davemerrill

Looked at the calendar and noticed that it's 2023 which means twenty one years ago I was part of a group that put together what we called a "comics album" in an attempt to become published cartoonists and get our work out into the world. It was called JUKU and you can still find it via resellers on Amazon for wild prices. It came up in a conversation about printing on the Bluesky and Elin W. was complimentary about it, which was nice. After it came out in 2002 we sold a bunch, and then when we did the next round of conventions in 2003 everyone asked where the next one was. There wasn't going to be any next one because finishing that thing simply blasted the desire to make comics out of three of our five JUKU participants. That's part of why Shain and I started Mister Kitty, was that we wanted to make comics and get them in front of others, not sell buttons and t-shirts and stickers and magnets.

Wow, it's November already! That JUKU thing has been sitting in my "drafts" here for two months.

YES we went to AWA, that was my home-to-Atlanta vacation for the year. The con went well, people were happy to be there, the reg lines were a lot shorter, events went smoothly. It's the last AWA in that Galleria/Waverly facility so there's some bittersweetness to the show. Lots of memories in that place. Got to visit with a bunch of friends and do some shopping and walk in the woods in the warm weather.

I came home with a good solid case of the con crud. Actually I've been sniffling and sneezy pretty much constantly all summer and fall, always worried I was going to get sick, so actually getting sick was kind of a relief. Not COVID, I tested four times. Probably got it from my brother, who'd been at a show in North Carolina the previous weekend.

We aren't going south for Xmas this year and it is like a Xmas gift I gave myself; not having that trip hanging over my head is a blessing from Santa Claus.

Had a great conversation on the Bluesky and I want to detail this while it's fresh in my mind; the marines are recruiting at NYAC and people are miffed about it, and I said something about now that anime cons are the size of state fairs the same kind of slap-chop aluminum siding hot tub salesmen are there to sell stuff to crowds, it's what happens when you get big crowds. And some stranger wandered into my mentions to drop a load of anger about back when SDCC send C&D letters to conventions that were also calling themselves "Comic-Cons." And when I said, yeah, conventions should come up with their own names, well, he didn't like that.

Anyway the gist of the debate was that I was questioning this dude's statement that "dozens" of conventions had had to close down and lay off "tons" of staffers because of SDCC's legal action. Because I simply don't think that's true. Dude was not going to be bringing any examples to the table because he wanted to remain anonymous. And okay, that's fine, but when I'm showing up with my real name and real conventions I'm staffing in my bio, and with specific examples of conventions that had to change their names because they wanted to call themselves Anime Expos and Otakons, and they changed those names and kept right on chugging along, and this dude is all "I work for a show but I won't tell you what it is," well, sir, as I said, you have me at a disadvantage.

Some OTHER total stranger wandered into the conversation to deduce exactly what convention this dude was talking about and how it was killed by COVID, not SDCC. Which dude did NOT like. That was after some legal-twitter names like Akiva Cohen wandered in to explain how SDCC was legally correct. Did not expect to see him in the conversation.

Anyway the conversation is over, I'm sure dude is still angry about his show that got smashed by those a-holes in San Diego, whatever, buddy. Next time come up with your own name.

So it's two weeks since I got back from AWA and I guess I didn't get the COVID. I got two separate PCR tests the Sunday of the con - just so I'd have results in time before my flight on Tuesday- and they were both negative, of course.

The con went OK! Thursday was super crowdy. Friday still kinda crowdy. Saturday and Sunday didn't feel as crowded as those days felt in 2019. My feeling is, my guess was right and the show lost about ten percent attendance. The people that did show up were masked, vaxed, tested, and ready to party. I mean Thursday night drunken Disney Atlantis Princess drunk.

A lot of my friends who usually come didn't make it this time. The Saturday night that we'd normally have some sort of room party in memory of the room party we used to have which was called Dessloktoberfest, well, it was me and Neil and Ryan and Lloyd and Matt Buffington sitting around Neil's room drinking the rest of the six-pack of Shiner I brought and just shooting the breeze; no big deal but after not seeing these guys for 2 years it felt great.

The congoers were great about masking up. The part about "you must show your vax card or your negative test results" didn't quite filter down to the walk-ins, however, so there were a lot of walk-ins getting annoyed that they had to fish out their vax cards. I mean, the Braves weren't asking for vax receipts. Seems like the States, or Georgia anyways, has basically decided to Stop Giving A Shit and let the virus roam free as the wind blows.

The World Series meant parking was absolutely not happening for under thirty dollars on Saturday. I saw "Parking $100" at the Steak & Shake on Sunday. Most of the Braves fans were bemused & amused by the anime cosplayers, if people were expecting trouble it didn't happen. Hard to be angry when the Braves are in the series, I guess.

Most of the nerd fan drama nonsense seemed to dial itself back. Disgraced former anime voice actor Vic Mignogna had a signing scheduled the Saturday of the show at a hotel across I-285 from the convention, and there was some talk about what if certain banned Vic-involved people show up at the con? I don't wanna say the head of public safety was looking forward to throwing certain people out on their ass, but when Lloyd and I did our "history of AWA" panel that certain people had shown up to in 2019, public safety was there with eyes on. But certain people didn't show up. Better for everybody involved, I think.

The con had crazy line problems on Thursday - more Thursday attendees than ever before. Two lines for the SHFS materialized out of nowhere and what can you do? They got merged into one line, and people who got the short end of the stick weren't happy. One woman told me AWA was the worst run convention she'd ever been to. That's a tall order for 5pm on a Thursday! Anyway, I saw her later, she got into the SHFS and walked out with armloads of stuff, so I guess things went OK for her at some point.

