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OTAKU_INFLUENCE

                                               May 10, 2012

                                                 "Oatku Japan's
Azuma believes that the                          Database Animals" (2001)
concept of "influence"                           by Hiroki Azuma
implies "authorship" (though
only "unconsciously"). p.49/50
                                                      OTAKU_BASE
But it just doesn't: one might
say the Brit-American goth-punk
subculture influnced gothic              INFLUENCE
lolita fashion without claiming
identifiable authorship on either
end.

He seems to be arguing in the direction
that understanding things in terms of
"tracing influences" is somehow inferior
to his elements-in-the-database concept,      (Nor is it clear why he likes to
but it's not really made clear why one        skip other commonly used concepts
would prefer the database-view                like "genre convention" or
                                              "fads/fashions"...)

It might be useful to avoid
getting bogged down in
unresolvable historical questions.     And if you can dodge
                                       issues about authorship,
If you can get away with a             you may be able to dodge
hand-wave toward "the database"        issues about ownership:
as the ultimate source, then you       here the database is a     LEGAL_BLOCK
don't need to worry about              shared resource, a
establishing whether manga authors     "cultural commons".
A-ko and B-ko have actually read      
each other's work.                    
                                             BIG_RESERVOIR
Some ideas are just "in the air"     
(or on the disk).

   There's a suggestion that along
   with the intense desires underlying
   the otaku's fanatic consumerism,
   there's something more icy:

      "Within the consumer behavior of feeling *moe*
      for a particular character, along with the blind
      obsession, there is hidden a peculiarly cool,
      detached dimension-- one that takes apart the
      object into *moe*-elements and objectifies them
      within a database."  (p.53)
                                                          UNTHINKABLE


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