Category: fandom

The Eyes of Hyrule Zine Preview

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I’m excited to announce that preorders are open for The Eyes of Hyrule, a Legend of Zelda fanzine devoted to the Sheikah. The zine’s Carrd is (here), and you can check out more previews on its Twitter account (here).

There’s a lot of talent involved in this project, and the mods have been totally on the ball at keeping everything organized for the zine, which is expected to ship out this summer. It’s always a pleasure to be part of a project where everything clicks and comes together so well. Also, I might be biased, but I think the stories (and comics!) in this zine are especially interesting and unique.  

My own piece, “The Only Come Out at Night,” is a soft horror story about Kakariko Village in Ocarina of Time. It’s narrated from the perspective of Grog, the punk kid who hangs out near the entrance of the village at night. During the trading sequence necessary to acquire Biggoron’s Sword, the player can pick up hints that Grog’s story is much darker and more complicated than his initial appearance would suggest. I therefore wanted to use this character to explore the darker side of the Sheikah through the medium of a Stephen King style “peculiar little town” story. I had a lot of fun writing this piece, and I can’t wait to share it.

If you’re interested, you can preorder a copy of The Eyes of Hyrule via Bigcartel (here).

The Museum of Hyrule

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I was recently thinking about what a modern version of Hyrule would look like, and I was imagining how fun it would be for Link to encounter the Master Sword during a class trip to a museum. When I started sketching, however, what I ended up drawing is a reincarnation of Ganon seeing his crown from Ocarina of Time. The moment I wanted to capture is the calm immediately before a terrible storm.

Also, as someone who loves art and history, I tend to dislike museums, but that’s another story entirely.

Essay on Comic Fanzine Discourse

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I’m excited that the essay I presented at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival academic symposium, “The Role of Dōjinshi in Comic Fanzine Discourse,” has been posted on Women Write About Comics (here).

Although this piece began as an overview of the culture of comic fanzines in Japan, it gradually evolved into a discussion of how English-language fanzines have been impacted by the intense pressures of a creative market that provides neither stability nor opportunities for emerging artists. Here’s an excerpt:

This level of competition in formerly free-for-all online spaces has resulted in the widespread frustration succinctly expressed by @rogvaettr’s tweet. From the perspective of someone who simply enjoys fandom culture and indie publishing, we’re living in a golden age of comics and illustration. For many aspiring artists and writers, however, these glossy fanzine anthologies are another shot of anxiety onto a battlefield already pierced with arrows.

The tensions always implicit in any creative industry have been exacerbated by prolonged economic recession and steeply rising costs of living in urban areas, the combination of which has forced freelancers to take on more work while also maintaining an active social media presence. To many people, the intrusion of professional-level competition into ostensibly amateur fandom spaces feels like a betrayal of the sense of community based on affective attachment that formerly provided a relief from professional pressures and anxieties.

This essay was an enormous undertaking that spanned almost half a year, and I want to acknowledge the support of my brilliant editor Kat Overland. Writing about online discourse is difficult, and Kat helped me make good decisions while also directing me to number of useful resources on indie comics. I should mention that Kat is a lot of fun to follow on social media, and you can find them on Twitter (here). I’m also highly indebted to Masha Zhdanova’s essay “A Brief History of Webcomics: 2010 to Now,” which is an interesting and excellent discussion of webcomics in a transcultural context. You can read the essay on WWAC (here) and follow Masha on Twitter (here). Last but not least, I want to thank Anna Peppard (on Twitter here), who organized the TCAF Academic Symposium and encouraged me to share my initial draft with an amazing group of Comics Studies scholars.

Watching from the Shadows

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I contributed a story about Impa and Princess Zelda titled “Watching from the Shadows” to Goddess Reborn, a zine celebrating the female characters of the Legend of Zelda series. You can check out the zine’s Twitter account (here), and you can read my story on AO3 (here). Here’s a short description of the story…

Impa prepares to train Princess Zelda as a Sheikah warrior during the year following the fall of Hyrule Castle. Zelda is tired of hiding and eager to fight, so Impa shares stories from the past to demonstrate that there is wisdom in waiting for the right moment to strike.

This spot illustration was created by the magical and marvelously skilled Frankiesbugs, whose sharp and deadly work can be found on Tumblr, on Twitter, and on Instagram.