Anime Hell went without a hitch. Opening ceremonies were an hour late starting, so I figured by the time Neil's Totally Lame got going it would be at least 9 - but they scheduled an hour of slack time into the schedule and Neil started more or less on time, as did Hell, as did Midnight Madness. Didn't have a full room for the full two hours, but that's on par with attendance levels throughout the convention, I think.

Sunday I got a ride for myself and Neil over to Dad's house, and we carved a pumpkin and handed out candy to kids, the first pumpkin I've carved in a long time. Walked around the block and caught up with a neighbor girl who's now a neighbor lady living in her childhood home taking care of her elderly mom and her kids and her mom's business and her own job, and still had time to dress up Mrs. Voorhees (her son was Jason).

My convention panels were over by noon Saturday, I left the dealers' room for the last time with $40 still in my pocket, spent my downtime catching up with friends from 10, 20, 30 years back, hearing about kids, health issues, middle school drama, and how everybody's coping with the tidal wave of covid wrecking everything.

I got to hear from a LOT of fans happy to be back at the con, happy AWA was back. Got to hear from a few staffers who thanked me for helping the show through the rough patch it was going through when it changed hands a few years back. After the con I came home and there was an email from someone who had been attending my classic anime panels for years and how those panels had opened her eyes to a lot of great shows she might otherwise never have seen, and that was a nice email to get in the aftermath of a convention.

Flying seems to have added a few layers of passport-checking, boarding-pass checking, can I see that sticker on your passport, please? checkpoints. An hour before we needed to leave for the airport I decided my old luggage was trash, so I hustled over to the Canadian Tire and splurged on a new set of (cheapish) hard-shell luggage. Treat yourself, I guess. Glad I did.

Discotek WAS at AWA but they did not have Braiger. They had the Cleopatra with my pull quote on the back, though. I wound up paying shipping for Braiger along with Future Boy Conan. What a world we anime nerds live in now.

Just about ready for AWA 2021, the first one post COVID lockdown. A lot of the Usual Gang aren't coming this year, which is going to make it a weird show for me, being a con I've been to for the past 26 years and that my pals were a big part of.

The people that aren't coming this year fall into a few categories. Some are on family vacations. Some are being overabundant in their exercise of caution around crowds. Some went to Otakon and weren't too impressed with how... what did Surat say, how Otakon basically felt like a typical Saturday on their Saturday, which, in the middle of the Delta wave, was enough to be concerning. And of course as Surat said, we found out later that Otakon/Dragoncon/NYCC weren't super spreader events, but by then it was too late to nail down airline tickets and vacations.

I'm not super excited about flying, myself; the convention crowd doesn't bother me that much, but the airport is always a nightmare, even in the best of times, and international travel means I have to get a test here, and then get another test in the States and enter all that info into a Canadian government app that the customs and border guy will likely ignore. I honestly wish I had time to drive down.

My personal feeling is this - most of our friends are in their 40s and 50s and have a lot of stuff going on in their lives, and taking three or four solid days out of their lives for an anime convention is becoming less and less practical. We're seeing a normal amount of attrition, and the COVID has been a great reason for people to say "hey, not this year" and kick that normal level up a notch. We talk about entry points for anime fandom, well, this might be an exit point for anime fandom, at least the anime fandom that involves packing all your shit up, finding parking in what's become a paid-parking nightmare of Braves fans, and spending five hundred dollars on a hotel room. If you can get a hotel room.

The SHFS is happening more or less like normal. It's back in the Waverly - it moved over to the Galleria in 2019, but I don't think AWA is using as much of the Galleria this year? - so it's back in the hotel ballroom. We cut down on the number of tables sold, and they sold out quickly and without me doing any sort of advertising.

I count like 130 vendors on the AWA website, I don't know how that compares to 2019? I don't see Discotek on there and I hope that's an error and they're coming anyway because I need to get Braiger without paying thru the nose for shipping. AWA is NOT doing the formal ball dance this year but is still doing the maid cafe, the music video programming, the idol performance, the video and tabletop gaming, most of the legacy events are still happening. Neil's doing Totally Lame and Gavv is doing Midnight Madness, I'm doing Anime Hell, we're back in our regular Friday night block.

I don't know what attendance numbers are like. I do know that most of the 2020 memberships just rolled over to 2021, and that the convention didn't get penalized by the hotel or the convention center at all. And I know AWA had been socking some cash away for just this kind of emergency, so their regular expenses have been handled, more or less.

From what I can see on the FB pages it does seem like there are going to be a lot of first-time congoers at the show, and at the same time I recognize a lot of the emails on the SHFS list, so there are apparently a lot of veterans coming back. My gut feeling is that AWA maxed out its attendance numbers in 2017-2019 (about 29,000 paid) and that this year we are going to see a drop of ten or fifteen percent. Maybe twenty percent. Which is fine. There are enough convention nerds in the Atlanta area desperate to hang out in their My Hero Academia cosplay that any nerd event with a good track record is going to do OK.

I think what IS going to happen is that our generation of con nerds, we're aging out, which is the normal way of things, and if we want to see our friends it's going to happen somewhere that isn't a hotel jammed with twenty five thousand people half our age or younger screaming about memes or whatever.

Personally I've had to take a hard look at everything involved with getting me to AWA, especially this past year, and asking myself if it's worth it to me. And it is. I really enjoy putting the SHFS together, I enjoy doing Anime Hell, I enjoy watching the convention happen around me. At some point I'm going to realize I'm a creaky old man and should be acting my age, but that point hasn't happened yet.

the latest Let's Anime is all about how yes, I was a teenage anime club president.

https://letsanime.blogspot.com/2021/06/i-was-teenage-anime-club-president.html

It's absolutely fascinating to look back on the weird assumptions and nerd culture traditions we just sort of automatically assumed we needed to do when we started getting together to watch cartoons - that we needed officers and elections and we needed to be an official part of some kind of official structure with a national home office somewhere. And to my teenage 80s mind the C/FO was a vast organization with libraries and archives and vaguely professional behaviours, when the truth was it was run by two or three overworked people trying to answer letters and put a magazine out. A local anime club really didn't need to be a part of any part of it that didn't deliver two things, (1) tapes of anime, and (2) information about the anime that was on those tapes.

