Queering Fandoms from the Periphery? A Conversation between Queer Fan Event Organizers in Mexico and the Philippines

Abstract

Queering Fandoms from the Periphery?A Conversation between Queer Fan Event Organizers in Mexico and the Philippines Fen Garza (bio), Kristene Michelle Santos (bio), and James Welker (bio) James Welker: To get things started, please give us a brief overview of your events and your roles in them. Kristene Michelle Santos: I'm one of the founding organizers of Lights Out, in 2004—called BLush since 2012. Lights Out was the first BL convention not just in the Philippines but in Southeast Asia. We usually hold BLush in a convention space in Metro Manila that can accommodate around 600 attendees plus around 100 circles, exhibitors, and guests, in contrast with the just over 100 people, including organizers, who attended the first event. In recent years, we've held the event in July or August to accommodate the schedules of speakers and guests. In 2020, since August 1 will be on a Saturday, BLush will be held on and celebrating "Yaoi no Hi," that is, "yaoi day." "Yaoi," of course, is an alternative Japanese pronunciation of the numbers 801. BLush was founded by a group of friends, including myself, who are very fond of BL. There are three of us from that group who have remained since the beginning, and, along with seven more people, we actively plan the logistics, collaterals, theme, and activities of each event. As a specifically BL event, we encourage participating circles and exhibitors to have at least 60 percent BL-related merchandise. The event's notion of BL-related merchandise is quite loose, however. As long as items they sell are original BL or feature "ships" (relationships pairing of characters) that a circle is interested in—even if the romantic or sexual relationships between them are not explicit—they've satisfied that requirement. So, the event often captures the pulse of fandom as circles produce fan merchandise—ranging from illustration cards and acrylic keychains to stickers and so on—for popular series. What's popular naturally differs from year to year. More often than [End Page 119] not, BL fan merchandise related to anime and manga that is most popular. There is always a handful of merchandise on sale that's related to Anglophone media and fandoms such as Marvel and DC series and English-language films and TV series—but this all also depends on the kinds of series released in a year and their popularity. Last year, we had a couple of fans who made fan merchandise, colloquially called "fan merch," based on K-pop, Thai BL, and danmei [Chinese BL] ships. We hope to continue creating with artists and general participants an increasingly diverse fan space, encouraging different forms of BL as we move forward. Fen Garza: Along with Julio Juaristi, I created Oops Summer Fest in Monterrey in 2015. I currently run it primarily by myself with a closely-knit staff of five and around thirty volunteers. Oops was the first yaoi fan event in Mexico, and when we broadened our focus in 2017 it became the first LGBT comic con in the country. The event started off as mainly focused on yaoi/BL but from the beginning we knew we wanted to open up to other genres not represented at local conventions. Our first event, however, was held the same day as FujoshiCon was first held in Chile. I believe that makes Oops and FujoshiCon the first two BL events in Latin America. Oops is held each year in early September, the last weekend of summer. From the beginning we have held it at Cintermex, Monterrey's main convention center, which has plenty of space to host the roughly 1200 attendees and 200 artists who've participated in the past couple years. BL is very big in Mexico, especially original Japanese BL, as well as all the derivative works based on non-BL media, like fan art, fan fic, and so forth. However, in recent years we've seen more content based on western animation and Chinese and Korean webcomics, as well as a dramatic surge in K-pop-inspired fan art. In the beginning, we expected somewhat more works based on American comics, namely DC and Marvel, with the recent...