Nothing sucks more than getting peed on.
Not that I know from experience. But it’s the (socially-accepted) idea of thing. Being urinated on isn’t just yucky, it’s humiliating. It’s a sign of submission, of defeat. As for the pee-er himself… Well, that’s just it, the triumphant urinator is always a “he.” Peeing as a sign of power is a uniquely male phenomenon.
Stick with me on this one. I know it’s a little weird.
Think of boys writing their names in the snow, or boasted about the public territory they’ve “marked” (Hmm, maybe I just know strange boys). Peeing becomes a way, however recognizably juvenile, for guys to assert themselves in the world.
The same is definitely not true for girls. Of course, part of that has to do with anatomy. It’s also a matter of idea about male aggression and female passivity. But what if the pee-er isn’t even human?
40 hours or so (Oh dear lord, the hours!) into Okami, Scott and I–well, really Amaterasu–have acquired the ability to urinate on enemies. And that’s funny, I get that. But it’s also odd. Not just because it serves as a constant reminder that you’re playing a wolf, no matter how you’d like to anthropomorphize her, but because Ammy’s a girl.
Granted, she’s pretty gender ambiguous. But if you want to talk about the power of female peeing, that starts to get us into some curious fetishistic territory. More to report on the subject soon though; that is, as soon as Ammy learns her enigmatic next attack, Brown Fury.
Bonnie Ruberg is a sex, technology, and video games journalist who contributes regularly to publications like The Economist, Forbes, and The Village Voice. By day she's also a comparative literature PhD student at UC Berkeley, where she studies French, English, gender, sexuality, surrealism and perversion. You can reach her at [her first name and last name, all one big word] AT gmail DOT com.
October 26th, 2006 at 8:39 am
You should have a look at Tatsuya Egawa’s Golden Boy I guess (the manga, not the anime). Might send you on another, if parallel, track about the whole peeing is a boy thing.
Just flip through it though, it makes interesting working material, but poor reading (The whole event I’m refering too only happen later, but I just can’t remember at what volume, after 5 I bet since that’s when they stopped editing it, judging the rest of the story “too scabrous”).
October 26th, 2006 at 10:11 am
I can’t wait to poop on our enemies.
October 26th, 2006 at 12:08 pm
Taken from this page: “Wolves mark their territories with urine and scats, a behavior called scent-marking. When wolves from outside of the pack smell these scents, they know that an area is already occupied. It is likely that pack members can recognize the identity of a packmate by its urine, which is useful when entering a new territory or when packmembers become separated. Dominant animals may scent mark through urination every two minutes.”
October 26th, 2006 at 12:18 pm
Glad to see you’re still playing with sex and games subjects. It seems like Japan is the mythical place of origin for most of the world’s sexual fetishes, and there is an extent where things considered taboo or narroly fetishistic in America are more subliminated in Japanese culture. You’ve touched on Ameratsu’s character before as a sort of primal feminimity in nature (or something like that) and this seems an extension of that. To a culture where dozens of men ejaculating on one woman’s breasts is a popular form of erotica, a wolf peeing probably doesn’t register as taboo.
October 27th, 2006 at 11:05 am
Brown Fury. (shudders)
October 27th, 2006 at 11:09 am
Glad to see you're still playing with sex and games subjects.
Huh? What’s furry sexuality? Or games as masturbation? Or, you know, all those sex and games links in In the News?
October 28th, 2006 at 7:32 am
Yeah I’ve seen a couple things from Japan while uh.. doing research and it’s not just a boy thing. Gross as all get-out for me, but regardless of who’s showering.
It’s just not as funny to me as teabagging. Teabagging represents the ultimate gloat over a foe, I’ve found.
October 28th, 2006 at 8:47 am
I think turkey slapping is funnier, but maybe that’s just me. There’s something about the nomenclature.
October 29th, 2006 at 7:19 pm
Some of my male friends have coined the term “fdunk”–or, to be specific, the sound it would make if you slapped someone across the face with your penis. Same basic idea.
November 2nd, 2006 at 10:56 am
When I first found out that Amaterasu could do this, and that you were rewarded by a demon fang for it, I laughed hysterically. I actually look forward to when my enemy is down but not out and leaving them with a bad taste in their mouth. The fact that this act is rewarded makes it even funnier, and I can’t wait to upgrade it!
November 2nd, 2006 at 12:05 pm
Golden Showers in Okami! Great! Where is our society going to when you can pee with a wolf on your enemies? (jk!)
BTW, I can’t agree more with Adam about teabagging.
March 1st, 2009 at 1:21 am
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