Absolution

The country is sad today. What should have been an exciting day for all fans of comic books and the movies based on them is now marked by the kind of weariness that can only come from the enactment of a national tragedy.

Like with the last nationally significant article I wrote, about the January 18^th internet blackout, there isn’t really much left to say about the event itself: An individual, allegedly 24 year old University of Colorado student James Holmes, entered a screening of “The Dark Knight Rises” dressed in ballistics gear and opened fire, killing 12 and leaving 59 injured. Upon being apprehended, the suspect allegedly made claim that he was inspired by the films, making the claim that he himself was in fact The Joker.

All day my personal Facebook wall has been alight with news of the shooting with friends and acquaintances all bringing attention to the tragedy, and for a while, I struggled over whether or not I too was going to have something to say about it. I committed something pretty disappointing myself the moment I heard about the crime. I got on the threads of several of my friends and I made the statement “What is wrong with people in Colorado?”  I was trying to indicate there has to be some civil unrest, or some element of the law in the state, like their current stance on gun control, (which is incidentally, stricter than it is in our home state of Texas) that was to blame for this tragedy.

The response to my comments however, were negative, and rightfully so. I respectfully agree with every response given to a statement like that, but the strange thing about it is, I agreed with all the statements made against me. Of course, this is an isolated incident, and the actions of a whole state cannot be blamed. I know that stereotyping a group doesn’t work to create a solution. I realize that raising flags like gun control won’t undo what’s already been done. I forgot that for a moment, though. I, like a lot of people are mentally working to make sense of the whole unfortunate circumstance.

So, after spending the entire morning lowering my personal reputation on Facebook, I remembered a similar incident earlier in my life: 9/11 happened when I was in my first semester of Community College, and while I was drawing a still life in one of our classes, another instructor I didn’t know, took our class aside and told us all to design posters expressing our feelings about the tragedy. Now, since I was just barely beginning art class, I didn’t think I had the skill or ability to make a real statement. Her only response was “Sometimes you have to stop being a student, and start being an artist."

I drew what turned out to be a graphite bleeding heart filled with fissures like a fault line with the planet Earth as its left ventricle on a piece of oddly torn butcher paper. It seemed corny to me then…It still does to me now, but nonetheless I learned a lesson: when something that happens that effects us all, we should all try to do what we can to make things better, even if it’s something as insignificant as giving away a day of art class.

So that’s why I finally made up my mind to write this, but more important than my decision is the message I want to send everyone:

Speculation, comments, discussions and debates on Facebook serve their own purpose, but when a tragedy like this happens it should make everyone want to get up and make everyone create something.

It doesn’t matter if it’s private or public, small or big…It just has to make a statement. Some artists are already doing this by creating fan-art and symbols like the Bat-Ribbon logo that have been appearing on Facebook. But there should be more. If you’re a cosplayer, a photographer, a gamer, a videographer, or a musician…If you make 3D models or plush dolls or even internet memes, you should put your feelings about the event in whatever form best suits you. If you can raise money for charity with what you do, by all means do so, but it’s not a requirement.

Some people are debating whether it’s appropriate that images of Batman should appear in these works: I say absolutely. After all, Batman is the ultimate symbol against the senseless and wanton perpetration of criminal acts like this. If this individual considers himself to be the Joker, then everyone who considers this to be wrong is, by all means, Batman.

What’s more important than the content of any of these works, however, is the message it sends: we do not approve of these sorts of actions. We do not want our community and our way of life beaten down by the act of one misguided individual who was inspired to commit murder and atrocity in a realm where we usually are inspired to uphold justice and what is right.

Just remember this quote from Batman: Absolution. “We impose meaning on the chaos of our lives. We create form, morality, order. It's a choice we have to make every second of every minute of every day.”

The Future of Augmented Reality

This past June 23, we at Augmented Reality had out first year anniversary. I say “had” instead of “celebrated” because we had no particular party, private or public, and we didn’t make any special videos or articles made in order to commemorate the event. In fact, we haven’t posted many articles at all lately, and for that I have nothing to say other than we’re sorry. 

