AnimeSuki Forum - View Single Post - Beyond Moe: has anime really changed at all?

Sheba · 2011-12-03, 08:11

@ Undertaken

Just to clarify my position here. I attempted to get moving on my story not to appeal to the crowd but to get the story that finally get me satisfied with the result. I have in mind Kurt Vonnegut's "Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.". In the long run, I found out that "Bring/Find the MacGuffin to defeat the Evil Overlord" just did not cut it anymore with me. Maybe when I was 14, but no more when I was past 25 already. Finally, it is the history nerd inside me, with an interest for the Sengoku period, the Thirty Years War and the American Civil War, and the reading of War and Peace that gave me the "tick" and a sight of what I really wanted to do, a piece of fictional history.

My prob with those Tolkien wannabe is that they rushed to copy it without understanding what made it tick in the first place, and often did not try to find inspiration from elsewhere, it could be vanilla History, legends from places such as Egypt or Ancient Greece, or more obscure places, anything else .

I think it is the same problem that plagues the Light Novel industry as pointed out by Cyth, if I understood him right, when he said "incestuous". Those fans of fans of fans of authors just recycles tropes seen a thousand of times in many works, often taking inspiration from anime, manga and video games. While, those are not bad sources of inspiration, but they should not be the end-all be-all sources, when there are matter outside this sphere that is as rich if not more. I think that an aspiring author could gain a lot from a trip to the library or zapping to Discovery/History Channel. Which might be how I reached that "Eureka!" phase as one while I struggled to find the playstage for my characters.

2011-12-03, 08:11	Link #215
Sheba RUN, YOU FOOLS! Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: Formerly Iwakawa base and Chaldea. Now Teyvat, the Astral Express & the Outpost Age: 44	@ Undertaken Just to clarify my position here. I attempted to get moving on my story not to appeal to the crowd but to get the story that finally get me satisfied with the result. I have in mind Kurt Vonnegut's "Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.". In the long run, I found out that "Bring/Find the MacGuffin to defeat the Evil Overlord" just did not cut it anymore with me. Maybe when I was 14, but no more when I was past 25 already. Finally, it is the history nerd inside me, with an interest for the Sengoku period, the Thirty Years War and the American Civil War, and the reading of War and Peace that gave me the "tick" and a sight of what I really wanted to do, a piece of fictional history. My prob with those Tolkien wannabe is that they rushed to copy it without understanding what made it tick in the first place, and often did not try to find inspiration from elsewhere, it could be vanilla History, legends from places such as Egypt or Ancient Greece, or more obscure places, anything else . I think it is the same problem that plagues the Light Novel industry as pointed out by Cyth, if I understood him right, when he said "incestuous". Those fans of fans of fans of authors just recycles tropes seen a thousand of times in many works, often taking inspiration from anime, manga and video games. While, those are not bad sources of inspiration, but they should not be the end-all be-all sources, when there are matter outside this sphere that is as rich if not more. I think that an aspiring author could gain a lot from a trip to the library or zapping to Discovery/History Channel. Which might be how I reached that "Eureka!" phase as one while I struggled to find the playstage for my characters.