So, hey, can you do me a favor? I need someone to convince me not to spend twenty dollars on a tote bag. The Shonen Jump store just dropped some Sakamoto Days merch this past weekend. I wouldn’t mind getting any of the shirts or hoodies, but I don’t need them so badly as to spend forty or fifty bucks on them. But that tote bag? It’s made to look like a convenience store grocery bag for Sakamoto’s on one side! It’s so perfect! My anti-capitalist instincts tell me I can’t justify spending twenty whole dollars on a canvas tote bag, but also I seriously want it so badly. I’m gonna get it. I can feel it. Never mind about that favor.
I’ve spent the past few days building up the habit of drawing every day. When I’m not working on a specific project, it’s so easy for me to not draw. Like, to paint a picture of my free time: I have a lot of different things I’d like to do and several things I know I need to do, and a couple of those are non-negotiable. So I have to figure out which of several options I’ll do with the rest of the time. Before I start, or when one activity ends, I either sit around staring at space for upwards of fifteen minutes, or I could spend upwards of an hour scrolling through social media that I don’t enjoy that much, really. Wasn’t it Kierkegard who was all about one choice closing out the possibility of all other choices? So I usually don’t do much, except whatever I have the strongest positive emotion about at the moment, and I feel unfulfilled and regretful to some degree as I go to bed. Drawing hasn’t felt like a “for fun” activity for a long time, and it’s scary to start. So I’ve been making a point to do at least some drawing of some kind every day for a few days, which will hopefully become a habit, and then it can be a non-negotiable in my routine. Like, eat, shower, draw, sleep should be the bare minimum of my night, or else I feel antsy and sick.
All that to say, I’ve also looked at more art stuff online, and I came across a Pinterest post about words you can use instead of “very” adjective phrases. I hate those kinds of posts so much, you know? I get the positive point you could get from them – in this case, that it’s good to keep the full scope of available words in mind as you write so you choose the right one – but all it does is shame people for nonconformity. “Very funny,” “really funny,” and “hilarious” all mean different things. Fundamentally, elementally, spiritually. That’s one of those things that you either get or you don’t as an English speaker, and especially as a writer. If I wanted to say something was hilarious, I would say that; if I said it was really funny, that’s what I meant. It’s like how a really good movie isn’t a great movie, right?
Making a list of alternate words for “very” phrases is just a way to police people’s language, under the guise of giving advice – after all, the person making the list can’t actually believe that the person who wrote “very funny” didn’t know “hilarious” existed, right? And what exactly are you trying to enforce? The aesthetics of “good writing,” as established by the canon of literature held up as unquestionably good writing. I’m not saying those works aren’t good writing, I’m just saying that not all good writing that can exist will look like the kinds of novels they teach in school. It doesn’t have to. Berating people for “sounding like a kid” because they made a specific choice in diction that you don’t like makes you a jerk. It’s not a weakness for someone to write effusively and with exaggerated emotions and sensations. I do it a lot; I love to say things were really this and very that, and also maybe understate the scale of some things because they’re so big and bad. When I’m writing a little more seriously in prose, I drop some of it because of whatever idea of a narrator I have in my head, and sometimes I’ll use “rather” phrases instead. I do it on purpose. I know a bunch of obscure, specific words, and I’ll use them when they’re the right choice. Most of the time, they’re not, and I prefer plainer, more common language that I can inject personality into.
On the conscious level, I was making that about me to illustrate an example of why someone would choose to write the “wrong” way, but it is fair to say I don’t like how it reflects on me. It’s like when you find your own way of doing something that not only gets the job done but also does it in the way you prefer, and someone taps on your shoulder to point at the manual and say you did it wrong. Like, shut up? I know all that stuff, it’s why I made a different choice. I’m not dumb or ignorant. It’s pretty safe to assume that anyone who chooses to write prose on any level is also educated and intelligent enough to know what words are, and when someone is trying to shame them into conforming with a standard of “good writing.”
Along those same lines are those posts where there’s four drawings labeled bad, basic, better, and perfect. Like, for starters, what sane artist is going on social media and saying their work is literally perfect and expecting to be taken seriously? Beyond that, they’re usually just a way of pushing people towards realism, because it’s always a progression towards realism. And like, I’m also not here to say that realistic art is bad, I’m just here to say it’s not the only good art that exists. It’s really frustrating when people put up examples of the best comics or manga art, and it’s all the most detail-oriented, realistic art they can find. There’s so much else out there in the world! Defaulting to realism as the standard for “good art” is lazy, a lowest common denominator consensus that necessarily includes people who don’t know anything about producing or appreciating art: No matter your point of view or knowledge level, everyone can see a realistic flower and agree it looks like a flower and took a lot of skill.
The personal level for me there is twofold. First off, as I’ve discussed before, I have dysgraphia, which makes it really hard for me to produce realistic pieces. For all practical purposes, it’s a closed door. I’ll never be Brian Hitch (who’s still somehow the standard in my head for realistic comics art, after like two decades), and trying to be in the past, feeling I have to be, is part of why it’s scary to start drawing. Second, I don’t want to be Brian Hitch. I much prefer expressive, exaggerated art. That’s the kind of artist I’d like to be. I guess, for some reason, I thought the internet was past scolding artists for having a wide variety of styles, or telling them that “perfect” art is realistic, in style and achievability.
All this makes me think about what Jason Pargin was saying on the most recent Quick Question. They talked about a Substack he wrote about celebrity culture, and he cited this study that showed people tend to copy everything a successful person does when performing the same task and do it the same way, because they don’t know what thing was the deciding factor in success. Giving anyone advice that boils down to “do things the way these famous people did it” is reductive and feeds the beast. Starting out with that kind of mimicry is fine, and often is a good way to figure out what you actually like and don’t; pushing others to keep up that blind mimicry is helping no one, and may even be hurting them. Like, people say using “very” phrases sounds dumb and childish because the great novels that established “good language” were written in a different way, not because there’s anything inherently childish about “very” phrases. If the Great Gatsby were littered with “very” phrases, their proper use would be seen as a prerequisite for success, and they’d sound posh and educated (also, I haven’t read the Great Gatsby, so I don’t know if I just embarrassed myself).
So yeah, assume artists and writers know what choices they’re making and help them progress how they’re trying to progress, rather than assume they’re trying to conform to societal standards. Also, since I’m posting my daily drawing as a maybe not useful mechanism to maintain the habit, I’ll link to some socials here, if you’d like to see it. I’m not doing Xwitter much or at all these days, but I’m still using Facebook. I got a BlueSky, if you have one, too (I assume it’ll be better when it’s not a gated community). I have a Threads, and I’m still confused on if it’s redundant to post pictures there and on Instagram, which I’m doing. How do those things interact? I do have a Mastodon, as well, though I hadn’t been posting there yet.
Weekly Thoughts 10/28/23
Life in the Gutters 