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Otaku Journalist is 12 years old!

Twelve years ago today, I began posting on this blog. One of my professors at American University’s School of Communication encouraged us each to secure our name as a dot com for portfolio purposes. So when I started this site on November 14, 2009, it was initially a generalized showcase of my writing on topics related to journalism. It was the middle of the  Great Recession, so anything to get hired right?

I got disillusioned when I graduated and found myself working minimum wage retail… with a master’s degree. I changed the name to Otaku Journalist, began posting exclusively about fandom reporting, and the rest is history. It’s safe to say the opportunities I’ve gotten through this blog have determined the course of my career in internet culture and fandom journalism. 

Now I have mainly put my career aside for various reasons, most obviously that I’ve become a stay-at-home-mom to my toddler daughter and I’m expecting a baby boy in spring. And thus, this blog has been a bit lost at sea for the last couple of years. But twelve is my lucky number and I couldn’t let this milestone pass without celebrating the year’s highlights. Though I haven’t been posting much, I HAVE been keeping track of work stuff I do just to remind myself that even if I spend most of my time at the playground, I haven’t completely left the game. In a different year, these would all have been separate blog posts! Here’s a list of every Otaku Journalist-worthy thing I’ve done this year, with commentary:

Started a Gunpla 101 Instagram

Beginning this list on a low note, since I definitely haven’t updated this in months. But it felt good to try a new direction for my most profitable blog. While this didn’t stick, what did work for me this year was expanding my monthly shopping update into a semi-news post. 

Was on AnimeCons TV

Doug invited me and my slightly offscreen husband John to talk about Otakon’s future, which was tenuous at the time. But it just turned into an informal discussion between three friends who really miss going to cons together. 

Guest on The Bebop Beat

I had huge imposter syndrome about being a guest on this podcast. Other episodes had guests like legendary voice actor Wendee Lee and graphic novelist E.K. Weaver. I did my research in advance and was able to share at least two fun facts about the mecha of Cowboy Bebop.

Reviewed Fruits Basket the Final for ANN

This was the only anime I reviewed weekly in 2021. I’m not sure how well my reviews were received because I never read the comments. I felt generally positive about the series though; it was wild to finally see these last chapters of the manga get animated for the first time. 

Expert source for Rolling Stone Brony article

EJ and I were colleagues ages ago and I’m touched that when she wrote about bronies she thought “Lauren would know something about this.” A long time ago I dedicated thousands of words in the Daily Dot to my brony coverage, and I outline some of the fandom’s history here.

Began curating the ANN newsletter, ANNouncements

Out of everything on this list, the newsletter has altered my year the most. I’ve built my weekly routine around curating articles and choosing, with much indecision, each week’s featured post. Even though it’s not a ton of work, it ensures that I remain uncommonly informed about anime news. At a time when I worry about losing my identity to parenthood, the newsletter makes me feel like I’m still very much part of this community. I already told Lynzee I don’t want to take a break after my new baby is here; that’s how much I credit this gig with keeping my brain from turning into mush. 

Appeared on PBS Flyover Culture’s Gunpla episode

I think this is the only time all year I did a full face of makeup. I don’t consider myself a Gunpla expert (my site is called Gunpla 101, not Gunpla 400), but I’m glad Payton asked me to be on the show anyway so I could demonstrate that you don’t have to be good at Gunpla to enjoy it. Watch it to see me share the ONLY Gunpla model I built this year (an HG Momokapool).

Washington Post article

My name, in print, in a major newspaper! This was above and beyond the most impressive accomplishment of the year. I wrote a blog post about the details and what it means to me. 

Wrote a talk for Otakon and didn’t go

This talk is completely finished and really good, I DEFINITELY need to share it! But I was too panicked to go to Otakon, even though it was not only not a superspreader even, but not one of the 20+ people I know who attended contracted covid after (and yes they got tested). Good job, fans. 