Anyway, we learned. Enjoy!

We both got our second shots. Shain got two Pfizers and I got two Modernas, and I spent the night after the shot with chills & fever and the next day being generally wiped out. Shain didn't have side effects other than a sore arm.

The weather's nice, the antique malls are open, the snakes and turtles are out, it's finally summer here.

Always fascinating to see one of these fandom predators get busted and then see how many people you know were friends with the guy on social media. At least two, in my case!

https://twitter.com/IrvingPD/status/1407813177904074758

I mean, I get it, you can't always tell who's an abuser and who isn't, I've had my own creep-radar blindness issues, but as far as I know this latest thing has been going on for decades, do people not talk to each other about these creeps? Was he just that good at moving from group to group and keeping things compartmentalized? Or did everybody hear things and just say "well that's nonsense" or "he never creeped ME out" or otherwise handwave it away? Because that's one thing I KNOW happens, I've seen it.

So there was an anime con in Miami last weekend called "Otakufest" - not to be confused with any of the other Otakufests around the world, way to come up with an original name there. Yup, an anime con in the middle of a pandemic. Word got out that one of the artist alley vendors had tested positive for COVID-19. They had, but not during Otakufest.

https://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sril05

I don't know if what they're saying is accurate or not. What I DO know is that NOBODY SHOULD BE HAVING ANIME CONVENTIONS DURING A PANDEMIC, PERIOD, END OF STORY. Nobody should be organizing them, nobody should be attending them, nobody should be presenting at them, nobody should be artist-alleying at them. Nobody.

I get that a lot of discourse around the anime conventions that continue to happen in spite of COVID-19 is driven by people for whom running fandom events is their business, or for whom tabling at conventions is their business. This was ALWAYS a bad idea. If COVID wasn't going to kick you to the curb, something else was. Conventions fail ALL THE TIME without the benefit of a worldwide pandemic.

Gang, this shit is a hobby. Find something else to do that will pay your bills. Nerd conventions aren't going to do it. Nerd conventions don't have a healthcare plan or retirement benefits or paid vacations or even a guarantee they're going to happen on time.

Obviously nobody's going to listen to me; I've been saying this for years, & for years people say they're gonna be the exception that proves the rule, they'll be superstar millionaires selling copyright-infringing prints in artist alleys across the nation, their X-DoofusWorld-Con will be the biggest pop culture event ever for ever and ever, they'll start a chain of comic-cons in third-tier markets across America where magical first-tier crowds will shell out $500 each for the VIP packages. Animation studios will fight each other for the rights to their wonderful original ideas for an animated series. Fans with plans, we call 'em.

None of this ever happens. This shit NEVER WORKS OUT. However? Bills still gotta get paid. Rent comes due every month. Your teeth don't care about your fan art, they need to see the dentist twice a year. Your car needs gas and tires and the mechanic won't take old anime DVDs. Maybe he will?

Learn a trade, kids. The nerd shit will still be there when you clock out on Fridays. The nerd shit will still be there when COVID-19 is over. That's the great part about volunteer run and volunteer staffed nerd events. WE can walk away from EVERYTHING because THIS AIN'T OUR CAREER, this is a hobby, we can pick it right back up where we left off. Corporate Expo Overhead Salaries To Pay cannot.

Apparently there's an anime convention happening this weekend in Dallas.

Repeat, an anime con in the middle of a global pandemic's giant wave of infections, at a time when hospitals and health care workers are being overwhelmed. Not a great idea.

Their COVID-19 precautions are as follows:

"-Attendees of Anime Dallas 2020 please note several health and safety procedures are being implemented for 2020. This year will be smaller and more spread out than past years and an attendance cap will be in place.

-MASKS will be required of all attendees, staff, and even the guests. Nobody is an exception to the mask wearing rules, and we will be asking folks to wear masks properly covering their nose and mouth.
-There will be no at-con registration allowed on Friday or Saturday of the convention, the convention’s busiest days. Only pre-registered attendees will be able to attend.
-Hand sanitizing stations will be provided at every panel room, at vendor booths, and throughout all other event spaces of the hotel.
-Hotel spaces will be specially sanitized and cleaned between events and at night
-We will be asking people to respect 6 foot social distancing guidelines and putting markers in place wherever we expect to have lines.
-An attendance cap will be implemented – and this limit will be less than half of last year’s total attendance.
-MANY wonderful and fun events simply can NOT take place during this time. Close contact events such as our convention dances will not take place. Events like our rave dances, maid cafe, etc, won’t happen this year.
-Panel rooms and hotel space seating will be socially distanced and additionally rooms will be capped at less than half normal capacity."

These might be good guidelines for any event moving forward, say in 2022. But right now, without a vaccine, they aren't nearly enough. Apparently the convention is hosting a buffet? A terrible idea right now. Locals say that the DFW area has been having weddings and events and buffets for a while, so Texas simply doesn't care, I suppose.

I have a friend who's vending at the show; he's not happy about it but he's got to be there this year or he loses his spot next year, and last year's convention was lucrative enough that he can't afford to miss it. That's where they're at - either risk your life, or risk your livelihood. Ugh.

Stay home. Don't go to this or any other convention.

worldwide cases: 29,051,154
worldwide deaths: 924,879
US cases: 6,520,733
US deaths: 194,107
Canada cases: 138,712
Canada deaths: 9,221
Ontario cases: 46,485
Ontario deaths: 2,863

Ontario's having a little spike over the past week. From less than 100 new cases a day to more than 200. I blame the big Brampton house parties, get 200 people in a house for a big party in defiance of common sense and health and safety regulations, what's gonna happen? It's put a gloom over the beginning of fall weather. Well, the gloomy fall weather's been doing that too, lots of clouds and a bit of rain since Labor Day.

