How Otakon made me feel OK again

Fandom

On the first morning of Otakon, I took out my makeup case for the first time in a month.

Before that, there’d been no point to wearing makeup if I was just going to cry it off. The tears could come at any time—most commonly, before I was even fully awake in the morning. But this was Otakon, and I was not going to cry. I applied neon pink to the inner corners of my eyes, and then blue for an unsubtle galaxy look. The next day, I added more purple.

The thing about being sad is that you feel trapped alone with your thoughts. But there’s no being alone at Otakon. Amidst some 20,000 people I found the sensory overload I was looking for. I saw lots of old friends and made new ones and hugged everyone who was willing.

After Jess died I knew I needed to keep surviving. I needed to keep eating and sleeping and working and even having fun. My friends and I didn’t cancel a damned thing—even the vacation we planned together with Jess and then went on without her—but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was watching a movie of somebody else’s life. Everything I did, I did with mortality in mind. I wrote letters to all my friends, trying to tell them the things I never got a chance to tell her one last time. I spent too much time combing through school yearbooks and old diaries, trying to recapture all the feelings I felt when she was alive.

I think Otakon was the first time in awhile I felt like I wasn’t just surviving. I was living.

Anime conventions are liminal spaces. Normalcy gets put on pause while everyone takes a weekend to dedicate themselves to joy. Outside the convention walls, the world was falling apart in more ways than one, but the celebration inside shielded me from it all, even if for just a little.

The convention gave me permission to put my trauma on hold. Not only did I not cry at Otakon, I wholeheartedly embraced every activity: from screaming my lungs out at JAM Project, to focusing all my attention on a friend I rarely get to see, to eating really delicious onion rings. Before Otakon, whenever I caught myself really enjoying something, I felt guilty—both because these were things Jess could no longer do, and because being happy, even for a minute, would mean I didn’t miss her anymore. If the pain went away, it would mean I forgot her. Not this weekend though: in the liminal space of the convention, it was too noisy to hear my inner critic. 

Besides, that’s not true. As long as I’m here, I will be a living, breathing monument to her memory. She will always be a part of me and many, many others. (I don’t think you realize how many people your life is touching right now, and how many people would be wrecked if you were gone.) It took going to a place that never fails to make me happy—where I really have no choice except to be happy—that I realized I can be happy and I can memorialize her at the same time.

I can’t say this was a permanent change. Just a few days after Otakon was over, I was back to bad dreams and crying jags. I don’t think my life will ever go back to the way it was. (To be honest, I had been waiting to post again until after I “got better,” but before I knew it a month had gone by and I realized that not only is “getting better” not happening, but that it would be even more awful not to be able to remember these painful memories anymore.) There will always be a hole in my life from now on, but at Otakon I realized that doesn’t mean I’m broken. 

The days are still hard but I finally feel like I’m looking forwards instead of backwards. The most exciting parts of the future? More cons. I am looking forward to meeting online friends at Crunchyroll Expo this upcoming weekend, paneling at Katsucon 2018, and more.

I think fandom can be a wonderful escape and, I’d argue, a healthy one. I still have to do the work of grieving, but being part of this community has made my burden a little lighter.

Top photo: letters to my and Jess’s friends. 

Hiatus

Writing

Since high school, I have had the same core group of friends. We used to call ourselves, semi-ironically, the Sexy Seven, but since then we have expanded to include significant others (like my husband, John, and Jess’s wife, Nicole), roommates, and more. Most recently we welcomed the first member of our second generation, Jess’s son.

Twice a year, we go to one friend’s vacation home to play board games, go boating, and watch terrible movies. We were in the middle of a massive email chain planning that, when I learned that my friend Jess died unexpectedly. She leaves behind her wife and one-month-old son.

What do you do when somebody you’ve known for half of your life, and whom you expected to know for the rest of it, too, suddenly disappears? Maybe you wander around in some kind of fugue state and feel like you’re losing your mind. Maybe you go through a personality shift and transform from solitary introvert to clingy extrovert, making any possible excuse to be with other people. In the past few days, I’ve spent every waking moment with friends who knew Jess, with my parents, sisters, grandmother, and even my aunt and uncle.

