Otaku Links: Deru deru deru

Otaku Links

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Image of Kyary Pamyu Pamyu via. 

Ethics in (card) game journalism

Careers, Journalism

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This week, something really cool happened to me—something that might make you lose your respect for me as a journalist.

On Monday, a representative from Wizards of the Coast dropped a note in my inbox asking me if I would be able to cover the Magic: The Gathering events at PAX Prime this year. I’ve covered M:TG events plenty in the past, for Forbes, the Daily Dot, and even Otaku Journalist. This time, I obviously had to decline. Since I splurged on a two-week trip to Japan in March, I knew I wouldn’t be able to afford to travel again until next year.

That’s when the rep shot back—what if we paid for your flight and hotel? I figured I had nothing to lose, and asked if they would also cover my husband, who has always wanted to go to PAX. It was a longshot, but the rep replied that’d be fine. I was over the moon!

You see, it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve gotten compensated in return for my reporting. Hasbro regularly sends me boxes of My Little Pony toys to review. Before I left the last M:TG event I covered, I received a swag bag put aside for me, just like every other reporter who showed up. Just about every card game I’ve reviewed for my Forbes blog has been gifted to me—as I disclose clearly in my reviews. Why would disclosing a plane ticket or a hotel stay be any different?

Well, it turns out it’s a lot different. My elation didn’t last long before my editor let me know there was no way I could accept this. For one thing, she pointed out, there’s a major price difference between a flight and a toy. For another, it’s against the rules to use the Forbes brand for personal gain. I could try to argue that they asked me to come because I’m a good reporter, but it’s pretty obvious they asked me because of my Forbes affiliation. While I’d be totally in the clear to write this up on my personal blog, Otaku Journalist only gets 30,000 hits a month.

For some of you reading this, everything up to this point confirms the worst that you believed about journalists. I’m willing to accept perks in exchange for reporting coverage.

I know the concern here is bias. A few years ago, when I was a Bitcoin reporter for ReadWrite, I bought $20 worth of Bitcoin in order to write about the experience. Shortly after that, the Bitcoin boom happened and I found that my $20 had become $150 overnight. My then-editor told me keeping it would bias my reporting, so I donated it to the Red Cross. (Hopefully, the Red Cross figured out how to extract it before Bitcoin’s worth plummeted again.) 

Still, I’m not pigheaded enough not to know that I’m already biased. I have likes and dislikes that sway me incredibly—which is why I have given very bad reviews to things gifted to me, including a board game Wizards of the Coast sent me. And they were thrilled with that coverage! They’re not paying me for good reviews, just reviews in general.

And over time, I admit I’ve lost some of this rigidity. Last year when Hasbro sent me a shipment of My Little Pony toys, I donated them all to charity. Then, they sent me their Comic-Con 2015 exclusive. I sold it on eBay for $80 and went out to dinner. (Mind you, I didn’t review or even request these—they were just shipped to my house.)

How I justify it is this: I don’t feel like a bad person for taking what I can get. I get paid by the half penny for my Forbes coverage. As a human being who sells my body and time in order to feed myself (because that’s what hourly work is), I don’t feel like part of the media elite. I write about stuff I like, and sometimes companies take notice.

If anything, I hope this post sheds some light on the complex considerations that come up when journalists have to decide what they can and can’t accept for coverage.

Photo by Jesper Währner

Otaku Links: Pokémon stay a while

Otaku Links

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Last week was pretty rough, to the point that I sat down to write Otaku Links and thought, “Why bother?” But I got a great email from reader Greg, letting me know that reading this link list brightens his day. I hope all of my readers have been taking care of themselves, especially my minority readers, and I hope this silly round-up makes your weekend a little better.

  • Anime News Network gave me the amazing opportunity to interview Xavier Lim of Bluefin, the North American official Gunpla distributor. I was surprised to learn that after 20 years, the most popular Gunpla in America are still from Gundam Wing!
  • Is season 2 of FLCL going to be any good? With returning musicians the Pillows and returning character designer Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, how could it not be? 
  • My Otakon panelist badge just arrived in the mail. I will be presenting a panel summarizing the history of Gundam anime this year, so I’ll share more details when they’re out!

Screenshot via Mob Psycho 100.

The Otaku Journalist Summer 2016 Season Preview

Uncategorized

As a trained journalist, I know this summer isn’t as terrible as it feels. In my graduate program, we learned the techniques the media uses to make current events seem very pressing for brief periods of time—the searchlight or spotlight method of journalism. Even so, every time I open up Twitter, I just want to retreat into a fantasy world.

