NDK 2021: Saturday Panels (Day 2)
Our day was supposed to start out the day with the panel Make Your Own Dragon Plush w/Heather Martin, but she decided to make the convention go by her schedule and she started half an hour early which blocked all of the disabled people from getting into her panel. People with disabilities were supposed to sit in a waiting area and she did not go get them when she started her panel early. It also left tons of people waiting outside for the panel to start and she never bothered to come out and tell people that it was too late because she had started way early. I made a formal complaint to NDK about her doing this and they didn’t care. The next day for her second panel Heather decided to start an hour earlier then her panel was scheduled leaving even more people out. We had decided to skip her on Sunday, but heard from others complaining about her pulling an even worse stunt. I told others to also go and make complaints against her so that NDK would be aware of just how many people she negatively impacted. Heather Martin should never be invited to another con because she thinks that the con world runs around her schedule and when she wants to do anything. Please boycott her panels if she is ever at a con you attend. She needs to learn that there are other people in the universe and that discriminating against people is not ok.
11am Anime Goes to College
-Panel Description: Attend a short lecture from Emilie Waggoner, who teaches the University of Colorado Denver’s first-year seminar on anime through a sociological lens.
-Notes: Lead anime characters are normally aged between 18-25 years old which has them fall under student development theory. Different theories can also be applied to explain why college students act the way they do. Chickering and Reisser’s theory focuses on vectors of development, but it was developed to focus on CIS gendered males because at the time they were developing the theory that was what their student population looked like. One of the animes that Emilie uses is Yuri on Ice because it is good to use to analyze for different theories. When looking at fan development it is hard to get research on the population. She did also briefly mention that more research is needed on if queer baiting in fandoms is real or not.
This panel was very good, but I do not know how well it works for the general otaku population. I found it interesting because I work in higher education, but much of it could easily go over the heads of the average person. I actually invited Emilie to do a version of this panel as one of the monthly events for Fan Meetups. I would recommend going to her panels or taking a class with her. She is very knowledgeable about these subjects, but also don’t be afraid to ask questions if you do not understand something she is talking about. She is good at engaging with the audience.
2pm Cosplay with Pride w/Queen D
-Panel Description: This panel is for all the freaks, geeks, and outcasts. The ones who were told to not be yourself. The ones who were bullied, mocked, and may have even lost friends over your art. Come to this panel and see that it wasn’t all for nothing. Cosplay is love. Join the Queen of freaks and geeks himself, Queen D as he helps you to “cosplay with pride.”
-Notes: Therapy is for everyone and not just those with known mental health issues. During the panel Queen D kept coming up with so many great quotes that I couldn’t write them all down. “Calling someone a snowflake is not a bad thing because each one is unique.” “If you are against bullying, then why do you bully yourself.” If you want to get into burlesque a good way to start is to volunteer as a kitten, get some basic dance and acting classes, and make yourself useful.
A lot of this panel focused on mental health and covid instead of cosplay. I love going to Queen D panels, but she does have a habit of getting off topic a lot. I would recommend to anyone to go to one of her panels and her late night ones are even better.
Random things I learned about Queen D in the panel: She likes a venti water from Starbucks because she says that it is triple filtered. She has 2 cats Diva (Demon Cat) and Naja (named from the character from What We Do in the Shadows). Naja goes after food left on counters. She is on something called Twitch (yes, I really was not familiar with this one until I looked it up just because of her). One of the positive things to happen to D during the pandemic was that she bought a house and took up gardening. She also just launched a beauty line of glitter products.
8pm America’s Internment of Japanese Americans
-Panel Description: In 1941, the U.S. imprisoned more than 10,000 Japanese Americans in internment camps in response to Pearl Harbor. Come learn about the horrible conditions and struggles these American citizens endured and their strength and survival.
-Notes: Order 9066 was what was used to intern them. The government also got some non-Japanese mixed in because they didn’t care about the differences in Asian groups. There was a little talk about the debate of to say internment camps vs concentration camps. The government used some Native American land to build the camps. The only politician to stand up against it was from Colorado. Instead of standard education, Japanese students mostly only got political brainwashing. Little Tokyo in California has a museum dedicated to Japanese American History.
Most of the info for this panel was very generic and it felt like she was just adding “witty” commentary as she read off of Wikipedia. If you knew nothing about this part of American history then this could be a crash course, but for most of the attendees there was not a deep enough dive into what happened to hold much interest.
All panel descriptions come directly from the NDK Program and are their words not mine. All notes are mine that I take while the panel is in progress (it’s like to class for me and yes you really can learn things at cons).
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