How am I doing? Not as mopey as you’d think, but weirdly turned up to 11. My friends and I have an email chain going (as usual) where we’re sharing memories of Jess, and they are inevitably funny and brilliant, like her, so I go from laughing to crying a lot. Other than that, I’ve barely been at my computer. I don’t want to be alone. I went to my sister’s house to organize her winter clothing, just so I could be with somebody I love instead of being alone.

Honestly, I didn’t want to even post about this on my blog. How crass is it to use my friend’s beautiful life for #content? But I wanted to let you know why I didn’t post on Friday, won’t be posting tomorrow, and I’m honestly not sure when I’ll be ready to post again.

In the meantime, I bought a pack of 20 rainbow cards and envelopes, and I’m in the process of writing an embarrassingly affectionate letter to each of my friends and family members. 

I would encourage you to do the same. Don’t wait until tragedy strikes. You never know how much time you or your loved ones have left. Drive for hours to see them if you have to, because it could be the last time. Tell them you love them until it gets weird. Live in the present, because that’s all we’re guaranteed.

Photo: Jess and I on my wedding day. She could always make me laugh like this.

Midyear checkpoint: How I’m spending the rest of 2017

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It wasn’t until I got my Anime News Network weekly streaming assignments that I realized summer—and 2017—are both half over. How has the first half of your year gone?

This is the time of year where I like to reflect on how my year is and isn’t panning out. My favorite, Alexandra Franzen, has some great questions to help with this.

Lately, I’ve been feeling sort of lost. So instead of a regular blog post, here’s an exercise: here’s how my year is going, followed by some questions for you to consider about yours.

What have I done for the first half of the year?

Learned to oil paint. Wrote 2,600 words of fiction. Tweeted 2,700 times. Launched Anime Origin Stories. Presented my panel, “He Is A Char,” for the first time at Katsucon 2017. Got my panel, “Gunpla is Freedom,” accepted to Otakon 2017. Volunteered at Anime Boston. Went to West Virginia and tapped trees to make maple syrup. Joined a local support group for women entrepreneurs. Solidified my self-employed income with two new regular clients, then quit writing income reports. Wrote a free e-course for making your first $1000 as an anime blogger. Went to a Korean spa. Celebrated my fourth anniversary with John at a Japanese-American bed and breakfast. Went to John’s hometown and talked to kids and teens about anime.

What do I want to do for the second half of the year?

Publish 150 Anime Origin Stories. Draft a novel that I can write during NaNoWriMo. Pass the N4 Japanese Language Exam. Run my third 10k race. Plan my 2018 trip to Japan.

What am I going to need to do (or not do) to make those things happen?

  • Cut back on social media. I quit Instagram. I deactivated Facebook. Now, it’s time to heavily limit my Twitter time. Social media gives me the dopamine burst I would normally need to do actual work to obtain. It’s taken a long time for me to realize that my reliance on Twitter is codependent and unhealthy.
  • Develop a more disciplined daily routine. Normally it goes like this: get up around 8, work until noon, eat, exercise or go on a walk, then work until John gets home. This isn’t strict enough. If I want to make fiction and studying Japanese priorities for the second half of the year, they need to go onto the schedule.
  • Say no to what’s not working anymore. I started writing a book compiling and analyzing Anime Origin Stories but I feel so reluctant every time I open the doc. So I’m putting that on hold for now. I’m not excited about anime this summer the way I’ve been in the past, so I’m letting myself cut back to three shows. If it’s a commitment that doesn’t fit one of my goals for 2017, it’s time to rethink that commitment.

Now it’s your turn. Here are my questions for you to consider:

  • What are you most proud about accomplishing in the first half of the year?
  • What do you regret not accomplishing yet? Is it too late to start now? (Hint: it isn’t.)
  • What were your goals? Are they still your goals?
  • What do you need to do (or not do) to reach these goals in 2017?
  • What’s no longer working for you that it’s time to cast aside?