We went out yesterday and hit an antique mall and the consensus over the summer has been that the Woodstock antique mall got in a lot of new stuff and is on their "A" game, and every other antique mall within about an hour's drive of us desperately needs some merch turnover. Got to take some photos of a snake, though, so it's all good.

I put up a new Atlanta Fantasy Fair blog post all about how the Atlanta Fantasy Fair moved from downtown Atlanta to the GICC by the Atlanta airport, and how it did the convention no favors at a critical time in its convention lifespan. Moving down there didn't critically injure the convention, but it sure didn't help things.

https://atlantafantasyfair.blogspot.com/2020/09/1992-atlanta-fantasy-fair-southside.html

AWA went to that same location about ten years later and got out unscathed, mostly because the GICC swore on a stack of bibles that they were going to tear the whole thing down, we HAD TO GET OUT. Nearly twenty years later it's all still standing. Part of the last two Avengers movies were filmed there, I guess a big exhibit hall is great for filming large green-screen sequences.

Speaking of AWA, it looks like their virtual show is going to be around the end of the year instead of Halloween, which is fine, gives me more time to put things together. I'm definitely *not* in the panel content creation zone at present.

I wasn't going to comment on this, but it made the local news in San Antonion:

https://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local/article/San-Japan-leader-calls-himself-an-idiot-after-15319698.php

Short version:(from the article) "Responding to criticism over the lack of diversity among panelists and talent for the local annual anime event, Henkin tweeted, "We get tagged and constantly requested to book sexual predators and popular asshole divas. That's what people want to throw their money. Show up by the hundreds with cash to see (people of color) then I'll book them."

So this got leaked and people flipped. Admittedly this was a dumb, tone-deaf thing to say, it highlighted the laziness and failure to take chances on the part of the convention, and it put the blame on attendees rather than on the people making the actual decision. And it was the absolute wrong thing to say when POC are being assaulted on America's streets by the cops as they protest being assaulted on America's streets by the cops.

I do get where the con chair is coming from, he's on that awful endless cycle of having to sell a lot of tickets because they booked expensive guests and acts which will draw the crowds they need that will buy a lot of tickets to pay for the expensive guests and acts, which will... and all this means he has to listen to what the fans want. Or he thinks he does, anyway. I'm pretty sure these people would come to his show regardless of the guests he booked. They can be bold in their guest choices.

As I said here: (https://twitter.com/terebifunhouse/status/1268654129242681344) "I'm old enough to remember when we put on anime cons and invited guests because we loved the thing they did, not because they would Bring In The Ca$h Money$$$. if you have to book predators and assholes to keep your convention alive, your convention needs the sweet, sweet caress of DEATH. "well we can't invite this creator or screen this movie because nobody's familiar with them/it." Uh, that's why we're DOING this nonsense, to put this stuff in front of people that might not otherwise see it, you dorks."

Anyway, that was my response to the tweet that leaked this to the world. The leak tweet got three thousand retweets. The con chair apologized in public. Actually the first thing he did was to block a bunch of people on Twitter because he wasn't sure who had leaked the tweet. Which was not a good step. Anyway, a day later the convention released this statement:

"Dear San Antonio and our greater fandom community,

This week, our chairman said hurtful and ignorant comments on his personal Twitter account. This does not stand with the mission and vision of San Japan. We have only been successful thanks to the hard work and support of our community. We have become one of the top anime conventions in the nation because of people of color and our LGBTQ+ family.

Effective Immediately:

Dave Henkin will step down as convention chairman and relinquish control to the San Japan board of directors. The board will govern by committee until a long-term solution can be established.

(....) Please do not hold the stupidity of one man against the work of countless POC and LGBTQ+ individuals who have worked for over a decade to make this a model conference. We look forward to the opportunity to prove ourselves during our next convention."

I have to wonder if the chair vetted this statement before it went out, because it kinda throws him under the bus. It's one thing to say "I said stupid things" and another for a convention he chaired to say "our chairman said hurtful and ignorant things, and is also stupid."

Also an interesting factoid: the con chair is the sole owner and employee of the business that owns the convention. So far there has been no indication that he is going to divest himself of this business. "No longer con chair" is meaningless in a business or legal sense.

It's my understanding that the con chair has a history of PR blunders and blunt statements that the convention has to explain or walk back. Which is a problem the convention should have addressed years ago, and didn't.

What this all looks like to me is somebody said something stupid in private, and then over-reacted and made things worse, and then the organization over-reacted and made things even worse. It's stepping on rakes all the way down. Had they just DONE NOTHING, this entire thing would be forgotten about next week. Had the con chair just said "yeah, I said something stupid, my bad, I say stupid stuff all the time, sorry" and then gone on about his business as usual, this whole thing would have been swept away in the NEXT big news outrage.

But with their over-reaction, they have taken what was a mild irritation and turned it into a full-blown public relations disaster.

In contrast, last week Anime Expo took the time to make one of those BLM statements that brands and corporations have been making, and immediately got dragged by a POC who was an event host but was let go after asking why more POC weren't involved.

https://twitter.com/CheyenneTheGeek/status/1268292556900626432

I personally think this is way worse than "con chair said something stupid", but this AX story doesn't seem to be getting the traction the San Japan story does. Maybe AX has sense enough to not throw gasoline on a fire.

back in the day if convention organizers dared to ask their attendees to follow basic safety guidelines, well, they were labeled ‘con nazis’ because they were trying to harsh everyone’s mellow, man. Back in the mid 00s I wrote this column for the Anime Jump website, and now it has returned at Let’s Anime! Enjoy decades-old complaints and the sarcastic responses they received. It’s fun!

http://letsanime.blogspot.com/2020/05/ask-con-nazi.html

So there was a thing that happened this week over on the twitter and the YouTubes.