Fortunately, the new anime season (and Pokémon Go!, I’ll admit,) are ready and waiting. Though I don’t usually watch more than one or two season premieres, this time I found myself watching a ton to keep my mind off of things! The better to be your anime oyster, sifting out the good stuff from the crap.

Here’s everything I watched so far and whether I think you should be watching it, too.

Amanchu!

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You can see from this screenshot why some people are calling it “The Muppet Show.” Otherwise, it’s a pretty standard slice-of-life about two girls just starting high school. The story takes place in a seaside town, and Kohinata comes from a family of scuba divers, so there’s an ocean motif that follows the episode around, down to their mermaid-cut school uniforms. I love scuba diving so I’m excited for this show to exit the classroom and dive in.

B-PROJECT

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Young everygirl Tsubasa lucks into a job managing not one, but three male idol groups! She doesn’t have any special talents, but her instincts are already winning over the idols—and I can see them falling for her in the future. This is an anime designed to pander to me, but I’m not sure how much more I can take. Between interchangeable pretty boys and Tsubasa always doing everything right, getting all of this fanservice is actually kind of boring.

Cheer Boys!!

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Maybe it’s time to tone down the exclamation points, anime. From the beginning, Cheer Boys!! is not your average sports anime. For one thing, it takes place in college, when the characters are more independent and mature and (to adult viewers like me) relatable. The first episode starts slow as the boys begin to form their cheerleading squad, but I’ve already found my favorite character in the eccentric Wataru.

DAYS

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Tsukishi has a smile I want to protect. This is a sports anime in the spirit of Yowamushi Pedal, starring a hapless nerd as a main character. Tsukishi is a soccer newbie, but he has enthusiasm in spades. It’s not soccer that he’s so crazy about, exactly, but being on a team and running toward a common goal with all of his new friends. Not a lot of innovation here, but the thoughtful character designs and sweet soccer moves are pretty cool.

Love Live Sunshine!!

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I liked Love Live a lot, especially Nico. This is a high quality franchise with engaging characters and great music, and the sequel isn’t any different. As usual the best part is the character interaction—putting a dozen girls with totally different personalities in a room together and watching hijinks ensue. My favorite is Yoshiko, the chuunibyou idol who thinks she’s a demon. My one complaint so far is that Chika is very much like Love Live main Honoka. Perhaps there’s only one kind of personality that can unite this many disparate school idols together?

Orange

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I read the manga to the end, so I’m already inclined to love Orange. It’s your run-of-the-mill shoujo anime… with TIME TRAVEL. And a little bit of wish fulfillment, since 16-year-old Naho is receiving letters from her 26-year-old self in order to assuage her past regrets. Already these characters seem full of life, and the world they live in is full of subtle beauty.

SERVAMP

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A high school boy who hates troublesome things adopts a stray black cat… who turns out to be a vampire who also hates troublesome things. The two enter into a bloody contract (pictured) in which Mahiru can order his new “servamp” to fight other vampires on his behalf, like for example the first episode’s Grell reject who is threatening his friends for no reason. It’s a supernatural show with cute boys so I guess, the summer version of Bungo Stray Dogs? Either way I don’t feel the urge to watch beyond the first episode.

sweetness & lightning

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Here’s a show for everyone who liked Usagi Drop minus the weird incest part. Kouhei’s wife died six months ago, and he’s left raising his adorable daughter, Tsumugi, by himself. However, the hapless high school professor has no idea how to feed the two of them healthy meals. Enter his student, Kotori, who works at a homestyle restaurant. This is all set up to be a heartwarming cooking show, where the characters’ apparent relish in eating should satisfy us, too.

This Art Club Has a Problem!

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Why did I even watch this? Starring a dude obsessed with drawing his own waifus in the creepiest ways possible and the girl who loves him, this is everything I dislike about “meta” anime, that acts like its self-awareness forgives it for re-using the same tired tropes.

The Morose Mononokean

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I’m a huge fan of Natsume’s Book of Friends, in which a high school boy hangs out with yokai only he and a select few can see. This is a clear knockoff, and as usual, it’s nowhere near as good as the original. Hanae’s self-deprecating everyman personality feels cookie cutter, and holier-than-thou Haruitsuki isn’t any more likeable. But hey—yokai hunting at school! It’s going to take more than a meh first episode to make this overall plot less appealing.

Thunderbolt Fantasy

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You absolutely need to be watching this puppet show, is a phrase I didn’t think I’d be saying this season. When I saw everyone hyping this, I thought it must be hilariously bad or something. Nope. These puppets are stunning with painted faces and elaborate embellished outfits. The animated effects are gorgeous, and the voice acting and musical score makes you forget that the puppets’ mouths aren’t always moving. I’ve already watching episode one twice.

