It's that time of year again!
Time to submit Yaoicon panels and hope like hell Joyce isn't pissed at me after last year.
Comments, criticism and suggestion are all welcome. I'll be submitting these to YCon in a day or so.
"What's a Nice Queer Like You Doing In a Fandom Like This?"
Academics describe slash and yaoi as "important to the LGBT community and the formation of queer identities, as it represents a resistance to the expectation of compulsory heterosexuality." But much of yaoi fandom is focused on enjoying men in a very specific way, often to the exclusion of queers of all stripes. So why do do it? What draws us into these fandoms even when we don't necessarily like men or sex, and how do we make space for ourselves and our own genders and sexualities? In what ways do we see ourselves reflected or rejected by the dominant paradigms of our fandoms? How do we deal with and respond to the problematic aspects of our chosen hobby?
"Yaoi Pre-Millenium"
Yaoicon debuted in 2001, and it blew minds as the first convention really giving legitimacy to BL in the US. But yaoi existed as a genre, and as a subgenre of fandom for years before the con even debuted. So come for a round of nostalgia and we'll talk about Kizuna, Ai no Kusabi, Gundam Wing, Fushigi Yuugi and all those other shows we watched on scratchy VHS tapes or terrible Hong Kong sub DVDs before we even knew what "yama nashi, ochi nashi, imi nashi" even meant.
"The Limits of Online Fandom"
We used to mail out fanzines. Then we used e-mailing lists. Now there are bulletin boards, archives, and the journaling sites-- oh, the journaling sites. Livejournal appears to have begun a slide into fandom disuse, while Dreamwidth seems to have found its audience and has been running strong for over two years now. And then there's the Archive of Our Own, which aspires to be a new Fanfiction.Net, while FF.N still stands proud and tall. And that's not even touching new fandom models like Tumblr and Twitter... Join us to discuss the overarching concerns for further online interactions between fans to infinity and BEYOND.
"Culture Clash: Western Fandoms in a Japnese Milieu"
We're all here because we love yaoi-- but Japanese media relies on specific tropes that Western audiences have to learn and adapt to. Sometimes we even immerse ourselves in them so deeply that Western media tropes can seem "foreign" to our fandom-eyes. But SOME Western fandoms go global-- Harry Potter, Supernatural and the X-Men have all gotten big enough to become "native" Japanese fandoms in their own rights. Join to discuss what it's like seeing domestic media become something new, and how we as Western fans re-adopt and re-use Japanified Western cultural artifacts.
Comments, criticism and suggestion are all welcome. I'll be submitting these to YCon in a day or so.
"What's a Nice Queer Like You Doing In a Fandom Like This?"
Academics describe slash and yaoi as "important to the LGBT community and the formation of queer identities, as it represents a resistance to the expectation of compulsory heterosexuality." But much of yaoi fandom is focused on enjoying men in a very specific way, often to the exclusion of queers of all stripes. So why do do it? What draws us into these fandoms even when we don't necessarily like men or sex, and how do we make space for ourselves and our own genders and sexualities? In what ways do we see ourselves reflected or rejected by the dominant paradigms of our fandoms? How do we deal with and respond to the problematic aspects of our chosen hobby?
"Yaoi Pre-Millenium"
Yaoicon debuted in 2001, and it blew minds as the first convention really giving legitimacy to BL in the US. But yaoi existed as a genre, and as a subgenre of fandom for years before the con even debuted. So come for a round of nostalgia and we'll talk about Kizuna, Ai no Kusabi, Gundam Wing, Fushigi Yuugi and all those other shows we watched on scratchy VHS tapes or terrible Hong Kong sub DVDs before we even knew what "yama nashi, ochi nashi, imi nashi" even meant.
"The Limits of Online Fandom"
We used to mail out fanzines. Then we used e-mailing lists. Now there are bulletin boards, archives, and the journaling sites-- oh, the journaling sites. Livejournal appears to have begun a slide into fandom disuse, while Dreamwidth seems to have found its audience and has been running strong for over two years now. And then there's the Archive of Our Own, which aspires to be a new Fanfiction.Net, while FF.N still stands proud and tall. And that's not even touching new fandom models like Tumblr and Twitter... Join us to discuss the overarching concerns for further online interactions between fans to infinity and BEYOND.
"Culture Clash: Western Fandoms in a Japnese Milieu"
We're all here because we love yaoi-- but Japanese media relies on specific tropes that Western audiences have to learn and adapt to. Sometimes we even immerse ourselves in them so deeply that Western media tropes can seem "foreign" to our fandom-eyes. But SOME Western fandoms go global-- Harry Potter, Supernatural and the X-Men have all gotten big enough to become "native" Japanese fandoms in their own rights. Join to discuss what it's like seeing domestic media become something new, and how we as Western fans re-adopt and re-use Japanified Western cultural artifacts.