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If you ever make a sequel to your book you better not use some cheap tricks to ruin your characters relationship you maybe possible monster!

Too late, I've already introduced Sean's long-lost sister and now it's a creepy anime love triangle and everything is terrible.
Nah, don't worry. Arbitrary relationship drama is actually one of the things that makes me most angry in fiction. My characters will certainly have conflict in their relationships, but it won't be because "fate is tearing them apart" or some shit. It'll be because they are different people with different needs and life goals, some of which conflict with others.
Incidentally, one of my other pet peeves is stories that refuse to actually show happy, fully-formed relationships, so there'll be plenty of that too. I feel like way too many stories only find relationships interesting when people are either getting into or getting out of them.
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Liked by: Sunshine Marmot

If you would be invited to a far remote village where it is custom to eat their dead. Would you have a taste?

Unless it'd be incredibly rude not to, no. The concept makes me kind of nauseous.

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What are your thoughts on George RR Martin's "Architect vs Gardener" analogy for the two types of fiction writers? Which one would you consider yourself?

Considering I think his "gardener" description is kind of a white lie intended to encourage people who'd otherwise be intimidated by the difficulty of story construction to write something, I guess I'd fall solidly into "architect." But I also think most people use elements of both methods during story construction - you can't write a coherent story without somewhat knowing where it will go, and you can't write a living and naturally flowing story without letting its characters breathe.
For me personally, I plan out the general points each chapter in a larger piece has to make ahead of time, as I'm constructing my overall outline (in this scene, these characters finally do ____ event. This results in ____ change in this character, prompting ____ followup event, pushing ____ arc through this point, and acting as the third beat in this five-beat arc for ____ side character). Those are basically the outline touchstones of a chapter - but from there, I'll just let the characters themselves act their way through the execution of those actions. It can actually be pretty thrilling to reach a point where I know some big turn is going to happen, but I get to "see" how the back-and-forth of a conversation between two characters I love leads them to that turn.
Martin seems to do something similar, but for larger "branches" of his narrative than just for small in-chapter exchanges between characters. He himself has said he has the larger narrative beats of ASOIAF planned out, but lets the characters dictate smaller pieces themselves. Frankly, I think that kind of shows in how rambling and awkwardly constructed the last couple books have been - I think that's a weakness of his writing, not one valid choice out of several.
Not to say he's a bad writer or anything - I think he's a great writer, actually, and his masterful understanding of character voice is something I try to learn from. But I do think he's let a very winding narrative kind of get away from him, and hearing that he lets the story dictate its own path as it goes along is thus not that surprising to me.

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Do you agree with Damon Albarn when he says that things like Glee and american idol is ruining the music industry trough homogenisation ?

Nope. Albarn is sounding kind of like a music-Miyazaki here - he's a product of a time when big label-backed albums were actually relevant, and so he's operating under assumptions that don't really relate to the modern artistic landscape. The music "industry" is not something you can rely on for any kind of artistic vibrancy, and never really has been, but we're actually entering an era where it's no longer a particularly relevant gatekeeper.
Granted, we also haven't really found a way for artists to get /paid/ in this brave new world, but hopefully that will come eventually.

What are your thoughts on the movie Mind Game

I saw it a decade ago, so I'd need to see it again to have a meaningful opinion on it.

Um any favorite games ''interactive media'' that people usually classify has an ''interactive movie'' pejoratively?

People definitely do that for Katawa Shoujo - I distinctly remember people complaining about its positive reviews, saying "this isn't even a game at all!" Which is kind of funny to me - like with the "get your feminism out of my sweaty manhobby!" crowd, it turns out applying actual criticism to games means you're gonna end up praising a lot of stuff that's more interested in evoking an emotional experience than shooting more skulls than the other guy.
Lots of RPGs, I guess. And I find the Metal Gear Solid games pretty fascinating, though Hideo Kojima is kind of bipolar when it comes to his gaming-as-storytelling-device ambitions versus his telling-a-story-worth-a-damn limitations.
Ooh! Catherine. Catherine's awesome. And the Persona games are all kinds of jumbled pieces, and they're great too.

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Should we murder cutscenes in video games? Got my pocket knife ready!