TSUKIUTA. The Animation

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We’re definitely not hurting for idol anime this season! This one features just two male idol groups, instead of three like B-PROJECT, but definitely trades that quantity for increased quality (though not enough to make this a must-watch). I liked this storyline, in which three of the idols took a bored little kid on an adventure, because it gives the characters slightly more than the minimum of character development. Even so, that CG dancing has reached uncanny valley levels of discomfort. Once again, being pandered to is better in theory.

All this, and Mob Psycho 100 still hasn’t premiered yet! What are you watching this season?

June 2016 Income Report

Careers, Income Reports

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Welcome to a new thing I’ll be doing based on a reader request to post my freelancing output. I blog about how you can make money blogging, but you don’t really get to see how I personally do that. This will show you how I make a living with my hobbies in a more transparent way.

One caveat—I’m not comfortable posting all of the exact monetary amounts right now. That could change. I’m nervous it’ll be alienating, eliciting both “that much??” and “that little??” responses from people. What I can tell you—I live in a major city, I split expenses 50-50 with my husband, and I’m currently using my extra income to save for a house. After I’ve done a few of these and if I feel more comfortable (and if readers think it’d be helpful), I’ll consider sharing numbers.

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Here’s where my money came from in June. It’s sort of an unusual month, because more than half of my earnings came from my part-time job. That’s because I didn’t work a lot of freelance in May. I was sort of exhausted with life and not pursuing a lot of freelance work. Since most of my clients pay me 30 days after I turn in work, this June earnings report doesn’t reflect my June work much at all.

Freelance-wise, here’s what I got paid for in June:

I also did pretty poorly on the Amazon side this month. My affiliate earnings peak around Christmas and drop off summer. This month, I earned $425.53, which is the smallest amount I’ve made all year! (Yeah, with that one number you can probably get a pretty good idea of the whole pie chart, but whatever, still subtle enough for me.) My suspicion is that during convention season, people prefer to buy Gunpla models in person than over the internet.

oj-june-profit

In business, you need to spend money to make money, as the saying goes. I spend money on the freelance and Amazon pieces of my pie chart, so I included just them in this comparison of revenue and expenses. You can see that in June, I spent about 1/5 of what I made on business costs. Those included:

  • Freckle, my time tracker. I often bill by the hour, and Freckle makes sure I bill accurately.
  • Paying two of my Gunpla 101 contributors, Mario and Milky.
  • Paying my developer, Rusty. We’re working on a big new feature for Gunpla 101, more on that soon!
  • My monthly internet hosting. I have 10+ dot coms.

A few takeaways from June 2016:

June is a historically low-earning month for me. Since I started Orsini Bowers Media in 2014, I’ve been keeping spreadsheets of my earnings. All three years, I haven’t even hit $2,600 for the month. I wonder if it’s because for most of my life, I got out of school in June and I crave a vacation around now—my productivity definitely tapers off. Even worse, the money I earn passively from Amazon fades then, too! My goal is to build more reliable passive income streams so I can support myself even at this sluggish time of year.

My personal projects have taken a backseat. This is the first year in two years that I haven’t written a book. (Unless Affiliate Linking for $$$ counts?) My Gunpla 101 Secret Project is slow going, as are my Otakon panels. I’m mostly chalking this up to having a part time office job—for five of my most productive hours in the day, website code is all I work on. So I’ve finished fewer things I’m proud of this year, overall. The list of my career priorities and the breakdown of how I spend most of my time do not match up this year, and it’s something to consider when I hit my job’s one year anniversary.

On the other hand, not paying taxes is THE BEST. Not paying taxes CONSCIOUSLY, I mean. Ever since I started freelancing full time, I have had to pay estimated taxes four times a year. It sucks to have money in your bank account that you know you’re just going to have to pay to the government soon. This is what’s neat about jobs with withholding, like my web developer job. They take tax money out of my paychecks before I even see it, so I never have to kiss it goodbye. This year, I had a brilliant plan—I am withholding double the amount that I need to. The result is that I barely bring any money home from this job, but I don’t have to pay estimated taxes! I’m withholding so aggressively, it’s more likely that I’ll get money back from the government, rather than having to make up the difference with an April check like usual. This has been the best part of getting a somewhat-traditional job after years of working for myself.

So that’s what’s on my mind this month, as a business owner and employee. It feels pretty good to get this all out there, and I wish I had started doing this sooner. Fellow freelancers, how do you keep track of your earnings?