Everything is 95% shit

This right here is a piece of wisdom that I think a lot of people would benefit from. It applies to almost everything.

"Genre" as a concept is incredibly limited. It's used by marketers to help sell things. Convince people media is more similar to stuff they like than it actually is. Its also used by academics and content creators because their very existence is depending on inventing rigid categories and definitions where none truly exist. Genre can be useful when its descriptive, but I think it can be harmful when prescriptive.

I read an interview a long time ago... I think it was with Jerry Cantrell of Alice in Chains, but I could be wrong. The interviewer set up the context that a lot of people take the position that grunge killedor replaced metal, but some AIC fans argue that AIC is a metal band. He said something along the lines of "we use a lot of metal-isms in our music, but when we are writing we aren't really thinking about whether something is metal or not".

I really embraced it when I started making music myself, and with band members. There have been occasions where I purposefully say to myself "I want to write a power metal song" or "I want to write a simple singer-songwriter folk song", but those tend to sound almost like parodies. They're popular with people who only listen to music casually. The more interesting artistic exploration happens without those assumptions and expectations. The most interesting pieces of media tend to defy genre boundaries.

Even "anime"... What counts? Stuff like Castlevania and Arcane get called anime, but they weren't made in Japan. A lot of animation is outsourced to Korea or other countries now... Does that still count? A lot of Adventure Time was animated by a Korean studio... Is that anime? Is any japanese-made stop-motion or claymation anime? What about projects that blend animation with live Action?