@B0bduh

Bobduh

Do you feel like it's possible for media that were great in their time to be replaced by new art that copied its innovations? (The example that came to mind today was Ocarina of Time.)

In the popular consciousness, or as a possible entertainment recommendation for a specific audience? Definitely. But this comes down to a larger "role of art" question, and in that light, an influential piece of art can't really be replaced. The history of any artistic medium isn't a series of isolated works, it's a conversation - a certain trend or way of depicting "truth" will come into prominence, be articulated on and interpreted and modified by a variety of creators, and then something will arise either in opposition to or somehow otherwise counter to that existing trend and the conversation will expand to include and comment on that. This doesn't happen in a simplistic "rocks beats scissors" progression of artistic trends and countertrends, but that sometimes /does/ happen (like with surrealism self-consciously forming a break from prior trends), and either way it means that you can't really remove blocks from an artistic canon, since it's all part of a living whole.
This can actually get pretty awkward in the more storied and self-reflective mediums. That whole cliche of modern art just being a bunch of garbled nonsense is reflective of the disconnect between a general audience looking to appreciate things with a given standard of what is "beautiful" and an insider audience that is acting in the assumption of familiarity with a long-standing conversation that gives context for a given piece. It's the same with writing - there are obviously general rules of narrative craft that make a work emotionally coherent and accessible, but there are also works that break every one of those rules in service of provoking some alternate reaction based on a given context. Personally, I had serious trouble getting into a variety of modernist authors back in college, because their work was so insular and so dependent on familiarity with a vast array of specific cultural and artistic touchstones that you essentially had to translate it out of its own language. Let me know if you get much out of The Waste Land, because I sure didn't.
But we're getting a little off-topic. As I said at the beginning, in terms of what a work means to its audience, in a very general way, things can be "replaced." But obviously most works have a million minor details that separate them from others, and influential works always exist as living pieces of a conversation anyway, so most art is roughly as immortal as the culture that creates it. And hey, Ocarina of Time is still my favorite Zelda game, so clearly it's got some value left in it.
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Latest answers from Bobduh

Do you ever worry about the possibility that the lack of spoiler warning from your twitter feed will lead people away from possibly following you? I've heard a lot of quiet complaints from people I know that stopped following you because you tweeted content they haven't seen yet.

Lately I've been trying to include show hashtags for anything that's actively airing and might be spoiler-prone. Not really much I can do beyond that.

Is it really so wrong given that you tend to the exact opposite views of about certain anime , to want to see you and Jacob Chapman engage in a head to head debate about it?

It's certainly not wrong to want that, but it's not something I'm really interested in doing. After too many years of arguing on the internet, I've come to accept that the only results of Critic Fights tend to be enjoyment for people who like arguing and frustration for people who don't. I don't enjoy arguments, so I've stopped engaging in them - my hope is that my own criticism at least makes my perspectives on shows understandable, even if you don't agree with them.

Can you name some of your favorite bands/albums? I asked previously it's just very hard to find old answers in AskFM. I can't even scroll back that far in time in my notification box!

It turns out I actually went pretty deep on this question in the past, which I was able to find by google (if I'm looking for something I think I've answered, I generally just google "*topic* bobduh ask.fm" or similar).
http://ask.fm/B0bduh/answers/109151815722

Ever written a piece on End of Eva?

Not yet. I'm planning on prioritizing Evangelion for the Current Projects once I've cleared out a few of the projects I'm currently finishing up, and I'm guessing that project will end in many many words on End of Eva.

My question wasn't meant in a mean way and I apologise if you felt like I'm trying to croner you or something like that. I'm sad you used me as shaming material with your friends, I read it and it hurt. There was a lot of assumptions there that were unnecessarily mean. I won't bother you anymore bob

Your prior question combined a /fourth/ reframing of "but aren't you wrong about how you're parsing this character?" with a paraphrasing of my prior acknowledgment of the ambiguity of the text, framed as to negate the significance of any opinion I might offer. If all of that was meant entirely sincerely, I apologize for causing you hurt. But I hope you can see how that looks from my perspective - the ultimate effect is a reiteration of the prior question combined with a jab against whatever I might say.
I've been fielding disingenuous questions about Euphonium basically the whole time it's been a show, so I hope you can understand my skepticism and fatigue. What could theoretically be an innocent question feels a lot less innocent the fifth time, and like something else entirely the fiftieth.

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maybe you've written about this before elsewhere, but what things in the show imply Kumiko isn't straight?

Expression work and shot framing, mostly. There are plenty of moments where both the camera's gaze and Kumiko's expressions very strongly imply she's extremely distracted and flustered by Reina's physical presence.

How do you keep track on Anime sales? With Girlish Number or Flip Flappers for example. It's really interesting stuff to know.

My friend @somekindofthing on twitter keeps excellent running tallies of show sales. Though of course, sales alone should be taken with a grain of salt - there are many ways anime can make back their cost or count as "successful."

Do you feel like Kumiko and Reina should have more material together in the last episode of eupho? Felt like Reina deserved more time since she was such a major part of the show.

I think the previous episode was basically Reina's conclusion. In retrospect, I feel the show should have done a better job establishing that it's Reina's faith in Taki that helped him come to peace with his current path in life - that would have given both their characters a bit more closure.

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