You and your fandoms are constructs (and that’s okay!)

Martin wrote a post on K-ON! that may warrant some consideration. This is not a criticism of Martin’s way of doing things; I quite enjoy his Mono no Aware, generally. This is, rather, an examination of certain assumptions in Martin’s post which may apply to many (particularly western) fans, an attempt to reveal these assumptions [...]

Enjoyment/appreciation

No doubt you’ve encountered the disconnect between art one likes and art one enjoys; I mentioned it myself last Thursday. The basic principle here is that we might like something for its depth and complexity, but not enjoy it on a visceral level, or we might enjoy something viscerally without lauding its inherent structural mastery [...]

Disorganized thoughts on subjectivity

And now I shall swing the makeshift club of social science at anime fandom yet again — taking a class in mass media theory is convenient that way — and talk about subjectivity. You might also read this as an attack vs. objectivity, but I don’t really think of it like that. No point in [...]

What else is good about Aoi Hana?

Besides the characters, I mean, who are fantastic. They all manage to make mistakes and achieve meaningful everyday successes through nothing more than the power of their own character traits, and they all remain more or less sympathetic throughout, which is a real achievement, as far as I’m concerned. But I’m not going to go [...]

Otaku annotated: adventures in moe, porn, and postmodernism

I found Hiroki Azuma’s Otaku: Japan’s Database Animals at the university library — seven or so months ago. And, what do you know, it’s due back. Overdue, probably. So I suppose I should annotate this thing at long last, for your benefit and mine. It’s a short book, but I won’t be entirely exhaustive here. [...]

On turning female and gay

Well, no, I can’t do that, I guess. I am and shall remain male and straight; sorry if I got your hopes up. I have this proposition, though. I don’t claim that it’s true; I don’t even claim it’s plausible, or that it has any foundation in logic or data; all I claim is that [...]