A lot has happened in the personal lives of my contributors and I the past few months. Some of them are minor, some of them are major, and some of them had more impact on us than they really should have. One of those types of changes occurred around February, during my last semester of college at UTEP, when my friend and fellow contributor Alicia left her apartment to move into the spare room of my house. A good amount of my personal time has been spent adjusting to the changes that can only come from sharing a home with someone. Naturally, the fact that I was working on graduating from university added to my work load, but one thing that was most impactful for me was the fact I’d lost my job as a file clerk at a local grade school; a job that I’d held on to for four years. 

A lot of time that would have gone into the blog has been put into the adjustments that we’ve had to make. Alicia and I are both the main editors of this blog and in the past few months we’ve both had to put aside our responsibilities a lot in order to…make life happen. In addition to that we’ve taken on a new contributor, John Browning, the “BlackWing Magician,” and we’ve been hard at work producing his directorial project “Yu Gi Oh: The Blood of Raizel.” The production of the film has been an emotional mixed bag for all involved. There have been good times and trying times on set for both the crew and any members of the cast we’ve brought in from El Paso’s numerous other organizations. 

Thankfully, the film is as of now complete life is slowing down, and everyone in the AugReal crew are optimistic about one another and their ability to continue forward working as a team. As for me, well, I’ve graduated UTEP with my Creative Writing and Communication degree, and while I’m still between jobs I’ve made a significant amount of income doing some freelance online communications work.

When I think about the future of the blog, however, all I can think about is how much more we can all accomplish. I want Augmented Reality to do its best to provide the latest information on all of El Paso’s great events, conventions and local business. I want Augmented Reality to produce unique and original content for the web, and I want Augmented Reality to be the go-to place for all the greatest information related to fandom this great city of El Paso can offer. In order to do that, I have to be the person who is willing to change. The past few weeks I’ve been figuring out to do that, and I’ve busied myself with making apologies, negotiating new deals with some associates, and planning a feature for the blog that, well…I don’t want to spoil the surprise. 

So, for all of you that are looking forward to some sort of affirmation from Augmented Reality on its first anniversary, here it is: the next few months re going to be filled with all new material, brand new content, and brilliant new ideas that are going to be like nothing we’ve ever produced before. We are already hard at work on some unique and original ideas, and with the addition of new member John Browning’s directorial skills, we will be bringing out some great original content. We’re still very closely associated with many local conventions, shops, and event-makers in the city, and we’ll continue to provide a unique look at all the truly unique and interesting events that El Paso has to offer.

Here’s to the future of Augmented Reality.

Bringing Up The Past

When I was about 20 years old, I was a student at El Paso Community College. I belonged to a creative writing and poetry club, and while I was there, I first met Ray Ramos. Ray, as some of you may know, is the founder and editor-in-chief of Adversary Comix, one of El Paso’s many local independent comic entities. At the time I met Ray, Adversary was still in its infancy, and it had a small stable of artists and writers making preliminary plans to turn their imaginative ideas into original comics.

Hopeless opportunist that I am, I expressed an interest in joining up with Adversary Comix. I showed him some samples of my artwork: spindly little drawings of cartoons with bug-eyes, Simpsons-esque overbites and bodies the width of twigs. Despite the fact I’ve been drawing since I was a child, I’ve never quite broken out of an art style any more stunning than your average episode of “Home Movies,” which just happened to be what my art-style was frequently compared to. What caught Ray’s attention more was my writing which, despite still being less developed than it is as I write this article, still contained a good amount of silliness combined with insight and a little satire.

So Ray brought me to meet the rest of his crew at the time, one or two of them being members of Adversary to this day, the rest of them temporarily supporting the group before they later moved on to other things. One of the latter category was a guy I’m gonna call Trevor. Trevor was looked up to by the rest of the group. He had a style of art that evoked many comics of the early 90s, and had two concepts planned for Adversary.

