Adventures in Paper Writing

This is why I hate writing research papers: you have to do research. It's not that I mind reading through stuff and learning more about the subject--that's the whole point of writing such a paper (and I'd rather read about something than write about it, anyway). What I do mind is when I constantly run into brick walls during the research phase. I get into a vicious cycle where I feel like I can't come up with a solid thesis without some good sources to back it up, but I can't find good sources that will help me come up with a solid thesis. I thought that I'd be better at this by now.

Maybe I'm going about this the wrong way. For my final paper project, I want to write an essay that focuses on the unique history and evolution of the manga art form as opposed to western comics. Of course, I looked up "manga" in wikipedia for some general ideas to get started. Then I went to the UIUC library website and started looking for books and articles that deal with manga. Turns out we have lots of actual manga here, but apparently relatively few books that discuss manga. The few that do exist are of course checked out. But hey, I can rest secure knowing that if I ever feel the need to learn how to draw manga, the university has several books that can help me. I'm supposed to have something of substance to bring to class, but I'm still sitting here without even a definite thesis. Bleh.

In other news, I started Palestine, perhaps as a way of atoning for my utter lack of progress with my paper. It's very...political. I mean, Fun Home was maybe a little bit controversial on some issues like suicide and sexuality, and Berlin touches on issues of ethnicity and nationalism during a very turbulent time, but the tone of both works seemed sober and politically conscious, if not politically correct. The narrator in Berlin makes no such effort to hide his convictions and beliefs. He's writing the story for a specific reason--he wants to make people see what he sees. I guess if Berlin is a historical research paper, then Palestine is a persuasive essay. I'm not used to graphic novels having such a stated purpose. The book is unique in other ways, too, of course. For one, the art is...not pretty. That's not to say that it's bad or ineffective, but I suppose it's less aesthetically pleasing. To me, anyway. The author also does interesting things with the placement of the captions and narration. They're kind of all over the place. Sometimes they're kept in the margins, almost like footnotes for the pictures. Sometimes they practically obstruct the pictures and spill out all over the page. And it has the feeling of a journal, with the snapshot-like pictures and the scrawled handwriting commentary. It's less "clean".

Alright, I've broken down. To be perfectly frank, I've shared the contents of my humor folder that are both worksafe and unanimated. For some reason, the animated .gifs don't seem to work correctly when I post them, which is a shame because they're hilarious. To this end I've decided to just start pilfering and appropriating webcomics for my usage here. I'll probably use this space to showcase some more of my favorite webcomics for the rest of the year. This one is called Dinosaur Comics, and though it's not for the impatient, it has a wonderful intellectual charm to it.