Oh, good grief... Slash tropes infest the for-purchase market.

You know how I used to bitch and mock the bad porny novels coming out of houses like Samhain and Ellora's Cave? About how all the BDSM novels were either written by people who had never done it, or had done it were all New Relationship Energy with their toy and had to tell you all about how cool it was, or who had done it but couldn't write their way out of a paper bag?

There is something worse, I've discovered: the gay porn written by straight women for straight women. Who've never committed sodomy in their lives. Who have no idea what cock even tastes like. Who are absolutely clueless about what men are like in bed. Prissy, excessively talented cops and cowboys who "discover" sometime in their lives that hey, they like guys like they never noticed before and, miraculously, the right guy is there. It's like, two men who would be perfect husbands if only they weren't gay, which is a mirror for the one man who would be a perfect husband if only he weren't about to marry the female protagonist.

Gag me. No, not you.

Look! It's a Stereotype!

This afternoon on bus 18 headed into downtown I saw one of those stereotypes that you don't really believe exists because, well, you've never seen one before and you've only heard they exist over there.

Over there, in this case, is Japan.

He was a small man, a thin man, certainly Asian and proabably Japanese, wearing a cream-colored sportcoat over an orange shirt and black pants. He was reading a book that most definitely was Japanese, but what made him a stereotype was the over-the-shoulder bag completely festooned with Loli-style cloisonne pins. At least two dozen glossy, cartoony little girls in conveniently panty-exposing poses pranced and leaped across the canvas bag's front flap, all smiles and grins and one or two mock I-don't-really-mean-it pouts.

He didn't give off creep vibes. He didn't really give off much at all. It was just one of those odd things to see, like a Sasquatch, a genuine rorikon.