Ladybeard interview for Crunchyroll

Over the years I’ve had the opportunity to interview Ladybeard both on video and in person, and it’s always a fun conversation. Speaking as a reporter, naturally charismatic people like him can be difficult to interview because you get swept into feeling you’re just chatting with a friend. I don’t mean that he’s doing this in a manipulative way; I mean that Ladybeard has never met a stranger. Usually my interviews with people in Japanese media are fairly dry (like this email interview with Fruits Basket director Yoshihide Ibata) but Ladybeard was willing to talk on the record about all kinds of interesting things, particularly his genderbent stage identity. 

Reviewed Reconguista in G the Movie for ANN

This movie wasn’t bad but it wasn’t good either, and for me that’s the most challenging type of review to write—much easier to praise something or really lay into it. 

Wrote Yoshiyuki Tomino Doesn’t Want You To Read This Article for ANN

Usually, when I write an article, I don’t get to write the title, too. But with both this feature and my Washington Post article, I wrote my own title! I used to have my editors write my titles and then go on Twitter saying “No, I didn’t write that clickbait title, who do you take me for?” but in this case the title I came up with is absolutely clickbait, and I absolutely did write it myself.

Expert source for Rolling Stone cosplay killing article

I helped with some details about Danganronpa and what yandere means, but I obviously didn’t know the details of EJ’s reporting until the article came out. When I read it and realized it was a touching emotional tribute to the deceased, I cried. A lot of coverage of this incident focused on the sensational “costumed killer” angle, and this is definitely not that. 

Appeared on Baka Banter podcast to talk about journalism 

This invitation sat in my inbox for nearly two weeks, which makes me seem super ungrateful, but I was feeling so overwhelmed when I got it! I was thinking, “Why do you want to interview me, a person who has barely worked this past year?” It’s hard for me to remember sometimes that I have 10 years of experience in reporting before that! But this conversation actually turned out really well and I think I had some decent advice for aspiring reporters.

Appeared on Keepsakes podcast to talk about my book

I wrote Otaku Journalism 7 years ago, and started writing it 10 years ago. Jay gave me the perfect reason to reread my own book: such a weird experience to revisit the person I was nearly a decade ago. I am often hard on myself about this book because I wrote it before the internet morphed into the horrible form it has today, but amidst some outdated references to the “new Homestuck fandom,” a lot of the advice still stands up. After the podcast went live, 20 new readers downloaded the book, which feels like a lot to me. 

My theme of 2021 has been an inability to see beyond what I did over the past 24 hours. But listing it all out like this reminds me that I haven’t been quite as dormant as I think. As I’m writing this, I realize the 2021 list isn’t finished yet; I’m working on two article assignments for ANN now. I hope that if you have a similar tendency to mine, you’ll consider writing it all down. My brain may not be able to comprehend time anymore, but at least my records don’t lie. 

Whether you’ve been reading Otaku Journalist for 12 years or this is your first time visiting—thank you. I’m not finished with this blog yet. 

On logging onto TikTok and immediately crumbling into dust

Lately, I’ve been spending a lot of time on TikTok. I started using the app regularly while researching my Washington Post article since all of the cosplayers I spoke to said they had started or increased their usage on TikTok during the pandemic. But there’s no work excuse for why I continue to spend an hour a day scrolling through funny cosplay videos. 

It’s uncanny how quickly the TikTok algorithm figured out what I wanted on my feed. My corner of TikTok is like an anime con masquerade that continues for 24 hours a day. I love this in-character Sk8 the Infinity barbeque, which turns a hangout into performance art. I’m in awe of this cosplayer who adjusts their look and body language to recreate a dozen Danganronpa characters in one video. I’m hooked on cosplay transformation videos that distill the sheer amount of time it takes to get into costume to a second or two, timed effortlessly to music. 

But every time I use TikTok, I’m also barraged with reminders of my age. “Minor, DNI [Do Not Interact]” is a common user profile descriptor. There’s a meme where young teenagers search a relative’s home for “vintage” manga, and based on my own manga collection, I might as well be that relative. More overtly, here’s a woman born the same year as me pretending to die of old age, though her presence on the app conversely shows that there are still older users! Goth Dad is one of my favorites. But I’m not seeing things: according to Statista, 50% of TikTok users worldwide are 34 or younger, and over 25% are 19 or younger. (Still, I wouldn’t put too much stock in these statistics dividing male and female users, since so many of the videos recommended to me are produced by nonbinary creators.) 

