Day in the Life of an Idiot

Fannish Appreciation

Wed, 06 May 2026 18:35:57 GMT

I truly love fandom.

I've been in Bleach fandom since at least 2012 (a date easily checked because that's when I started my AO3 account.) And, you do not need to immediately comment that you've never read Bleach. I honestly wouldn't recommend it to most people. I honestly wouldn't recommend it to anime or manga fans, either! For whatever reason, Bleach just happened to be the thing for me that hit me in the right place at the right time. I felt 15 years old again, absolutely caught up in something that I felt desperate to share with other people. That feeling is probably familiar to you, my nerdy friends. So, as I talk, just imagine Your Thing anytime I say Bleach.

I've been really lucky that, over the years, I've had other Bleach fans gift me things. People have written stories for me, people have drawn amazing art for me, and opalsong even podcast one of my fics ("Hey, Opalsong, if you like Free! you should read my Bleach x Free! crossover," I say for the nineteenth time before I remember that YOU PODCASTED it.) There are so many things people have offered me as part of this fandom that I will cherish forever, but until recently no one has ever offered to share a amateur bound book of my work with me.

Behold!

Image: a fan bound book with the title "Academy Blues" by TSP Bindery. (https://www.tiktok.com/@tsp.bindery).

This volume actually contains two of my multi-chapter fics. First,"Forever With You Never Sounded So Stupid"and "Academy Blues." Not than most of you care, but both of these fics are part of my emotional process of recovering after the absolutely stupid, rushed ending of the official Bleach manga. I will not get into it (in part because if I start ranting, I will not stop), but suffice to say this is a fix-it that, in my own personal head, is now canon. I literally note which panel to stop reading, because my story perfectly fits canon up to that point. I also actually include a lot of the information gleaned from the official light novels that Shounen Jump commissioned to also try to actually fix the mess Kubo Tite left behind.

Anyway, the cover isn't all that exciting, honestly. But wait until you see the interior....

Interior chapter start, this one featuring Renji from Bleach....

And a second one,

Image: featuring a bone tree from a part of the Bleach universe known as Hueco Mundo, the Hollow World

Also scatterred throughout are some bits of a manga-style comicbook that aysmiro drew and shared with me, while I was writing this particular set of fics. As I was telling a friend, the pieces of this fan manga are so important to me that I've desperately been saving it on various digital back-ups for years. Now, thanks to this fan project, I have high quality printouts forever.

Image: a fan-drawn manga of a fan work of Bleach.

The crazy thing about this, of course, is that in the past year or so there's been a scammer who has targetted me twice attempting to suggest that they will draw a comic book/manga-style work from my story. (It's usually kind of obvious it's a scam because they'll pick a story where I'm like, "three people have read this. Why?") I always answer this with, "if you found my AO3 profile, you know I've given blanket permission for you to do this. Have at it!" and then they always come back with, "Yes, but for a commission," and I have to say, "Friend, I write fan fic for free. If you want to do fan art for the love of it, go for it. I am not paying you to make fan art of my fan work." Especially since this book I got? I paid nothing. The book artist wouldn't even let me pay for shipping.

Anyway, fandom is the best.

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Posting as Proof of Life

Thu, 15 Feb 2024 17:27:46 GMT

I don't actually have anything to say? I'm here and alive. It snowed, the first real snow we've had all winter. It's gorgeous and brilliantly sunny. that's kind of the big news.

I do feel like I should have something to say about the renewed Hugo Award scandal, but I really don't. I was a virtually attending member of the Chicago WorldCON, and, so, due to how the Hugo voting works, I was able to nominate for the Hugos. You then have to buy at least a voting membership for the current WorldCON in order to vote and, I'll be honest, I didn't want to give any of my money to the Chinese government in protest of their stance on free speech, GLBTQIA+ rights, and the oppression of Uyghur people. I understand that the Chinese fans are lovely and not to blame, but this was a choice I made.

For the longest time, I was feeling kind of superior in a "what did you expect?" sort of way, but now I'm just utterly horrified by the fact that a bunch of Western fans decided to compile dossiers (what the f*cking f*ck) on the nominees (and then do it so very, very badly.) Thus, basically self-censoring the Hugo Award ballot. This is an absolute disgrace. Because the one take away I have held close to my heart since Trump was elected in 2016 and the shadow of fascism and totalitarianism grows ever longer in the United States is that we should NEVER, EVER comply in advance.

We did this entirely to ourselves.

However, generally, I am a supporter of WorldCON and the Hugo Awards. I have faith that we, as a community, can FIX this. As has been pointed out by many others, there's not a whole lot we can do in terms of righting wrongs, but we can do BETTER going forward. In fact, I just signed up to be a virtual attendee in Glasgow next year. It cost me over a hundred bucks (US), but just as I did NOT buy a membership last year in protest, I'm buying one this year in support of the institutions of WorldCON and the Hugo Awards.

This is, again, a personal choice and so this is why I feel, even though I just went on about it for several paragraphs, I don't really have a lot to say about this scandal.

I'd love to hear your thoughts, however.

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Things That Happened This Week (That I Forgot To Talk About)

Sat, 15 Jul 2023 19:58:22 GMT

I posted my fic and then wandered away, I guess?

Sorry about that.

