AnimeNEXT 2013

Venturing out into the sunlight? Planning on meeting up with other cel addicts? Post convention or gathering info here.
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AnimeNEXT 2013

Post by sensei »

As long as we are mentioning interesting regional cons, I will be attending and presenting at AnimeNext, held June 7-9 in Somerset, New Jersey. It is a smallish regional affair, light on guests but, in my experience, very good on anime-related panel discussions. I'll be on the following:

Anime Under the Radar: 10AM on Saturday, June 8. [I and others will be talking about series that for one reason or another have failed to get the attention they deserve in North America. In the past I've discussed Tenshi ni Narumon and The Star of Cottonland, and this year I'll be making a case for Maeterlinck's Blue Bird.

Bronies Uncensored: 11:30 PM on Saturday, June 8. [Dang, I'd hoped to avoid the hoopla that occurred last year when I presented a rather intellectual paper on how to understand the emerging fanbase of MLP/FIM in anime terms. I'd asked for a different time and a smaller room, but this year I'm going to be in the ballroom again, the hour will be a little later, and the audience will be even more inebriated/stoned. I will get to use more of my R34 stuff, though.]

Collecting Original Japanese Animation Art: 11AM on Sunday, June 9. [If I live through the previous event, I'll do a fairly normal intro to cels/sketches/rilezu the next morning. Yeah, I'll bring a few books and boxes of stuff. Mid-Atlantic collectors are quite welcome to show up and share some love.]

I'm hoping to get my major "May Madness" update up before I leave (Rozen Maiden, Condition Green, Microid S, and yet another new "Golden Age" gallery). But we will have to see.
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Re: AnimeNEXT 2013

Post by sensei »

For more info, directions, preregistration, etc.

http://www.animenext.org/
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Re: AnimeNEXT 2013

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Cel Depot will be there, btw. :)
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Re: AnimeNEXT 2013

Post by sensei »

Cels in the dealer's room! OMG!

I'm sorry, then, that the collecting panel will run Sunday morning: I could have drummed up some business for you otherwise. I used to do some more specialized panels (how to remove celotape, or how to bid on YHJ without a working knowledge of Japanese, etc.) until I realized that the typical clientele of the con simply didn't understand how anime was made in the first place. Then I took a much more entry-level tack and drew bigger crowds (though not nearly as big as when I put "brony" in the title).

See you there for sure!
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Re: AnimeNEXT 2013

Post by Quacker »

Those are all interesting sounding topics Sensei, especially the "Anime under the radar".

If it is not too much of a hassle & not a burden on your busy schedule - may you post-up your Presentation notes/transcripts of each discussion after the convention?

Oh I have to scan an article across to you too, it may be of some relevance to the second topic.
If you can believe it, it is an article in one of the Business papers I read, detailing the emergence & rise of the 'Bronie' phenomenon in Australia? Apparently there recently was a convention held in Sydney where 2,000 Bronies attended.

If I do not get the chance; best of luck with the Presentation & Discussions!
My Cel Gallery can be found here:

http://celsphoenix.rubberslug.com/gallery/home.asp

A growing collection of Escaflowne, Evangelion, FMP, Fate/Stay Night plus other cels that are among my Favourites. No cheap & nasty stuff here.
Come, check out the cutesy female & Mecha madness!!
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Re: AnimeNEXT 2013

Post by sensei »

Thanks, Quacker. I'm one of four on "Under the Radar" and probably the only one to come with a PowerPoint, but I'll take some notes on what the others will say. I'm going to focus on Maeterlinck's Blue Bird which I think is seriously good based both on the cels and on the raw Japanese DVD that I've been watching. (There is a really intriguing anti-war episode that I wish someone would fansub.)

The others should be easier to report, but I may have to put the Brony notes in the Speakeasy as the quotes from forums get a bit rough in places. This deals with "Rule 34" material, or appropriation of the characters/situations for sexual fantasies. Though Rule 34 and the other "Rules of the Internet" date only as far back as 2007, it's a phenomenon that folklorists have been observing prior to the computer age. The Star Trek fan network of hard-copy fanzines often specialized in Kirk/Spock romances, some consummated through "mind-meld" and others with the help of what was euphemistically referred to as "plumbing."

