I straight up forgot to write this for the week. Busy Black Friday weekend for us in retail. I’ve spent most Black Fridays working the floor or a register, and this was my first time in the back for it. It’s really nice, like my day was so smooth and easy. I didn’t have to deal with the zoo much at all. I’ve also been enjoying my new Wacom tablet. I had a rough patch as it started, with the break after pencils and getting new equipment and freaking out about whether the first few pages were turning out well. Just fully questioning if I made something worthwhile and if I should abandon it and do something else. It always happens. Scanned pencils, especially in a zoom, always looks bad, and it’s easy to have that artist’s imposter syndrome. But I’ve leaned into it by completely changing my workflow. I have a way with this new tool to isolate and darken my pencil lines, so I’m going to do it all like that. It’s something I’ve always wanted to try. Who knows, it may well end up not being the right choice for the long term, but I’m happy to do it here. I probably would have gone crazy if I didn’t make a big change like that.
A while ago, I saw someone share an old newspaper cartoon. It depicted a change that happened after the invention of the radio, that people stopped playing and singing songs together as a standard home activity and instead listened to professional musicians. Like, that’s why we imagine homes from a hundred-plus years ago casually having pianos in them. We weren’t all good at piano and singing in the past, we just had to do something fun at home, and that’s one of the things you do. It’s fun to sing songs and play music. Once it became possible for people to hear the best players around at any time of day, that became the fun activity, and people started getting embarrassed to sing or play in public because they knew they would be compared negatively to the pros.
I keep thinking about how that process has happened so many times with every art form over the last century — with TV and home release and the internet and streaming — and I’m not aware of an ongoing conversation about this change. There’s nothing wrong with liking some of the other great leisure activities we have now, but people are missing out by not participating in the arts because of this embarrassment that we aren’t recognizing or countering. For instance, I would die of shame to be seen dancing in public, and that prevents me from trying all sorts of social activities. People would enjoy themselves way more if when they saw professional artists and performers doing amazing things, they recognized and appreciated the work that went into it, instead of labeling that level of quality as a baseline. A lot of toxic fandom and nastiness on social media would go away if people were instead making their own hobby art to pass the time and work through their feelings.
And of course, there’s the business stuff that has come into every artistic medium because of these same emerging technologies. It’s always been a challenge, but now it’s omnipresent and empowered. Because artists will make art anyway and need money to make it full time, the business side has all the leverage in the world, and is all too happy to use it. Expectations of success are also very different because art primarily exists in the market. Mass popularity is much more highly sought after and hailed as the greatest achievement. Obviously, there’s nothing wrong with making something that a lot of people like, but it’s so stifling and misguided to apply high school-style genre and medium hierarchies based on popularity. Puppetry is still good, and being niche is great. The machinery is changing the shape of art, too, which isn’t necessarily detrimental but certainly something to watch out for. It seems like the norm for music now is to be very chorus-heavy (at least the music you commonly hear on the radio and such) because of how things like Spotify work.
I don’t really have many conclusions here. I’ve never thought I would be a big breakout star, and I don’t really want celebrity. I’d like it if a lot of people read my comics, that I could bring joy and maybe a new perspective into their lives. If anything, as I figure out how art works, I’d like to find a good little corner of the world to sit in and ignore the noise. I mostly have social media so I have something to look at, and I could replace much of its current functionality with an RSS reader for news and a fidget spinner. What joy to rediscover boredom! I’ve never been popular on social media, and I don’t know how to become popular, so to whatever extent it’s helpful to an art career (and I’ve heard mixed things about that), I don’t have the capacity for it. My dream life still has me making art full time, for as foggy and unlikely as that future is. That said, as I work my way towards the foothills, it’s nice to think that I could go to cons or whatever, be a comics person, and have both a work life and a personal life.
The biggest conclusion I can really gather from all this is that I want to learn to withstand embarrassment, and art is a great way to do that. Am I not good? Correct, and I’m still going to do it, so one day I will be. Is my thing not popular? That’s fine, I only want people who like my stuff to get it anyway. Is the image you have of me in your head that I’m bad at stuff? That’s honestly been my biggest fear in life, because I always feel behind and missing something fundamental everyone else has, and I’m overcompensating. So what I’m worried about is that you’ll mistreat me for being different, which would only prove your moral failings and speak to your own insecurities. If your attitude in that scenario wasn’t such a turn off, I could help you with those things. Plus, I get to know how someone thinks of me, for once. I actually never really care that much when I know someone doesn’t like me, so it would be nice to not be so worried if everyone does like me.