Eager to set myself up as a representative of a local comic book company, I drew up a three-page preview of a story for a preview book that Adversary was assembling. My story was basically a comedic series involving a team of paranormal investigators. I stretched myself creatively in directions I never had before. Looking back I never realized it took me until that age to begin inking my drawings. Most of my artwork consisted of character designs without backgrounds. For this preview I had drawn some crude borders around my art that resembled a computer grid, and lined out neat lines to hand letter. (My handwriting has always been terrible.) Work completed, I showed it all to Ray, who was impressed by my initiative, and I had my three pages published in an early print of their preview book. Working off my momentum I was also uploading images to the company’s official Yahoo! Group.

However, I was unaware of something boiling slowly in the background. In the time it took me to complete my work, roughly a 5 week period, I attended regular meetings with the group at a Village Inn. We drank coffee, ate pie, and discussed future plans. Trevor’s involved elevating comic books as an art from. Younger, naïve and impetuous me didn’t understand that. I simply assumed comic books were supposed to be objects of fun and interesting writing in and of themselves. So we’d constantly debate about this during our meetings. One time, at the end of a meeting, I was on a miniature egotistical rampage. I had said the standing slogan for Adversary Comix, “your Imagination is not the Enemy” didn’t make sense, along with several meandering self-back-pats which I can’t even remember. As I left the meeting on that night, Trevor turned to me and said “See you in the funny papers.” I turned back for a moment, thinking what he said was odd, but I didn’t think anything of it.

You could probably guess what happened next, but I’ll tell you anyway. I went back on the Yahoo! Group to find all of my uploads had been deleted. I tried to upload them again. I deleted them again. I got ahold of Trevor and he told me he didn’t want me on the team anymore because I was being obnoxious. It didn’t matter how well I had held up my end as far as comic book writing, the fact that I was being a pain in the ass to another artist was enough for me to be given the brush-off. Ray did nothing, and to top it all off, my three pages were removed from the preview book. I know now it was because I was being immature, but I didn’t then, so I plotted all sorts of stories to write and publish so I could ‘get back’ at those skunks at Adversary Comix and retain some sense of integrity as far as being a comic writer.

Lots of people say revenge is a good motivator…It’s not really. Years went by. Ray and Trevor had a falling out over some issue I know nothing about and Ray started contacting me again. He wanted me to give him constructive criticisms of new comic preview books and side-projects he was working on. I gave him a few, but then I brought up the issue again by asking him “Why do you want the opinion of someone you kicked out a couple years ago?” He stopped asking. More years went by. Last year, as a side-effect of my combing the city in search of stories for my YouTube channel, I finally patched things up with Ray, and with the assistance of local artist Elijah Lawson I actually released a comic through Adversary Comix: a one-shot story featuring their character “El Nino Heroe” for Free Comic Book Day.

I’m glad that I could be accepted back into the comic-writing community in the city, but that’s not really the point I finally decided to share this. I decided to share this story because I wanted to let you know about the hideous mistake I made. It took me 8 YEARS to get over that incident, get over my own selfish pride and bring myself to a point where I could create again. That’s 8 whole years I lost ALL resolve to do something creatively, and to this day I’m still not so sure I can ever be fully successful as a comic book writer.

Every time I hear about a club quitting a club to form another club, or even a con quitting a con to become another con, and every time I hear that the motivation behind these actions is an attempt to ‘get revenge’ by ‘living well,’ I get upset because I remember everything that happened to me when I endeavored to do the exact same thing. I still keep the copy of the Adversary preview book that contained my three page preview as a reminder, and I constantly wonder what could have been if I had only done things differently.

Every writer looks to send a message to their readers. Everyone who practices written words hope that people see the messages underneath them. I, on the other hand, have always prided myself on my honesty and my integrity, even though my ego and my temper have always gotten me into trouble. If I could give one lesson to the world, though, it would be taken from this story.

And if that guy I called Trevor is reading this, I just want him to know that I’m sorry. You’ve taught me a very valuable lesson about life.

Remember, Remember...

January 18^th.

Remember this day. Have it circled on your calendar for next year.

Keep it every year as a holiday, not one where you get presents or time off, but instead one where you reflect.

Remember this day, for this was the day of a revolution, our first bid for the freedom of the free web against one of its greatest opponents, the United States government.

