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sophygurl · 7 years

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When Fandom Ain’t Fun: A Frank Talk by QPOC - WisCon 41 panel write-up

These get long so click the clicky to read.

Disclaimers:

I hand write these notes and am prone to missing things, skipping things, writing things down wrong, misreading my own handwriting, and making other mistakes. So this is by no means a full transcript.

Corrections, additions, and clarifications are most welcome. I’ve done my best to get people’s pronouns and other identifiers correct, but please do let me know if I’ve messed any up. Corrections and such can be made publicly or privately on any of the sites I’m sharing these write-ups on(tumblr and dreamwidth for full writings, facebook and twitter for links), and I will correct ASAP.

My policy is to identify panelists by the names written in the programming book since that’s what they’ve chosen to be publicly known as. If you’re one of the panelists and would prefer something else - let me know and I’ll change it right away.

For audience comments, I will only say general “audience member” kind of identifier unless the individual requests to be named.

Any personal notes or comments I make will be added in like this [I disagree because blah] - showing this was not part of the panel vs. something like “and then I spoke up and said blah” to show I actually added to the panel at the time.

When Fandom Ain’t Fun: A Frank Talk by QPOC

Moderator: Mark Oshiro. Panelists: ANerdCalledRage, Tanya D. (Katherine Cross listed, but unable to attend)

#WhenFandomAintFun - for the livetweets

Mark introduced himself by saying he was glad to be getting to do this with his friends who also yell about stuff on the internet (he’s Mark of Mark Reads, Mark Watches, etc.)

ANerdCalledRage asked to be identified by her twitter handle and not her real identity due to some issues that happened during livetweeting of a previous panel. I’m not entirely sure this meant for post-panel write-ups, but we’ll go with that to be on the safe side until/unless I hear otherwise.

Tanya introduced herself as someone who is active in talking about diversity in games (#INeedDiverseGames), and said that for some reason she’s still in the BioWare fandom online.

Mark holds up Tanya’s mug that read White Tears and said “it’s already full!” Tanya replied - “I’ve already been on a panel today.”

Tanya discussed how trying to talk about her own intersections as a black queer woman gets complaints about “harshing our glee” and “but why can’t I just...”

They all joke about being old, brown, tired and queer. (This is a theme repeated often throughout the panel)

Mark asked the panelists to talk about a time when fandom stopped being fun for them.

ANerdCalledRage replied with a time she and Mark were at a con and on a Firefly panel together - she’s a huge huge fan of Firefly while acknowledging it has issues. They were the only two poc on the panel. The moderator, a white man, made a lynching joke and a white woman on the panel continued on and made a second one. ANerdCalledRage was like “what are you doing - do you not see me right here?” She got a blank look in return - no one knew they’d done anything wrong.

While explaining why she’s not on tumblr, ANerdCalledRage remarked “oh I know - all the discourse - fuck your discourse!”

She talked some more about the Firefly panel above and said that at one point she made the remark that it’s dangerous to deify creators because they’re human and can make mistakes and people freaked out defending Joss Whedon.

Mark added that they’d even softballed any criticisms they had and still got such bad reactions in return. There’s this idea that cons are this happy fun space - but sometimes that happens at the expense of other people. Mark will rat people and cons out online for treating him badly, and has gained the reputation of “Mark the Con Killer”.

He talked about a time that a stranger on a panel called him a “fruitcake” (which he says he is fine with his friends saying to him btw), but it was so upsetting to him that he just shut down and stopped talking for the rest of the panel.

Mark brought this issue up to the con organizers and was told “well that’s just his sense of humor...” Mark was like “obviously - I do understand how jokes work, but still - “.

Tanya said that she gets this whenever she writes opinion pieces. One time she was discussing the racefail in Dragon Age and people responded telling her that she hates DA. Actually - she really loves the game series. She also gets told “you’re just making this about race.” She responded with “well yes, I’m brown. Every day. It affects me. Every day.”

Tanya was approached to write about a Switch game in which black women’s hair was used as a weapon. She had issues with this. Someone tracked down her personal account and told her she’s a horrendous person in reply. Then they said “have a nice day.”

She said she has stopped interacting with the Overwatch fandom due to pushback on intersectional issues. She talked about how she can’t just separate out her identities.

ANerdCalledRage added that no one can do that. We can’t just turn parts of ourselves off to create things or enjoy things - especially parts of ourselves that are forced upon us by our oppressors.

Mark brought up that qpoc are often pushed ashed even when they’re not talking about intersectionality.

