Author: Lauren Orsini

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This is fandom reporting in 2020

Recently a brand I mentioned in an article praised my coverage and asked if they could send me some of their products as a thank you. I replied by asking if instead, I could have an opportunity to interview the founder, and attached some of my most burning questions about the company. They probably won’t reply, but it felt like progress.

For me, this was one small step toward a bigger goal. Lately, I’ve been itching to sink my teeth into long-form reporting again, to tell a true story about fandom that feels relatable to fans within the community and teaches those without it something new. In short, I’d like to get back to the kind of work I started writing for this blog ten years ago.

I’ve got some leads, but I’m not there yet. My current work/life balance scale is still tipped dramatically onto the mom side of things. But in the meantime, I’ve been making a renewed effort to read the kind of writers whose work I consider to be at the very top of this field.

Long after I carved my niche into “otaku journalism,” the oeuvre of fandom reporting has grown more creative and clever with each passing year. I used to have a list of around ten obscure publications to pitch about fandom topics. Now you can read about even the most obscure internet communities in the New York Times. 

To me, good fandom reporting is about empathy. It’s easy to be a goggle-eyed fandom tourist, posting tweets and nasty observations with zero interest in a deeper dive. I particularly like to read about fandom from self-identified fans: they’re better equipped to serve as tour guides into subculture communities that often have their own lexicons. 

This is by no means exhaustive, but here are some of the fandom reporters whose work I have read and admired lately. 

Lynzee Loveridge. I have previously interviewed Lynzee back when her name was Lynzee Lamb. Since then she has moved up to Managing Editor at Anime News Network and has differentiated herself by not giving a fuck. She covers difficult, messy stories in anime fandom that other people are afraid to touch. Her explosive investigations on Vic Mignogna and Eric Torgersen brought to light abuses of power that had previously lived only in whisper networks. Her nuanced, careful research helps to bring justice to their victims. 

EJ Dickson. EJ is not only a fellow Daily Dot alumnus but a fellow mom, so her current prolific coverage for Rolling Stone gives me hope that I, too, can get back in the game. As the recent founder of a podcast about Cats, a movie I’ve heard is endearingly awful, she knows what it’s like to be way too into a niche interest. She brings this empathy to her fandom reporting, particularly this kind, tolerant treatise on furries that I genuinely wish I had written.

Gita Jackson. Gita recently left Kotaku, the site where I did my first internship, to move to Motherboard, where I am sure she will continue producing the searing hot video game takes she is known for. Her story about abuse claims at EA could be a tutorial on investigative reporting. Meanwhile, her recent personal essay reviewing Fire Emblem: Three Houses through the lens of abuse feels especially vulnerable and brave. 

Aja Romano. Like many Extremely Online people, Aja has gotten mixed up in their share of chaos, and I’ve always applauded the grace with which they acknowledge and grow from their past mistakes. Currently, they’re at Vox providing some of the most informative news you can use on fandom controversies, like the recent Romance Writers of America implosion that I’m not ashamed to admit, I couldn’t begin to understand before Aja’s explanation. 

Elizabeth Minkel. It’s so hard to write well about fanfiction, a secretive, Othered space that’s always evolving and evading a mainstream definition, but I’d consider Elizabeth an expert. Her coverage last summer of San Diego Comic-Con gave voice to the creeping commercialization of what it means to be a fan. I’m also a huge fan of Elizabeth’s Fansplaining podcast, co-hosted with Flourish Klink, and weekly newsletter The Rec Center, co-written with Gav. 

This is a really short list, and I’m sure I’m forgetting some very deserving writers who should be on it, probably including writers I know personally (sorry in advance). Please tell me about YOUR favorite subculture reporters in the comments so I can read their work, too. 

Lead photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash

On going back to work

It’s been a while since I’ve written, but to me, it has felt like no time at all. Having a baby has really skewed my sense of the passage of time. Even as I readjust and things get easier, the sense that linear time remains warped has remained.

First, I was on maternity leave. Let me tell you what it was like to be away from work for two months after ten years of defining myself by it. Having a baby has been particularly weird because it’s one of the few socially accepted practices under capitalism that does not improve one’s work productivity. I use an app called RescueTime to track my online productivity, and just look at the nosedive I took in October—it’s basically all Netflix! In two months of leave, I worked on my laptop maybe once or twice. Even after I returned to work, at least partially, I continue to do most of my writing on my phone. A lot of this work will never see the light of day. I started keeping a journal because constantly caring for a baby can do a number on your memory. Aside from wanting to keep it to myself due to my privacy concerns, it’s also a bit less articulate than what you’d usually see from me.

