I got a new picture this week, this time of Walker. I did a more narrative thing than a drawing challenge with this one, which was fun. But not enough. So I also experimented with a different type of skeleton than I usually use and drew a bunch of insane patterns on their clothes. I actually had a different pattern, with overlapping triangles, where the swirl is, and changed it when I realized the triangle thing looked too similar to the checker pants. This is a great example of an outfit that’s fun to think about and draw once and would be absolutely terrible in a comic. I can’t imagine drawing this more than once; maybe if I could digitally fill spaces with patterns that I didn’t have to draw, but that’s currently beyond me.
I’ve been planning out story this week. After revising the narrative, I have a good idea of the principle players and important moments and whatnot for this graphic novel. So now, to move forward, I need to know what is actually going to happen in each chapter, in each scene. That kind of thinking and planning is so much harder than anything else. Over the past few days, I’ve spent like twenty to thirty minutes on it, so I’m making some progress. I have a couple chapters roughly mapped out, and I have solid ideas on start and end points for others. I have the general shape and arrangement of big parts. It’s that one part of the creative process that takes so much brain power, I just have to escape. I flipped a stick for like thirty minutes the other night. I had a small bruise on my hand the next day because I caught it wrong in the same spot a couple times. While I was doing that, I realized that it was easier to catch the stick if I thought about throwing the bottom away than if I thought about flipping the top towards me. The bottom is the part I want to catch and need to pay attention to, so focus there makes it easier to throw it in the right place, and I’m not switching from flip thought to catch thought. It’s pretty amazing how much perspective can change, huh? You just have to identify a goal and figure out which things are eating up space in your head that ultimately aren’t important to that goal. Not to erase those things, but to recontextualize them and figure out how to handle them.
Speaking of distractions, my social media feed has started getting a lot of Dragon Ball Sparking Zero and Daima content, since those are coming out soon. The former, especially, has me thinking about how fans interact with the series again. It’s always bothered me when people make fun of Yamcha. Like, I get part of it. From a good faith perspective, he is a funny character who makes mistakes and does silly things, and there’s a fun meta joke about how he’s always the one who gets beaten early to prove how tough the bad guy is. Like, is there no one else who can draw that short straw? But like with so many things on social media, it’s hard to tell which people are having fun ribbing him as a bit, and which people seriously think he’s a complete failure and deserves to be ridiculed.
I don’t like that. It’s mean-spirited, ignores the actual essence and themes of the series, and is like a factually incorrect view of him as a character? I don’t want to get too in the weeds, but it’s always worth pointing out that, back in the early series, Yamcha was consistently one of the top eight greatest martial artists on Earth. The Spirit Ball was, at the time, the most advanced chi control technique ever. Android 19 thought his resting chi levels were high enough to belong to a guy who could defeat Frieza three years prior and who had been training ever since. Just because he’s not as good or doesn’t have the same raw power as Goku doesn’t mean he’s bad. It’s a dumb caveman response to look at something entirely as a spectator, with no knowledge of martial arts, as a person who only cares about violent dominance, and put down a character you know specifically because he’s a really good martial artist and could lay out any of his haters with a flex of his pinky, you know? It’s like you kept hearing bits about how he never gets to enjoy a big victory, took them literally, and started reveling in ridicule because you don’t feel satisfied with anything you’re capable of.
Like, the big thing that gets me thinking about this is that every time there’s a new Dragon Ball thing going on, people share this meme depicting a scene where Yamcha has achieved Ultra Instinct and is telling Goku to stand aside so he can take over the fight. And like, yeah, good faith bit, it is kinda funny to think Yamcha would ever tell Goku to stand aside. He’s not that kind of character. Unless, of course, this is a smaller enemy, and Goku needs to save his energy for later, so Yamcha wants to help out. Because from what I can see, the joke to a lot of people is the idea that Yamcha could make a comeback by developing Ultra Instinct. And that’s not a joke. Literally any and all of the Z Fighters are capable of reaching those heights. It’s a technique, and they’re all some of the greatest martial artists in the universe; Master Roshi is like one therapist away from having Ultra Instinct right now, and he’s on record saying all his students are better than him. It’s a not-often commented upon meta joke that every time Goku finds the next secret training from god, his friends try it out afterwards, starting at a higher level, advance by a greater degree from the training, and do so in a shorter period of time than him. So like, why is it dumb to think that, if Yamcha wanted to get back in the game in a serious way, he could go back to Kame House and ask Roshi to teach him how he fought Jiren, and he unlocks a basic form of Ultra Instinct in like a month? It’s actually not that far-fetched. Plus, for as much as I think Beast was silly, it means there’s another very plausible direction Yamcha could go to make a comeback. At any point, he could drink the Ultra Divine Water, or make a wish on the Dragon Balls like Piccolo did, or ask Goku to teleport him to New Namek or the Sacred World of the Kais; there’s a ton of ways people can have their potential power unlocked, and any one of them could lead to…I guess, Yamcha Wolf? Or we could skip all that, because there’s every reason to think he learned Kaio-ken and simply was never able to use it at an effective level, until a moment where he jumps in and uses it at like x10,000, because that’s all he’s been training while everyone ignored him. I get that he’s not likely to make such a comeback at this point, but you can’t deny how relatively easy it is to plot out.
All of which is to say, what do you get out of dismissing and being cruel to Yamcha? I’m not addressing you if you just legitimately don’t like him as a character. I’m talking about the people whose only complaint about him is that he’s “weak,” by which they mean, “not as strong as Goku.” What do you get out of the experience? You watch a show or read a book, see one of the characters isn’t the main one and thus doesn’t do as much cool stuff, and you make fun of them for it? And to be clear, we say “make fun of someone” a lot, but this isn’t simple fun or humor in question: It’s cruelty. There are a lot of complex lines and distinctions when it comes to humor, but eventually, if you stop treating the premise like a bit and laugh anyway, you’ve gone into the toxic cruelty zone. And I honestly don’t get what you get out of that. I wouldn’t be any stronger for trashing Yamcha’s lesser status. I’m self-aware enough that I would recognize how what I’m doing goes against my values in other areas, which would soon drain any short-term pleasure or distraction I get from how bad I feel about myself. Is it just being a part of a culture of cruelty, where you see there’s always someone on bottom who’s treated in inhuman ways, and you look for that pattern in everything, because that seems natural and correct to you? Where does that desire for violent dominance come from? Why place that desire above or even equal to a desire to be the way you think is best? What’s the point?
Weekly Art Blog 10/06-10/13/2024
Life in the Gutters 