Tanya replied with a story about some fanart that was created shortly after the release of images of a new character in a BioWare game. She was a dark woman, but the fan said they “improved” the image by giving her different lips, nose, hair, etc. Tanya said it was like being erased before she could even interact with this game. We can’t even exist in digital worlds! “You already have everything - can’t I just have this one character?”

ANerdCalledRage said she has mixed feeling about the character Bilquis on American Gods. She loved watching her swallowing a cishetwhiteman with her vagina, but she knows how the character ends up in the book.

She also talked about Thandie Newton’s character in The Chronicles of Riddick - a kind of Lady Macbeth character who has too much ambition, is too aggressive. She finally got to see herself in a role like that - but it was still very pigeonholed and the character is demonized.

ANerdCalledRage discussed the difficulty in watching a piece of herself being degraded just for being herself and fighting for what she believes in. Yet she was told by the fandom to just be Grateful for getting this representation. Saying things like that makes fandom less fun, and less inviting - isn’t that what fandom is supposed to be - sharing the things you love with others - don’t you want to share it??

Mark brought up the check boxes issue. As an example he brought up Supernatural (”I can’t believe I’m going to say something positive about this show...”) season 11 where there were queer hunters and one of the them was Latino - AND they got to live at the end. But people in the fandom were saying it was not believable to have someone who was both queer and Latino - it must be the writers just checking boxes.

Mark added that yes, sometimes white creators do this annoying thing of just checking boxes, but that’s not what he saw in this example. This idea that someone can’t be more than one thing is frustrating.

“I guess I don’t exist then - I’m just an astral projection of a bunch of social justice warriors online!” (big laughs)

Tanya’s response to people who don’t believe in diversity is - do you not go outside or read books or turn on the news that’s not FOX?

She gave an example from Watch Dogs 2 (btw, she very publicly hated the first one and told the game creators this on their own stage). But in the second one, there was a black nerdy guy and some people were saying it was not believable. This was set in San Francisco! It’s like people can’t imagine anything outside of their own tiny bubble.

ANerdCalledRage talked about how she and Tanya are both light skinned queer black women from Chicago, so at cons people often think they’re the same person. Tanya asked - have you been called Tanya yet this weekend? ANerdCalledRage replied - not to my face...

ANerdCalledRage said she had to leave the anime fandom - she was really into Dragon Ball Z. She also doesn’t go to Wizard World anymore. One time she saw a Dragon Ball Z T-shirt and squeed about it. The white dude vendor asked “oh you get that reference?” At first she was going to excitedly explain that she did, but then she realized he was asking in a patronizing way - not like a fellow fan would. Then he asked her how she would pay for it, in an even more condescending tone.

She also relayed a story from when she went to the anime club in college - everyone kind of stopped talking and looked at her when she entered the room and a white dude even asked her if she was lost. And when she is out with her friend who is Southeast Asian who is not into anime but ANerdCalledRage herself is wearing an anime T-shirt - people will stop to talk to them but direct the questions and convo to her friend.

ANerdCalledRage asked - how do I reconcile loving something that doesn’t love me?

Mark talked about the issue of people being mistaken for other people based on race. He often gets mistaken for Daniel Jose Older, for example. And, even though Mark is Latinx, he is often read as Middle Eastern and has been mistaken for Saladin Ahmed.

Mark added that these are often very well-meaning people with a good intent to compliment these authors, but it feels like a fuck you to him. These people aren’t bothering to notice their differences and who they really are.

Tanya replied that N. K. Jemisin has been mistaken for Octavia Butler - even after Butler died. She then talked about a panel last year where a bunch of black women switched their name tents around to have some fun with the problem.

Tanya talked about how in fiction, there’s often only one brown and/or queer character and then that character has to be model minority. Queer and poc characters are ignored, infantilized, erased, etc. One example of this is Kylo/Hux being shipped much more than Finn/Poe.

ANerdCalledRage brought up the new Ghostbusters movie (Tanya jokingly gets up to leave - this is apparently a conversation they’ve had many times before lol). ANerdCalledRage talked about Leslie Jones and Kate McKinnon’s treatments by the fans. She said she is not a fan of Jones’ character in the movie - she relies too much on negative tropes for black women. But she does respect Jones’ hustle.

ANerdCalledRage made the mistake of going online when Jones was being harassed - fans of the movie were not defending her but were giving McKinnon’s character so much support and praise just for being coded queer.

Leslie Jones got to play the first black woman Ghostbuster and no one was talking about that. So while ANerdCalledRage was excited to see girls watching this movie with femme action heroes, there were upsetting things going on too.