Which is why I immediately understood most of what the "CCS uncensored" forums were talking about when I discovered them in 2000.
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Re: AnimeNEXT 2013

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sensei wrote:The others should be easier to report, but I may have to put the Brony notes in the Speakeasy as the quotes from forums get a bit rough in places. This deals with "Rule 34" material, or appropriation of the characters/situations for sexual fantasies. Though Rule 34 and the other "Rules of the Internet" date only as far back as 2007, it's a phenomenon that folklorists have been observing prior to the computer age.
According to Knowyourmeme, Rule 34 dates from at least 2004.
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Re: AnimeNEXT 2013

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Killua wrote:According to Knowyourmeme, Rule 34 dates from at least 2004.
Interesting: my source for the 2007 date was Knowyourmeme. Thanks, killua, I'll hack around that site a bit more: presumably R34 circulated as a general "rule" several years before the official list was formulated. Certainly it's an integral part of anthropoid biosoftware. I'm sure adolescent cave guys slipped off from the official myth-telling ceremonies to their own secret caverns and enjoyed painting their own murals of wooly mammoths having sex with magical bird men or vice versa. That was, no doubt, as shocking as "Rugrats" R34 stuff is today. ( 8O "Rugrats"??? 8O )
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Re: AnimeNEXT 2013

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The first of three retrospectives of the panels that I helped present.

Anime under the Radar: Good stuff nobody is watching

We had four panelists, myself (Sensei aka Bill Ellis), Dylan Ferrara, Casey Schoenberger, and Elizabeth Ellis. I led off with brief introductions to three currently unavailable “classic anime series.”

The first of these, the Takahata/Miyazaki adaptation of Pippi Longstocking (1971) was in fact never made. It was the first independent project the two animators proposed after leaving Toei to freelance. To research the setting and try to secure the literary rights to the classic books by Astrid Lindgren, the two visited Sweden, and Miyazaki made dozens of original sketches, most with watercolor accents. At some point, the two had test cels made to use as illustrations of what their adaptation would look like. Alas, Lindgren refused to grant permission, and these test cels are (apparently) lost. However, Miyazaki published many of his preliminary drawings in the Hayao Miyazaki Image Board collection (Kodansha, 1983), and photographs of the test cels have turned up on auction. The two influential artists struck it rich in 1974 with Heidi, Girl of the Alps (Nippon), the first internationally important Japanese anime series. But we will always wonder what their Pippi would have been like.

Second is Maeterlinck’s Blue Bird: Tyltyl and Mytyl’s Adventurous Journey (Office Academy, 1980). The original play on which this series was based, published in 1912, helped win its author the Nobel Prize for Literature, but attempts to adapt it to movie form have been cursed since the beginning. This anime version, produced in 26 episodes by Leiji Matsumoto (Space Cruiser Yamato and Captain Harlock) with character design by Toyoo Ashida (Hotoko no Ken), may be the only viable modern version. This is thanks to the inventive and quirky approach the anime adaptors took to it. I brought along my raw Japanese DVDs and played a few scenes from the early episodes, including the fairy Berylune’s musical self-introduction (complete with fanservice!) and a touching scene from an anti-war episode, showing children pressed into service as soldiers as their parents suffer and die from the hardships of combat.

Third was Ai to Yuki no Pig Girl Tonde Buurin, or “The Super Pig Girl of Love and Courage. Produced in 52 episodes by Nippon Animation in 1994-95, the series has been dubbed into English but never released in North America. A Spanish dub, however, has become very popular in Latin America. A wry parody of the magical girl genre, it concerns a high school girl who encounters a magical animal and gains the power to do a henshin into a superhero with superhuman strength and flying ability. Unfortunately, she also has to turn into a pig. (I showed the henshin sequence in which this happens.) Arguably silly and random, the series served as a training ground for many up-and-coming animators, some of whom became well known for work on more serious animes such as Speed Grapher and Mushishi. Notably, director Hiroshi Nishikiori and character designer Hiromi Kato later teamed up to create Tenshi ni Narumon.