I would like to do a little book comparison today, as well. I recently got a manga called Rock is a Lady’s Modesty by Hiroshi Fukuda. It’s a yuri manga about a teenage girl going to an elite private school who is pulled back into the world of rock music after vowing to become a proper young lady. From the name alone, I could tell it’s the same sub genre as Young Ladies Don’t Play Fighting Games by Eri Ejima, which is one of my favorite books. It’s not exactly a fair comparison from the start, but the world of art isn’t about fairness, so let’s dive right in.
Right at the top, let’s talk about the strengths of Rock. I like the art well enough, especially when they’re playing music. It’s really good music art. Very energetic and forceful, which is appropriate for the genre and is pretty compelling. I think the main character’s backstory is solid enough to create nuance and unfolding storylines as the series goes on. There’s a level of extreme that the author dips into when emotions are running high that gives it some satisfying edge, and I’m hoping for more of that as time goes on. It’s a fun first volume, and I’ll get the next one.
All that said, I think Rock is overall not hitting its potential, and comparing it to Fighting Games is a good way to show how. First, let’s compare the positions of the main characters. In Rock, both our commoner-turned-posh protagonist Lilisia and our picture-perfect love interest Otoha are idols of the school. Lilisia is commonly called the cutest girl in her class and has the poise and grace to earn everyone’s admiration. Otoha gets less narrative time to her reputation, and we see a lot less of how she demonstrates prim-properness to the public. In contrast, in Fighting Games, the commoner protagonist Aya is just another student, and isn’t anywhere near her goals of young ladihood by the time she starts up her rivalry with love interest Mio. Mio’s reputation as the idyllic “Shirayuri-sama” is given a lot more focus.
Ultimately, I think the approach in Fighting Games works better for a few reasons. First, Rock has the somewhat common shojo problem of the book telling me who’s the prettiest, and me having to take its word on that. As it stands, I know Lilisia is supposed to be cute because she has pigtails, and Otoha is supposed to be sexy because she has boobs; character design has to be more complex, and romance stories need glamor shots. Creating a distinct contrast between the characters on the grounds of their prettiness, in a world where prettiness is so valued, gives Fighting Games breathing room to have Aya be whatever she is, and to go all out making Mio as pretty as possible. It sells the illusion a lot more convincingly and easily, and allows the characters to be their own people. Putting all the focus on Mio being so stunningly gorgeous and refined, wasting no time to put Aya on the same level, creates incredible contrast when we see Mio playing fighting games. That’s where we need it, since we already know what world Aya comes from. Rock wastes page space trying to convince me that Lilisia is already this perfect doll when we still have so much work left with Otoha. At the same time, Otoha rocking out doesn’t look as insane or impressive since we didn’t spend as much time on the fantasy of the perfect, beautiful maiden.
This is, of course, indicative of a larger strategy. Another key difference between these books is that in Rock, Lilisia’s mother married into a rich family, while in Fighting Games, Aya worked for a scholarship to fully upend her previous lifestyle. Their stakes are totally different. Aya can be just another student, still learning how to be a young lady, and then fall back in love with fighting games, without risking her entire life. She only risks losing her current school life, where she’s made these special connections. Lilisia has to be the belle of the ball so that her mother isn’t mistreated and ostracized at home for being a commoner in noble territory. Her home life lends itself to a lot more tension and complication, with the first volume ending on the introduction of an antagonistic step sister. However, I think Lilisia already having everything she needs to be accepted into high society (besides violin skills) takes away from what makes her story compelling. She’s struggling to claw a place for herself and her mother in a hostile but potentially beneficial environment, and she’s worked herself to death in this reinvention. Yet at school, she’s gliding by without much issue. We are told a lot more about her struggle than we see. If she weren’t one of the dual idols of the first year students, then her challenges would shine more brightly, and I think we’d get more out of her character.