ANerdCalledRage was invited to be on a podcast talking about the movie - she was the only black person on the podcast. She felt like she couldn’t talk specifically about the issues affecting “me and mine.”

Tanya added that she was paid to write about the new Ghostbusters. She did not like the movie. The trailer only showed Jones’ character as having these negative stereotypes. She wrote her opinion piece about how they could have easily fixed this trope, and how it was the same stuff that Ernie Hudson’s character had in the original movies. She got so much flack for that piece.

Tanya also said she got really sick of all of the Holtzman praise and especially got mad at all the straight women saying things like “I’d go gay for Holtzman!”

Mark said he got a twitter question for the panelists about how they handle people wanting solidarity on one issue while ignoring the others - examples are Agent Carter and Supergirl.

ANerdCalledRage said she’s going to make enemies but “I hate Supergirl.” (Someone in the back cheered - much laughter) She said that the show was the blandest form of second wave feminism. She tried but couldn’t get through the pilot - even with multiple attempts. The J'onn J'onzz character was unapologetically showing a large black man scaring the shit out of a tiny blonde woman and she was wondering - do they even know what they’re doing with this trope? Fuck this show!

ANerdCalledRage added - to each their own - you can like the show. But don’t push me to watch it. I won’t ask you to stop watching it or liking it, but please consider my views and feelings.

Another example is Into the Badlands - there is an Asian American assassin character and a black woman doctor love interest. There was a great trope subversion there but ... they killed her off. It’s frustrating to have to justify opinions and feelings about this stuff.

Mark talked about the whole “just give it another try” thing that fandom does. His example is The 100. Wells Jaha was such a well developed black character - but just four episodes in they kill him to give a white girl feels for one episode.

People were recommending the show for the queer characters, but having that queer representation doesn’t justify the racist stuff. Wells’ own father stops talking about him for two whole seasons. Mark sees this as just bad writing. If they’re going to pull that kind of thing in episode four - they lose his trust.

Tanya said that the single issue thing was in effect for Agent Carter too. If your show failed because they forgot that brown people have money then...

(I have in my notes that some funny conversation ensued but wow I was getting tired at this point and cannot read my own handwriting. wooops.)

An audience member asked about the Black Panther movie and not representing the lesbian characters from the comics. ANerdCalledRage talked about being excited as hell for the movie, but also really scared. Marvel’s history with erasing black creators and lack of complex black characters, especially if they have more than one marginalization.

Another audience member asked the panelists if they had any examples of calling someone in fandom out and that person actually changing. Mostly blank looks at first as they try to recall something.

Tanya mentioned one time someone on tumblr told her not use the term poc - she engaged with them and gave them resources. A week later they came back and apologized. She figures they “fell into a discourse pool and drowned.”

She said she often gets comments on twitter from people saying “I never thought about that before...” and she replies with “because you never had to.” She said she’s not online to educate her white followers. If that happens, good, but sometimes when people thank her for doing that she wants to give them her paypal link.

Mark talked about how sometimes people will tweet creators his reviews. (He said don’t do that, btw, it’s creepy and weird) But one time this happened when he was talking about some transphobic stuff in Leverage and John Rogers (I think - notes unclear but I think that’s who he was talking about) got sent the review and actually thanked Mark for bringing it up. John Green has also thanked him for bringing up issues in his work.

And audience member asked - so there’s hope? Mark replied - don’t quote me on that! But ANerdCalledRage added - we wouldn’t be doing this if we didn’t have hope.

One audience member (who I believe was a white male) admitted they were going to tell a story - Mark said no we only have 2 minutes left but the audience member continued and said - okay I’ll be brief... Tanya stepped in and said - I’m not hearing a question, so the audience member finally realized what they were doing and stopped.

(I include this to kind of illustrate a point, I guess. Someone with privilege with good intent was over-stepping and it took them a bit to figure it out, but they did eventually realize and stop. Another example of people eventually getting it??)

ANerdCalledRage talked about her concerns with the CW picking up Black Lightning. This comic story is about an older black male superhero who chooses to stop and make his family a priority. He also has two daughters who begin to have powers. So there are Two Black Female characters who are coming into their power! Now, in the comics, one of them is a lesbian - will that happen on the show?

Mark brought up a fanfic where Cap punches Nick Spencer in the face - everyone cheered loudly, and that wrapped up the panel perfectly.

#whenfandomaintfun #when fandom ain't fun #wiscon #wiscon 41 #wiscon41 #wc41 #fandom

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