On Tuesday, I went by myself to the fan screening of the movie Psycho-Pass: Providence at the Roseville AMC. As I said to a friend, Crunchyroll placed a surgically striking ad in a pop-up when I logged in to see if there was any anime I was interested in watching. I've been a fan of Psycho-Pass forever, but it's a weird little cyberpunk where, n some distant future, Japan has instituted something they call the Sybil System that monitors people's "crime-coefficient" (a thing that measures how likely you are to commit crimes.) You can be executed and/or imprisoned just for being "a criminal type." It's sort of like Minority Report, except in this the law enforcement agents actually employs some of these not-quite-criminal, but criminally-minded sorts to aid Investigators as "Enforcers." So, there's (for me, anyway,) this fascinating underclass of people who do the dirty work of enforcing the very system that oppresses them. I kind of love everything about it? But, for whatever reason, I can't talk a lot of my fan friends into it? So, even though I immediately bought TWO tickets to this show, I couldn't even convince my son to go with me.

Worse, when I got there, I discovered that that particular screening was dubbed.

I try very hard not to be a snob about dubbed versus subbed. This is one of those fan wars I try to stay out of, but I definitely prefer subbed when I can get it. But, if someone tells me that they watch something dubbed that I watch subbed, I say, "Yay, we're in the same fandom!" And that's the end of it for me.

But, as I was telling another friend, this one was tough to appreciate because for whatever reason the dubbed director cast two English-speaking actors to play opposite each other who had the same vocal range, the same accent, the same clipped speaking style, and the same delivery. The scenes they were in where they were exchanging quips during a battle... I had no idea who was saying what. Yes, in English. It was a real problem for me. You're probably thinking, but Lyda, the one talking is the one moving his mouth, how hard is this for you? Well, not all scenes were "shot" where you could always see their mouths. Sometimes people were walking through dark tunnels. Sometimes there was just a lot of action. So, now you're saying, "But then how would this have been better if you had to read subtitles at the same time?" I will tell you. The Japanese voice actors for these two characters have totally different vocal ranges, speak differently (in terms of emotions), and are distinct! So, even though the subtitles don't tell you who is talking, it's actually far easier to tell speakers apart when, say, one guy is a tenor and the other an alto.

I have had to complain to everyone I know about this because I was alone. It always kind of sucks to go to movie theaters alone. I was also masked, although given that there were four other people in the entire theater with me, I probably didn't have to be.

On Monday and Friday night I played taxi to my wife. She's on the board of The Friends of the Ramsey County Library and they had a meeting in Shoreview on Monday and then some tech training at, of all places, The Good Earth restaurant in Roseville. This used to be a relatively popular cafe/restaurant chain. The tea still remains, but the only two places left to get the vegetarian menu exist in Minnesota. But, in both cases, I was not invited to the actual meeting, not being the board member, so I spent Monday trying to find any good manga I hadn't read yet on the shelves at Shoreview, and on Friday I spent the time in a nearby Starbucks people watching and writing some snail mail letters to friends.

Wednesday night I had D&D, but I managed to fail to make cookies for them... and then subsequently failed to write up my usual letter home. As I was telling Mason later, I'm having a bit of trouble with this character? I have literally never played a woman in an RPG before and... I can't say I like it. Beyond my very personal reasons for never having done this before, I also made some mistakes in designing this character because I forgot to factor in real life sexism? Like, I forgot that if you want to play a fun-loving, sexually adventurous, chatty (ditzy?) woman, not only will the other player's characters dismiss you as a silly little thing, but also the tenor of whole game shifts? Suddenly a lot of the around the table jokes get more pointed about who your character might choose to sleep with and what EXACTLY they might be doing with them, etc., etc. There's always some of that stuff and so it's not necessarily even a dealbreaker for me? Still. I mean, I'm still having fun with this character and this group, but I find that I'm engaging slightly less in character moments when they come up (to be fair, my Wednesday night group is much more a "kill things and take your stuff" bunch of players, anyway?)

I think that's my whole week? I did some writing, but not on the right things.

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Cat Continues

Tue, 04 Oct 2022 19:22:11 GMT

Image: Tiny black cat, Clover, asleep on the bed, buried in the green comforter.

I'm exhausted this morning because last night we decided it might be nice to let Clover have the run of the house for once. We don't want her to be under the impression (no matter how much Willow might like it to be true) that she is forbidden anywhere downstairs. But, to give Clover free rein meant that I slept with Willow in the TV room, on the couch. Our couch is... okay, but getting a bit worn in the springs. It's a bit lumpy.

Plus, while Willow mostly tolerated being cooped up with me, Buttercup really wanted in twice in the middle of the night. He scratched at the door insistently, waking me up. I usually fall right back to sleep, but last night I didn't.

We had another good morning with a bit of grumbling, but also some sharing of space. Mostly Clover deals with Willow by trying to be very small and doing a lot of slow blinking. Clover is not all submission, though, because today when Willow decided she was done staring at the new cat and got up to hop off the bed, Clover rushed at her when he back was turned. It surprised the [bleep] out of Willow, who jumped into the hallway and looked shocked. Clover, whose tail had puffed out to six times its size, sat on the edge of the bed looking triumphant. I'm not sure what this all means, but Shawn and I both later confessed to each other during our afternoon walk that we were kind of glad to see Clover stick up for herself a bit. Obviously, we don't WANT cat fights, but at the same time it would also be nice if Clover was not so terrified of Willow that she won't come out from under the bed, you know?