My colleague Dylan Ferrara then gave an introduction to Chuka Ichiban! aka “Cooking Master Boy,” based on a 17-volume manga (1995-99) by Etushi Ogawa, who bases many manga on the culinary world and arts. It was produced in 52 episodes in 1997-98. No licenced sub or dub in English exists; Ferrara saw it 11 years ago in Las Vegas dubbed in Cantonese on an Asian cable channel. It revolves around Mao, the son of the legendary chef Pai, who has passed away but also passed on her cooking skills to her son. Mao is challenged by a former apprentice of Pai's for control over her restaurant, but shows his cooking prowess by defeating him in a cook off where the two must make the best tofu dish. As the series develops, Mao creates more and more improbably elaborate dishes, winning by setting off a flavor explosion in the judges. His goal as a Super Chef is to unite China through cuisine and to make the national cookery famous worldwide. The series likely will never be licenced here, but a clip from it is available on YouTube, along with the opening animation.

Casey Schoenberger and Liz Ellis discussed the very recently released anime Shingeki no Kyojin, translated “Attack on Titan,” though a more accurate rendering would be “Attack of the Titans.” Based on a manga by Hajime Isayama, it premiered on Japanese TV only on April 6 of this year. It deals with a world in which humans are the prey of giant ogres, or Titans, and most people survive only within the protection of massive walls too tall for the Titans to scale. However, the Titans have been growing larger, thus requiring the human warriors to venture outside the world to ensure their culture’s survival. The morality of the series becomes clouded, however, as the Titans, while huge in size, often look just like the humans they consume, making the action seem more like interspecies warfare than survival of the fittest. Using both the manga and anime footage, the presenters introduced the main characters and dark visual feel of the series. While it is clearly not “under the radar” in Japan, its very recent introduction to American viewers via CrunchyRoll means that relatively few people as yet know about it. A more detailed review of the series has been posted on Liz’s Ellis’s blogsite, “The Insatiable Critic.”

Next: Collecting Japanese Anime Art.
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Re: AnimeNEXT 2013

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Collecting Japanese Anime Art

This was intended for an audience that was basically unaware of the fact that anime art is still relatively easy to collect and inexpensive. I'd done more sophisticated panels before, such as one on how to do basic tasks of conserving cels and sketches, or how to bid on YHJ without being fluent in Japanese. But they didn't draw audiences. This one drew the smallest crowd of the three that I did, though the bunch did show considerable interest and stayed from start to finish. This is a summary of my part, which opened.

Animation is “images in motion”

Every anime you watch seems to be a film of humans, aliens, mechas, and/or demons going about their business. But all of this is an illusion: what you are seeing is a montage of hundreds of still images. All the characters, and the settings we see them in, are creative projections of artists’ imaginations. [To illustrate this, I showed a simple reanimation from Rozen Maiden, showing Souseiseki falling and falling and falling from the sky.] Anime is made up of millions of such still images, and if you see it on the screen, someone had to draw or paint it. Studios usually did not want to preserve the art, once the footage for the anime was completed. So the opportunities to collect original anime art are more plentiful than you might think.

Common types of anime art

Here I gave a very brief survey of the stages of animation, beginning with the storyboard, then the layout, then the various types of gengas, then the dougas. I had brought along physical examples of these that I brought out, and also had scans of others from my collection on the PowerPoint.

Finally, I talked about the distinction between cel-based animation and CGI animation, noting that many shows still used pencil-on-paper animation, even if the final dougas were scanned and digitally colorized. Also, I noted that physical watercolor backgrounds continued to be made and scanned for many series. So there is an ample supply of art even without cels.

Why collect anime art?

It’s still quite inexpensive, with a huge number of items continuing to come onto the market. While some cels from very important movies or series can go for thousands of dollars, most nice items sell at auction for the equivalent of $35-$50. Even $10-$20 will get you a colorful image or action-filled sketch at a dealer’s table [Insert first plug for Cel Depot]. And we are talking about one-of-a-kind objects, that literally give you a piece of the fabric that anime is made from.

So what do I collect?

First of all, doubt any general advice on what is “most valuable” in the field. Some people advice beginning collectors to “invest” in certain desirable series or to concentrate on cels of a certain type. Given the amount of material on the market, and the debatable status of anime as art, there really are no firm rules. Consider a piece of animation art as something precious to you, and you won’t go wrong. In short, Collect what excites you.

At this point I used several examples of art that were especially important to me, the basic lesson being “If it’s there on the screen, the art is probably out there somewhere.” I ended by talking about how Nomad had passed on original Rozen Maiden art to Office F&O, which used them as the basis for rilezu, or custom-made reproduction cels. These sold for premium prices, but once this concern had made its profit, they sold the original art on Yahoo Japan for much less than the repros.

