== The tacit pressure of conformity, both to the community and myself My [[best N in 2015 BestNIn2015]] agreed pretty well with [[my year-end APR votes https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/682323993395871744]], but [[my 2014 best N BestNIn2014]] did not. In 2014, [[my APR vote https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/550437291781812224]] rated *Mushishi*'s second season as my top show; almost a month later, [[my post BestNIn2014]] demoted it all the way down to being only my third APR-eligible choice and I was not entirely enthused about it. So, what happened? Here's the simple version: *Mushishi*'s second season was a show that I was supposed to love, so I did. For a while. I was supposed to love it both because I genuinely loved the first season so how could I not love the continuation ([[well, there were reasons for that MushishiFirstVsSecondSeason]]) and also because the anime fan community that I'm part of ostensibly liked the show and gave it critical acclaim. In the face of all of that I buried [[my https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/546472079994781696]] [[qualms https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/541730363589283840]] ([[also https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/481999757691592705]], [[also https://twitter.com/cks_anime/status/482559567600295938]]). *Mushishi* was good, the second season was not obviously bad and had basically all of the same magic, how could I not like it and love it, especially when plenty of people I respected also did? So I rated *Mushishi* highly in [[APR http://behind-the.nihonreview.com/category/animepowerrankings/]] and in public because it was something I was supposed to like as a good anime fan and as myself, even though the second season didn't land with the same impact as the first one (and I felt it at the time). I could only admit to my qualms around the edges and with qualifications that of course *Mushishi* second season was great, but. But by the time I wrote up [[my best N in 2014 BestNIn2014]] the passage of time had made it so that I'd stopped being willing to lie to myself about it, and I could [[more clearly articulate my concerns MushishiFirstVsSecondSeason]] (and being able to do that helped things along, because I could put logic behind what my gut was saying). There was no explicit outside pressure here, no one who was pointing derisively at the people who didn't like *Mushishi* S2 or had qualms with it. It was the more subtle tacit pressure of conformity and expectations. Everyone wanted *Mushishi*'s second season to be great and have the magic of the first one, so I convinced myself that it did, probably partly so I wouldn't be disappointed (us humans *hate* to be disappointed and betrayed, even by our own expectations). I don't have any solutions to this general issue. Cutting myself off from the anime fan community and its aggregate tacit expectations is certainly not it; even if I wanted to do that, I'd still have the tacit pressure of my own past watching experiences. It's all well and good to say that I should get more backbone about listening to my gut and taking a contrary direction, but that's hard; the tacit pressure of conformity is real and not insignificant. I think the best I can hope for is to be consciously aware and alert about the possibility that it's acting on me. (This is another of my [[12 days of anime https://perpetualmorning.wordpress.com/2016/12/11/i-hijacked-12-days-of-anime-sorry-12112016/]] posts.)