This is what categorizes my enjoyment of TikTok into a decidedly guilty pleasure. It’s time to admit that I am old and out of touch. This is a huge reason I have not been blogging anymore: my current life is so removed from my presumed audience that nothing that I feel like writing about feels like something my current readers would care about. 

When I launched Otaku Journalist, I was 22. My graduate school professor said we each needed to reserve a domain name in order to launch our careers as journalists. I initially started this blog under my real name and kept it general in order to appeal to more potential employers. After a few months, I leaned into my niche, limiting the number of jobs I could get, but also choosing to specialize in my preferred subject. You know the rest: this choice has led to bigger and bigger opportunities to cover fandom, including TV interviews and a book deal. 

All the while, I’ve written this blog with my 22-year-old self in mind. Some parts of my early career are still relatable, like my job at the Daily Dot churning out 16-20 articles a week. Other parts, like my relatively harassment-free internship for video game site Kotaku, are less so. Believe it or not, my reporting jobs in the ‘10s required me to interact in the comments section or on social media. In today’s environment of organized online abuse against journalists, that’s wildly unrealistic! There are distinct modern challenges that I never faced back then. 

But to add another barrier between me and this expected audience, I am not even working right now! I lost many of my freelance positions during the early days of the pandemic, as well as any interest I had in putting my daughter in daycare. That was a valid excuse for a while, but now that daycares are back open and my county is 70% vaccinated, I have to face the truth: I don’t want to go back to work yet. Of course, I do work: I don’t want to erase my around-the-clock labor to care for a toddler and manage a household, but it’s definitely a divergence from the career path I used to blog about. Writing and blogging used to be what I did during work hours, and now I do them in my free time, when Eva is asleep. In a way I’ve come full circle back to when I was 23, working in an office 9 to 5 and writing Otaku Journalist posts at night. 

When I was 23, jobs in fandom barely existed. Now, opportunities to turn fandom into your job are abundant, but the environment in which they exist is increasingly hostile. The internet is bigger, more public, and less forgiving than it used to be. I understand what it’s like to exist online now as an adult, but not what it would have been like to grow up this way. Rather than try to talk to young people about what I think they’re going through, I’m trying to listen to them.  

At the bottom of this epiphany is probably that I need to make a much-needed update to this website. I haven’t really made updates since 2017, and it’s incredible how much the web has changed in 4 years. If you’re doing one of my free courses or reading one of my ebooks in 2021, remember that this advice is coming from a different time. I’m not planning on deleting stuff (yet); I don’t think realizing that I’m old and out of touch means I have to fade into obscurity. But it certainly means I could stand to acquaint myself with fresh perspectives before I create something again.

Photo via Pexels.

How I wrote my first article for the Washington Post

As my friend Samantha of Anime Herald said, “Strange times breed strange opportunities.” Anyway, today I’m sharing my first article in the Washington Post. 

All dressed up with nowhere to go: Cosplaying in the pandemic ran today in Launcher, the Post’s video game vertical. I even wrote the headline! As is par for the course with a major news outlet, I had to begin on the ground level for a general audience, so Otaku Journalist readers may encounter details in it that seem obvious to fans. I’m glad, at least, that the social media team didn’t do me dirty the way the New Yorker made Matt Alt’s life difficult earlier this week. (That tweet, about how anime is “finally mainstream,” was deleted after major criticism, but you can get the gist of what happened from Mike Toole’s QRT.)

I found out about this opportunity on Twitter, which is the same place I have found out about basically every other gig in my career, which is why I still show up there every day and allow randos to yell at me. It’s been years since I reached out to the Post with one of my own pitches, but this time my area of expertise—cosplay, in this case—matched up with what editor Mikhail Klimentov wanted to feature. 