Nah, I totally get where you're coming from, but I actually kind of really like some videogames as reflections of a "broken medium." It's probably due to my nostalgic love of FFVII, which is about as big and personal of an aesthetic mess as you could possibly create, but I think there should be room for both aesthetically holistic videogames and videogames that are a mishmash of different mediums awkwardly smashed together and laced with interactivity.
Having your gameplay and aesthetic vehicle be reflective of your theme is a powerful thing. So is naturally integrating your storytelling into the gameplay and content of your world. Many more games should aspire to do both of these things. But many other "games" should also just abuse the power of interactive media to create audience investment in a semi-traditional narrative. Katawa Shoujo's a big example for me - there, the "game" elements are limited to maybe a dozen multiple choice questions, but that's not a "failing" of the game, because it's really only designed to demonstrate consequences in a more visceral way, and make it very slightly "your" story. There are so many ways to make artistically/emotionally meaningful use of interactivity.
At this point, I don't even really like the "game" label being used as the informal title for interactive media. Many of the best pieces of interactive media would be "bad games" according to many people, and that's because the medium is still tied to the idea of being entertainment before art. None of my favorite movies or books are the ones that are just "fun" - I want games that break my fucking heart.

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Do you believe that melodrama can be effective - that is to say that the drama portrayed has very little weight behind it, but is still able to create an emotional response.

It really depends on how you define melodrama. If you really mean "drama that doesn't really have any grounding in earned character truth," then the answer is "yes, definitely, but only for audiences that /want/ to be affected." Which is where I'd place things like Angel Beats. If you mean "drama that is heightened and operatic and ridiculous," then yes, definitely, as long as it's still based in something true. That's where I'd place something like Utena and maybe Shiki. You also /can/ create a strong emotional reaction in a few quick strokes - you just have to be a master storyteller and choose your details exceptionally well. That's where I'd put something like the first ten minutes of Up, or pretty much the entirety of One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Okay, in your opinion, is it worth watching Clannad/Afterstory? Everything I've heard from critics I trust makes it sound pretty terrible, and I've read about the horrible ending, but your answer about episodes 17 and 18 made me curious.

I'd say that overall it isn't worth it, but there is certainly good in the series. If you've seen Angel Beats, imagine that most of Clannad is the slapstick/melodrama combo of that series, except sometimes it will suddenly veer into really great character drama for a few episodes or so.
So I guess it ultimately comes down to your tolerance for bullshit. If you've got some actually consistently good show you're in the mood to watch, watch that instead - but if you're really compelled to watch Clannad, sometimes it will reward you for suffering through the rest of it.

Which anime blogger(s) are you most fond of?

If I haven't told senpai myself, I sure as hell can't tell ask.fm!

What's your favorite "stupid" movie, e.g. Airplane

Not sure I have one? Even the movies I like in kinda schlocky genres (Battle Royale, Cabin in the Woods, etc), I think are actually really compelling and smart.
Does The Room count?

If you could live as an anime character for the rest of your life, who would you be and in what setting?

Would I be, like, replacing some character in their story? Would my personality be replaced by their one? If that's the case, how would that really be "me" living at all? Whoa.

How do you feel when you finish an episode of something while thinking "that was a refreshing lack of exposition; I like how the writers respected the audience's intelligence" and then you hop on the internet and discover that half the audience has no clue what happened?

Kind of sadly amused, I guess? Pretty much anything that employs subtlety is going to be yelled at for being confusing or "random."
I actually just read a comment about how Kyouko from Madoka's actions are "random" because she first yells at Sayaka and then tries to help her, a complaint that requires completing misreading Kyouko on a fundamental level. WRITING IS HARD, YOU GUYS.
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Liked by: Sunshine Marmot Rose Bridges

Which anime blogger(s) are you most similar to with regards to taste?

Deadlight, AJ the Fourth, and basically everyone from Isn't It Electrifying.

Where would you bury your treasure if you had some?

Probably right beside the ni-hi-hi-hiiiice try, internet.

How many times a day do you look at yourself in the mirror?

As few times as is necessary, I guess. Washing hands, brushing teeth, etc.
Incidentally, this is my oldest unanswered question. Two months woo! I SAID I'D GET TO THEM.

Gundam Unicorn? Give it a try?

I've heard it kind of requires some Gundam-fluency, and I don't really know Gundam at all. Maybe someday.

Considering your love for great characters, how have you not watched NHK yet?

I've read it. It's great. I'll watch it at some point.

You always talk about how you like realistic characters. But how do you deal with a character if they are supposed to have a mental problem like insanity?

I'd hope they'd still be a character, and not a MWAHAHAHA cliche. But I don't really trust most anime to actually portray a mentally ill person as anything but a silly device - it /does/ happen, but most relevant characters fall into fetish-fuel territory like yanderes.
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Liked by: Sunshine Marmot Rose Bridges

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