Also, I should mention here that when I say we hear a lot, I mean that we see the same parts of Lilisia’s backstory three or four times in this volume. It didn’t feel over the top to me, but you know, that’s too many times. We need more time for Otoha, and maybe to see her step father, and more about her mother’s pressure to keep up appearances. That’s another difference between these two books, and one that’s much more a matter of taste. Rock spends more time on the social stuff and the drama than Fighting Games. Rock is going to focus on the romance and the drama and the life choices and growing up. It probably isn’t going to be a super niche book about rock music that goes into detail about how music is made, the history of the genre, or how bands operate. Fighting Games is really about fighting games, and one of the things I love most is learning about this whole other world of fandom jargon, game dev, and strategy. I also like that it puts the character’s interests at the center of attention, because it feels immersive, like you’re part of their world, watching their relationship come together and why it works. There are times where you forget that it’s a yuri book, and then it comes back like a thunderbolt, and it’s beautiful. Like I said, it’s a matter of taste, so I’m not faulting Rock for not going the same route. I’m just sticking to my logic about why Rock doesn’t look set up to get the most out of its approach.
Rock doesn’t do as much to sell you on the music side of things as Fighting Games does to sell you on the fighting games stuff. This is important because, whether the story focuses more on the music or the romance, the music is still centrally important to our characters. Lilisia is going to be risking her and her mother being ostracized in a terrible, cold world, maybe even being forced to start over from poverty as a single-parent household, all to make a band with Otoha. The book has sold me on what she’s risking, but not nearly enough on how much she wants to risk it. She talks so casually about forming a band and playing a gig in town, and it feels dissonant. I know and appreciate how she inherited her love of rock from her father, and that she really loves it, but I’m just not feeling the level of passion. She says she’s dying but looks fine. Her pride is clearly strong but her resolve appears shallow. Instead of talking about why she wants to earn the title of noble maiden for a second, let alone third, time, I want her to talk about how much she’s always wanted to play at huge festivals or can vividly hear all the songs she can’t write after giving up the guitar. Something. Even setting aside the narrative focus, Fighting Games does more to sell me on how much Aya and Mio love fighting games, and so I understand more clearly why they’re risking expulsion to play games all night, and what the core of their romantic tension is.
Rock also doesn’t have as good of a balance between scenes. For instance, a couple different times, Lilisia imagines her dueling for musical dominance against Otoha as a dominatrix standing over her sub. It’s imagery that doesn’t directly connect to either setting, and at no other point so far do we see Lilisia having S&M fantasies. It’s jarring and over the top for a first jam session between amateurs. Imagining her crush as a dominatrix with a boot on her back the second time in your life she see her speaks to Lilisia being very horny, with specific sexual tastes that would have been developed before high school, so why aren’t we seeing that all over? Quite frankly, if we don’t get more of this, it’ll be a missed opportunity to explore the rebellious sexuality both rock music and queerness present to high society. I also think that the way Otoha gets more crass and belligerent when playing drums is lopsided. She talks so proper all the time, even while she plays, and then gets fully vulgar once she’s finished. Where’s the ramp-up? Her backstory is simply that she plays drums purely out of passion, but she doesn’t pick up that other gear and the matching speech just from practicing and listening to albums at home. These characters clearly have these other shades to them that come on suddenly and in limited doses, and it’s kinda weak. I think work is needed to even that out if we’re to get the most out of this.
Fighting Games‘ desire to go deep into the world of fighting games also feels much more extreme, and thus edgy and rebellious, than Rock. A standard romance story is pretty safe, after all. I don’t want to keep harping on it, since it is a matter of taste and a difference of approach. But I have to say, since rock is the teenage rebellion music, and this is the world of high society, and also Otoha yelled at Lilisia for having really wet riffs, I think we need more rock and roll in this story. What does wet mean in that context, besides bad? I’d love to find out, and generally to get more of that world. Like, don’t make it a sort of educational thing, like how Fighting Games has those explainer pages; this is a different sort of book. Just give me monologues on why one band is better than another, and conversations filled with that special language in other contexts. I need to feel like they’re going someplace they’re not supposed to, that their extremes are more than passionate playing.
It’s just the first volume, so we’ll see. The way their first gig goes, and who they pick up as band mates, will decide a lot. It’s early in the series, so there’s still time to dig into the all the notes I’ve detailed. Rock is not a bad book by any stretch, it just has a lot to live up to in my imagination because it feels like I’ve read a better version of the same premise.
Life in the Gutters 