I worked on it for the better part of two weeks at the end of May and beginning of June. With four interviews and more than 1500 words, it contains my most serious reporting since Eva was born. I do most of my work during her nap and after bedtime, and that’s when I conducted the interviews for this article. But I needed help finding time to cobble the narrative together, so I’m grateful to John and my parents for watching Eva during several consecutive mornings. In my experience, mid-mornings are naturally my most productive hours, when I used to get my best writing done, but as a stay-at-home mom, I usually don’t have access to them anymore. 

Once I did have time to work, I found that my writing stamina was shot. I simply was no longer used to sitting down and writing 500 words at a time anymore! (My weekly Fruits Basket review, which is almost stream-of-consciousness, doesn’t count.) I broke through that wall with a free site called Pomofocus.io, which is based on the Pomodoro Technique. I would work for 25 minutes, take a five-minute break, and repeat one or two or three more times, depending on how much time I had. I also found out that it can also be motivating to know that you only have a limited window of childcare. When you know your time is that limited, you are less likely to waste time writing and rewriting the perfect sentence. Just stick in a placeholder and revise later. 

I don’t want to burn any bridges so I don’t want to tell you what they paid me (though you can Google their freelancer pay rates pretty easily), but I spent enough time on this that my pay-per-hour rate is laughable. The real benefit was writing for a major paper of record about our fandom in a way that I hope does it justice. It was also incredible to have access to the Post’s photo team for what turned out to be a very visual story. Most of the story revolves around three cosplayers in the Bay Area (Tatted Poodle), the NYC Metro area (Maweezy), and Atlanta, Georgia (Yaya Han), and the Post sent photographers to all three locations! 

Growing up as an aspiring journalist in the DC area, it’s always been a goal of mine to write for the Washington Post. I didn’t expect this to happen at a time when I’ve all but abandoned my career to hang out on playgrounds all the time, but here we are! It feels great to be writing again, and I hope you’ll see more bylines from me soon. 

Lead image: Maweezy in her incredible “Boba” Fett cosplay, photographed by Melanie Landsman for The Washington Post

5 Tips For Breaking Into Niche Writing In 2020

how-to-break-into-niche-writing-2020

It’s been difficult to find the motivation to blog. As quarantine wears on, my role as a primary caregiver has continued on as the most important and time-consuming part of my life. The traditional gender roles I conveyed in my May post have only become more stark as John’s career gets demanding while I continue to drop work I no longer have time or energy to do. 

“It’s awful,” I said to my sister about my quarantine life with an increasingly mobile toddler. “All we do is eat, nap, and play with blocks all day. I’m losing my mind.” 

“That sounds like fun actually,” she pointed out. Maybe complaining about all-day playtime to a very busy and in-demand employment lawyer wasn’t my smartest move. 

Since that conversation, I’ve tried to embrace my new life as a storybook reader, block stacker, and nursery rhyme singer. Like everything else about this quarantine, it feels like it’s gone on forever. So when, every now and then, I get a request for advice, it jolts me back into who I used to be—a niche journalist with ten years of experience reporting on anime, tech, and fandom. 

Like I say on my about page, “my favorite part of [this blog] is getting to connect with students and give them the advice I wish I had received.” That’s truer now than it has ever been. As somebody who launched my own career against the gloomy backdrop of the 2009 recession, my heart goes out to anyone getting their start during such a bleak time. 

I ought to permanently affix “Sorry for the late reply” as a heading to all of my quarantine correspondence, but I have slowly been offering advice to students and young professionals who ask. With their permission, I’ve included some of it here:

1) Get Gigs By Giving Editors Ideas

Not only is it a tough time to break into the field, it’s a tough time to be in the field. Though online ad revenue is down, more people are stuck at home and reading news outlets than ever, so clicks are way up and editors need stories for people to read. Just from hanging out on Twitter, I’ve seen requests from places like Crunchyroll News, Funimation, and Anime News Network that are putting out calls for story pitches because they need new content. 