A YouTuber who has "yaoi paddle historian" in her bio made a video about a year ago in which she spoke of the worst injury reported from a yaoi paddle. According to her source, at an Otakon between 2005-2007, somebody hit somebody else with a yaoi paddle so hard that it shattered his pelvis. The victim is "still in a wheelchair" and the perpetrator was arrested and went to jail.

This video went live, got about 700,000 views, and it was months before anyone who was attending conventions at this time saw it and thought, hey, this is a pretty serious thing to have happened, why didn't I hear of it?

It came across my twitter feed and I agreed, I know a lot of people in the con scene, I know the guy that was con chair of Otakon at this time, we'd talk about something like this, we don't think it ever happened. That was the general consensus on twitter.

The YouTuber was put in the mix and they defended their video by saying that they trusted their source, and even though there was zero corroborating evidence - no names of victim or perp, no arrest record, no hospital record, no Otakon record - she was standing by the source.

Then the official Otakon social media account got into the act. They said, and I quote: "So official Otakon account here: This story is entirely fabricated. It's not true. It's a fake. There was never a hospitalization injury due to a yaoi paddle, or assault charges. Please don't spread unfounded rumors like this."

Faced with this, the YouTuber did the right thing, she took the video down. Meanwhile, her source, which is the guy who sells doujinshi at anime cons, you know the guy, he is really loud about the doujinshi he's selling, he used to sell the yaoi paddles, this guy decides he needs to weigh in. Maybe there's some fire to this smoke after all?

No such luck. Doujinshi vendor says that he had heard "stories" about people getting hurt with yaoi paddles - which he was selling at the time (!!). At this time, anime conventions were waking up to the inherent problems of selling what are essentially fraternity paddling paddle blunt instruments to thousands of excitable teens who are liable to whack each other with them. So anime cons were preventing the sale of yaoi paddles, in much the same way they prevent the sale of other potentially dangerous objects.

So, when he was prevented from selling yaoi paddles, the doujinshi vendor was asked "why can't you sell them" and he replied with "because people are getting hurt" and that story, like all unverified stories, grows in the telling until it becomes "somebody got his pelvis broken and he's permanently disabled and the paddler went to jail". And he kept telling people this story without any thought as to whether or not it was true, how it made Otakon look, how it made fans of yaoi or of Japanese animation or comics in general look, he just needed a story to tell people.

He couldn't just say "The con said I can't, ask them" and go on about his business. No way.

Anyway, that's HIS story, that it was a story HE was told and he was just passing it along. Way to throw your YouTuber friend under the bus there, guy.

And the moral of the story is, fact checking is your friend.

Anyway one bonus is that I got to hear about Mercedes Lackey getting super paranoid at 1996 Dragoncon, in a story that involves body armor, bodyguards, mysterious black-clad figures, and the requisite beating and arrest that leaves no reports of any kind... https://fanlore.org/wiki/Mercedes_Lackey_-_%22The_Dragoncon_Report%22?fbclid=IwAR3FSaMBrS8UYcqjHmldAAruofYew8-DrrMbPEyVIV3fRICYQuV_wdy1rwM

I'm mostly packed, I've printed everything I need to print, I've emailed everybody I need to email, I should have US service on my phone, I have all the junk I'm selling packed away, now I'm killing time until my flight. This is the zone, that weird antsy time before AWA when a zillion thoughts are bouncing around in my brain and I'm in a state of low-grade panic. It's been this way for 23 years, though I'm a lot less stressed than I was when it started.

Should be a pretty good show this year. Anime Hell got knocked back to 11:30 because of musical acts and film premieres taking over Main Events, so that's a thing. I have some stupidly early panels, that's another thing. But I'm looking forward to the show, seeing friends, seeing what interesting stuff shows up in the SHFS, generally wallowing in the maelstrom for a few days.

What will I be doing and where will I be?

Next year the show moves to Halloween and the reaction has been mixed - there's grumbling about it taking place on the 31st because, trick or treating? I guess? There have been some remarkably petty FB complaints. Retail employees say they can't get those days off, "witches" complain because it's happening on one of their holidays, one guy says it's happening on "his brother's birthday".

The fact is that no date is perfect for everybody. And yeah, I get Halloween is a big deal. Well, unless you're eight years old, it shouldn't be that big of a deal. That's how I feel about it. Ask me about Christmas sometime. Anyway, we've held AWAs on Halloween before and the world didn't end.

I think it's great myself - I get more time between Anime North and AWA to rest and relax. The Atlanta weather will be cooler. The staff gets more time between Dragoncon and AWA to rest and relax, and the fans get a few more paychecks.

Anyway, I get on a plane in a few hours and then I'll be back in Atlanta for a few days. See you there, maybe!

I had a twitter conversation two days ago with a guy who was complaining about AWA and how AWA has "lost its focus" because it has panels about things that aren't Japanese cartoons, and it should be about Japanese cartoons, and this loss of focus is awful. He worked himself up pretty good. "Fuck AWA directors" are the words he used.

I engaged with him- he's someone I know and am reasonably friendly with at the show. He's a good fella, generally. And the gist of what I told him was:

-the mythical "pure" AWA he's dreaming of never existed, there have always been panels that had nothing to do with anime.

-His twitter feed is filled with Power Rangers and screen shots of him playing some new Spider Man game and video games and tokusatsu and if there was a Japanese cartoon he expressed interest in, I didn't see it, so he should probably walk the walk if he's going to talk the talk

-if his feelings are "fuck AWA," then he should probably just stay home.