Clover is really starting to show off a somewhat cranky princess personality.

Image: Blurry because her head was in motion, but I caught the elusive curling tongue cat yawn in progress.

In other news, there are six days until the final arc of the Bleach anime comes out. Yesterday, we (the fandom) found out that Bleach is breaking from Crunchyroll and will be airing on Hulu and Disney+. Luckily, I have access to both, and now all the jokes about various characters now being Disney princesses can begin. I remain of very mixed feelings about this final arc as many of you well know. But, I am hoping for an uptick in activity in my fandom, which has been fairly dead since the manga ended several years ago.

Meanwhile, tomorrow is my weekly D&D group. I'm trying to decide if I should bring the peanut butter chocolate star cookies that I made the other day, or if I should make "Elven Bread" from the official Dungeon & Dragons cookbook, Hero's Feast. Elven Bread is basically a hearty cinnamon swirl. Feel free to cast your votes in the comments. I would do a poll, but I have the worst luck making those. Anyway the only two choices are:

A. Risk someone having a peanut allergy cookies, or
B. Make cinnamon swirl "Elf" bread

In related news, after watching the zillionth ad for it while watching "Critical Role," I decided to try the D&D Beyond App for character building. I will say, it's kind of slick. Like, once you pick your class it knows what kind of equipment you're allowed and with the click of a button your inventory is filled with the standard "explorer's pack" items, etc. Which is, I have to say, really handy. You can even roll die on the app, which I might use because Jeff's set up does not really have a good table top and I don't own any kind of fancy dice tray. Plus, it's free? You only get six character slots with the free version and if I ever end up running a cleric, however, it will require me to buy some add-ons if I want anything other than Life Path, but for now it's fine. And it actually might make everything easier, because it will mean just holding my iPad and not all the sheets of my character sheet. I am kind of the disorganized player that really can use something like this. I feel pretty good that I have one notebook for all my games, but after that there are so many pieces of paper shoved into various plastic sleeves that's not even funny. I will report after tomorrow how it actually works in game.

In other gaming news, I'm attending ConFABulous next weekend. They're still hammering out their final schedule, but I'm excited to be on some paneling and also dong some gaming. I'm going to be joining the Thieves'' World game as well as the Heart of Wulin, both of which I'm very excited about.

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Absenteeism due to Fandom

Tue, 02 Aug 2022 20:03:08 GMT

I wonder if any of my teachers would have accepted that excuse? "I'm sorry, Mrs. Johnson, Lyda can not attend school today because she lost all sense of time while immersing herself in the world of fan art and fan fic writing...."

Yeah, so, I don't quite know what happened, but I suddenly had a keen yen for my old stomping grounds on Tumblr and the Bleach fandom. So, I went there for an hour, and like fairy land, I seem to have been redeposited back in the Real World weeks later.

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Wednesday and Other Things

Wed, 15 Jan 2020 18:17:38 GMT

I'm in a weird mood today.

Ironically, it's due to something I was reading (which maybe isn't 'ironic,' Alanis, but more coincidental, as today is 'what are you reading Wednesday.')

Thing is, some time ago, I got another invite to a possible anthology that would revolve around magical realism. As part of that, the editor sent me a sample story. I finally had a chance to read it today, and now I'm trying to think about what I would have to say in a magically realistic way. I tend to think of myself as a straight-forward writer... for the most part. I know that I have a tendency towards genre trope perversion, and I can be, as my former agent apparently used to say to sell my work, "Weird, but compelling." Which, when you think about it, pretty much could sum up magical realism as a genre. But, I'm just sort of in that nebulous phase of story writing where I'm just trying to wrap my head around what I might write and how I might write it.

This feeling is probably exacerbated by the fact that all I really want to write is more fan fiction. I've been on a streak. I have a number of pieces going, one of which is extremely self-indulgent, which means that it's tremendously fun. Who knew I had a secret yen to write slice-of-life on the farm stories? NOT ME. But, apparently, I do. (Yes, this is still Bleach fic, so WTF. I should at least be a Silver Spoon fan.)

So, what have I be reading?

Honestly, not a huge amount. I did read the first volume of Nyankees which I LOVED because it was precisely what I wanted/expected. It's cats as people (and sometimes as themselves), running around doing hoodlum things, like fighting over food, territory, and lady cats. It's dumb AF. It's AWESOME af. 10/10 would recommend.

Also, some time before Christmas, I ordered a DVD version of the Bleach Live Action film, which finally showed up on Monday.

image: a montage of a bunch of real people Bleach characters staring intently out at the audience--literally all of them are super good-looking.

I bought the DVD from somewhere in Malaysia because the people I go watch anime with expressed an interest in seeing this and the hostess does not have Netflix. It is, so far as I know, still available to stream from Netflix, but let's be honest I own almost everything else Bleach related, so I should probably just own this.

I am thinking about trying to find a copy of "Bleach: The Musical," but then I would own a musical and... even though I love "Manly Dance" from the Bleach musical, I do not know if I could ever force myself through an entire musical, even one based on Bleach. You ARE talking to the one person who intentionally fast-forwarded through the music in Disney's "Frozen." In fact, I fast-forward through any musical number in almost anything I watch. And, no, I have never gotten into "Hamilton," which I do, in point of fact, know makes me a freak of nature.