Your Journey Awaits! Pokémon Fanzine

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I’ve spent the past several years in the Legend of Zelda fandom, but I have a deep and enduring love for the Pokémon series. Although I’ve taught classes and given conference lectures about Pokémon, I haven’t written fanfic about the series in years. When a few fandom friends announced that they were putting together a zine about the small towns where your avatar characters begin their journeys in the games, I was onboard.

The story I contributed to the Your Journey Awaits! Pokémon Fanzine is “The New Kid in Postwick,” which is about Sonia and Leon from Pokémon Sword and Shield. It’s about Sonia’s childhood in the small rural town of Wedgehurst, her friendship and rivalry with Leon, and the ambitions underlying her decision to set out as a young Pokémon trainer. Here’s a short description of the story…

Sonia has lived in Wedgehurst her entire life. Despite the beautiful nature and rich history of the area, she’s started to feel isolated from the wider world. Her anxieties are exacerbated by the boy who just moved into an old farmhouse in Postwick along with an exotic Charmander. Although he seems confident and carefree, Leon has problems of his own, and he’s ambivalent about moving to the country from Wyndon. Sonia and Leon gradually come to understand one another as they train together, and they seal their friendship by making a promise to venture out into the Wild Area together.

You can read my story on AO3 (here), and you can check out previews of the work appearing in the zine on its Twitter profile (here). The zine itself can be downloaded for free on Itchio (here). Along with a PDF of the zine, the download includes all sorts of fun digital extras like icons and wallpapers. The illustrations and stories are accessible to readers of all ages, so please feel free to share the zine with any younger Pokémon fans in your life!

The Role of Dōjinshi in Comic Fanzine Discourse

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I’m looking forward to presenting at “Histories & Futures of Comics Communities,” the first academic symposium held in conjunction with the Toronto Comic Arts Festival. Here’s the abstract for my presentation…

In December 2021, a conversation concerning the definition of the term “zine” unfolded on Twitter. This conversation arose from anxieties surrounding the recent rise of fandom zines that, while organized by amateur editors and limited in distribution, are nevertheless professionally printed and highly selective. Many comic artists lamented what they perceive as a betrayal of the DIY ethos of North American zine culture, while others have used quote tweets as a platform to remind their followers that anyone can make a zine.  

Surprisingly absent from this conversation is an examination of the largely separate zine cultures that have developed in parallel at comic festivals and anime conventions. Many exhibitors at local indie comic festivals continue to produce artistic but relatively low-budget personal zines. Meanwhile, exhibitors in the artist alleys of anime conventions have gravitated toward professional production methods for fanzines and associated merchandise, often taking advantage of the services of manufacturers based in East Asia.

I argue that contemporary North American anime fanzine culture has its roots in Japanese dōjinshi, which are typically created by aspiring and early-career creative professionals and tend to be manufactured by specialty presses that guarantee a high level of production quality. Dōjinshi-style fanzines spread to North America during the early 2010s via anime conventions hosted in cities on the western seaboard, particularly Los Angeles, Seattle, and Vancouver. While tracing this transcultural development, I will reflect critically on the tension between DIY zine counterculture and big-budget fanzines and address how neoliberal values have affected public conversations on amateur artistic production.

. . . . . . . . . .

The “Comics Communities” event takes place on June 17, the Friday before the TCAF. You can find the schedule (here). The main exhibit floor of the TCAF is completely free and open to the public, but registration for the academic symposium is limited and already completely sold out. Which is very exciting! The symposium organizer is a fellow contributor at Women Write About Comics, and I hope to be able to publish my paper there soon so that it’s accessible to anyone who’s interested.

ETA: My essay is now available on Women Write About Comics (here).

The Capra Demon Is for the Gays

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While waiting for more news about the Breath of the Wild sequel, I started playing Dark Souls on my Nintendo Switch. I’m not into character customization, so my Chosen Undead is the basic male character. I named him Tulip. I am very bad at this game, and Tulip has been having a rough time of it. Yesterday evening, for example, Tulip fell down some stairs and died.

Tulip is currently spending a lot of time with someone called the Capra Demon. The Capra Demon infamously functions as a gatekeeper who blocks the player’s access to the majority of the game. It’s impossible to beat him without knowing exactly what you’re doing or getting help from real-life friends, and the game makes getting help difficult for reasons that are complicated to explain. Everything about this game is complicated to explain, so I hope you’ll forgive me if I leave it at “it’s just very hard to beat this boss.”