If I were looking for gigs, I’d be reaching out to these places with story ideas I’d be ready to write for them ASAP. In a cold email, I don’t even think a portfolio of samples is as important as a well-written email with an interesting pitch and the intent to back it up with quick, solid work. It’s less about researching what makes a good story pitch in general, and more about studying previous stories at those outlets and suggesting a story you can write for them that’s both in their wheelhouse and not something they’ve covered in the past. 

2) Pitch The Stories You Want To Read

Is there anything in your preferred beat that you think isn’t getting good coverage? Do you think you have an interesting idea for an in-depth piece that’s not about immediate breaking news? Better yet, can you make a case for an article that only you could write, involving a personal angle or anecdotal experience? Best of all, can you tie an article idea to what’s going on in the world right now? These are all ways you could get your idea to pique an editor’s interest. 

I would write to a couple of your favorite niche outlets with one or two ideas (I’d go for quality over quantity, you really only need a single good idea) and see if anyone responds. And if nobody does, I would try smaller organizations next. In the videogame sphere, a good example would be that you’d pitch to, instead of Polygon, someplace like Rock Paper Shotgun. They’re actually a great place for this because their contributor guidelines (always read those first) say that you don’t need to have published work to pitch to them, just an example of prior writing.

3) Find Experts To Guide Your Niche Reporting

If you look at my career over the last ten years, it looks like I’ve covered a huge variety of topics. But actually, those topics all occurred in clumps. I’d be assigned a beat and I’d immerse myself in it. For example, when I was at ReadWrite, my editor came to me and said, “Lauren, I want you to become our Pinterest expert.” So I did. I signed up for an account when they went live, I went to their headquarters, I followed a lot of Pinterest influencers and kept tabs on them. This also happened with robots and smart homes at different times. 

These days, my beats are informed by my own interests. I write about anime and Magic: The Gathering for Forbes because I like that stuff and already know a lot of background. But any time I’m entering into something I know nothing about, I do a lot of research. For example, when I wrote about quantum computing, I first found and interviewed a quantum physicist. Look for guides in a new beat: people who know the topic way better than you do and can keep you from looking stupid. I don’t want to make insiders roll their eyes at something I write the same way I roll my eyes whenever a reporter writes “Sailor Moon: The Anime Nobody Has Heard Of.”

4) You Can Skip The Unpaid Work Step

Let’s talk about privilege for a moment. My parents paid for me to go to college, and my grandmother paid for me to go to grad school. (I also had scholarships for both but they would not have paid for all of my tuition, my books, etc.) This gave me more choices than the average student. So when I wanted to intern at Kotaku for no money, that was an option. When I wanted to intern at the Newseum for no money, I could do that. Kotaku, in particular, was huge for helping me build contacts in the games/pop culture writing space. But the world has changed. The Newseum closed and Kotaku now pays their interns. It used to be that you would “pay your dues” by working for free, but now that’s just called “being taken advantage of.”

Today, I suggest jumping right into freelance work instead of interning. Even though freelance gigs are frequently one-time, you can turn that into recurring work if you deliver good, consistent writing. And even if not, you can get big publication names in your portfolio. 

5) Never Stop Learning

I’ve always been interested in web design since middle school, though it started as a hobby. Then, when I got my Master’s in Journalism, technical training was a required part of the coursework. Even back then there was an understanding that journalism alone wasn’t going to pay the bills in the future, and journalists needed to be well-rounded. Of course you don’t need to go to grad school for this. You can use Lynda.com (I have a free membership with my library card and you might, too). One suggestion for honing your skills might be to set a productive goal: you could build your own website and use YouTube videos to help you along the way.

Over the years, I’ve worked on improving my skills whenever my justification for doing something a certain way was “This is how I’ve always done it.” That’s a bad reason. That’s when it’s time to start with a Google search and see how people are, for example, doing web security audits these days, and see if I need to get with the times. 

Photo by Amador Loureiro on Unsplash

How I’m balancing life and work during quarantine

At the beginning of the global pandemic and resulting quarantine, some of my friends recommended that I post some tips for those who are newly working from home. I started a few drafts before scrapping the effort: in no way does quarantine resemble my old work-from-home routine. All of my old tips, like getting out of the house once a day, or making time to socialize during the evenings to make up for solitary work days, do not apply!