And this led to a long series of general tweets from me, condensed here:

==
guys, if you aren't having fun at a convention, it's OK to not go. It's all right if you want to break up. Everything will be OK. You'll get a free weekend, the convention will keep right on rolling, it's all good.

I used to go to Dragoncon and I found myself getting cranky and irritable, and I just said, why am I going? So I stopped. I quit complaining about how the show wasn't doing it for me and I moved on with my life. We're all happier.

Sure, I moved away from Atlanta so it isn't an issue for me any more, but there's a big show here every Labor Day weekend, and I don't have anything to do with it... because I know it's not for me, none of it is my thing. If that convention isn't your thing? Don't go. If it used to be your thing but it isn't your thing any more? Don't go. Take five minutes and do that cost-benefit analysis and see if you're getting what you want out of it, and if not, find something else to do with your weekend.

Nobody signed billion year contracts to attend or staff these things. We're allowed to have lives and experiences beyond institutional carpeting and harsh fluorescent lighting. We can listen to voices that aren't amplified through jury-rigged PA systems. But there's a fan expectation that if we do something once we have to keep doing it again & again, and that's not healthy. In spite of that expectation, we *don't* have to attend the same conventions every single year until we die (because we did nothing ever but sit on couches talking about conventions).

==

I feel like this guy I was talking to, he's getting older, he's not as interested in this stuff, he's seeing a lot of people at the show who are into things he's not into, and it makes him feel like he's not a part of the crowd any more. That's a normal feeling. It means you are growing and changing as a person, and that the convention itself is growing and changing. That's what things do, they grow and change. The definition of something that doesn't grow or change is 'death'.

So he doesn't like where the convention is going? Fine, don't go. Or get on staff and change that direction. Anything but whine, because that shit gets old. People you don't know going to a panel you won't attend about a thing you don't like does not affect *your* life in any way, shape, or form.

What he SHOULD do is start his own Power Rangers/tokusatsu convention in Atlanta so he can wallow in his nerd trough, wallow in the things he loves. It's not hard. Anybody can do it.

The thing is, I halfway agree with him - we've had to make a lot of sacrifices this year with regards to the schedule to work around the large musical acts that are performing. The convention is crowded and a lot of those people could give a shit about Japanese animation. You look at the AWA FB group and it's all people showing off their Walking Dead cosplay or their super hero cosplay or their video game cosplay and chatting about the photoshoots they're arranging off-site, the lobby of the Waverly is full of attention-whoring doofuses and stalkers with giant cameras lying on the ground for those arty upskirt photos. I'd rather have a much smaller convention with people that are actually interested in Japanese cartoons. But AWA is not my show any more, if it ever was, and either I can fret about what coulda shoulda woulda, or I can get on with my life, and I'd rather get on with my life and enjoy the things I enjoy.

every time I think I might be a little too contemptuous of SF fans, I remember that large chunks of SF fandom looked the other way or downright denied the child molestation offenses of Walter Breen and Marion Zimmer Bradley.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_H._Breen

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jun/27/sff-community-marion-zimmer-bradley-daughter-accuses-abuse

I was a teenager when I got into fandom, and there were child molesters in Atlanta fandom at that time. Some of them were just creeps who showed up to every event, and some of them *ran* the events. They eventually got caught, but lots of fans looked the other way, didn't want to cause a fuss, didn't want to be the bad guy. And as a result children were assaulted, and there isn't a fan club or a fanzine or a convention anywhere on Earth that's worth that.

Of course, this is fandom, where serial groper Issac Asimov was just a hilarious old guy, and Julius Schwartz was oh so funny and charming until he got you alone in an elevator. Fandom was A-OK with these guys.

Anime fandom isn't so swell, either. There's a guy I knew from Texas anime fandom who's now out of jail after doing a stretch for kiddy porn. We were in an APA together before he got arrested. Now he's back and he's on Facebook and there are people who are cheerfully chatting with him like nothing happened. Maybe they don't know. However, I know, and that means zero contact with that guy and zero contact with anyone he's in contact with because if he goes up the river again I'm not going with him. If you want to look up anime convention chairs getting accused of creepy sex texts or statutory rape, just do some googling.

Seems like these days the creeps are getting a good airing and every day there's a new allegation of sexual assault or harassment, and middle aged men are starting to sweat a little, asking themselves if they were creeps or gropers in the past. And maybe they should. Maybe everybody should start checking their behavior a little. It'd be a nice start after sixty or seventy years of assault that nobody took seriously.

last week David Cassidy, aka Keith Partridge from the TV show The Partridge Family, passed away. Now I know it's fashionable to sneer at The Partridge Family and the early 70s bubblegum-teeny bopper Teen Beat scene, and yeah a lot of that music is awful, but firstly that Teen Beat scene is something that kids and specifically girls loved, so of course grown-adult rock critics are going to sneer at it, and secondly I have some Partridge Family LPs and there are some good songs on those LPs. Cassidy came from a show biz family and was determined to become an entertainer and become an entertainer he did, and if his his life had some struggles and some problems, well, check out the life of costar Danny Bonaduce sometime and get back with me, after you sign the pledge to never let your kids be actors.

Anyway, as we do, we marked his passing with an issue of a Partridge Family Stupid Comic. The art's great except when there aren't any photos to reference, and the story makes not one lick of sense. Enjoy!

http://misterkitty.org/extras/stupidcovers/stupidcomics556.html

In other news: our Thanksgiving was last month so we didn't do any of that here. We did get pizza at work for a full year of no injuries, and then later in the week a giant bag of cookies appeared in the front office, so even though we haven't celebrated any holidays, it hasn't been a great week for me on the scales. But it HAS been a great week for workplace safety.

in Fandumb news, Cosplay nude photo site "Cosplay Deviants" trademarked the phrase "Cosplay Is Not Consent" and is asking that every convention that wants to use this phrase to help keep their attendees safe to comply with their usage guidelines. Cosplay Deviants, which charges $15 a month for access to their library of models dressed and semi-dressed as copyrighted characters that Cosplay Deviants has not licensed the use of, merely wants to make sure that "Cosplay Is Not Consent" is not used for profit. That would make "Cosplay Is Not Consent" the ONE THING that fandom isn't allowed to put on a T-shirt for profit, apparently.