Honestly, there’s no need to be too informative about it. You know precisely what I’m talking about. Today, January 18, 2012, a variety of major US websites, among them Google, Craigslist, and Wikipedia acted in protest against the Support Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA). I don’t have to spend too much time describing what these bills too. You’ve read about them on bigger sites like Kotaku and The Escapist, and if you’ve visited Google or Wikipedia today, you’ve probably signed their petitions, used their search engine to look up your local congressman and seriously consider sending them a letter.

You’ve heard all about SOPA, how people in jest call it the “Sons of the Patriots” act, in reference to the similar deed Solid Snake fought against in Metal Gear Solid 2. You have heard it is supported by gaming and technology companies you admire like Sony, Nintendo, and even the Entertainment Software Association. You’ve heard that its attempts to install DNS blocking for domains has the potential to damage the navigation of the web. You’ve heard that recently it has been revised to be slightly less endangering and President Obama intends to veto the act, which has caused several outraged pundits to calm down slightly, but only slightly, as people are still concerned by the loss of internet freedoms apparent in the Protect IP act. You’ve heard THAT law gives power to corporations to deem anything a violation of copyright and take anyone from the most powerful competing organization to the most humble writer of fan-fiction to court for copyright violations.

We all know it’s important. We all know it’s something we should all be fighting against, and yet the only thing I can be said about it in this article I am writing is just how personal a law like this can be to one person. It doesn’t sound like it’s a lot, but even if it’s the least I can do in support, it’s still worth doing.

So here goes:

My family officially got internet access in 1996. At the time I was about 15 years old. More than the World Wide Web, my first explorations on the internet were on AOL keywords. I spent literally hours on the official Kids WB AOL portal, where I and a group of online friends wrote our first attempts at fan-fiction starring Earthworm Jim. The cartoon based on the video game had already been cancelled by the network, but on the internet it was still alive and kicking thanks to the efforts of our writing. So much so that the Kids WB keyword kept that message board open for about a year after the show was cancelled before finally taking it down. In the meantime I found other AOL and World Wide Web message boards dedicated to all the cartoons I enjoy, wrote several more fan-fictions and discovered…..Hey! I really enjoy writing! In fact I enjoy it so much I hope to write professionally someday!

Yeah it’s a hokey story about how I ultimately decided about what I want to do with my life, but the reason I bring it up is because I see SOPA and PIPA in terms of how it would limit me if I were still that age. I imagine myself at the age of 15, writing on a message board, when suddenly I’m summoned to court by…Interplay or Universal, suing me because an Earthworm Jim fan-fiction I wrote was a violation of copyright. In my day this happened, every now and then a fan-fiction writer would get a cease and desist letter from a company, telling them to take down some copyright material or face a lawsuit, and the individual would obligingly take the material off.

But SOPA permits companies to do SO much more…On that very first infringement, if they consider it enough of a copyright violation, they’d have me in court. No warning letter, no opportunity to quit, just…criminalization of myself over a work I wrote, not as a profiteer but just as a fan of the series.

If that were to happen to 15 year old Mike Cervantes, do you think he would have been interested in continuing a career in writing? What about the 15 year olds who are writing fan-fiction and drawing fan-art today? How will they feel once this act passes? A whole generation of creative people who, like me, were inspired by the fan-communities on the web would be forever lost.

Fast forward to just about a year ago and I’ve started attending UTEP. It’s just been a month since I’ve launched Augmented Reality, and I was taking a course in online journalism. It was a memorable course, not just because I was taking it while situating myself in the role of a blog manager, but also because I had a really great instructor.

My professor was a journalism veteran. He trekked across the world with his camera as a teenager and returned to the United States to become the managing editor of several English and Spanish language newspapers.

Naturally, you’d think that such a veteran of the printed page would put a lot of emphasis on the journalism techniques of old, but to my surprise, my professor spent just about every day of that class telling us how important the new digital media was. “If you’re a print media major, change your major,” he would often say “print is dead.” He would tote the modern technologies as giving the common man the ability to report news the instant it happened, citing an incident where an individual recorded an incident of Juarez gang violence using only the camera in his sell phone.