The Capra Demon exudes Pyramid Head energy in that he’s extremely fit, shirtless, and carrying two heavy meat-cleaver swords in such a way that his shoulders are pulled back, his chest is thrust forward, and the muscles of his arms are bulging. I made a stupid pastel-colored sketch of him and put it on Twitter, and I immediately lost five followers. I lost five more overnight.

When I say that I hate Pride Month – and sometimes I do hate Pride Month, kind of a lot – what I mean is that I hate the commodification of queer identity, and I hate how this commodification necessitates the sanitization of queer sexuality. Everyone is happy to see cute Disney animals dancing with hearts and rainbows, but nobody actually wants to see gay people being gay. And the Capra Demon is just about as gay as gay can be, which I think is charming and delightful.

I know the history of Pride Month, and I know why it’s important. Still, I wish people were able to accept difference not because it’s fun or attractive, but because… I don’t know, because it’s the right thing to do? Because we’re not animals? Because we’re capable of moral reasoning and extraordinary flexibility concerning what we’re able to accommodate into our worldview? And I just don’t feel that corporate rainbow merch and police-sponsored city pride parades are really helping people outside the community understand that being gay isn’t like Christmas, meaning that it isn’t a “special” thing that we collectively tolerate because it only happens once a year.

Like, being gay is being thirteen years old and playing Dark Souls because your friends are playing it, and then you get to this one boss, and you don’t know what’s going on but there’s just something about him, and the next thing you know you have your pants down and a wad of tissues in your hands, and then when you go to school the next day, maybe the way you talk about this video game character is a little weird, and your friends would never say that they’re homophobic, because of course they aren’t, but there’s just something about you that they don’t like, so they stop talking to you. You’ll make other friends as you find your community, but now you’ll have to live with the anxiety that there’s an element of who you are that a lot of people are always going to understand as being bad and wrong. Just like the Capra Demon is bad and wrong… but don’t his legs look fantastic in that cute little skirt?

I don’t really have a thing for the Capra Demon myself, to be honest, but as soon as I saw him I knew what was up. The Pride Month version of “this is for the gays” has become whatever sweet and wholesome child character is trending from whatever sweet and wholesome children’s cartoon is popular at the moment, but I don’t think that’s an accurate reflection of the reality of queer identity and sexuality. The Capra Demon is for the gays.

Goddess Reborn Zelda Fanzine

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I’m excited to share a preview of the story I contributed to Goddess Reborn, a collection of art and fiction that celebrates the female characters of the Legend of Zelda series.

The zine is beautifully inclusive, and the amount of love that has gone into this project has been incredibly uplifting. I can’t wait for everyone to share their full pieces, but you can check out previews on Twitter (here) in the meantime. Preorders are open until May 31, and all proceeds go to international women’s charities.

✨ goddessreborn.etsy.com ✨

The End of the Line for the Shinra Corporation

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Over the course of its expansive story, Final Fantasy VII changes direction and shifts focus but holds fast to the goal of saving the world from a crisis created by Shinra. Even if there were no interstellar demons or mad scientists, the Planet would never have survived were it not for a small group of activists who dared to challenge the most powerful corporation in the world…

I contributed a meta essay titled “The End of the Line for the Shinra Corporation” to the Return to the Planet fanzine, which celebrates the 25th anniversary of the original 1997 release of Final Fantasy VII. My piece is about how the game references the corporate critique and real-world grassroots environmental activism in Japan during the 1990s. The zine is filled with gorgeous artwork, stories, and nonfiction, and it’s free to download. You can read my essay on my Japanese fiction blog (here), and I also posted it on AO3 (here). You can check out the zine via these links:

🌿 https://twitter.com/ff7ogzine
🌿 http://whitemateria.net/ff7ogzine/
🌿 https://archiveofourown.org/collections/FF7OGZine

The Legend We Create

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The courageous hero loves the wise princess, but they are bound by their fate and must put their feelings aside for the sake of a world floating above the ruins of an ancient kingdom.

…or so the legend goes, but some storytellers have a slightly different interpretation.

The Legend We Create is a tale of mutual pining and second-chance romance on the Great Sea, as well as a meditation on how each new generation heals the wounds of history by telling their own narratives about the past. You can read this short story on AO3 (here).

This story was published in Fated: A Zelink Zine. You check out the work of the other contributors on the zine’s Twitter account (here).