fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #1967 ]

[ SECRET POST #1967 ]

⌈ Secret Post #1967 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 051 secrets from Secret Submission Post #281.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 1 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I majored in Japanese in college. One of my profs was a very intelligent man whose life work was his translation of The Tale of Genji. If you've read it English, you know how ridiculous such an undertaking is; if you've seen excerpts of the original ancient Japanese, you know why it's taken over a decade, and why I have an enormous amount of respect for this man.

Anyway, I took a seminar with him. It was very serious material, and he took it quite seriously. But that didn't stop him from taking half an hour out of class one day to talk about Final Fantasy and how it has helped the evolution of video games as a medium capable of telling deep, meaningful, intricate stories. And all of us students were nodding along, agreeing that it was totally awesome. And then we were comparing the games and talking about which ones are better in which way and why. In class. It was awesome.

Moral of the story: educators can totally be in fandom, too! It helps if your fandom has something to do with your field, but even if not, it's still cool.

But that's kind of the difference between high school and college fandoms, isn't it? Things like that are acceptable at a collegiate level, but if a high school teacher took some time out to do the same it would be problematic. It all depends on the age of the students.

Okay, you're right on the in-class thing. But it seems like OP has fled out-of-school fan gatherings of one sort or another. As long as a teacher didn't take time out of class, I don't see why being a fan would be such an issue. So what if you see your teacher or principal at a fan event for Twilight/Sherlock/One Piece? Maybe it's a little bit awkward, but I don't think it would be any more awkward than seeing a distant cousin or that barista who always takes your order at Starbucks, in the sense of, "Oh, wow, that person actually has a life outside of teaching me at school/sending me Christmas cards every year/making my coffee," which admittedly can be awkward. But enough to be a real issue? I wouldn't think so. *shrugs* Or maybe that's just me? IDK.

To be fair, OP, I totally get you on the "too weird or not weird enough" thing. I'm kind of in that same awkward no-man's-land, so it's kind of weird to talk fandom with people IRL. But being in education shouldn't put a damper on your fan life.

My best friend is a counselor at a public middle school in the US Bible Belt, and she has to be super careful about how she behaves in public. Sweet little Susie and her mom run into my friend at a dinner out and there's a table full of alcohol, whether or not she's drunk? BAD. My friend is seen bellydancing at a gathering downtown in bedazzled bra and split skirt performance attire? BAD. She's not into fandom, but I imagine it would be equally as BAD because here fandom activity and local con goers are pretty heavily equated with sexual deviance. A presumed sexual deviant in a middle school? You can probably guess that'd be MEGA-BAD.

da

Ew. That sounds awful tbh - having to carefully censor yourself in public at all times. I don't think I'd be able to do it.

Just curious - what do you mean by "sexually deviant"? Someone who isn't straight-and-vanilla? Someone who has lots of sex or deviates from Christian ideals of what sex should be (whatever those ideals are, since not all Christians agree)? Something else?

Pretty much all of the above. Anything outside monogamous heterosexual missionary within the bounds of marriage. She's got a long-term boyfriend but they're not engaged, and we've had discussions about her fears that her principal'll find some reason to punish or get rid of her if she should accidentally become pregnant.

Also, the only con here locally got its greatest amount of press ever when it hosted a few furry panels years ago. So that's the association the general public has.

I've lived in two states in the US South and taught in both at the collegiate level, and you are absolutely right about how careful you have to be in public. If you're not conservative, Protestant Christian, straight, and white in the places I've lived, you're already suspect anyways.

OP: That's been basically my experience, too. Based on my appearance and general behavior, I typically don't code to people as fannish or alternative lifestyle, which is helpful for maintaining privacy as it relates to my job but makes it hard to connect with peers in my age bracket with the same interests.

AYRT

*nods*

I know exactly what you mean. (Especially when some of the colleagues who I had decided to trust, and who spend most of their time role playing a fucking Vampire the Masquerade game for fuck's sake and who should be my peeps) decided to side with the crazy evil boss of tenure denying doom in her decision. I have kinda decided not to make any RL friends anymore. LOL *sigh* It's just too risky.

Hmm....here in my city we have a furry con that pops up every year...(or is that occasionally?), a con that's been here 30+ years, and new anime con.

They also has some of that stigma as well, but not nearly as bad. And I think that's just because my city is pretty much the only "liberal" city in the entire state.

(if anyone got any of that then, hi possible neighbors!!)

OP: I am best known in my main fandom for writing sometimes plotty smut between characters that were older teens during the canon of their series. Most of the time it was future-fic with them aged up, but a few times it wasn't because teens 15+ having sex is pretty reflective of reality. Do I want to risk a student, particularly one who's not the best student and may be looking for an upper hand, connecting me with my fandom identity and the "child porn" I've written? No.