We would spend our mornings in each class exploring the front page of The New York Times and discussing current events. Often times our conversations would turn to the then-popular “Tea Party” movement. My professor was a professional journalist and never made any biases. But he did say once, that the one thing that concerned him the most about the Tea Party was that they don’t have respect for journalism. Couple that with what he had said about the new media and technology before, and I was able to form my own opinion about the information climate of today, which I will now share with you.

We live in a society of vast, widespread information. The web already contains more information than a person can ever possibly know in their lifetime and new stuff is being added to it every day. Anyone can update the web, including religious, political and social extremists, so you often have to be aware of where you’re getting your sources from, but besides that, anyone can share what they know about the world, essentially making anyone a journalist. Hell, I even do it as a hobby. Not since Gutenberg invented the printing press has communication been so revolutionized.

But with every technological evolution, there comes a series of technological revolutions. People who are comic book and video game fans know this because there were concerted, and at times successful, efforts to censor that material under the extreme belief that it was corrupting our youth, and interrupting our ways of life. We’ve grown to accept comics and are slowly growing to accept Video Games as media, but it just goes to show that whenever something progressive occurs in society, there will always be a specific group ready to oppose it.

There are people in our political climate who want to return to simpler times, adhere to traditional values, and hold us all to a standard of living that has served themselves well, but may not particularly fit with us all. Some of them are republicans, others Democrats and Independents, but they all certainly agree that the internet represents that last great frontier of free and open information an ancient conservative corporate society cannot fathom.

Think about it: Before the internet became public in the 90s, people had to rely on media run entirely on corporate sources. A small collection of very large companies own all the media in this country in every other form: television, radio, magazines, and newspapers, to the point where anything said in the media wasn’t in some small way biased.

The internet changed that. No matter what is said about the violence in Juarez on 20/20, it can’t compare to the footage shot by that one rogue guy with his cell phone camera. Corporations are concerned, not so much about torrents and piracy as they are about letting the public inform themselves in the same way as that one human being with a camera and an internet connection.

The corporations’ response to this is to lobby congressmen, who want a return to a corporate-sponsored media, (and if you think I’m incorrect about this, please google ‘Net Neutrality’) to give corporations a way to lobby the government and assert control of their intellectual property. Once they’re in the machine, they can then attempt to regulate and justify any sort of changes to the internet landscape as they can get away with and before you know it you’ll have a corporate-controlled internet.

So you see, being against SOPA and PIPA has more to do with copyright infringement, criminalizing fan-works, or even free speech. It’s about technological sovereignty. I want to be a part of that information-rich future my professor saw so clearly. But if these laws are passed, I won’t be able to go on and provide the articles, information and features on this site that I have freely and out of my own personal enjoyment. I’ll be too busy dodging my corporate Big Brothers.

Of course, that’s simply the way I see this outcome affecting me.

What you have to think of, is how it will affect you.

Oh and for all you El Paso readers: Here’s a link to a list of your elected officials.

A Farewell to Anime

In the last piece I wrote I explained partially why it took me so long to write an article talking about building a better anime con here in El Paso. I already had a pretty good idea what to say but I was hesitant to finish it, until I got some positive impromptu feedback from my friends. Given that the people I was driving home with back from EPCON were saying essentially the same things as I intended to write, I was re-assured and I was able to continue finishing the article you had just read.

However, even THAT re-assurance was not enough to finally get me writing that article. As I’d mentioned I received that encouragement driving away from EPCON, which was in September. I still spent the whole month of October not writing this article. There was a reason for that too, and the reason I continued to procrastinate also speaks very clearly to the problem of anime conventions in the area.

I was afraid of the fallout.

The anime community in this area has a nasty habit of ostracizing people who have differing opinions. That’s the simple truth of it. Don’t believe me? Well, let me tell you how I come to this conclusion.

I first experienced this phenomenon the very moment I got involved with the community through UTEP’s Anime Appreciation Society of El Paso, who at the time was having a feud with the Anime Society at the University. The whole time I was there, I was scratching my head and wondering why these two groups didn’t get along for the benefit of one another. The response to my incredulity was answered simply to me by the then-president: Those guys were ‘just jerks.’

