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Writer's Block: You Don't Know Me
Our friends don't always know us as well as they think, particularly when it comes to likes and dislikes. Which popular book, movie, band, food, TV show, etc. would your friends be surprised to hear that you don't like?
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Honestly? I have no taste. I think that most people reading this would be horrified to learn about some of the things that I do like.
But okay, I'll bite.
I genuinely dislike most of Neil Gaiman's writing. Mostly this manifests as a sort of "meh I can't enjoy this" reaction to his books, with the notable exception of American Gods, which actually made me start banging my head against my desk, toward the end. Sometimes Gaiman gets so caught up in his high story concepts that he forgets to give his protagonists, oh, you know, actual emotions/motivations/believable reactions to anything. Granted, the whole "blank cipher as a protagonist" thing plagues a lot of speculative fiction, not just Gaiman's. And yes, I know that sometimes Gaiman is trying to do it on purpose - I'm not dumb, I know why the main character of American Gods is named "Shadow" - but it's still enough to throw me right out of the story, whether done purposefully or not.
I'm in awe of Gaiman's imagination and his mastery of English prose. But I still can't enjoy his fiction if his characterization is weaksauce. I'm one of those dorky readers who cares a lot more about characters than I do about concepts. That's probably why I can enjoy media based on completely insane, ridiculous, bordering-on-moronic concepts if the characters and their relationships grab me enough. (See: Death Note, every magical girl anime ever made, the best Stephen King books, etc.)
For the record, I also think that Makoto Shinkai's The Place Promised in Our Early Days is the most overrated piece of shit I've ever wasted two hours of my life on. Maybe this shouldn't bug me so much, but every time I see Shinkai getting hailed as "the next Miyazaki" or "a masterful storyteller," I just want to start throttling people and screaming, "Stop being distracted by the prettiness! An animated Thomas Kinkade painting does not good writing make!!"
It was an extraordinarily pretty movie, though. Just crap in every other sense.
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I liked Voices well enough, as the need-to-cling makes sense when you're out in the middle of space. But the other two films made me feel... I dunno, angry. Like, get over it already! Or, just call her damnit! Where's the basis for your OMG FEELINGS? I just couldn't sympathize with the characters. It only got worse when I thought about how many fanbrats buy into the Tragic Never-Will-Be romance.
Since you're a comic book fan, nenena, I can understand how lack of interesting characters turns you off from a story. What's the point of shocking plot twists if we don't care about who is experiencing those twists.
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YES
THIS X1000
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Yes, this too. Except what makes it worse in TPPioED, I think, is that after all of that angsty build-up, they totally got a Dues Ex Machina happy ending! And it was so ridiculously stupid, too! Like we were supposed to believe that she was making a tragic sacrifice by giving up her memories of having met him (all of twice!) in the "dream world," even though A) they were already in love BEFORE their dream-meetings, so it's not like she was sacrificing their "tru wuv" or anything like that, more like forgetting two dates that they had one time, and B) the fate of the entire universe was at stake, who the hell CARES about your two stupid memories, they're not as important as THE WHOLE REST OF THE WORLD. Gaaaah. Plus the whole "she only has to forget her memories" thing was just tacked on at the end with no explanation whatsoever - again, Dues Ex Machina to the max - and it's such a lame cop-out that it totally invalidates all of the dramatic tension that's been built up before.
That, and every single aspect of the main romance in that movie was cliche, cliche, cliche to the max. Every single blush, all of the stupid stuff about her violin, the part where she tragically (oh noes!) falls into a mysterious coma, etc. It was just every bad anime romance cliche all thrown into the same movie at once. Argh.
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I like where you said about your taste. I tend to like a variety of things and it can be very unpredictable, even to myself. XD And I often don't like what most people like. I can find the merit in many things but I rarely love things in a big fan way. (e.g. Kyou Kara Maou being one of the very few anime that had me hooked.) Sometimes I may seem as if I like something more than I do because I don't usually say critical things. I can be a bit 'Pollyanna', seeing the good side of things, where possible.
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And some of us cannot really enjoy a work if it does not have the character equivalent of car chases and explosions and shooting.
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Yes, this. I like Neil. He's an incredibly nice guy, and his ability to manipulate fantastic ideas is amazing to the whole. Unfortunately, I tend to find his plots a bit weak and his characters often fall quite flat.
I have a similar problem with China Miéville. He writes a really gripping story, and then he botches the ending every single time.
Now I'm deathly curious about who you do like to read.
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I thought The Place Promised in Our Early Days was pretty...but boring. I really want to like it, because it seems so sweet, but there's just something boring about it. It doesn't capture my attention. But I like 5 Centimeters Per Second. It's different and it does capture my attention. But he's not the next Miyazaki. I think Satoshi Kon has better films (Tokyo Godfathers ftw. A movie about bums? Awesome).
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