Look, I don't like tomatoes, either, so I am possibly the only person I know who isn't terribly fond of pizza, which also makes me an outlier in American culture. (I love white pizzas, though, thanks to discovering such things existed when we went to Rome a zillion years ago with my parents.)

Anyway.

The other thing we've been dealing with again is Mason's late-night schedule. So, I've probably talked here, before, about how our clever boy has figured out how to get a later start at his high school. He doesn't have to go in until 8:50 am most days (Wednesdays are an exception because Washington has something they call "Foundations," which appears to be like home room, on Wednesdays.) He's arranged this because his PSEO classes allow him to be flexible about when he takes them. So, he's signed up for evening classes both semesters. This semester he has one on-line class, economics, and one in-class class, which is print making (which my art loathing child is hoping isn't too focused on drawing skills since he has NONE.) Between these classes, which often go until 7 pm;his robotics season, which has him staying until at least 5:30 pm; and his work, which, when he goes can go as long as 7 pm, Shawn and I have been struggling with pushing back our dinner schedule so we can all still eat together/eat decently.

We're old.

We have been old, in fact, since we were young.

We like to eat at 4:30 pm. Don't judge!

Okay, you can judge, because everybody does--even Mason's friends called him an old man when he would leave a gaming session to go eat at our ridiculously early hour. But, at least try to sympathize with the idea that a family that is used to eating at one time is now STARTING meal preparation THREE HOURS LATER than usual. We don't eat these days sometimes until 8 pm, which wonderfully European, but TOTALLY NOT US.

Shawn and I are thinking that we're just going to have to institute a kind of second dinner option, wherein we eat some kind of (potentially healthy) salad/appetizer some time closer to 5 pm, so that we all aren't hangry by dinner time. Mason, meanwhile, has always had the option of snacks either at St. Paul College or at his work. I pack extra food on robotics days. So, he'll make it one way or the other, but Shawn and I have previously stared balefully at potato chips or just sitting and being sad until dinner time, so the pre-dinner dinner might be a solution for us.

I don't know how normal people even do this late eating thing. I suppose you also don't have breakfast at 6 am and lunch sometime around 10:30 am, eh? WEIRDOS.

Anyway, did y'all read anything interesting this week?

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As Promised, I Return...

Wed, 18 Dec 2019 23:08:11 GMT

The exciting news of today is that I officially accepted a pinch hit for Yuletide.

Yay!

I adore pinch hitting. It's funny, because, even though it means that I won't receive a treat myself, I don't think I'll ever go back to officially doing the Yuletide exchange. There's just something about the whole process of pinch hitting that I love. Everything from watching the requests for pinch hits roll in to the adrenaline rush of taking the plunge and putting your name in for an assignment... it just makes me happy somehow. It's weird.

It's hilarious in its own way that I've accepted an assignment because I feel very behind on writing--letter (aka "snail mail") writing. For those of you just tuning in, one of my actual, honest-to-god hobbies is pen pal-ling. I joined the International Pen Friends some years ago and have regular pen pals around the world to whom I write personal, snail mail letters. But, I currently have a STACK of unanswered letters on the dinning room table. I'm thinking that the holiday break will be a good time to finally catch up with everyone. I think it's acceptable to send holiday cards any time before Christmas all the way through to New Years, right?

What else can I tell you?

Oh, I know! I'd wanted to give a quick recap of anime night, mostly so that I can remember what I watched.

I ended up going late and leaving early, so it wasn't the usual marathon sampling session, but we did watch another episode of ReLife and the whole of Your Name. Your Name you may recall is something that I'd listened to on a Japanese language immersion learning podcast. It was very surreal to finally see the movie. I didn't realize the extent to which my brain had made up pictures in my head about what I thought was going on. To be extremely clear. I don't think I understood more than a half a dozen words in the entire two hour podcast (and the majority of the words I did understand consisted of "arigato" and "domo," so nothing that should have given me any hint of the story). It makes NO SENSE, therefore, that my brain would have filled in anything in any kind of detail. However, sound effects are surprisingly contextualizing. For instance, I knew there would be a scene in an underground cave (echoing dripping sounds for the win!). I had no idea why we were there or what exactly transpired in the scene (except that something magical[??] got drunk), but it was weird to be watching the movie and KNOW that I'd "seen" this in my head before. Very weird. But, the experience also made me want to find a way to do more of this kind of passive listening/learning. To that end, I've been looking into ways to purchase Drama CDs from Japan. Because, why not, right?

Eleanor and I are planning to try to go see Terry Garey at the nursing home again this week, probably Friday. We'd initially planned to go Monday, but, having seen her the Thursday before, I had to tell Eleanor that I just wasn't emotionally ready for it again so soon. If you've been following along with the detailed journal on Caring Bridge, Denny does a pretty good job of explaining some of Terry's issues, but, some of what he leaves out is that memory wards are just hard. There are people there who just aren't there. You see them just staring at the walls in the dining room, not even seeming to notice the food in front of them. There are people who randomly yell or moo (seriously.) That being said, it's absolutely true that Terry needs visitors (just, you know, be prepared for the atmosphere if you come during a meal time, in particular.)

