Lilibet

20 days shoujo challenge, day 7

flo-nelja

Day 07: Favorite Shoujo Male

(Given the way the next questions are asked, I assume it means favourite leading male)

Favourite shoujo male in a manga: Sumeragi Subaru (Tokyo Babylon)

(He’s also in X, I love him also in X, but he’s not a leading character here)

What can I say, I love tragic heroes. I love him as an innocent exorcist who just wants to help people and will never be happy because he can’t help everyone, even less if he wants a life for himself. I love him as heartbroken and going through the motions, having lost his sister and still in love with the man who ruined his life, and even if we will never have the ending of X, I also loved his situation last time we saw him (more tragedy!)

~~~~~

Favourite shoujo male in an anime: Kikuhiko | Yurakutei Yakumo (Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu)

(I haven’t read the manga yet. Maybe I’ll love it just as much. But as it’s about an art involving voices, and Kikuhiko is voiced by Akira Ishida who makes a wonderful job, I’ll always love this version. The rakugo scenes are incredible. And the symbolism about death…)

Kikuhiko is the one who’s not a genius, but works hard and seriously. Would be a rival is most mangas, he hasn’t Sukeroku’s natural charisma. But he’s the one who lives, he’s the one who inherits such a complicated heart, made of regrets, love and resentment intermingled, lies he tells to other and lies he tells to himself. He’s such a complex, interesting, fascinating character, and we discover him layer by layer. I loved following him for such a long time.

Also, he gets even hotter as he’s getting older :P

Anonymous asked:

I've seen more and more monetisation / paywalling of fannish activities, most recently Bookbinding. The people who monetise this, from what I can tell, often don't live in material comfort and seem to have genuine need for funds. On the other hand, this financial gatekeeping is impacting fannish activities and causes differential access based on means. Do you have any suggestions on how to promote/preserve the inherent anti capitalist aspects of Fanfic, as readers, writers, and book binders?

armoredsuperheavy answered:

There’s definitely a tension and a bit of a generational fault line but I think, as you say, it comes down to (1) if an individual has the financial and temporal space in their life to pursue a hobby (a non revenue generating activity) , related, (2) how deeply a person has internalized the “always hustling” mentality, and (3) whether they are aware of, and subscribe to, the traditional “gift economy” model of fandom participation.

Probably financial situation is going to be the biggest single determinant about whether someone is making gifts for strangers, or doing fanbinding for pay.

But financial angle aside, thinking about fandom activity generally over the last decade it’s gotten progressively more mainstream, transactional, less personal, conducted on ever more public platforms (twitter- the antithesis of intimacy!) and honestly in that context it’s almost indistinguishable from commercial posts. Not a lot of community building sort of interactions. It feels like a gig already to maintain a presence on social media.

So if the past few years were a person’s entry point into fandom, I can see how it would feel pretty natural to attempt to squeeze a gig out of it.

Personally I hope I’ve communicated that fanbinding in any form is worthy of the time you take to do it, and gifting that binding to an author is the ultimate compliment. I encourage people to bind within their means. The Renegade discord server is full of folks improvising materials and making it happen. I’ve also been experimenting with less costly methods, e.g. the zine tradition, with satisfying results.

It’s a bit hard to explain the feeling of giving a gift to someone who never expected it. Hearing about how they cried with joy when they held it in their hands. And also the satisfaction of selecting a work to print based on your own personal standards and no other considerations. Editorial & creative control - there’s a reason people want it.

I agree with you that the fannish gift economy tradition is rapidly eroding, especially as we’ve all but lost the opportunity to gather offline and make real personal connections. We’re losing something very rare in our society, a radical, subversive way of thinking based on connection and giving versus “burn it all down” angry reactionism. It’s exactly the kind of peaceful resistance that social media disincentivises. I hope when Covid hell is done, we will emerge in droves from our homes and make an effort to do more in-person interaction. I mean panels and cookouts and swap meets - not just merch table grazing. To me, that’s the only way out of the dwindling spiral of commodification.