Now it’s February and I still am not back to normal. I think what “normal” is has changed forever. Before I had Eva I was focused on getting back to normal as soon as possible. That’s why I wanted to take off only two months, having no idea how I would feel afterward. I knew I wanted to be more than a mom. But I didn’t realize how much of my time I would want to spend just being a mom, and it turns out the answer is a lot. It’s amazing how everything else has felt like background noise compared to Eva and her wants and needs. I imagine a lot of this is a hormonal surge designed to keep me from leaving her on the ground to be eaten by wild animals. There have been times I’ve prioritized work over John even. It’s weird to have something more important than my work. 

My schedule changed hugely in early January when Eva started sleeping through the night in her own room. After her 7:30 bedtime, I’d have a guaranteed two hours of productivity, enough time for one or maybe two writing assignments plus email catch-up, administration, and billing. But during the day, I’ve been getting less done than ever. Eva’s stomach is bigger so she nurses less often, meaning I spend less time writing on my phone the way I detailed in my Anime Feminist essay about breastfeeding. She’s more active and less content to play quietly with toys while I work on my computer, so our days are filled with stroller rides, playdates, storytime at the library, baby yoga at the community center and all the basic mom stuff I never thought I’d do because I didn’t realize yet how even boring things are fun when I do them with her. 

Eva is infinitely interesting. Seeing life through the eyes of a baby makes the ordinary fascinating. For example, it’s amazing how much John and I, two Christmas curmudgeons due to our birthdays occurring Christmas week, got into the spirit this season. It’s amazing how, after years of ignoring much of what DC has to offer as “tourist stuff,” we’re carting Eva around museums just to see her expression, raptly focused and observant whenever she sees something for the first time, which is a lot of the time!

I’ve been reading about matrescence, a time of metamorphosis when a parent, usually the one who gave birth, undergoes a dramatic identity shift after having a child. I still introduce myself as a freelance writer to other parents (the only type of people I seem to meet these days), but it feels less fitting now that I’m essentially a stay-at-home mom with a side gig. After years of defining myself through the work I do and the hobbies I cultivate, who am I once the way I spend my days has changed so much? My life feels like a pie dish without enough room for all the slices I want to fit in it. And still, I’m coming from a place of incredible privilege and I know that. I’m lucky to have an active co-parent in John and to be in a position where I don’t have to work a lot if I feel overwhelmed. I’m lucky to have understanding clients and flexible deadlines. I know this is unrealistic for so many which is why accessible childcare and resolving income inequality are my two most strongly held convictions going into the 2020 election season.

Every day, Eva does something that I’ve never seen her do before. It reminds me that both she and I are going through a period of enormous change. She won’t always need me this much, and that’s why I’m seizing any spare moment to keep up my career. I’m not back to work as much as I thought I’d be at this point, but I haven’t given up the effort. Watch this space. 

Photo by Bogomil Mihaylov on Unsplash

2019 In Review: 9 questions to help you process and reflect

This year, I don’t have any big plans for New Year’s Eve. I’ve been heading to bed when Eva does, around 7 PM, and I don’t think I could stay up until midnight if I wanted! 

Even so, I’ll be continuing one of my New Year’s rituals. In both 2017 and 2018, I dedicated the final post of Otaku Journalist of the year to helping me (and hopefully you) assess how the past 365 days have gone, and I did that this year, too. 

Below are nine questions I’ve been asking myself since 2017 as a way to summarize the year in review. Though it’s a personal exercise, I enjoy sharing it with my blog readers. I hope that my reflections encourage you to make your own. 

What made up your body of work this year? Which parts are you most proud of?

  • I started working with a new client, Tubular. I get to use their fascinating social media tracking tools to write about viral video trends. My favorite article for them so far is Transgender Videos: Why Brands Should Join the Conversation. 
  • Speaking to Syracuse University students about cosplay. The invitation came when I was right out of the hospital after having Eva and I felt less like a person with any knowledge worth sharing than a collection of sore body parts. Preparing for this talk gave me a chance to be more than a mom for the first time in nearly three months.
  • The CBC radio interview I did about the Kyoto Animation fire despite still going through my own emotions. I’m proud of myself for getting through it. 
  • Honestly, anything I wrote while 9 months pregnant was a major accomplishment over fatigue and nerves. Even when I’m up all night with Eva I’m not as tired as I was this summer, because at least my body feels comfortable and predictable again. I know I keep talking about this—having my kid was the most defining part of 2019 for me.

What were your top 5 moments of the year?

What are you really glad is over?

My pregnancy, but not for the reasons you’d think. At around six months along, I was diagnosed with an unusual complication called a velamentous insertion. It could be nothing, or it could result in a stillbirth. The uncertainty was maddening. 

