Thursday, 20 May 2010

Royalty Free Idea: Last Gasp Generic Whiner Gamble



If you're anything like me, then I apologise. Also, if you're anything like me, you'll doubtless have a folder of drawings from late childhood/early adolescence. On the one hand, it's nice having an actual tangible link to my carefree pencil-toting past. On the other hand, well, it transpires that I was a bit of a whiner. Or rather, I found whiny self-indulgence to be a positive, desirable trait. As such, a great deal of the characters of my creative yore were almost preordained aloof and sarcastic. Either that, or stoic and weathered, silent and "let's just get on with this". My characters were very often robots. Whiny, sarcastic robots with big swords or guns or gun-swords. I was doing my standard grades at the time.

But they were important formative years, and it's not fair on my younger self to cash in the chips of his whiny, stoic progress for cheap irony. Double fairness - whiny whinyness was a bit of a character staple in manga and anime at the time, in which I had a fledgling interest. Thankfully, I've since been able to differentiate between being a fan of manga/anime and being interested in particular, individual titles. I'm very much in the latter camp. At the moment, general anime character staples of note are: being young (and more often than not, female-young), and either being full of cleavage or full of sacharine adorable tweeness. These are, to be fair, almost desperately unfair generalisations, but they typify the most popular titles of the moment, or at least the ones that get the most anime-media attention. Dig deep and there's definately content out there that's worth the time and effort, but it's certainly a dig.

My folder of characters would either be very sarcastic about the whole thing, or just resolved to getting through it, however getting through it may be accomplished. Good for them.

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