She always perks up to see people. One of the issues Terry has been having is with getting enough to eat and, last time we were there, Denny offered everyone a cookie from the ones his family had brought and Terry ate, sort of perfunctory (perfunctorily?), to be sociable. Last time when we were there, she also was cheerfully explaining that because she was an army brat, it was easy for her to get used to this place. I suspect that was true (I know the army brat part is,) but also the sort of thing you say in front of company, even when you're bored and want to go home.

So, I don't know--I do hope people who are close and who remember Terry consider visiting. Those places are boring and dreary. My dad had to spend a serious amount of time recovering in one of them and they just kind of suck.

It makes me think a lot about Fandom (capital-F, as in the local people who go to cons, etc., as opposed to one's small-f, fandom,) and about casual friendships. I feel like I know a lot of people, yet I'm not sure how many of them I know all that well... I mean, people I could call in an emergency, etc. And, yet, I think I'm actually fairly well connected to actual, real people, thanks to a bunch of things like my local, in-person writers' group. I'm not sure what I want to say about this other than to repeat something Eleanor has been saying a lot: "stay socially connected."

Anyway.

I should start plotting out a story. Plus, I have to hop up in about twenty minutes to go collect Mason from his job at the Science Museum.

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Tonight: End Game (And I Already Hate It)

Tue, 30 Apr 2019 17:59:42 GMT

I'm going to put down money right now that I'm going to be awfully grouchy when I leave the theater tonight. I suppose I ought to put my speculation as to why I think so under a cut, as I did INTENTIONALLY spoil myself a little.

( Angry ranting with definite general spoilers to End Game (read at your own risk) )

My other problem, of course, is that I'm not normal. I remember the first time I wondered if there was something wrong with me because I got far too attached to people in a story. I no longer remember what show had been on the TV. It was science fiction, I know that much, but everything else is a blur. Honestly, I think I forgot the details out of trauma and embarrassment. I have a vague memory of my parents saying something to the effect (probably trying to comfort me) of, "You don't need to be this upset. It's not REAL." I knew the show wasn't "real." I have always played a lot of pretend, but I never had any trouble separating fantasy from reality.

Vividly, I remember lying in bed that night wondering if there was something ACTUALLY wrong with me for feeling so strongly about something that was entirely imaginary, in its own way. I lie there, awake, trying to figure out WHY I cared so much.

I still don't know.

It still makes me stand out, even among fans. I'm still that one person, giving f*cks about Bleach, when everyone else has managed to find a way to shrug their shoulders and move on. Hell, I'm still spitting mad about Phantom Menace. (All these people who whine about their childhoods being ruined because suddenly there are girls and PoCs in their sandbox, and I think WHERE WAS YOUR OUTRAGE OVER MIDI-F*CKING-CLORIANS!!??? You want to talk about a ruined childhood! The movie wrecked everything. Suddenly, I couldn't study hard and become a Jedi. I had to be BORN to it. ALL THOSE CLASS PERIODS TRYING TO MOVE A PENCIL WITH THE FORCE WERE WASTED. If you weren't devastated about that, let's talk about who is a True Fan, my friend!!.)

Anyway.

Speaking of True Believers, as the late, great Stan Lee used to call us, the only comfort I have is that I have long had to mentally assign the MCU "alternate universe" status. In the comic books, Tony Stark didn't create Ultron, Henry Pym did. Yet, when the MCU made that change, I thought, "Sure, why not? Close enough," which is how I have reconciled all of the disparities. Marvel comics has a long history of changing authors, riviving old titles, changing leads (Beta Ray Bill, anybody?), and literally writing their own alternate universe and "What If?" comics. So, whatever happens on the screen tonight is just one version of the story.

Not that it's going to help. I'm still going to be mad.

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Hello, New Subscribers

Tue, 04 Dec 2018 19:29:08 GMT

I recently added my information to snickfic's "Return of the No-Frills Multifandom Friending Meme." I'm going on a following spree thanks to that, and hopefully some of those folks will follow me back. I would LOVE to be part of an active fan community here on DW, so welcome.

Alas, this particular blog isn't terribly fannish. If you scroll down it, you'll see a lot of... politics and baking. I have been separating out my fannish side to Tumblr, where I am junko and post almost exclusively about Bleach.

I also am a fic writer on AO3, where I am insanely prolific and also going by my fan name: junko. It's on AO3 where you can see more of my fandoms, besides the nearly million words I've written in Bleach fandom, I've also written in: Gangsta., Harry Potter, Free!, 月刊少女野崎くん | Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun, ばらかもん | Barakamon, Munchkin Cthulu (Board Game), Psycho-Pass, Tiger & Bunny, and 弱虫ペダル | Yowamushi Pedal.

And, those are just the fandoms that I've written in.

I run a manga review site over on WordPress called: Mangakast. I review a LOT of yaoi, but my policy is actually to review literally anything that I read that qualifies as manga. So, you'll see my opinions on all of it.

I'm also an avid SF/reader and a published author, both in SF/F and paranormal romance (as Tate Hallaway.)

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Party Animal

Sat, 11 Nov 2017 23:08:28 GMT

'm turning 50 one week from today. It's a big milestone and I've been thinking about how part of me would really like to throw a party. The neurotic part starts to worry that I don't actually have that many friends. The lazy part of me is like, "Whoa, that's a lot of work, man. Plus you'd have to clean the house." Then the first part comes back and mutters, "But 50 is a big deal, right?"