So where do I look?

Japanese auction sites like Yahoo Japan! are often the place where art enters the market. Deputy services like Rinkya and Shopping Mall Japan will help you bid on these in return for a commission. (This seemed a new idea for the audience, so I spent some time explaining how this concept worked.) And several stateside dealers offer good stocks of anime art. Such as... [insert second plug for Cel Depot, accompanied by an explanation of how to find it on the map of the dealer’s room.]

Some basic advice

* First, acquire good taste. A collection of eyeworthy anime art is never “small.”
* See what’s out there: look through online collections such as Rubberslug to learn what’s out there.
* Make a budget and stick to it. Inexpensive purchases add up quickly.
* Be careful in making wishes: the celga no kami have very sharp ears.

Then I had my co-conspirators talk more informally about their collections. Dylan Ferrara talked about his interest in the series Hajime no Ippo and Hunter x Hunter, along with his developing interest in non-anime Japanese graphic arts. He showed some especially nice cels that he'd just purchased from [insert third plug for Cel Depot]. Casey Schoenberger gave a brief survey of Asian art forms served as predecessors for manga and, in time, anime, often with old art and new anime images side by side on the screen so we could see the influence. Liz Ellis showed some of her Utena and Escaflowne art and talked about how excited she was about the new digitally enhanced versions of these classic series.

An audience member, reasonably, asked how the studio could do a restored version of series like these, if the original cels were now dispersed and in private hands. We kicked this around, and I explained that, from the studio's point of view, the master was the photographed and timed footage, not the cels themselves. And, since they are chemically active, probably collecting and reimaging them would produce lower quality results, since trace lines would be faded and some paints shifted. But Liz commented that, even so, the cels often were more brilliant than the images on the screen, so the intent was to try to produce a video version that would be at least as sharp and colorful as the cels were, when they were originally photographed.

Next: Bronies Uncensored -- tomorrow, as this was a complicated talk and will take some time to summarize lucidly. My Liz said it did her heart good to watch the audience really paying attention and taking it seriously, vs. last year's hoo-haw event.
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Re: AnimeNEXT 2013

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Bronies Uncensored: The Queering of the Herd

1. Bronies are not normal people.

Neither are Otaku...In Japan the term “otaku” often means a young adult who is solitary, even unstable. The same assumption is made about North American “geeks” (young men who are unemployed and sexually naïve) Often otaku are confused with “hikikomori,” youngsters who closet themselves in their homes and refuse to come out.

Indeed Bronies are not “normal.” A psychological comparison of Bronies and Non-Bronies showed:

1. No difference between the two for employment status or sexual orientation.
2. Bronies were somewhat less likely to be married or show interest in dating.
3. Bronies were somewhat more Introverted, and much more Agreeable.
4. Bronies were less likely to be Neurotic.

Source: Edwards, Patrick, and Marsha H. Redden. 2012. Study Results. Brony Study (Research Project). http://www.bronystudy.com/id1.html

2. Bronies listen to Queer stories

Queer Studies is a useful way to study Brony culture. This theory holds that dominant faction in culture create and enforce social rules of how people should live their lives. It began dealing narrowly with gender and sexual identity, but now deals with all kinds of social and political orthodoxies. These are taught as “common sense,” because those in control do not want people to question them.

So the most disturbing challenges to the status quo are concealed in plain sight in “nonsensical” forms of culture, supposedly intended for children.Adults who openly follow such stories are transgressive (from the culturally dominant POV).

...difficult topics are raised and contained in children’s films precisely so that they do not have to be discussed elsewhere and also so that the politics of rebellion can be cast as immature, pre-Oedipal, childish, foolish, fantastical, and rooted in a commitment to failure.
--Judith Halberstam (2011)

[I spent some extra time here talking about what Halberstam means by “Commitment to failure.” Basically, she argues that majority culture defines difference from the norm not as disagreement but as failure. Dissidents are ridiculed rather than disproved. One lesson social critics have to learn is that such ridicule is part of the way that the majority controls society, and to learn to commit to move past “failure” into genuine cultural revolution. This is pretty clearly exemplified in “Winter Wrap-Up,” in which Twilight Sparkle, the newcomer to Ponyville, tries in every way she can to help the community get ready for spring, but is humiliated in every task. Ironically, she learns at the end that the Ponyvillians are also messing up their jobs, but are just better at concealing it, and in fact the effort is turning out to be an incompetent fiasco from the top down. Twilight, having failed at every individual task, turns out to be the only pony capable of organizing the event and steering it toward success.]

