Dream with Our Eyes Open

Hey, it's the last weekend of this year's auction, which provides funds for people of color to attend SF&F conventions. There are some great fannish things for sale, including signed copies of books and ARCs by folks like N.K. Jemison, Martha Wells, Seanan McGuire, Lois McMaster Bujold, Ann Leckie, Neil Stephenson, and Patrick Rothfuss, custom jewelry, crtiques of your writing, and so forth.

Go ye forth and bid.

Saw this a couple of days ago at Scalzi's Whatever:

The little bug girl at 3:32 will steal your heart away. And I saw "myself" several times. How about you?

"Con or Bust helps fans of color/non-white fans attend SFF cons. It will be taking requests for assistance attending cons in April, May, and June from February 15-25, 2013. For now, this post is where to find out more about requesting assistance."

- Read more in general about Con or Bust here

Cho here: The Con or Bust auction is a win-win situation all around. If you're a bidder/buyer, you can walk away with some deeply cool stuff, like autographed books or vintage fannish posters (I got an original U.K. teaser poster for "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" one year ...). If you're a fan of color (and that includes aspiring authors/artists etc.), you can apply to get financial support to attend a convention, with all the associated opportunities to network, talk to publishers, and do all the usual con-type stuff (GOH speeches, coffeeklatches, author panels, special film showings, art shows, the dealers' room, fannish live performances, etc.).

So it's been a bit more than a month since whymzycal assigned me these seven things! Life has been rather complicated during that time, to say the least.

I have joined the Organization for Transformative Works because, given that I now have 90 stories on AO3 (under my writing account), I figured it was time to put my money where my authorial voice was.

On November 16, the polls will open for the election of two new members to the OTW Board. Many of us here on DW have been posting our opinions about the candidates and indicating our choices (each voting member may select up to four candidates).

I am still mulling over most of the choices. A couple of my major issues for this election are (1) the high incidence of burnout among the volunteers and (2) the divide between the larger fandoms (mostly Western canons, especially television shows, popular movies, and a scattering of recent best-selling books, such as Harry Potter) and the smaller fandoms (such as most manga, manhwa, Bollywood and other non-Western films, non-Western literature, classical and most YA literature, and others). As should be clear, this large vs. small division corresponds quite closely with the divide between Western vs non-Western fandoms.

Regarding the burnout issue: I experienced this first hand, both in my own case and in the case of others, when I was involved in tag wrangling. I believe that the board needs members who have not only had experience with this issue but who have some ideas about remedies for it.

Regarding the issue of smaller vs. larger fandoms and how easy it is for the needs and wants of the smaller fandoms to be buried: I saw this during my tag wrangling work as well, where getting the names of non-Western fandoms and their characters to be handled well was a constant struggle. There was also the server name contest incident, opinions on which are being used as a litmus test for the various candidates' level of awareness of the tensions regarding the diversity situation. In my early fan days - literally decades ago - I was very much in the Western fandoms group: my fandoms were primarily Tolkien and Star Trek:TOS. But recently, I've become a huge fan of manga, and I'm seeing parts of the other side. For example, it's often a struggle for me to participate in multi-fandom challenges, because there are so few fans, comparatively, in the fandoms that give me joy.

I also feel that the simple majority represented by the larger fandoms leads to a lot of injustice and pain. As fans, we are often marginalized by the outside/mundane world. To have the same ugly situations re-enacted within a fannish organization that's supposed to be welcoming - "our own," as AO3's name states clearly - is particularly miserable. Yes, that's how a simple majority works - but we are supposed to be intelligent and creative, aren't we? Can't other solutions be devised, to make all of us feel welcome at the party?

On various journals and in some of the candidates' statements, I've seen it implied that somehow a Board composed of like-minded members is the best way to solve problems, because only like-minded people are going to be able to work together. I believe that is completely untrue, and that given the nature of some of the issues facing OTW, it is in fact vital to have a Board that reflects diversity of opinions, backgrounds, and experiences.

I will also note that I feel strongly that there is a huge difference between, on the one hand, expressing one's own feelings forcefully and passionately about issues, and on the other, impugning another person's reputation and sanity. The first is both understandable and commendable; the second is offensive.

At this point, I still have two candidates to pick. But in the meantime, I have decided that I will definitely be voting for Julia Beck and Nikisha Sanders.

Samurai Deeper Kyo vol. 37/38!

And Del Rey included Kamijyo-sensei's pencil-only postscript, which I had seen online and in the Japanese original that telophase snagged for me! I am very, very pleased!

Also, I found 20th Century Boys vol. 9 and Bamboo Blade vol. 5.

(I had a very nice and yet very awkward conversation at the Borders manga section with an androgynous teen who was over 6 gangly feet tall, clad in jeans, a black camisole, strappy red suede fingerless gauntlets, black-and-red head wrap, and long dangly crystal-red-and-black earrings. I think the awkwardness was simply because we were both shy.)

Pattern recognition: A dialogue on racism in fan communities

The article is from Transformative Works and Cultures, Vol 3 (2009). You will likely recognize some of the dialog participants.

(A tip of the hat to facetofcathy on the racism_101 LJ comm for posting about this.)