Leading up to my due date, I had to go to the doctor twice a week for tests and ultrasounds to see what was going on in there. For my own sanity, I treated this like an annoying inconvenience. It wasn’t until after Eva was born at just five pounds eight ounces that we realized she really had been fighting for her life in there. Fortunately, all the danger is over now that she’s out, and we’re so happy to see her packing on the pounds.

How are you different today than you were 365 days ago?

I’m better at living in the moment now. I don’t worry as much about the past or the future. Eva needs me to be right here for her right now, and she’s made me match her pace.

It feels so typical, so basic, how I can’t stop talking about her. I never thought motherhood would change me but it has absolutely transformed my routine, my mindset, even my values. 

Is there anything you achieved that you forgot to celebrate?

I got promoted to Senior Contributor at Forbes. 

Though I’m on a hiatus from my studies, I graduated from Japanese 405. I started studying the language in 2014, so to go at it for five years felt like a major accomplishment. 

What have you changed your perspective on this year?

I used to be very uncomfortable asking others for help. Then I spent much of this year physically limited in one way or another, and got better at expressing what I needed. If I needed to stop and rest on a long walk, I said so. When a colleague offered me her granola bar during a work event (my hunger came in uncomfortably quickly during the first trimester), I accepted. In the weeks after Eva was born, I subsisted on meals friends and family cooked for me. Not so long ago this would have made me feel guilty and ashamed that I couldn’t take care of myself. But being in a vulnerable position has not only made me appreciate the kindness of others, but renewed my empathy for other people going through difficult times. 

Who are the people that really came through for you this year?

The dozens of doctors I saw throughout my pregnancy who vigilantly monitored my complication. Definitely not my insurance company, but for sure the many insurance phone representatives who took time out of their days to keep me from getting overbilled and, in several cases, bringing an incorrect $500+ bill down to $0. I think the more you go to the doctor, the more of a chance you have of getting billed incorrectly because it happened to me half a dozen times in 2019. 

What were some pieces of media that defined your year?

  • Demon Slayer. Like everyone else on Earth, I got totally sucked in!
  • Naruto. Somehow I never picked up this classic until 2019. I’m reading it on my Viz Media Shonen Jump app, which is the most-used app on my phone.
  • I frequently had prenatal insomnia, and the positive part was that I read way more books than usual. My favorite piece of fiction was another classic: I, Robot by Issac Asimov. The best nonfiction I read was Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino. These are both affiliate links so I can fund more book buying in 2020. 
  • Does performance art count as media? I made an effort to go out more evenings this year since I knew I’d have to get a sitter after Eva got here. I ended up seeing several Japanese arts performed for the first time: kyudo (archery), a karuta demonstration, a koto performance, a Noh play. 

What will you be leaving behind in 2019?

Feeling completely out of my depth all the time. So much happened this year on my personal life it was often overwhelming. There was a birth, a death, and two weddings in my immediate family. With all of this going on, I did not do my best writing this year. But I think that working while undergoing these many changes made me more resilient. I don’t need to spend as much time preparing to write. I don’t even need my laptop—I wrote most of this post with my thumb, on my phone at odd hours of the night, while holding a baby. I’m better at snatching spare moments to write and better at avoiding procrastination; because by the time I’m done procrastinating I might be busy with a baby. Freed from these prior self-constraints around writing devices, work hours, and standard routine, I think 2020 could be my wordiest year yet. 

If you decide to do a similar exercise to this one, let me know! I’d love to read it.

Lead photo by Andreas Dress on Unsplash.

Otaku Journalist is 10 years old!

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Have you seen the new ad for anime on Disney Plus? “It’s not about being otaku, it’s about being… you.” Even now it is exhilarating to me to see this formerly obscure and misunderstood loan word used in a mainstream setting. Because when I launched Otaku Journalist on November 14, 2009, I had to explain what it meant every single time.

Though I’m mostly still quietly withdrawn from blogging in favor of snuggling my newborn daughter, I couldn’t let Otaku Journalist’s first decade pass without a word. 

If you’ve been around for a while, you know the whole story, and my sixth-anniversary post outlines those early years well: my journalism school professor strongly encouraged each of us to have our own domain name and portfolio website. I initially named it the eponymous LaurenRaeOrsini.com and tried to keep my content as general as possible in order to show my range and widen my appeal to the largest possible audience. Fast forward just a few months and I’d narrowed the scope to the topics I like best—with a name to match. 

At the time, “Otaku” was appealing to me not only because it was generally unclaimed among blog titles. It also seemed to express a more invested form of fandom. Today, mainstream discourse uses “otaku” and “fan” fairly interchangeably in English when discussing interest in anime and manga. The part about increased intensity has mostly disappeared. It’s been incredible to watch the language we use to talk about fandom evolve in real time. 