I was upset by this, but I let it slide since it seemed to be just an incident between these two clubs. Then a third club, The Videogame and Anime Committee, sprung up a year later. The founders were close friends of mine who had long since been suspended from the ASU, who at the time were having problems with their own officers. I stayed with that club for about two years while still maintaining a relationship with AASEP.

Around this time we got our first convention, the El Paso Anime Con, which took place at the UTEP Union East building in the summer of 2007. The event was put on by some officers of the ASU who had left the club to prioritize the founding of the event. The general opinion of EPAC was that it was mediocre. It was highly limited by some restrictions that UTEP generally puts on people who run events in general, the largest of which was that they did not allow outside vendors. People reacted to the “meh” that was EPAC in different ways. Lots of people still supported the event for its remaining two years. Others left it in hopes that something else would come along, but the remaining minority did something terrible: something that would shape the climate of local anime conventions for the worse for the years leading to today.

They formed a convention of their own.

Now, I can’t be counted on as a reliable resource when it comes to the reasons why the officers who eventually formed Wintercon, broke away from the founders of EPAC. I simply don’t know anything about it except that the lack of ability EPAC had in providing vendors had something to do with their decision. I also know that in some ways it was personal, as I’d attended a couple of developmental meetings for Wintercon and some of the founders mentioned the foundation of Wintercon as “sticking it to” the founders of EPAC. I rolled my eyes at that, relating it directly to the problems I had with the UTEP based clubs.

So Wintercon happened. It was a good event, not great. In fact I dare say it was pretty mediocre. Very few of the vendors or staff was shared between Wintercon and EPAC, even though they had some of the same artists. Now there seemed to be two large entities responsible for anime in the area. No big deal. It could still work.

Wintercon had moderate success, and the founders of EPAC found themselves a new niche by moving their convention to the NMSU campus and changing their name to “Las Cruces Anime Days.” EPAC was unceremoniously dropped without even an announcement, leaving many local fans to wonder whether it’d come back for about a year before realizing it was gone for good. We were all aware that the two parties were not associated with one another and were competitors. Any dialogue between the two of them was….unpleasant to hear, but at least things appeared to be stable.

Around this time was about when Ruben Rascon and I started working together on “The Captain_M Show.” We were both aware of the rivalries between both conventions and for a while we wondered which ‘side’ we’d take. We ultimately decided to do an unbiased evaluation of both conventions.

During our attempts to build the show Ruben and I had a falling out with one anime group for personal reasons and we simply stopped attending AASEP because we were so busy with our videography that we let a lot of our extra-circulars fall by the wayside.

We began our coverage of the company with the first LCAD, which took place in January of 2010. I had already purchased table space as I’d intended to attend as an artist. Ruben and I filmed our first on location video there where we limited ourselves to talking behind the table to fans. It wasn’t anything too fancy, but it was a start.

Immediately after LCAD, however, we struck our first major coverage deal with EPCON 2010. We rode the EPCON wagon, securing interviews with supporters both old and new and came up with our first full set of videos, essentially learning how to put together our humble little online show as we went along. It was a terrific experience, even as we got to the convention proper.

After the better part of the year was over, though, the anime convention season was coming around again, and we were eager to get back in with the crowd that we believed helped us start it all. To make a long story short the contrast between working with EPCON and working with LCAD and Wintercon was obvious from the start. Working with EPCON we entered into a mutually beneficial partnership which yielded us interviews with a large part of the conventions artists and participants with full support from the staff, who also participated in the interviews. Working with the staffs of the anime conventions was a lot more difficult. We were met by a lot of suspicion, and at times were outright ignored because we weren’t part of anyone’s staffing inner-circle, and we were often told we wouldn’t have the same level of access we would at EPCON because we “weren’t trusted.” Now, I say “weren’t trusted” as a way of keeping the civility of the argument. A few times we were met with responses that were a lot harsher than that.

