Saffron and Sage

With the announcement that Toonami was make a sequel series to FLCL, I thought I’d go back and give it a rewatch. Furry Curry was one of the first anime I really got into during my weebier days, and rewatching it really dug home how much it’d wormed its way into my brain. You can see it in LotH, and Jill’s smoking/poverty, though that wasn’t something I did consciously.

One thing I’m taking away from it on rewatch is how little exposition it felt the need to do. Exposition scenes are really hard for me to write, and it’s oddly liberating to realize no one really cares. And they really don’t.

It’s important for you, the writer, to know the details of your world. But it’s also important to realize that most readers don’t actually care about any of this shit. These early exposition-heavy scenes are the biggest mistake I made writing LotH, and did real damage to the comic (especially since they’re right in the beginning, when readers can be scared off). I had pages and pages of shit on how the Rabbit’s religion worked, and no one gave a fuck and likely no one ever will. And that’s fine.

I was stuck on LotH script for a while because I wanted a scene of Jill expressing her feelings and introducing herself to the rabbits, and watching a leaner show like FLCL really drove it home that no one fucking cares. I can skip this entire expository infodump/training sequence and skip straight to the fight scene and no one’s going to miss it.

Anyway, bit of a bloggy post there, but sometimes when you’re stuck for a long time, you should ask yourself if you really need the bit you’re writing.