I have been working on thumbnails this week, and I have three notecards’ worth of scenes thumbed. It feels nice, and I think I’ll get to eighty pages easy. Planning is such a brain-heavy activity, though, you know? It’s what I would call the hard part of making comics. As I go along, I’m looking for process and technique in it. Every time, it’s guess work as I patch together images that come to mind. I know that I know what I want, and how things fit together, but there’s a lot of uncertainty buzzing around because I don’t have the workflow down. I figured that stuff out with drawing, you know, to have a way to build a picture; I’m comfortable enough with it now that I can be looser and improvise more, because I know the methods. I want to establish a starting method for planning as I go through this.
I feel like I don’t have a specific topic in mind this week. I did see my first clip in a while of someone complaining about plot armor. My first big thought on the subject came up with Game of Thrones, because everyone was so thrilled that “no one was safe.” Like…clearly some people were safe, they made it to the end of the show. If a character you liked and spent a lot of time with dies, it just means that character was always meant to die. Characters aren’t people, with natural lifespans, you know? They have specific purposes, and a good story is able to create investment in that purpose, and execute it in a way that’s satisfying and believable. The way people talked about GoT and its lack of plot armor was pretty silly, because one of them has to win the game; just because you don’t notice the “plot armor” doesn’t mean it isn’t there. There’s a difference between a poorly written story where characters survive deadly encounters with no explanation, and stories where the characters overcome the odds through grit and ingenuity, but you’re not into it and thus decide their ingenuity is actually impossible or Deus ex machina. What people call plot armor exists in every story, because it’s how stories work; unless you’re talking about a genuinely bad story, it’s a complaint that shows a lack of media literacy, is a vague attempt to pin a flaw where there is none, or both.
I make romance comics (on this site for free!), so you probably won’t be surprised to learn that I’m always delighted when I find an action-adventure story with well-written, organic, and important romantic plotlines. You know, relationships that feel natural, that don’t take up too much oxygen or feel like a distraction, and work hand-in-hand with the themes and plot to advance the characters and story. It doesn’t happen very often, and it’s sad. I read a lot of shonen manga, where instead, you usually find a bunch of serious characters who never show any interest and that one guy who goes, “Me so horny!” Because as we all know, being interested in sex is one of those personality specific things. At least, for guys it is, because it’s always a guy, unless it’s a very homophobic lesbian character. And it always makes him a gross weirdo creeping on any and all of the women in the story, unless she’s the one unattractive woman, in which case it’s his job to relentlessly body shame her. Oh, yeah, this trope is always paired with the trope that all women are the same kind of sexy, and always lean into being sexy, but are totally not sexual themselves. As long as they hit the loverboy in the head, he can do whatever sex crimes he wants to them, because it’s a funny joke, you see.
Like, I don’t want to sound like too big of a jerk. I know there’s history to it. Tropes are born when people find patterns and archetypes they like and carry it forward one generation. Without knowing the details, I’m sure the “totally funny” lecher character has some kind of history related to a repressed, sex negative culture, where it seemed subversive to show someone who can’t keep it in his pants. There is plenty of comedy precedent for characters who act out what today we’d call intrusive thoughts and face harsh reality. But you know, over time, homages stop being tongue-in-cheek. Maybe Master Roshi (my generic example) was cutting edge at one point. Times change, though, and it would be swell if we rethought how relevant or baseline funny that character actually is. Like, sex comedy isn’t a sex crime with the timing of a stand-up bit. Try harder, or go to other material if you can’t hack it.
I don’t really watch anime all that much – watching a show doesn’t fully absorb my attention like reading does – so I’m only vaguely aware of things happening with anime awards through memes. I hear Kaiju No. 8 is up for anime of the year and maybe some others (or the awards have gone out, I wouldn’t know). As someone who’s read the manga since it first came to the Shonen Jump app and quite like it, I’m surprised the anime is getting as much buzz as it has. Like, don’t get me wrong, it’s good. Solid characters, good fights, fun aesthetic, and I’m always down for kaiju. It just doesn’t feel like “best of the year” material to me. It’s not exactly groundbreaking or super inventive; it’s a solid execution of time-tested strategies with snappy dialogue. Is the anime that much better than the manga? I know adaptations have room to level things up, if they have the vision and motivation, so maybe that’s at play? Or is it just really pretty and lowest common denominator? Idk, for as much as I’m proud of my taste, I probably don’t have my finger on the pulse very well. People think trash like Bleach and Jujutsu Kaisen are god-tier, while I haven’t seen nearly enough buzz for Sakamoto Days or Kagurabachi (which, in fairness, doesn’t have an anime yet, but there’s plenty of great pages for posters to share).
I guess I’ll leave it here for this week.
Weekly Art Blog 1/4-1/11/2025
Life in the Gutters 