Queer Storytelling is Mythological A myth is a story that takes place long ago, far away, and in a world different from ours, where magic and talking animals exist. At the same time it describes the most important issues of ordinary people here and now. So a myth is both unreal (it presents a fantasy) and real (it expresses problems and conflicts that ordinary people face). By creating an alternative frame of reality, it allows them to think about life issues in a lucid way, unrestrained by prevailing social rules.

Forms of Mythological thinking
• Religious sagas and teaching stories.
• Fairy tales.
• Fantasy novels and movies.
• Video and F2F or live-action role-playing games.
• Comic books and cartoons (or manga and anime)

As society changes, people constantly update old forms of storytelling and create new stories.

Queer stories are therapeutic. Bronies also display Absorption, the ability to become “fully engaged” in artistic experiences. “But they also participate in imaginative ways as well, imagining how they would act if they could enter their series’ world” [Edwards and Redden, Brony Survey (2012)]. Among children fairy tales also elicit a reaction different from other stories. “The fairy tales seemed to have touched the children’s inner concerns,” one study concluded, “and left them in a pensive mood.”

3. Some Queer Stories are about sex.

And so we arrive at the “Uncensored” part. Cartoons seem to embody a part of life that is pre-sexual and so more innocent than the adult world. But if a mythological system can be used to explore and elucidate real-life concerns...and if a major topic of concern among adolescents and young males is one’s sexual feelings and orientation...then it follows that bronies will inevitably use elements of their favored series to understand this part of their world as well.

And so “Rule 34” inevitably follows.

For otaku and those new to the herd... Rule 34: “There is porn of it. No exceptions.” Sometimes extended by a “Rule 36: “There will always be something even more explicit than what you just saw.” Among the brony community, producing, circulating, and reading fan-produced MLP fanfics and graphics with sexually suggestive content has become known as “clopping.” Most public sites for MLP fans (which include youngsters as well as bronies) ban “R34” materials and “cloppers.”

Otherwise young children would lose their innocence. But in fact children have more awareness of (and curiosity about) sexual issues than adults realize. Children as young as six have Barbie and Ken have sex during their fantasy plays. A survey of yaoi fans found a significant number of 14-year-olds in their sample. And folklorists have consistently collected rhymes and chants from 8-10 year olds that have transgressive sexual content.

Or is curiosity about sex transgressive but normal?

[I then showed a meme dealing with the rumor that Twilight Sparkle was “a lesbian,” causing considerable dispute among bronies. The rest of the meme shows Pinkie Pie responding to the rumor, observing that “in theory any of us could be straight, gay, bi, or even asexual.”]

The way the meme discusses the rumor effectively “queers” the series. Since animated characters have no biological gender, their relationships need not conform to human gender expectations. This “avatar” design allows viewers a wider scope in which to explore alternatives in defining sexual roles. Similarly, the animal/human relationships in fairy tales likewise introduce ambiguity in the ways in which one can see gender and sex in everyday society.

Some words from the herd on this issue: Assuming Rainbow Dash is a lesbian because she has interests that mark her as ‘butch’ and a rainbow mane is wrong and stereotypical; but it’s also totally heterosexist to assume that all the characters in this or any show are straight until proven otherwise. Even Lauren Faust has said so.

The point is not that the show is or should be about sexuality. It’s that people are arguing about a specific character’s sexuality in a way that implies that if it were a certain way, it would be wrong.

And to say “It’s a kid’s show, why would they put gay characters in something for little kids?” implies that being gay is something perverted and wrong that adults should protect children [from].


Lady Saika. “Pinkie Pie drops some truth.” Lady Geek Girl and Friends. March 23, 2012
Fact Check: Faust said “assuming [characters like Twilight who have ‘tomboy’ personalities] are lesbians is extremely unfair to both straight and lesbian tomboys.” [“My Little NON-Homophobic, NON-Racist, NON-Smart-Shaming Pony: A Rebuttal.” Ms. Magazine Blog. December 24, 2010.]