In a way, the passage of time has been the theme of my Otaku Journalist content this year. Obviously, it’s been a year of immense change for me as I prepared to meet my daughter. I wrote about returning to cosplay as a woman in my 30s and how I made sure not to be creepy while interacting with much younger cosplayers. I wrote about growing out of my terrible opinions even as I chose not to grow out of anime fandom. I wrote about how making money online has changed since I started working remotely around the same time I started this blog. I didn’t do this intentionally, but it’s clear that this ten-year milestone has been on my mind. 

This will be the 905th post published on Otaku Journalist (though 214 early posts are now private, and here’s why). I no longer keep a regular blogging schedule and I’m not exactly prolific anymore, but it’s been wonderful to have a platform to publish my writing, one on which I don’t have to answer to anyone. Whether you’ve been here for 10 years or 10 weeks, I appreciate you reading this. See you in this blog’s next decade!

How I’m learning to respect my daughter’s online privacy

Four weeks ago today, Eva Artesia was born, but it feels like we just got home from the hospital yesterday. Eva’s life so far has been a dreamlike haze, a sometimes illogical schedule that she dictates and I haplessly obey, grateful that I gave myself exactly zero expectations during my maternity leave. I rarely leave my house or know what day it is so sometimes it feels like she and I are existing outside of the normal passage of time. It’s been tough sometimes, but it’s been blissful to have this time together, living each day just for her. I forgot that we all start out as tiny, cuddly creatures who just want to be held for hours on end. 

At this period in Eva’s life, it’s hard to remember that my snuggly daughter won’t always be this way. She’ll get bigger and begin making her own decisions. She’ll have likes and dislikes. And many years from now, she’ll have her own online presence. So as much as I want to tell the world all about how great she is, let me tell you about my attempts to Not Do That. 

At first, I was posting about Eva on Twitter, but I’ve decided to stop. With over 8,000 followers plus viewers who come over from Forbes, I have way too big of a footprint there. Instead, I’m posting on Instagram stories (which expire after 24 hours) or Facebook set to friends only. I’m being careful about which photos I share, like the one above from Jessica Smith Photography when Eva was seven days old. It shows Eva in her best light unlike, for example, the goofy photos I took of her sprawled out in her bassinet this morning. And instead of blogging about her, I’m writing as often as I remember in an offline diary about her life. I plan to share it with her when she’s older, similar to the baby book my mom made for me. 

Right now, it’s hard not to think about Eva on par with one of my friends’ pets. The cooing noises she makes when she’s happy remind me of a purring kitten. But more than any other, this Slate piece about a mom who refuses to stop sharing public stories about her fourth-grader (even after she asked her mom to stop!) has reminded me that Eva is not my possession and her life is not my writing material. Only Eva owns her life’s experiences. And whether or not she chooses to share them online is something that will eventually be up to her. 

I recently had an online privacy disagreement with a client that made me feel that beliefs about online identity may be generational. My client asked me to remove their office phone number from their business website, citing an article that suggested it could open them up to more robocalls. I took the number down as asked, but I also vocalized that I didn’t think it would matter either way. Once stuff is online, I don’t think you can put it back in Pandora’s box. I’m somebody who has been “pwned” and had my personal data breached online a whopping 25 times—not counting stuff like the Equifax hack. Heck, I recently discovered that there’s a page about me, without my consent, on a foot fetish website!

My belief is that my data is already out there and it’s too late to wipe it from the web. Instead, I take reactive measures like freezing my credit, using lengthy nonsense passwords even I can’t memorize with 1Password to manage them, and always using a VPN on public WiFi. My philosophy is that everything about me is already out there, so I have to just keep anyone from using that readily-available information against me. However, Eva’s generation will probably be savvier than mine, and they might boomerang back to the proactive approach. I’m already trying to help her out. She’s only a month old, but she already has a two-factor-authenticated Gmail account ready for when she needs it.

I plan to still write here about the spaces where our stories overlap. Some stuff about my pregnancy, which was at times scary and high-risk (but thankfully, that’s all over now). Essays on what it’s like to be a parent on top of the other stuff I do. I just don’t want her to Google herself in ten years and see embarrassing photos and stories from her childhood. It’s the same courtesy I give to John, who is a lot more private than I am, by rarely posting about him here. Even though—or should I say because—she’s unable to ask for that yet.

Here’s what I do want to tell you about my daughter: it’s pronounced Eva with a hard E. So it’s not like the E in Evangelion; we actually decided on the name before the show dominated the anime community discussion this summer. (Artesia, however, is absolutely a reference to the Gundam character who is as brave and kind as we hope Eva will be.)

Someday, if she chooses, she can share the rest of her story herself.

Photo by Jessica Smith Photography.