Here's the LA Times using the phrase prior to CD's trademark application: http://www.laweekly.com/arts/cosplay-is-not-consent-anime-conventions-attack-the-problem-of-harassment-4184027

so if you went to AWA in the early years you might remember Alisa-chan. I think she was a Sailor Moon at AWA 2 or 3. She and her boyfriend Derek - you know, foam-hair Dragonball cosplayer Derek, angry holler-at-security-guard-late-Sunday-night Derek, internet-meme Derek - they did a lot of cosplay at a lot of cons and segued away from anime cosplay to super hero cosplay.

Anyway if you've been wondering what Alisa was up to, well, she and Derek are splitsville and she married another guy and that guy is a white supremacist and she and her Hitler-hubby were at the Charlottesville rally two weekends back, marching and hollering "Jews Will Not Replace Us."

Trust me honey, the Jews don't want what you got.

So because this is 2017 everything everybody does is all over social media and social media users were like, holy crap, that's Alisa. And Alisa, or Alyssa, or whatever, she was like, oh yeah, we were at the rally, on the side of the Nazi flags. On the side of the guy that murdered a woman. So there was some blowback on her FB pages, which have been deleted, and the webmaster of Alisa's sexy cosplay photo page took the whole thing down, and a few nerd news sites have covered the story.

http://www.nerdandtie.com/2017/08/18/cosplayer-alisa-norris-aka-alisakiss-participated-in-charlottesville-white-supremacist-rally/

https://www.bleedingcool.com/2017/08/18/supergirl-cosplayer-went-charlottesville-guess-whose-side/

Obviously there's been a lot of discussion among the Class Of 1998 anime nerds. How culpable is Alisa? Is she being manipulated by her husband and her husband's repulsive, hate-damaged pals? Is Alisa a grown adult capable of making her own stupid decisions? Or has she always been kind of, well, easily led? How many more white supremacists are walking among us, heads filled with poison? Something to keep in mind as we swing into fall convention season.

Alisa was kind of the first superstar anime cosplayer, kind of the template for the future photo queens and a target for the dudes with huge lenses who camp out all weekend long to capture their elusive beauty. I've seen her at a few recent AWAs but always outside posing for photos, never inside enjoying the con. If she wants to be a white supremacist she can continue to stay outside the con and be a white supremacist somewhere else.

So a little while ago on Twitter a Twitter pal in Buffalo mentioned a Niagara Falls convention called "Fan World" and how they were being really vague about whether or not their big Japanese guest was going to show up. They're a "con in a box" type show: a guest list with five musical acts, four voice actors, and five "professional cosplayers" and not much else. They don't have any roots in local fandom and their website was designed by the same guy who designed the website for the Midwest Media Expo, which was a Detroit "fan con" that was cancelled days before it was supposed to take place.

http://www.nerdandtie.com/2017/04/26/midwest-media-expo-2017-cancelled-days-before-event/

In fact, both the Midwest Media Expo and Fan World Niagara had the same guest, used the same guest bio and the same photo of the guest - Akira Yamaoka - the same guest that Fan World Niagara was now being so vague about.

Turns out that Fan World Niagara just announced that Yamaoka cancelled. Which isn't a surprise, when shows say anything about a guest that may in any way indicate that guest might not show, you can count on that guest not showing.

The con also had an ambitious cross-border event plan, with most events happening on the US side and a few on the Canadian side; the Canadian side events have all been cancelled.

It looks to me like this is Midwest Media Expo all over again - a new show rides a little wave of interest and publicity, but is unable to maintain momentum and withers away after a few years. Who knows if Fan World will make it past two?

I've done a lot of "how to start conventions" panels in the past, and we always holler START SMALL at the top of our lungs, but people don't want to listen. I don't do those panels any more, because people don't listen. They have to find out for themselves that conventions have to grow organically, from the community, that you have to build relationships with staff and facilities and fans (your customers) over time, and that the good will you start with by running a fan event will vanish overnight if you abuse it.

As a noted anime blogger (?) I occasionally get emails from PR firms that have been hired by various fan-related events or products, trying to get me to interview somebody to promote their thing. Usually these just go straight into the trash, but every once in awhile I get one that piques my interest, like this latest series of emails (name of convention has been redacted).

The subject line is "Disney World for nerds of all ages", which is a big WTF. There already is a Disney World for nerds of all ages, it's called "Disney World".

The basic gist of the first email was "Gamers, cosplayers and anime nerds don’t need to cross the ocean to access authentic Japanese anime, video gaming and manga because CONVENTION is bringing Tokyo to CITY." In other words, it's just one more anime con. This one is special, kind of, because their guest list is heavier than usual with American entertainers... nerd musicians, YouTube "celebrities", and 80s-era standup acts that have theaters in Branson. There are also actual Japanese animation industry guests, but the convention's website does not promote these actual anime guests over the nerd-rapper guests and the cosplayer guests and the video blogger guests. I mean, there are fourteen (14!) different musical acts performing at this "anime convention."

A second email sent a few days later tries a different tack: "A three-day, $60 pass will open 100+ doors for your readers with a convention that is finally all-inclusive. At CONVENTION, they don’t need to pay extra for autographs, events or exhibitions. For a potential blog post, I can connect you with a member of the CONVENTION team to discuss the event, the growth of the cosplay culture and how this shift in conventions from ala-carte to all-inclusive is improving the fan experience."