Shipping has a history “Shipping” = narratives that describe a non-canonical “relationship” (usually sexual) between two characters in a series. Since the 1970s, Star Trek fans routinely assumed that Captain Kirk and Spock were partners. Fan fictions describing this were “Kirk / [slash] Spock” fictions or just “Slash-fics.” Bert and Ernie, of Sesame Street fame, have been rumored to be gay at least since 1980. Similar rumors exist about Barney, the Purple Dinosaur, Tinky Winkie (of Teletubbies) and Spongebob Squarepants.

Henry Jenkins [Textual Poachers, 1992] said this activity allowed fans to articulate important social concerns and issues not fully articulated within the original works. In the case of Kirk/Spock romances, they created a wider awareness of LGBT issues among straight audiences and encouraged franker discussion of “the social construction of gender.” Participants “are being increasingly drawn into a political alignment with the gay community as they examine the implications of their own writing” (p. 221)

4. Queer Stories about sex are not normal. [But then Bronies are not normal people.]

Shipping fantasies are a major part of Bronylore. All the major characters have appeared in relationships with major and minor characters, including Spike and Derpy. [Not with each other, unless I missed something.] However, the two most “boyish” fillies, Applejack and Rainbow Dash” appear most often, and “AppleDash” shipping is especially popular.

[At this point I showed a whole series of “AppleJack” graphic images, some pretty innocent, but gradually becoming more and more risqué (showing them French kissing, in bed together, etc.), then getting married and raising a family of little ponies that show a hybrid of their colors and traits.]

Such bronylore raises controversy even within the herd. One position is that cloppers should be tolerated, even if what they write or display is distasteful to many web citizens. Others argue that such art verges on bestiality, and people with perverted sexual drives have no right to demand respect from others. Yet another view points out that fans are not turned on to literal farm animals, but to “humanized ponies” with most of the characteristics of human beings. The ponies are not ponies, but human avatars.

Some words from the herd again: Being attracted to Rainbow Dash is different from being attracted to a horse. I'm sure very few people are looking at mlp porn thinking "oh my god oh my god oh my god i want to put my **** inside a horsssee" it's more like "oh my god Dashie you're so ******** sexy I am willing to look past the fact that you're a horse."

I think that is a really big distinction that some people fail to make. Rainbow Dash, or [other cartoon characters] are perceived as people at a mental level, and have humanized features. They're not animals in any real sense.

if you don't believe in sex with cartoon ponies, don't have sex with a cartoon pony.

[All from a forum thread on Equestria Forums, started March 26, 2012 and gradually becoming more and more contentious until, after five pages, it was locked by the moderators.]

[I then concluded by showing and briefly discussing a very popular meme that begins showing a brony reacting to a troll’s attack “You like ponies? LOL Freak” with hurt anger: “Why can’t we just love and tolerate?” Then, in the final frame, the brony is attacking a clopper, saying “You like R34? LOL Freak” The meme was titled “Hypocrisy is Magic” on the “My Little Brony” memesite but has been picked up on many more forums and blogs.]

5. Everything is queer today. –Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland, Ch.2

Sources
Camille Bacon-Smith. Enterprising Women.
John L. Caughey. Imaginary Social Worlds.
Gary Alan Fine. Shared Fantasy: Role-Playing Games as Social Worlds.
Judith Halberstam. The Queer Art of Failure.
Henry Jenkins . Textual Poachers: Television Fans & Participatory Culture.
Susan J. Napier. Anime from Akira to Princess Mononoke: Experiencing Contemporary Japanese Animation.
Jeannie Banks Thomas. Naked Barbies, Warrior Joes, & Other Forms of Visible Gender.
Transgressive Tales: Queering the Grimms, eds. Kay Turner and Pauline Greenhill.
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Re: AnimeNEXT 2013

Post by sensei »

There is now a ten-minute clip of me doing the "Bronies Uncensored" presentation up on YouTube. If you watch it with the "Automatic closed captioning" (as I want to do because of my hearing loss) you get a whole new perspective on my academic intentions.
"Who can help you die? Can you imagine? --brutally! it normal was that he damned heart. Grozny! [Russian for "horrible'] Decline we our mass media ... under our plan ... "
It's kinda like a device that reveals the backmasking in college professors' lectures.

I'd like to try it out on one of the really unsettling MLP episodes, like the great "Winter Wrap-Up" episode, which informs kids that grown-ups are totally screwed up and not really in control of the world they are forcing you to grow up and inhabit. I suspect the backmasking on that one is pretty interesting.
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