#theproblemsofcreativeness

...also happens to be the title of a short, biting sci-fi tale by Thomas M. Disch; I use it as a half-ironic tag over on my blog but have been saving it as title. (in case you haven’t noticed or cared, I like to use old sci-fi story and movie titles as blog post titles as a sort of mood-setting thang over at heartsoffuriousfancies dawt com) I need to write -something- over there, if only because my (gasp) 10yr anniversary for the blog is approaching in September. I haven’t abandoned it, or even announced a formal hiatus. I do drop by and reply to occasional comments and sometimes, I run search+replace to fix terminology problems that might inadvertently position my ramblings as allied with odious netouyo.

So why have I not posted in 3/4 of a year? I lost my theory-moe-mojo. I think I blew it all on last year’s (or was it 2 years ago’s) big 4-parter on conventions of depicting intimacy in Japanese manga and anime. I am still proud of it but it became obvious that I wasn’t getting my point, my thesis or whatever, across. 

A similar thing happened a few years earlier when I examined 3 somewhat-lesbian-ish yuri works, ending in a detailed examination of the Bakemonogatari effort; Hanamonogatari (which, btw I lurv to death and Suruga Kanbaru is in many ways a far better lead than buddy boy, and I like buddy boy) Here for the record:  Too Het series: The “use value” extracted by straight-gaze works using queer characters is that these can do things that -by convention- straight charas are seldom shown doing. Lives of others: Tasteful, light queer desire is consumed for its iyashi feels. Hanamonogatari both lampshades and deconstructs the practice; it is a masterfully plotted tale. I then ran out of any “big” theory-ish thangs I wanted to grind on about. On a whim, I created an “imaginary friend”/ fictional interlocutor/ foil/ straight lawn mower/ OC? So I could do crummy dialogue-ish style grinds on smaller topics. It was either this, stop blogging or start doing new season anime reviews. Ack-chu-ally... The anime reviews ended up as meandering Twitter threads. Post screencaps, try not to be toooo slaggy, except for creeper shit that deserved a kick or two.

Even so, I generally just do a “nope, not for me, you may enjoy it, whatever” Why waste powder?

For instance, there are TWO summer 2021 high fantasy young lad hero isekai anime on right now; One is more “hard realism” and the other is already building a monster-girl harem. The latter is clearly more bullshit cliché than the former but I am enjoying it far more than the first -- which routinely slips in gratuitous child abuse shit to bolster its “realism” cred. ISEKAI, remember? FANTASY. Pleasant diverting escapism. If I want human scum acting scummy, I watch a video of CPAC.

Strangely enough, the monster girls in question are not shy about killing baddies, which is refreshing, even if they do pull their punches -most- of the time out of a sense of decorum towards their “young master”. The “realism” one could have used a few more dead baddies, right from ep1. Bhut Nooooo because our hero is... -something-. Bleh.

Even the Light Novel version of the Slime-taming Shed Builder Isekai from last year had him quietly, offstage, KILLING entre bands of bandits that threatened his forest cave home. Good on him. Do I have to endlessly re-watch Castlevania to see some obvious problem disposal? Which is not exactly a theory-moe-ish subject for one of my usual essay/posts. Which leads me to IRL. Obviously, a year -plus- of pandemic has not improved my outlook and I am sorely missing my special someone in Japan (she can’t visit me and I can’t visit her) and I really, really miss her. I DO feel better lately in that both of us are now fully vaxxed, and while we both have our share of “gettin’ older” complaints, we are healthy. So... writers block apologia post? There are a few other thangs that annoy/ get in the way but all in all, I like the way the last decade has gone in manga and anime. I have been watching casually for EONS and decided to fan out on it a decade ago and I will proudly state that I now will watch anime before I bother watching almost all live-action “movies” or shows. The overwhelming majority of them now provoke an almost-reflexive URUSAI/ STFU reaction.