Despite the cold reception though, I was positive that given enough time and exposure, Ruben and I could eventually get passed the initial impressions set about us and still become a working part of the community. However, not soon after I made that decree did something happen to me personally that permanently cemented my attitudes towards the local anime con scene as negative ones.

As a communication minor, I eventually found my way into UTEP’s online journalism course, and as a result of that, I became an editor for Borderzine, which is UTEP’s online magazine. Borderzine is a blog, much like the one I was already developing, but it is also an extremely well read blog that is often used as a new resource for other big name news blogs. I needed something to write about as my first story, and I was already dedicated to going to Las Cruces Anime Days that weekend, so I decided to write my story about that. While I was at the convention I interviewed writers, cosplayers, and club presidents, but I had also made several attempts to contact LCAD founder Andy Castellanos for a comment. Andy, possibly assuming that I was working on a personal project, though I told him several times it was actually for Borderzine, ignored my every attempt to get a comment were it via e-mail, phone, or even face-to-face contact, leading up to a moment where I discussed the wide scope of Borderzine’s influence to him while picking up my badge for the event, and he dismissed the importance of my school assignment by saying “It [LCAD] is only a small convention.”

Though I spent my two days at the Las Cruces event talking to anyone who was actually kind enough to give me an interview, I had taken Andy Castellanos’ comment to heart: It was only a small convention. I realized with that statement how I looked to them. I was a meaningless little student of journalism making a bigger deal about the wonder that is local fan coverage which, compared to the opinion of the founder was really not a big deal at all. I went on and finished the article for Borderzine using whatever comments I managed to get from attendees, but once the curtain was drawn on that event, I felt my admiration for the anime community fade to black as well.

In the following summer, I eventually negated a major criticism often put upon me by becoming a staff member at FAL-Con, another convention involving individuals who split from another anime convention due to personal disagreements. Unlike other conventions, FAL-Con founder Zach Chenowith, showed right away he wanted to have a working relationship with the blog and all of the members of the blog pitched in where they could to make it a meaningful event. I couldn’t help but notice, however, that of all the people attending the event, there were very few people on staff from other conventions. I had written about the overall effectiveness of FAL-Con in another article, so I won’t go into it again, but as I staffed the event it generally saddened me that once an individual as inclusive as Zach got an opportunity to throw his own convention, very few of the community at large even went to see it.

Not long after FAL-Con, I took a decision I made on the floor of LCAD and I made it into my own personal law. Up until this writing I’ve followed it to a tee, but I’ve never made a public declaration of it, until now.

I, Mike Cervantes, promise never to set foot in another El Paso-based anime convention or event ever again.

Now, this is not to say that Augmented Reality may never be at an event again. In fact as I’ve been writing this Ruben had already been to Wintercon 2011 and he’d taken some wonderful video of it, and we’ve also got some fine video on the way from our good friends at Sexy Taco Productions. I, however, did not attend Wintercon and I do not intend to go visit this year’s LCAD in January either.

This isn’t a boycott. This isn’t a protest. The only reason I’m staying away from those conventions is that I’m personally very tired. I’m tired of the infighting. I’m tired of the elitist attitudes shown by members of this particular section of the fandom, but most importantly, I’m tired of being looked down on when my only real crime is having enough interest in these conventions to write about them. The attitude put towards me is one of both disdain and concern. Disdain because I am not close personal friends or obviously aligned with any particular group, and concern because as a result of that, nobody knows what my intentions are. Well, now that I will never go back, the heads of the individual anime communities in this city, don’t have to worry about that anymore.

Before I’ve put it to writing, people have heard about this resolve of mine, and they’ve responded negatively towards it. They make the same claim that I once did, that I should ignore what peoples individual attitudes are towards me and just enjoy the convention for the pure and simple fact that it’s an anime convention and it should be fun. I agree with those people. I SHOULD simply be able to enjoy the conventions because they’re fun. The problem is in all honesty, I can’t. I’ve dealt with this dimensionality on some level or another since I joined my first anime club way back in 2004, and as far back as I go into my mind, I can’t take away from it that pure and sparkling gem that was my meager enjoyment of these events, and I’ve decided I’d just be happier staying away.