I never could have guessed my 2020 would look this way even a year ago. Not only am I adjusting to balancing my work with taking care of a tiny human, but now I’m doing it in isolation, too. I don’t have any tips because this is a brand new experience for me. But what I can do is share how it’s going. Spoiler alert: this work/life balance doesn’t have a lot of work in the equation. 

Here’s my daily schedule. Feel free to take a glimpse into my life in order to relate or feel better about how you’re handling quarantine or both.

Morning

Our wakeup call is fully dependent on Eva. When she gets up, either John or I get up with her, usually whoever had the better night. I eat while she plays with her toys, and then I put her in the high chair where theoretically she eats, but mostly she just plays with her food.

During Eva’s morning nap, I have to act fast. I can get either one article written or a couple of emails answered. If she wakes up in the middle of a task and John isn’t too busy, he gets her while I wrap up. Having John home is an enormous privilege. Because of him, I can take a Japanese class over Zoom every Monday while he parents Eva. The silver lining is that he’s getting to see more of her growth than he did previously. While he was at the office, I was the only one who was there for her first smile, her first roll. Now he’s home for every new milestone. 

Afternoon

I cook lunch and prepare baby food for Eva. Afterward, we play or FaceTime her grandparents, which is the closest I get to having childcare. She and I usually go for a walk around then to get out of the house, and then I put her down for her afternoon nap. 

This is when I try to get household tasks done. Every day, I do the dishes (because we’re eating at home every meal), and almost every day, I do a load of laundry (because baby). I may also clean, order groceries, prep for dinner, or puree more baby food. At this point, I might be asking, “what does your husband do?” and the answer is, “what he can.” He has to work minimum eight-hour days and manage a team. I know this is upsettingly consistent with reports of how quarantine tasks have broken down by gender. But for our family it’s a financially-based decision, especially considering I was working part-time to begin with. 

Since it’s so heavy on housework, my afternoons least resemble my old life. Even before the pandemic, with a younger baby, I didn’t do this many chores: I’d be able to visit my parents, or my mother-in-law would come to visit, or I’d go out to events like storytime and swim class and hang out with other parents so it didn’t feel like such a slog. I agree with this article about how weirdly, parenthood has made quarantine better, not worse, because it gives structure and purpose to my day. But it’s still a lot of work with no end in sight. 

Evening

After dinner, John and I put Eva to bed, an elaborate routine that involves video-chatting her other grandparents, taking a bath, and reading at least two books. It’s all finished by 7:30. 

Then it’s time for work!… if I’m not entirely burned out. Then I just pour myself a drink and play Animal Crossing. But let’s say it’s a good evening and I crack open my laptop. I’ll usually work for around two or three hours on articles for Forbes, Anime News Network, and Gunpla 101. The structure of my career has changed—like many freelancers, I’ve lost some income sources during the pandemic as some previous employers have tightened their belts. On the other hand, my affiliate marketing blog revenue has skyrocketed; as more people stay home and shop online, I’m making an ever-larger cut. Another bonus: many of my prior web design clients are rehiring me for feature requests and security updates since a WFH world means their portfolio websites are more important than ever. In a three-hour workday, it’s made me reevaluate the most practical ways to spend my work hours. But once again, this is on a good day. I have stressed-baked many batches of cookies in the evenings, too. 

What’s not on this schedule: thinking about the big picture. Instead, I’m even more task-oriented than usual, using the normally ill-advised strategy of using my email inbox as a to-do list. That’s great for putting out fires as they come up, but terrible for planning ahead. I’m taking this quarantine one day at a time, because to think about what’s likely ahead of me is just too demoralizing. Of course, who really knows what the future holds—these are unprecedented times. So even if I don’t feel like the Otaku Journalist right now, it’s OK to just write what I can, even something simple like this post. At least, that’s what I’m telling myself. 

Top photo: One of the aforementioned stress-bakes.