Writer's Block: What I did for love

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I chose which university to attend based on fear. I applied to the three closest to home because I'd never been away before and didn't want to go far. All three accepted me, so I decided on the one that the largest number of my high school friends were going to, so I'd know more people when I got there. (I didn't want to go someplace where I didn't know anybody.)

How good the school was, and what it could offer in terms of my major or my career path, never entered into it.

Looking back, I'd do it again, because of the people I met there and how they affected my life in getting me to where I am now. Without them, I wouldn't be in this place in my life today, and I wouldn't change where I am today. So there it is.

something I am grateful for today

Took the car for an oil change today. As we were wrapping up, the staff lady overseeing my procedures asked me if I had been given a coupon book last time I was there. I said no.

Then she's like “I'll get you one, there are coupons in there you can use for today”... and then she pulled out two coupons and proceeded to knock $19 off my bill, then gave me the rest of the book for another day.

I thought that was a really nice gesture. She didn't have to say anything about coupons and I woulda been none the wiser, gladly paying the full amount. It struck me as uncommonly generous.

manga influence

I suspected/feared that it was only a matter of time till I saw this:

Was in the bookstore recently, browsing thru the manga section. Saw a title that I didn't recognize [and don't recall], but I noticed that the cover credits gave “Anglo” names for the writer and artist. I also noticed that the art was trying very hard to “look Japanese”. Not so surprising: there's an awful lot of manga-influenced Western artists out there, more than ever before. I actually think this is a good thing, IMHSO [In My Highly Subjective Opinion].

Then I looked closer and noticed that it was drawn and printed in Japanese format, reading right to left.

I suspect this was done in an effort to make the work look “more authentic” or “more genuine” or somesuch. Cuz it's obviously trying to look like “real manga”. Granted, since there is a well-established market in North America for right-to-left manga now, this move will not harm the book's saleability, so in that sense it's not a mistake per se.

But I can't help feeling, Nuh-uh.

Japanese comics are drawn right-to-left because the creators grew up reading that way and their culture as a whole does it that way. This is how they naturally envision their art and the flow of their stories because it's ingrained into them from Day One.

In the late 40s, when Tezuka and a few contemporaries were shaping manga into what we recognize today, they were heavily influenced by Western comics and cartoons [e.g., Tezuka's pronounced Disney influence], but they felt no need to extend this influence to the direction in which they drew. They recognized that they were and would always be creatures of their own culture.

I mean look, Korean manhwa artists are all perfectly happy to draw their sutff left-to-right, even though it already “looks more Japanese than most Westerners will ever be able to manage”, because they're Korean and left-to-right is how Korea does it.

I dunno, to me this book I saw today is like they're saying “Oooo we wanna be Japanese so bad!!!” And I'm like, “Sorry, dudes, ain't gonna happen. Be yourselves, 'kay?” Is this too curmudgeonly of me?