Today, I was presented with a solution. A friend of mine, Tyler Tork (his pen name) invited me to his birthday party where he's turning 55. Tyler and I, both being writers, have friends in common, so I thought, "There you go. The two bird problem solved with one party."

And it was fun.

Although I got very lost trying to get there. The party was thrown at the GPS (Geek Partnership Society)'s space in Northeast Minneapolis. Northeast is not a neighborhood I know terribly well on my best days. I don't own a smartphone so, speaking of the OTHER kind of GPS, I don't have access to a talking inter-active map. I usually compensate pretty well by having a decent working knowledge of Minneapolis/St. Paul and extensively availing myself of Google maps and note taking before I head out places. Google Map directions seemed pretty convinced that NE Broadway DIRECTLY connected to Jackson. It didn't. After an hour of driving through the Presidential streets, I called Shawn and begged her to look up where Jackson was supposed to be NEAR. Between Central and Monroe. Well, I managed to find one street that seemed to be something else where Jackson would be, but turning down it DID take me to NE Jackson and from there the building was easy to find.

That was less fun.

But Andre/Tyler had a good spread of food and I got to talk to people I knew fairly well, but hadn't hung out much with socially: Abra Staffin-Wiebe, Michael O'Leary, Jr., Conrad Zero, Karl Jones, and Dreamwitdth's own sraun (and his wife, Irene.) We talked about Chuck Tingle, erotica writing (like the nitty-gritty of dealing with things like Amazon's search functions), and jumped around squeefully about Andre/Tyler's new book deal.

A good time was had. I'd say it worked darn well for a substitute party for myself.

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Trick or Treat Exchange

Fri, 15 Sep 2017 13:27:36 GMT

I just found out that AO3 has a Trick or Treat Fic Exchange.

Every year I participate in one way or another in Yuletide, which is an annual fan fic gift exchange that was, according to Fanlore, started in 2003. I've only been doing it for, maybe two or three years, being, as always a latecomer to fandom.

I often forget to sign-up on time, so the past couple of years I've enjoyed being what they call a "pinch hitter." Yuletide is very strict about gifts. If you're supposed to be getting one, they do NOT want you to wake up on Christmas morning with an empty in-box. But, life happens. Sometimes someone who promised a fic literally gets in a car accident or finals week crushes them. So, there's a hoard of volunteers, myself included, who take up the slack. A gifter is supposed to default by a certain day and the pinch hit lists start showing up in my in-box. But, batches come all the way up to the night before. It's kind of an amazing process. I also use the pinch hit list to write what are called "treats" where you can just go ahead an write something to someone's request as an extra. I have done this in the past for very weird fandoms, like the person who really, really wanted a Munchkin Cthulu fic (although that may actually have been assigned).

Point is, I love pinch hitting. I often write fic fast enough that getting an assignment for 2,000+ words the night before is no big deal.

The Trick or Treat Exchange also looks fun. The requirement is tiny, 300 word minimum? The other thing that seems to be fun about the Trick or Treat Exchange is that, unlike Yuletide, there is no popularity restriction. (Yuletide focuses on fandoms that have less than 1000 works of fic posted on Archive of Our Own.) So, for instance, I saw that Bleach was listed for the Trick or Treat Exchange (thanks to me, Bleach has WAY TOO MANY fics otherwise... and, I'm kidding, of course. It wasn't just me, I'm sure Bleach had over a thousand fics years and years before I joined.). The point is, for the Trick or Treat Exchange, I could potentially ask for or write a Bleach fic.

So I am tempted. The exchange i currently open and I am considering. I'll have to read the rules carefully to see if it's something I'm really up for.

I'm pretty sure the fans of my never ending fic soap opera would be furious to find me off writing treats for other people, when they've been so patiently waiting for an update.

Anyway.

Happy Friday everyone.

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Aging Fen

Thu, 09 Jun 2016 19:19:33 GMT

There's a big debate going on in the science fiction community going on about who feels welcome where and what that means. The sense of unwelcomeness originated with some older fen / pros talking about WisCON. Pretty much the most articulate summation that I've read so far on that subject comes from Sigrid Ellis: https://sigridellis.wordpress.com/2016/06/06/a-few-post-wiscon-thoughts-on-being-an-ally/

I've been thinking about the subject of aging and fandom on a more personal level. Nate Bucklin is someone I've known somewhat tangentially since I first started trying to write professionally. In fact, Nate was at least partly, if not wholly, responsible for connecting me to my then agent (and now rather notorious, speaking of WisCON,) Jim Frenkel. So, when Nate called several weeks back and asked if I'd be willing to help him with a writing project he's been trying to finish for years, I said yes.

Nate is currently living in a nursing home, the Augustana Health Care Center in Minneapolis (http://augustanacare.org). Because Nate has no internet access, I've been going to see him once a week to talk about this project, etc. It's pretty much as abysmal as you might imagine, but no worse than many of these places go. Nate has a small bed in a shared room, but there are lots of common spaces. It reminds me of the place my father stayed when he was in recovery for so long, though I daresay my dad's was a touch nicer, but probably due to being in a smaller town, if nothing else.

