off audiogalaxy one time that had the aim door-shutting and door-opening sound in it...

Turku/Åbo City Hall seen from across the Aura river

I love this building. I love this city.

This picture was taken on the way to the Wäinö Aaltonen Museum the other day, where I saw a photo exhibition called The Loveliest Girl in the World with bluesbell. It was a lot of stunning fantasy portraits of young women from a shelter in Helsinki, with fairy tale costumes and beautiful nature panoramas, blown up to, say, half the size of the livingroom wall. The gift shop wasn't selling any posters, which is too bad because I would have bought the shit out of that. Beautiful but disappointingly small - the exhibit, not the photos. They all fit in one room, a little hallway, and round the walls of the café, where some of the nicest photos were obscured by huge flocks of chattering senior citizens.