My schedule for Otakon 2012

Uncategorized

With Gundam Unicorn at Otakon 2011. 

Thanks to its prominence, size, and proximity, Otakon is a staple in my annual convention circuit. In fact, this is the third year in a row that I’ve blogged my Otakon schedule—here’s my posts from 2011 and 2010.

This is the first year that I’ve been a professional reporter while attending Otakon. Last year it was my final vacation before my Daily Dot start date on August 1, 2011. As a result, my goals this year are much higher. Last year, I was working on one investigative story. This year, I’m working on four different feature stories based on field reporting at Otakon. It’ll be hard work, but even if it weren’t my job, I’d find a way to report on something somehow. I wouldn’t want to spend the convention any other way.

Here’s where I’ll be during Otakon. Most of these events are on the official schedule, but I’ve linked the fan-run events to their organizers’ pages.

Friday

  • 10:00 AM – Anime News Network. It was great to meet the team last year and I look forward to hearing more of their insights this time around.
  • 1:45 PM – Spirits, Wheels and Borrowed Gods: Anime and Japan’s Sacred Culture. Charles Dunbar is a great guy and a hell of a panelist.
  • 3:14 PM – Homestuck Meetup. Fans have chosen this symbolic time (I’m told it has a lot to do with the comic) to meet, so I’ll be there for on-the-spot interviews.
  • 6:00 PM – Brony Meetup. I’m interested in talking to bronies about recent community charity projects and their thoughts about the upcoming MLP TV season.

Saturday

  • 1:45 PM – Sexism and Anime Fandom. My panel with Patches! A friend has graciously offered to record this, so even if you’re not there you’ll get a chance to see it.
  • 3:14 PM – Homestuck Meetup II. I’m scheduling in both meetups in case the Saturday one is significantly better attended.
  • 4:30 PM – Brony Meetup II. I’ve never made an effort to track fan meetups before, but already I’m sensing a pattern…
  • 6 PM – Otakon Fan Film Festival. I’m looking forward to checking out these mini documentaries about fandom by fans.

Haven’t planned a thing for Sunday. If I don’t leave early to go type up my field notes, I’ll be relishing some time in the Dealer’s Room for sure.

Interested in meeting up? See something on the convention floor and think, “maybe somebody should be reporting on this?” Don’t be shy, feel free to send me an @ message or a DM on Twitter.

Announcing my Otakon panel… and a survey for you!

Uncategorized

After two weeks of being sick, it’s great to be able to come back with some good news: my panel has been accepted to Otakon!

For nearly a year, I’ve been attempting to become a panelist in one form or another. First I submitted a panel to SXSW about reporting on fandom, but it was rejected. Next, I collaborated with Patrick Taylor on a panel about sexism in anime fandom for Katsucon. That one was accepted, but I had to bail or else miss my San Francisco trip.

We decided to resubmit the panel to Otakon, even though we’d have a far lower chance of getting accepted. But luckily—and I think this is partly thanks to Otakon’s policy of giving brand new panelists a fighting chance—it did!

Here’s a refresher on what the panel is about (readers will notice it’s almost identical to our Katsucon pitch):

Sexism and anime fandom. Even though women have a stronger presence at anime conventions every year, there’s still much to be said about sexism in the medium and geek culture in general. Geekdom is considered a pursuit that is historically male, while women’s involvement has been understated until recently. Are the images and messages of anime at odds with the increasingly vocal fanbase of women and girl fans? Do women feel uncomfortable at some parts of a convention or in anime clubs? Do they feel special for the attention they get for being both a geek and a girl?

This panel will give attendees a safe space to discuss feminism and sexism in a geek environment.

Note that last sentence, where I say this panel will be a discussion. That’s because Patches and I don’t want this panel to be about just us and our background as geeks and allies, but about as many people’s anime convention experiences as possible. We want to create a panel that resonates with as many people as we can—and that’s where you come in.

In order to gather some stories, we’re running two surveys. It’d mean a lot if you could fill out the ones that apply to you, regardless of your gender identity. I’m a little late posting these since I’ve been sick, but here’s how Patches describes our surveys on Altair and Vega:

Research Survey For Otakon Sexism Panel 2012 – This one is for any of you who’ve attended a convention. We’re trying to get a sense of how people feel at events and how they connect to the community.

Sexism in Cosplay Survey for Otakon 2012 – This one has been out a few days. It’s for you cosplayers out there. If you’ve cosplayed or do so regularly, we’d love for you to take the time to fill it out.

Notice that very few of the questions are mandatory. Even if you just fill out a few questions that you best relate to, you’ll be helping us paint a bigger picture of the anime convention experience.

Thank you, and I hope you’ll come support the panel, too!

Photo by Gage Skidmore

What I’m Watching: Folktales from Japan

Uncategorized

Happy Memorial Day, U.S. readers! It’s gorgeous out and I only had a half day at work, but I’m feeling so under the weather that all I’m doing is watching anime. Lately I’ve become enamored with the simple but charming Folktales from Japan.

Each episode consists of three short fables. Each story has different art and animation, but all of them start the same way: “Mukashi mukashi,” which the Internet tells me loosely means, “Once upon a time.” Each story includes a lesson, and based on the first eight episodes, the morals especially highlight the importance of honesty and contentedness with one’s lot in life. Meanwhile, the stories dole out harsh punishments to those who give into jealousy, ambition, and greed.

With primary-colored art, silly voice acting, and (sometimes) a tendency to veer toward bathroom humor, there’s no doubt this show is for kids. However, there’s also a lot of substance here for adult fans, too. I’ve definitely seen references to some of these stories in anime aimed at adults, and now I’ll fully understand them.

