June 11th, 2003, 11:33 pm
Wow, over two years without a rant? Lordy, am I getting soft?
...nah.
So. Good article. Stop Drawing Bad Manga!
I may not agree with it all, but it did need saying. If you aren't going to be original, people, WHY are you drawing or writing at all? And do not dare to say "as a tribute." A rip-off is not a tribute. I approve of tributes. Ripoffs, on the other hand, are derivative crap and are not to be borne. We have a Sailor Moon, and an Utena, and more than enough Ranmas, and too many Shinjis, and if we get any more Gokuu clones, the freaking world may just explode under the weight of all that hair. Creating another version of your favorite character entertains no one but yourself. If you HAVE to rip off, do it on your own time and quit trying to make me look at it. And STOP telling me it's yours and you were just "inspired"! I get inspired, but I'll bet I don't use up NEARLY as much tracing paper when I do.
This includes, but is in no way limited to: copying poses, copying ideas, copying design, or- my personal Doomsday Switch- ripping off other, more original fanartists. Yes, Celine is SOOOOOOOOOOO KEWL and her sotry megarawks0rZ and her piccys are BYUTIFL!! You don't need to tell me that. She's a dear friend, so I'd have to admit that I already know. But hey, if you wanted to get my attention by ripping her art, you definitely got it. Maybe not the attention you wanted, but any attention is good attention.
Right?
Because, hey, even if people are leaving screaming guestbook entries decrying you as a hack thief, at least you're getting hits. (Note- this happens, most notably to Celine, more often than I like to think about. Do people somehow think that no one will notice? It boggles the mind.)
This applies to professionals. I am all-inclusive in my snark. Yes, Ms. Hamilton, Anita WAS really fun to read in the first few books, and your world was fascinating with its supernatural politics. Can we PLEASE tone down the public wanking now? Please? It's getting a bit gross, and you've gotten to the point where you're ripping off yourself. Please note that I have no problem whatsoever with erotica. Hell, I enjoy it. But I want my erotica to be intelligent, not mindless humping. Adding a shapeshifter to the mix for "spice" does not make it intelligent, and perhaps if Anita had continued to grow and change as a person over the last seven or eight books the way she had started to in the first few, I'd be able to overlook it. She was an obvious self-insert in the first few books, yeah. However, she was an entertaining, interesting self-insert. No problem reading that for me. But she's become a caricature of a caricature. I almost suspect that the LKH section over at FF.net was taken down because the fanfics were getting to be of higher quality than the books. The Meredith Gentry series are only worth reading for a laugh, or that kind of horrified fascination that goes along with a highway accident.
I will not even touch upon the Anne Rice issue.
Look at a lesser-known author- Spider Robinson, for instance. SF, yeah. Recycles the occasional idea, yeah. But the quality of the storytelling is so excellent I can't manage to care, and the original ideas are highly, brilliantly original. The characters are memorable even though you might not want some of them to be. Callahan's Place is, I am convinced, one of the great creations of literature in the last fifty years. His humor and timing are flawless, puns notwithstanding. He's a WRITER, and the pop-crap paperback masses could learn a hell of a lot from him.
Okay, so back to professional anime and manga. Look at Hameru no Baiorin Hiki. Brilliant comic, poking fun at the entire genre of manga and at itself in the same breath, while still being original and standing quite tall all alone. Nothing else that I've seen is anything like it. Look at Fruits Basket. I dare you to find THAT anywhere else in manga. Took an average basic premise and made it GOOD. Remember back in the day when CLAMP wrote fascinating, original works with characters you could not get out of your head? This was before, as Trin says, "they became *CLAMP* and could do no wrong." I love X, but it's a guilty, dirty love. It is a love I must take in small doses, because I have so many problems with the story. (Character development? We don' need no steenkin' character development!) Remember when Utena turned the genre of mahou shoujo upside down and shook it? Or even halfway derivative works, like Princess Tutu. Shoujo? You betcha. Same old premise? Believe it, baby. But it went beyond the Pretty Pretty Secret Princess base and slyly poked fun at all those henshin sequences, all those secret identites, all those endlessly colorless designated love interests with about as much excitement as your average bowl of oatmeal. I like animanga for the stories and for the characters, not for how much ass your freakishly muscled dumb-as-a-post hero can kick. I don't care how much stuff blowed up real good. If I don't care about the characters, you lose. No more of my money for you.
How about amateurs? Strings of Fate. Eversummer Eve. As If. Something Positive. Sinfest. Boy Meets Boy. Venus Envy. Jackie's Fridge. Just A Little Ecchi. Arcana. Demonology 101. Greyling. Wendy. Madsman's Unholy Wastes. ANYTHING by Eugene or Miko. Dominic Deegan. Hell, the Powerpuff@Japanese stuff.Some of them may not be completely original. Some may not have the best art out there. But every single one has something to it, something completely all it's own. THAT is what makes good webmanga, good writing, good art. If you're not in your art, don't bother. Give me originality, or your “baby” goes in the slush pile. Because when it comes down to it, there's no reason for me to spend my time on something you didn't spend any time on at the start.
-Isa.