At any rate, I asked Nate today if he was getting a lot of visitors. He said 'No, not really.' So, if you know Nate or know people who know him, please spread the word that he'd like more visitors.

These places are rough, even when you know your time there is limited. I think a lot about Gardner Dozois and his wife Susan Casper who are in a similar situation in another city. Gardner, at least, is able to post updates and such on Facebook, and that was something my father was able to keep up with too. I actually gave Nate a computer (it was given to me as a gift, so I passed it on and, if he's interested, I'll see if I can get him set up to use Facebook and Gmail too. I know how much having outside contact kept my dad feeling at least somewhat more connected.)

I have to run pick up Shawn and Mason, but I just wanted to be sure to get this out there. Friends of Nate Bucklin! Go see him if/when you can! (if you need more specific info as to how to contact Nate, please feel free to drop me a line at my gmail address: lyda.morehouse@gmail.com.)

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Hugo on the Brain and the Nature of Fandom

Mon, 27 Apr 2015 15:27:32 GMT

Catherynne M. Valente has weighed in on the Puppies and the Hugos this morning (edited to add: apparently this came out awhile ago but was being passed around FB yesterday). I haven't read all the words because I'm suffering a bit of Hugo neepery burnout. That doesn't mean I've stopped thinking about it. In fact, I'm having some thoughts about it that are probably... I'm not sure what, but no one on my "side" is talking about it as far as I can tell.

Obviously, everything about what the SP/RP did to this year's Hugo was wrong with wrong sauce. But, I've been thinking a lot about why anyone sympathize with them, ever, under any circumstances. I don't think it's as simple as a lot of people want to paint it. It's super-easy to decide the whole lot of them are racist (and in Beale/Vox's case, that's not at all unfounded.) But, if that were the only motivator, I don't see how they'd have quite as much traction. Okay, maybe I'm being naive here. Clearly race relations are broken in the US, so maybe that's enough to fuel this kind of thing... but, okay, really? I just want to talk about ANOTHER aspect.

In Larry Correia's back and forth with George R. R. Martin, Martin vehemently denies that there are 'cool kids' in SF/F. He's wrong. Because, of course there are. Whenever you get a group of people together, cliques happen. That's just the nature of humanity and group dynamics.

Correia whines a lot about feeling shut out, and, while I think it all amounts to a load of man pain, I actually sympathize with him a little, on a basic human level.

I GET feeling left out of that inner circle, particularly at somewhere as huge as a WorldCON. I spent all of 1998 Baltimore WorldCON feeling like I was forever just one step from the parties everyone was talking about the next day. You'd go to a panel the next morning and hear Gardner Dozois laughing about how Warren Lapine shot a pickle out his nose (or visa versa) and I'd think: What? Where? When? How come *I* wasn't invited!??

Baltimore, it should be noted, was particularly egregious that year because of some corkage law or other that messed up how and where alcohol could be served and so there were A LOT of rumors of "secret pro parities" where the free beer flowed freely. I was also, it turned out, just on the verge of making my first pro sale, but not there yet.*

But, this happened to me once I was established, too. In fact, the WorldCON I felt the worst at was the most recent ChiCON in 2012, when I had, what, fourteen books under my belt? I was on paneling and, therefor, very much part of the "in" crowd. I also got my very first ever invitation to a secret pro party (a party I later referred to as the f*cking boat) which was a cruise on the Chicago canals/out into Lake Michigan hosted by Random House (which was not even my publisher.) I have never felt more uncool, than I did at that WorldCON, despite everything, and it all had to do with the fact that my career was starting to sour. But, regardless, I felt left out and all the things that Correia complains about (except no one shouted at me that I was a liar and a misogynist, perhaps for obvious reasons. Though honestly? I might have believed everyone hated me, my mood was so foul. I felt very picked on during the one panel I was on, because it was about serial fiction and all my series had failed.)

Okay, so you see? We all feel this.

It's especially maddening when you're just starting out, because you finally broke in only to find that there's still barriers to being in the spotlight, and we ALL want to be in the spotlight.

Look, we're all divas. Correia is just saying out loud what lot of us feel: boo hoo, it's NOT all about me! (Pro tip: most of us don't say it out loud, because we realize how whiny and self-centered it makes us look.)

BUT... yes, okay? I actually sympathize a little with this. To say there aren't cool kid cliques is disingenuous too. There just are.

Also, this feeling of being shut out of WorldCON culture something that has happened to people on the left, too. Not that long ago (but apparently outside of the collective memory), there was a huge controversy around the London WorldCON about a cliquish inner circle of white guys (and GRRM is even pictured!)

Here's the thing I want to say about this: con culture is a thing. It's a thing everyone needs to learn how to negotiate.

I've even talked about this idea before on this blog because I came across someone on Twitter complaining about feeling left out/unwelcomed at a con. The thing I said to that person (who was decidedly on the left), is that we're all responsible for our own con experience. It's not the con's job to make you feel welcome. You have to learn the culture of cons and figure out how to fit in. Some conventions even have panels on the opening days ABOUT how to make inroads and make friends and be involved in a way that will let you leave the con feeling like you were part of it in a positive way. I was lucky because we have a lot of local cons to "practice" on, some of them are HUGE, so you can get something very akin to a WorldCON experience. I know for a fact that I bounced in and out of the first con I ever attended, which was a WisCON: 1984, when Elizabeth A. Lynn was one of the Guests of Honor.