In other words, this convention is trying to claim "not charging extra for events" is some sort of exciting new policy. Sorry guys, we've been doing it like this all along. Not charging extra for autographs is nice, but all that means is that the convention negotiated a rate with the talent beforehand. The talent is getting paid regardless.

A third email, sent a week later, is a lot shorter and to the point: "This weekend is THE weekend... for CONVENTION! Would you be willing and able to share the news with your anime fans who happen to live in the Midwest and may want to check out the all-inclusive convention this weekend?"

Yes. PR emails are going out the week before and THE WEEK OF their convention. Who exactly are they targeting here? Are there fans who make their anime convention plans a week in advance? Who just says, "hey, I read about this anime con that's happening next weekend, let's take time off work and make travel and hotel plans for this thing?" I don't know anyone that casual. Maybe they're out there. Most anime fans I know have their convention plans nailed down months before the show.

My conclusion is that CONVENTION might want to go with a different PR team next year, one that starts sending out PR emails earlier and that has a better grasp on anime convention culture, and that might actually look at the blogs they're sending this spam to, because my blog is about thirty year old cartoons, not cosplayers or YouTube stars or Yakov Smirnoff.

we were at a fan event in a restaurant last Sunday and it was kinda crowded. Shain and I were at a table that had two other spots, and someone from our group was urged to sit down at our table by both the waiter and Shain and I. He didn't want to sit there, though, he wanted to sit against the wall at another table on account of his backpack, which was filled to bursting with... something.

Now, I can remember fans bringing backpacks to anime club meetings in the 1990s, and they'd be gigantic overstuffed backpacks full of giant 1990s era video game systems and cartridges and VHS tapes and issues of Animerica and CDS and manga and whatever he (it was always a he) was bringing to the club meeting to share. A lot of the fans were college students used to filling their backpacks with whatever they were likely to need for the next twelve hours, if I had to venture a guess. I suppose it gets to be a habit, I'm leaving the house, gotta take the backpack. I still see a lot of people at AN staff meetings with the backpacks. Me, I show up at the AN meeting with a pocket notebook and a pen and my phone, and that means I'm good to go.

This event Sunday was not a club meeting. It wasn't any sort of fan organization business meeting at all, strictly a social eat-food-and-socialize kinda thing, and days later I am still haunted by the question... What on Earth was in that backpack? I mean in this day and age you can fit the entirety of 1990s video game history, anime, and manga in the palm of your hand, so it's not that. What was it? A change of clothes? A year's worth of library books? Nice ripe grapefruit? What was so vital to life and comfort that it needed to be hauled into a crowded restaurant and sequestered in its own chair against the wall where it was safely out of everyone's way?

I still see this a lot, particularly at conventions, comic shows, and the like; worlds apparently bereft of hipster messenger bags, worlds where ever carrying implement has to jut out a full twelve inches into space, becoming a giant blunt object smashing into whatever is unlucky enough to be behind Nerdlinger Backpack Man. Because that's what backpacks do, they sit on backs and they get in everybody else's way, especially in crowds.

I am kicking myself because I didn't ask the guy what was in his backpack. "Man, seriously, I gotta ask, that backpack is jam full of stuff, what the hell is in there?" Maybe I'm being too nosy. But you don't manhandle that thing into a crowded room full of diners, not without a good reason.

Well! That one's over with. Got an article in the NOW about Anime Hell, no technical hitches, panels went as planned, everybody seemed to have a good time. We ate lots of food at a Mongolian hot pot place on Sunday night and are still stuffed. Found some interesting and reasonably priced stuff in the dealers room. Got to spend quality time with Neil and Mike. We had the usual fumfoolery getting badged up but I think I know the problem and will put a solution into effect.

Thursday it rained like crazy and it was ugly out there. Friday wasn't as bad. Saturday was nicer, and Sunday was downright pleasant.

Anime North found itself in the center of some political adventures over the weekend. Allow me to explain.

Since Stephen Harper stepped down the Conservative Party has needed to elect a new leader, and to do this they have a conference, and they had their conference in the North building of the Toronto Conference Center. Which is where Anime Hell and Anime North's Costume Contest was last year - AN has always had the South building but had recently expanded into the North building. This year we had to contract back a little.

Anyway, the Conservatives failed to let the attending party voters know which building they'd be in. So lots of Conservative voters were showing up to a parking lot full of cosplayers, ravers, photographers, and anime nerds, confused about what was going on and where they needed to be.

The voting polls closed at 4, leaving a lot of frustrated Conservatives unable to cast their ballots, but they didn't take it out on the anime fans, who instead got a lot of confused looks and some honest questions. And yes, there were a few anime fans who were Party members and who cast their votes (some in cosplay) for the least objectionable Tory candidate.

http://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/conservative-members-frustrated-by-voting-difficulties-1.3432284#_gus&_gucid=&_gup=Facebook&_gsc=Wh70HhN

I think my panels went OK; the Hot Tub panel went much better this time than it did at AWA, the Desert Island panel was interesting and fun, and the Chargeman Ken panel was a blast. Stupid Comics wasn't as well attended this year and I don't know if it was the time slot or if the crowd is getting tired of it. Maybe both. Incomplete Cartoon Education went well and I think we're going to bring that back next year and show more things these kids didn't grow up with. Anime Hell went great- the tech was flawless, the crowd was into it and stuck around until 12:45, and even though I spilled Diet Coke onto the laptop during the show, it didn't miss a beat. That's a win for the new age, I guess.

Now we're really tired. We actually left the con on Saturday to come home and feed the cat, and we wound up napping for an hour. We got home this afternoon and took another nap. The older I get, the more these things wipe me out. I don't know how people do convention after convention and keep their energy levels up. Red Bull and disco naps, I guess.

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