Just one example of a frequently referenced tale is Urashima Tarou, the story of a fisherman who is rewarded greatly for saving a turtle. It’s mentioned in Cowboy Bebop, Love Hina, Detective Conan, and DragonBall Z, just to name a few.

You can watch Folktales from Japan on Crunchyroll.

When is it unprofessional for a reporter to act like a fan?

Fandom, Journalism

If you want to picture what ROFLcon was like, just imagine Disneyland for memes. As a ROFLcon staffer said in the opening ceremony, one in every eight attendees was a guest of honor, AKA somebody who “has done something crazy on the Internet.”

So in between writing stories—I got some great stories and even a video out of ROFLcon—I had a chance to meet my favorite memes in real life. A surprising many were just as endearing as you’d expect. When I snapped this photo of taxidermist Chuck Testa with a squirmy puppy, he quipped, “I’m getting really good!” Believe me, he was at it with the one-liners all weekend.

One of my favorite parts was getting my picture taken with Antoine Dodson, the “Bed Intruder” ranter himself. I stopped him in the hallway and got another fan to take our photo together (afterward, I took a photo of him with her.) Dodson was loving it. He took photos and signed autographs all day in a schedule that would have exhausted a jaded mainstream celebrity.

I thought nothing of tweeting a photo of Dodson and I. But later, while reporting the next story of the day, I started to worry about whether I’d violated one of the rules of journalism by acting like a fan at an event I’d been assigned to cover.

Bad journalistic behavior is a topic that makes its way into the news from time to time. When a female reporter wrote up her GQ interview with Chris Evans as if it were a date, getting drunk with the star and even passing out at his house, reviews were mixed, to say the least.

Less ambiguous was an incident this week between a Montreal TV Host and David Beckham—the reporter asked Beckham to autograph a pair of underwear in a move other journalists near-universally denounced as unprofessional.

Is it ever professional for a reporter to act like a fan? Here’s what I think.

It’s NOT OK when:

  • You are currently reporting on the star. You can wait until after the interview to let them know you’re a fan. Try to do it with as low key an attitude as you can muster!
  • You’re at a group press conference, or anywhere that an expression of your fandom would be disruptive to the star or to other reporters.
  • You find yourself using your position as a reporter to try to get closer to the star. If you’ve been given a press pass to interview the celebrity, be the professional the celebrity is expecting to see. You can go to the autograph signing with the other fans later.

It’s OK when:

  • You’re not on active duty as a reporter and you run into the star in passing. If you don’t plan to report on it, you don’t need to act like a reporter. (You should still be decently polite though, of course.)

Of course, these are just guidelines based on my own experiences. In any case, it’s important to use your own judgement. For example, depending on the fame of the person People like Antoine Dodson and Chuck Testa are just Internet-famous, so their fame doesn’t affect their everyday lives. I’m sure they loved being popular at ROFLcon and didn’t mind the attention of fans.

That evening at ROFLcon, I consulted the Daily Dot’s community manager, Logan Youree, about my tweet. Luckily, Logan agreed that it wasn’t unprofessional. In fact, he thought our audience would find it logical for us to want to meet the people we cover all the time.  I was running on caffeine and sleep deprivation, so I just wrote to him to ask him to remind me what he meant:

“In some sense the Daily Dot is a true newspaper, but we are also enthusiast press,” he wrote. “We are supposed to write about the news in online communities but also about the things that interest us about them.”

From that perspective, my only concern is making sure I’m not too enthusiastic about my reporting topics. It’s a problem I’m happy to have.

Otaku, fangirls, and self definition

Fandom, Journalism

Do you own the words you use to define yourself?

I define myself as an otaku. However, dozens of people have personally written to me to tell me I’m wrong. For various reasons, they’ve decided that I can’t use this word or that it describes something that isn’t me.

This doesn’t surprise me. I have to define “otaku” every time I bring it up. It’s a relatively new word that was coined in Japan in the 1980s that spread to Western countries a few years later.

As scholar Lawrence Eng writes, otaku literally translates to “your home,” so all slang definitions for the word are up to the cultural context we place around it. I’d argue that the term is still ambiguous, still applicable to its original use as a derogatory term, but also widely known as a catch-all for enthusiasts of all kinds.

With shifting parameters like these, nobody’s definition can be overtly wrong. Yet people still feel obliged to “correct” me, possibly because they feel an ownership over words or meaning that they do not think I deserve.

I started thinking about the ownership of words when I wrote an article on fangirl culture. My source, Flourish Klink told me that although the word “fangirl” is sometimes used to trivialize women’s involvement in fandom, she wanted to “reclaim” it.

Reclaim it from who? Based on our interview, the patriarchy. Klink said she’s especially interested in studying the ways women respond to media texts, an interaction that is responsible for millions of creative fanfics, pieces of fanart, and apparently, much of Rule 34.

Read the story and let me know what else you’d like to know. Because this is just a preview.

This weekend, the Daily Dot is sending me (and most of my coworkers) to report on ROFLcon, which we’re also sponsoring. It’s a really exciting time for me because it marks the first time ever that I’m literally being paid to report on a fan convention.

As I’ve written before, opportunities like this one are the reason I started Otaku Journalist in the first place. I’d dreamed of being a convention reporter, but I wasn’t sure how I could make it happen. My solution (as I’ve also written before), was to define myself as a journalist and start reporting, despite the fact that nobody was paying me to do it yet.

Maybe other people think a “journalist” is somebody who gets paid to report. Or somebody who has her articles published somewhere other than a personal blog.

My definition didn’t fit at first. But I grew into it.