This has been quite the navel-gazing blog post, but I hope you found parts of it helpful. This year isn’t over yet. May we all accomplish great things as it continues!

Otaku Links: A sign of the times

Otaku Links

Lead photo via Old Anime Fashion. 

The importance of telling uncomfortable stories

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Before I married into a blue collar West Virginia family, I was a bit of a snob.

Chalk it up to growing up in the second richest county in the United States, perhaps. When I went to visit my new grandmother-in-law and she asked which Wal-Mart I got my designer purse from, I took it as an insult rather than, as I now realize, a genuine inquiry.

Now that John and I have been married for four years, these hiccups happen less and less. I no longer refuse to eat cheesy country cooking or think that living in a city means I’m somehow better off (my West Virginia relatives, who live on hundreds of acres of land they own, probably would think the opposite if they saw my tiny apartment). And I’ve come to discover that despite its problems with poverty and drugs, West Virginia can be a beautiful place.

Despite all this progress, something happened this weekend that made me very angry.

John and I were in town for a family reunion. (Despite the cultural divide, there are only about three hours separating us from rural West Virginia.) We went hiking and sightseeing at several natural and historic sites, one being the company town of Cass, West Virginia, which currently has a population of 52 people.

Two wealthy lumber tycoons founded the town around 1900 to transport timber up and down a nearby mountain via coal-powered train (which tourists still ride today). It’s incredible how well the history of the white people who lived and worked there has been preserved.

Before our train ride, I checked out the free museum, which included a big map of the town. There were the big company-built homes, the doctor’s estate and Company Store, and below the river, there was a huge cluster of smaller homes labeled “Colored Bottom.” I looked all around the museum, which included tons of meticulously gathered information and preserved photos of white faces, but I couldn’t find another reference to this part of the town.

Finally, I asked the museum proprietors about it, an older man and woman who have both lived in Cass their whole lives. Turns out, even though the lumber company employed black people in the least desirable jobs, they did not provide housing for them, and historians did not think the black part of town, with its small, rickety houses, was worth preserving. Eventually that whole part of town, which was on the lowest elevation, washed away in a 1980s flood, and the entire black population, I was told, “moved away.”

Fortunately, the curators still had their memories, and told me some colorful racist anecdotes about Cass right after the town’s school integrated in the ‘50s (believe it or not, West Virginia was one of the first states to desegregate schools). But when I asked about why the black residents weren’t part of the historical exhibit, they explained that “Colored Bottom” had its own church, its own stores, and for a while, its own school, so it probably had its own photos, too. Unfortunately, I can’t find even a mention of this part of the town when I look online. This is a part of history that makes people uncomfortable, so it’ll probably just be forgotten.

This encounter left a sour taste in my mouth for the rest of the trip. Finally, I realized why I couldn’t stop thinking about it—every time I visit West Virginia, I am expected to leave my own values at the door and embrace people who are different from me. So when I saw an entire town not practicing that, it made me furious.

It was also a stark reminder for me as a journalist. It’s clear that the story of Cass is only the parts of the story people want to remember. I advocate subjectivity in storytelling, but this is its downside—the possibility that you’re telling only the half of the story you care about.

Going to places where I don’t feel at home and having discussions that make me uncomfortable—these are things that I must continue to do as a journalist. There’s a danger in only telling the story you’re comfortable with, and it’s that the stories of the few and disadvantaged will just be ignored and forgotten.

Journalism already has a class problem, and it’s up to us to not make it worse. It’s important for journalists to challenge themselves to tell stories they’re not already familiar with. We can’t be like the museum curator and say, “they probably have their own photos.” What made me upset about the use of “they” and “them” was that it’s not us and them—the same way I’ve had to slowly learn that me and my new family are not an “us” and a “them.” The curators and their ancestors lived and worked with black residents, so why aren’t these residents included in the historical exhibits for tourists?

It’s up to us to find and tell these stories, because otherwise, these stories might not be told at all.