I did that con and maybe hit an early MiniCON and thought, "Eh, not much for me here." It wasn't until much later when I was starting a writing career did I go back and really work to make in-roads by volunteering for panelling, etc.

TBF, the local fan scene is such that you did have to kind of know the right people or at least be known to them. I somehow got on Eric Heideman's radar, and that was panelling for me for life.

So, fandom as insider-y? Hella yeah.

Does it mean the Hugos are broken? I don't think so. Yeah, it's possible they've been out of touch, if only because WorldCON members are aging, etc., but as Cheryl Morgan talks about in her take on Puppygate-Winners and Losers, in many ways the Puppies have brought a renewed interest in the Hugos that you couldn't have bought and paid for, if you'd tried.

----

*Out of curiosity, I went to see which WorldCONs I've attended and they are: 1998 BucCONeer (Baltimore), 2000 ChiCON (Chicago), 2004 NoreasCON (Boston), and 2012 ChiCON (Chicago).

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Dog-Whistles, Code and Insider-ism

Wed, 04 Feb 2015 16:27:09 GMT

I was scrolling through my Twitter feed, like you do, and I came across this: "Why 'Fandom is Family' is Problematic". It's a collection or round-up of tweets (probably involving a much larger discussion) about the phrase 'fandom is family' and why we should stop using it. First of all, I've actually never heard this phrase in my long association with SF fandom, and I tend to agree that family is not ALL THAT to everyone and it certainly should not be a phrase used to shelter abusers, etc.

What I'm reacting to is the idea that fandom (and it's not clear which 'fandom' is meant here, but maybe SF con fandom?) is unwelcoming because it has so many in-jokes... or...? I'm not sure, because I think, in point of fact, that the very term "not welcoming" is a dog-whistle for the Tumblr-generation/fans.

I'm not saying they're not right.

When I first entered con fandom, I felt very lost. I didn't know the routine. I didn't know the lingo. I didn't have many friends who went to cons. In point of fact, I dropped out of con fandom until I was a newly energized/hungry writer and saw the advantages of meeting people by being on panels. It should be noted, too, that I am, and have always been, a vey out-going and social person. It's not normally hard for me to make friends with strangers.

So it's absolutely true that a person's first con can feel very... exclusive, excluding even. Certainly, LONELY.

I experienced that whole feeling of exclusion all over again, despite years of being in sf con fandom, when I entered the anime fandom (and the anime con fandom, both of which have their own sets of rules and entire language books full of code and lingo and acronyms.) I even posted here that what i needed for the next Anime Detour was a translator to act as my guide.

But...

I never felt it was the duty of the con runners to make me feel "welcomed." I felt weird about my lack of knowledge--uncomfortable even, but I didn't let that stop me. If I felt any sense of privilege it was a self-empowered one, which was to say I NEVER DOUBTED THAT I HAD THE RIGHT TO PARTICIPATE, I just had to figure out HOW. I also never doubted that figuring out HOW was on me, and me alone. So, I thought, "Alright then, I need to ask what does mean?" I need to call up my friends and say, "Okay, who here is going with me?" I asked my more anime con savvy friends, "So... when someone is in costume, do I talk to them 'in character' or... What? How do I interact here? What are the rules?" In my early SF con days, I found someone I knew and asked, "Okay, so what DOES it take to get on panels? How do I volunteer for the stuff I like?"

I'm not saying this because I feel like "kids these days" (or people new to fandom) don't have the same where-with-all that I did/do.

But, because this term gets bandied about a lot, I do wonder if "not welcoming" actually is for them one of those words they use that means something that my generation doesn't quite understand the same way. I wonder if it means more than what I'm describing. I'm wondering if there are very specific ways in which the younger generation feels less empowered to just participate, despite the things I described above.

I'm not sure.

I want someone to tell me. I want to understand. I want to hear the stories that will open my eyes, so I can FIX the things for you (and, ultimately for all of us.)

In the meantime, I have to guess from context.

One of the back-and-forths in the twitter round-up made it seem like one person felt left out because Michael Thomas joked about "TRUfandom" (which is also a phrase I didn't know). She said, basically: "Whelp, see what I mean, I don't know this stuff." To me, that's not being shown the door, and having it slammed in your face, that's just BEING NEW. I've had the same experience as an old-timer, getting onto Tumblr and going to Anime cons. I never felt unwelcome. I just felt NEW.

We all need to learn each other's language.

I think that this is less 'insider-ism' than just the way sub-cultures operate. I sometimes have to use the urban dictionary to parse out what my neighbor is saying to me or what comments on my fan fic mean. I don't think my neighbor or the fans of my writing are trying to insult me or exclude me or intentionally make me feel unwelcome. In fact, each time I deciphered a bit of the code, I felt brought closer in. When someone left me ILU on my fan fic, I'd no idea for sure what that meant. I looked it up, and it means "I love you!" or "I like you" and is kind of just a term of excitement, bonding, or, as my subculture would call it, squee.

I really think that when Michael made his comment his intention was inclusion, as in, 'like that joke we have about TRU fandom, you and me." Yet it was seen as endemic to the problem.

I think we need to stop assuming hostility from each other.

Fandom needs all of us, young and old.

Srsly.

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