Some of my fandoms are anime, too, and while it's way more acceptable to be an anime fan now than it was when I started, there are still plenty of negative preconceptions for that interest alone.

Who was your professor? Has he published his Genji translation? :O

If it's the one I'm thinking of, it's not yet published but should be in the next year or so, I believe.

Your professor sounds amazing and I agree with him 100%; the Final Fantasy series is an inspiration to other games (or should be). Unrelated: I also read some of The Tale of Genji in one of my classes. :D

I work at a college, and here at least whether or not a professor has the safety of tenure has a pretty big impact on how... creative, I guess you could say... they get with their teaching and other activities.

YES YES YES YES YES

This is so completely true.

Goddammit, fucking tenure. You know, it's great when a professor has tenure and they can do whatever the hell they want with their class and teach in whatever way they see fit, but not when students don't learn jackshit or it becomes Russian roulette whether you pass, get an A, or just straight up fail. I swear to God, some of my professors assign grades by picking names out of a hat. I'm fucking sure of it. It's a damn crapshoot. And I hate it when you've spent all semester studying your ass off, learning the material they've assigned you (and sometimes didn't even bother really explaining, just a "Oh yeah, this thing exists, don't forget to learn it") and you show up for the final and IT'S NOTHING LIKE ANYTHING YOU'VE SEEN IN CLASS OR EVEN IN THE BOOK OR COULD POSSIBLY PIECE TOGETHER FROM WHAT YOU HAVE SEEN. You and everyone around you is sitting there just like, "HOLY SHIT. I'M FUCKED. JUST COMPLETELY WITH A RUSTED PIPE FUCKED." And everyone's just tapping their feet, sighing heavily, tapping their pencils, shuffling their papers and, generally freaking right the fuck out because what do you do? Where do you begin? Should you already start planning on re-taking this class?? Just DAMN!

Uhhh. Yeah, that was a completely off-the-wall, irrelevant rant there. Sorry. Just needed to get that off my chest. D:

I feel you, anon. In my second semester of graduate school, I had a professor who was really into numbers analysis and assessment, and he told us ahead of time that he specifically designed his exams so half the class would fail. Well, you don't get into graduate school without being something of an overachiever so we were all "yeah, right"... until we got the first exam. And we realized he wasn't kidding.

Then with a later exam in that same class, his TA messed up the copies pretty badly and everyone was missing the last 10 pages of questions. So he left class to go make copies of the remainder of the exam, and he's gone for over 15 minutes. We're sitting in there, unsupervised, with nothing else to do, and plenty of opportunity to cheat off one another or look for answers in our textbooks, but we all knew it was absolutely pointless, so we all just kind of laughed desperately instead. It was awful. Oddly enough, though, he graded papers super easy.

I'm sorry you have had a bad experience. I completely agree with you that some teachers are bad teachers; usually those teachers don't become bad teachers because they've gotten tenure, though. They were bad teachers all along.

Tenure is important for college teachers like me because until you have it, you can be fired for your lifestyle or your religious beliefs or whatever it is that makes you different from the community your college is in. And they don't have to even tell you why you're being fired, just not sign your contract. It's really scary, especially since a lot of the teachers who get denied tenure are the ones who speak out against the kinds of things you're talking about in your comment, the ones who rock the boat against complacency, and the ones who are often the best teachers.

True for high school teachers (like me), too. I don't have tenure in the (crazy stupid conservative) state I teach in, so I'm afraid to answer when a student asks me for an opinion. I hate lying to my students, but what else can I do? I already have enough going against me for being Jewish.

AYRT

I can't even imagine how much worse it must be for high school teachers.

At least I have the comfort of knowing that the students I teach are legally considered adults and, therefore, I have a bit of leeway in my interaction with them.

I lie or don't say too. I don't lie about the important stuff. I don't allow racism or sexism or homophobia or religious persecution to take place in my class (and I'm sure you don't either). But I don't talk about my *own* religious beliefs or sexuality or politics or anything. It feels just too dangerous.

K-12 teachers can't get tenure in any of the southern states I've lived in either. I didn't even know you *could* get tenure at that level in other parts of the country until I went off to college.

Hahaha is it weird that I know exactly what college you went to and who this professor was because I went to the same school and had the same prof? That guy is awesome.

Please, PLEASE tell me who this amazing professor is. PM if you must. I'm flailing and dying to know. I've been out of the loop a few years now, but I can't think of a known Genji translator who could be a game nerd!

I know how you feel! We're currently reading Heike Monogatari with our Prof but she takes at least some time at the end/beginning to a) bitch about how awful the university administration is b) tell us about her favourite shows (which she pirates on top of that). Ancient Japanese politics with Game of Thrones references, fuck yeah!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ SECRET POST #1967 ]

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