Otaku Champloo

Tag: fandom

  • Fujojocast No. 14: When Asian Fans Socially Distance because of Cultural Tensions in Fandom

    Fujojocast No. 14: When Asian Fans Socially Distance because of Cultural Tensions in Fandom

    An image of a circle's merchandise at Comic Frontier 2018
    Photo of a circle. Taken by the author at Comic Frontier 2018.

    In case you missed the memo, fandom is not a safe place, especially for BIPOC fans.

    It’s something that we Asian fans have been keenly aware of since our engagement online. It’s something that has been documented by scholars. In the last week, as different organisations respond to justice and equality, the Organisation for Transformative Works also made an effort to address racism in fandom. Of course, there are people who felt these promises are empty as there is no promise of structural change that supports BIPOC fans.

    This recent drama has left my friends and me in a tiff, as we have been enraged as fans over the years. The ways in which Western ideas, practices, and morals are shoved down our throats has left a bitter taste in our fan experiences that, more often than not, we disengage with fandoms popular in the West or we seek for circles that understand our contexts.  For a space that claims to be “our” own, this should not be the case and yet this displacement continues and it impacts the way we express our fandom.

    Here are links to some of the articles and discussions I mentioned here and others that may also reflect the cultural tensions we face in fandom.

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    Fujojocast No. 14: When Asian Fans Socially Distance because of Cultural Tensions in Fandom

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    Music Insert: Zhu YiLong and Bai Yu’s “Flying Across Time” from the Guardian Soundtrack.

  • Fujojocast #6 – Shipping wars, doujin scanlations, and the IP blocking mess we’re in

    Perhaps this is the first “breaking news” podcast I’ve done. Not that this is completely breaking news but it, nonetheless, an interesting development in things that we do in fandom.

    Last week, there was a bit of a stir when it was made public that a particular scanlation group has said that they’re blocking Japanese IPs so that publishers and doujin creators can’t access their works. Clearly, this doesn’t sound right on all angles but in this podcast, Nellie, who works for Crunchyroll and is an editor genre fiction, discusses with me the complex story that arises from this decision of said scanlation group as well as discussing the complexities we face as fans of Japanese animation and manga.

    Some of the things we definitely discussed is the protective attitudes and measures of artists and with regards to the fan works which goes on both ends (Western fandom side and Japanese fandom side). You might have seen pages or websites with the mark OFP which is Online Fanarts Protection group (now defunct). If you want to consider the economic states of doujin artists, you can read this research on how much doujin artists make in Comic Market. Or maybe you can also see the problems of Manga artists too. And for those who are thinking of permissions, here are some things that can help in case you are lost in translation. Asking permission does make an artist happy. Of course, stealing and sharing it a whole lot early can make artists mad, as is the case of Yamamori Mika’s page leak for Hirunaka Ryusei.

    Podcast: Play in new window | Download


    OP/ED – Rage On! by Old Codex (Free! Season 1 TV Opening)

    In the end, we are in a conundrum, finding no real solutions (although honestly we hope that attitudes DO change). Personally, I’d love to hear every one’s comments on this. But let’s not make this a bashing of the group or that scanlations is wrong but rather really open up discussions on fan attitudes and what needs to be changed so that we can meet fans and content producers in Japan halfway.

    If you wanna tune in our future discussions, we’re in also ITUNES now, so feel free to subscribe!

  • Recovering from the awesomeness of BLush 2014

    Blush

    I always say I’m too old for conventions but I guess I’m never too old for Boys’ Love conventions.

    This year, I took part in another Boys’ Love convention, this time it’s closer to home. Last 3 May 2014, my friends and I organised and held the second BL convention in Manila, Blush Convention. The theme this year is Secret Confessions and we used it to launch our second Blush anthology. However, it seems that there’s a lot of girls (and boys) who had a lot of feels to confess. Their voices are still ringing in my ears.

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  • For Fandom!!

    Again, another interesting thing popped up in my e-mail again. This time, it’s from Laura Hale and she’s co-maintaining a site called fanhistory.com. Now I really thought that it was all for naught, but it seems to be quite an interesting site on the history of online fandoms and how they were built. They have a short preview on how the fandom was born. And it lists almost all writers in fanfiction.net. Yeah, even feeble writers who haven’t written since 2002 *cough*. And it’s even more fun because it even lists like prominent fandom places, such as, in my case, the aoshimisao mailing list, an ML for rabid Aoshi x Misao fan. Of course… on the side even I enjoyed a bit of BL with Aoshi x Saitou, but in my heart of hearts I loved Aoshi and Misao.

    I think their effort is as gargantuan as wikipedia itself so if you know one or two things about your fandom, feel free to make entries. If you want to… (lol) update your author profile (SERIOUSLY! IT’S BOUND TO BE THERE!) then go ahead and scribble it down and write the fanfics you have written that’s not in fanfiction.net. Or change your history altogether and place a different fandom profile for yourself. Even add a few info for those who are curious. lol. If you’re not there, adding yourself wouldn’t hurt, would it?

    It’s quite nostalgic browsing through the site. I’ve been passing it to friends and it’s like “OH GOD! THOSE WERE MY FANDOMS!? WHAT WAS I THINKING THEN!?” lol. My generation of anime fans have seen how the internet and fanfiction has totally shaped anime fandom as we know today. So much has changed back then and even the community feels slightly different. Fandom History might be able to at least grab a bit of the old days back and make us ponder on how silly and innocent we were back then. When we were like what… crazy 16 year old kids!?! lol.