Earlier this year I applied to speak on a panel at an anime convention. The panel is on the subject of fanfiction, and… I was accepted! I'm not sure what my duties are yet and I'm not sure of how much use I'll be, but I'm going to give it my all and have a great time, so if you're in the area come convention season, drop on by and give me a hug! I'm super nervous about the panel, to be honest. Last year a writer who wrote a script for an episode of the TV show Psych was there (as were several prolific fanfic and legitimately published authors), so I feel pretty under-qualified. But, again, I'm there to have fun and talk about something I love, so I know it'll go well! I'm also unspeakably psyched about meeting people who have been successful in the writing world; I can forge connections in the industry I want so badly to be a part of, and this is, as you can imagine, and invaluable perk of my participation.
The above is relevant, I promise, because now it's related-story-time.
I told a friend of mine at school about the panel; she's friends with a writer on the school paper, whom my friend told about the panel, who then asked to interview me on the subject (it's a small school and we're rather in want of news, no matter how silly). I gave her the interview and she started asking questions that had more to do with fanfiction as a genre and a personal influence of mine, as opposed to questions concerning the convention and the panel. I ended up talking about how writing fanfiction has given me confidence, and how some snooty academic-types look down on it as a derivative form of literature and how these people need to go fu—I mean, go educate themselves and open their minds. We talked about how fanfiction is a great way for younger or more inexperienced writers to get feedback on their work, how it's a low stress environment, how it teaches commitment, how it helps one build a tolerance for criticism, how it lets a writer focus on story progression as opposed to world building, which in turn can help writers get a handle on character development with few distractions… all that good stuff. It was great fun and the article went swimmingly.
Well… mostly. It had a bit of a ripple effect.
My college town is pretty small. Just like my college itself, the town isn't the most newsiest of places—it's the typical, CAT STUCK IN TREE-makes-headlines sort of small town, and oftentimes you'll find that the local paper
This rewrite led to a very, shall we say "interesting", error.
You'd think that professional journalists would check their facts. "Think" being the operative word. However, the staff most obviously did NOT check their reworded facts, because in what appears to be a typo or a very unfortunate case of we-do-not-edit-anything, the paper claimed… well…
I think the only way to get this across is to quote the paper directly. Cutting out some uninteresting bits, they said (and I quote):
Blaine is a junior… and even wrote an anime called "Yu Yu Hakausho".
I'll give you a minute to absorb this information.
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..
…
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…Apparently, some dude in Japan has been collecting my royalties for YYH since before I was born. Who knew?
Obviously, I'm kidding. The whole instance shocked me. I mean, shouldn't they—the staff of a professional daily paper—have known better?? Not only did they incorrectly spell the name of my favorite anime (blasphemous heathens), they also claimed that I'm responsible for its creation.
I didn't let this go uncorrected; I'm loyal to Togashi to the core. I called the paper's office and told them they had twisted a teensy little fact, which they graciously corrected in their next publication. The whole thing was incredibly bizarre—but it did look nice to see my name associated with something so awesome in print, even if it was misspelled.
((The moral of this story: Edit your work and check your facts when dealing with anime otaku. Now go get 'em, Togashi fangirls.))
