Fannish criticism & upcoming events
Hi all. Being in school while working almost full time is hard, so excuse this link dump of a newsletter post… the links are worth your time, I assure you.
Gundam BL scholarship
Three pieces on the history of Universal Century Gundam BL doujinshi that are of interest to scholarly-minded fujos and fujo-likes:
Charma & Charmuro — A Dive into Gundam BL Doujinshi History by kishi: A statistical analysis of the trajectory of the big two UC slash ships, their respective uptake over time, and commentary on how technological developments and the life cycle of syndicated vs. home-released media affect which pairings get cemented within fandom.
On Fudanshi: Image, the Subversion of Mecha and Queerness in Post-War Japan & Yoshiyuki Tomino & Sunrise Studio II’s Acknowledgement of Fanworks, Doujinshi & Yaoi by retroanimechris: Chris @ Mad Angler Press does truly incredible work scanning, archiving, contextualizing, and translating primary source materials that are otherwise inaccessible to English-speaking audiences outside of Japan. These pieces excellently challenge many pieces of conventional wisdom within Western anime fandom, and Gundam fandom in particular, about who mecha has been “for” at various points in time.
One for the haters
Nascent book review newsletter Leave It (Un)read has a zero-miss record so far. Hating bad books is easy; doing worthwhile critical work in a bad-book takedown is hard (I would know, it’s the reason I update my blog four times a year.) Incorporating fannishness in literary analysis in a way that doesn’t give Aja Romano is an additional challenge which this reviewer has managed deftly. I appreciated their response to A Little Life and eagerly await the second half of the piece on R.F. Kuang’s Babel.
Upcoming events
AMERICAN FUJO is off to the printers, and co-contributor Elliott is holding an online workshop THIS SUNDAY on writing critical essays for fun! It looks totally awesome and I will be there (hopefully it will help with my inability to write negative book reviews that are worth reading.) You could be there too… for registration & more info, see here!
Lastly, if you’re local (Metro Vancouver area), you’re welcome to join me and other folks at the second iteration of the YVR HTML meetup. We’ll be meeting at VPL Central tomorrow (Nov. 15) for a chill session of hand-coding and general computer touching, plus sticker swapping. No experience necessary! See the event page for details.
XOXO, roland