Also I think that passive consumers of fandom should try to think a little creatively about ways they can contribute to fandom because there is much satisfaction to be gained in volunteer labor - and that’s the foundation of fandom’s existence.

sbooksbowm

When I interviewed members of Renegade Bindery last July (wow, it’s been a long year), most of the 13 interviewees were wary of fanbinding for compensation, and I wrote about the complications around commissions. But the Bindery has since grown (from about 50 members when I was conducting research) to over 300 now, and the weight of perspectives have shifted! The conclusions I drew around hesitations of fanbinding for compensation should definitely be revisited.

But I think the central question here is about value and compensation:

Do you have any suggestions on how to promote/preserve the inherent anti capitalist aspects of Fanfic, as readers, writers, and book binders?

at the moment, even if one might fanbind without reimbursement or commission income, they accrue value through satisfaction with the process and product, fulfillment, and developing expertise. But satisfaction does not pay the bills, and people do deserve to be paid fairly for their work. Fandbinding operates within a system that does not value this kind of work, or even see it as work at all. This extends to the work of fandom writ large. People external to fandom often do not value the work of fandom (in all its forms, writing, betaing, reccing, volunteering, modding, etc.) because they do not see it as work. This attitude aligns with rather than opposes the fact that fandom has become more mainstream: the mainstream attitude right now is that all we do (in professional and leisure time) should be available for profit. I write a newsletter, for example, and every week the website I’m on nudges me to add a subscription option. Why would I do that? I write the newsletter for my grandmother and anyone else who wants to read. I’m not going to make them pay to read something I’ve volunteered to do.

Not valuing the work of fandom as gifted work, as exchange and volunteer and community based work, reincorporates it into a gig, rather than a gift, economy. It attempts to dictate value as necessarily profit.

In what system is this work valued (differently), and thereby easier to promote/preserve/maintain? Ideally, one in which people are fairly compensated and sustained by external actors (a…universal basic income, perhaps?) and are able to engage in these modes of work-for-pleasure with more freedom, both of time and money. Basically, in my ideal world, people have more leisure time to do the work of fandom (and other art) because their basic needs are guaranteed in other ways (what a dream, sbooks). In the meantime, and forgive this lukewarm advice, because I have nothing better to add that @armoredsuperheavy has not already said, do as you can.

meeedeee

“We’re losing something very rare in our society, a radical, subversive way of thinking based on connection and giving versus “burn it all down” angry reactionism. It’s exactly the kind of peaceful resistance that social media disincentivises. I hope when Covid hell is done, we will emerge in droves from our homes and make an effort to do more in-person interaction. I mean panels and cookouts and swap meets - not just merch table grazing. To me, that’s the only way out of the dwindling spiral of commodification. ”

lierdumoa

This reflects a lot of my thoughts on the subject. I’ve seen many, many tumblr fanartists take the stance recently that “if you are not helping me monetize via promotion, you are a leech on the fandom community” and I don’t know how to explain to these people 1) this is not how transformative fanwork communities have functioned for the majority of my life and 2) I have ZERO desire to be in a fandom community that functions this way.

I’ll JOYFULLY give up looking at certain people’s fanwork if that’s the cost of getting to be in community where creativity is something you pay forward rather than something you pay for.

olderthannetfic

Well said.

Also, in the gigification of everything, there are always many valuable things and types of work that get taken for granted. Often, someone wants “fair compensation” for their fic writing but thinks their beta should work for free or an equivalent situation.

“Also I think that passive consumers of fandom should try to think a little creatively about ways they can contribute to fandom because there is much satisfaction to be gained in volunteer labor - and that’s the foundation of fandom’s existence.”

Reccing. Curation. Historical preservation. Writing primers. Writing how-tos. Moderating discords (or lists or DW coms). These are the ways a lot of fans who don’t draw or write have contributed significantly to their communities.

Lilibet

See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

20 days shoujo challenge, day 7

20 days shoujo challenge, day 12