I know in leaving the conventions I’m leaving behind a few friends. I’m making it so I won’t see one or two people who really did make my early excursions in El Paso anime truly worth doing. People like Jorge Santiago, Yamel Beltran, Michelle Morris, Edgar Morales, Stephanie Mendez, Shonen Neko Takaya, Zach Chenowith, and many other truly great participants of these events. All I can say to those people now is to keep the faith. Someday if you continue to stick with these events something truly special will be there for you, but as for me, I just can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Someday, all that has gone wrong will be in the past. I will be waiting until then.

Building a Better Anime Con

Okay, after so many months of waiting and anticipation, I am finally publishing my promised article about building a better anime convention for El Paso.

I wish I could tell you all that the reason I took so long to write this was because I was busy with other projects, or I was swamped down with articles I had to do with other websites, or even that I was occupied with my schoolwork or the general management of the blog. However, that’s not the reason I’ve put off writing this. I admit I’ve been apprehensive about writing this article. For a long time I was apprehensive because I thought nobody would support my opinion. After all, I’m just this guy who manages a modest little blog, and my word is nothing compared to that of a dozen people who’ve really gotten their hands dirty putting on these events every year, or even the loyal fans who yearly patronize the area’s three major conventions, Las Cruces Anime Days, Wintercon, and Fal-Con.

But then, something miraculous happened. I was driving home from EPCON 2011 with a car full of friends, and as we were chatting, the conversation turned towards the anime conventions. Now, my friends know this is a sensitive subject for me, so I opted to stay out of it. But, even though I didn’t say a word, my friends all volunteered ideas that were incredibly similar to mine.

Without me saying a word they said that they wished there wasn’t so much animosity between the three groups who facilitate the conventions in the area. Without me breathing a single ounce of dissent, they mentioned they wished the anime groups in the area would do better promotion, have better guests and, to my great surprise, someone even mentioned having similar ideas to mine when it came to who should be the manager of the convention. In that moment I was re-assured that my opinions about the anime convention scene were not just my own: people besides me are at least aware of these problems with the anime cons, and I should ultimately write this article to respect these opinions.

Let me re-iterate the point one more time that these are the opinions of someone who has pretty limited experience at running a convention. I admit I’ve done very little of this, and what I have to say may not at all times reflect the reality of managing such a large event. These are just observations I’ve made.

To start with, the founder of the convention needs to be an individual who has run a successful organization or business. The reason for that is these events require large amounts of organization with a wide variety of people, some of these people can be well known to the founder, but some of these people can’t, some of these people will really be associating with the convention head for the first time ever. Real, working management skills are key in a position like this because, even more important than the role the manager plays in booking guests, rallying local organizations and shop owners, the founder also has to be able to handle money. In the end, after the venue owner, the sponsors, and everyone to whom compensation is due gets paid, the convention has to turn a profit, if only so that there’s money left over to throw the convention next year and not have it be a financial loss for the group that’s running it.

I’ve made this argument to people before and I’ve had quite a few people counter me, saying “But Mike, anime conventions were originally founded by fans. How can you say they now have to be run by business owners?” The reason I say that is that once upon a time, anime conventions HAD to be founded by fans because not enough people actually knew what anime was. It was necessary to start conventions in a grassroots manner when certain conventions were founded. This is no longer the case. Anime is a mainstream media. It airs on Television all the time, and there are corporations in America like Funimation that manage the rights of the industry here in the United States. Anime is a business, so when it comes to conventions, the people involved with the conventions have to know how the business works, just so they can stay competitive with other conventions.

This brings me neatly to my next point: guests. All conventions need guests. It shouldn’t be treated like an accessory. It shouldn’t be an afterthought; it shouldn’t be a commodity that is too rich for the convention to afford. Guests. YOU need THEM. The reason for that is that guests are the main draw of any convention. That’s what brings people to your convention, and by that I mean even people who weren’t originally intending to go to the convention. There’s even the possibility that you can use guests to attract people with only a fringe interest in anime and a bigger interest in other aspects of a convention like gaming or American comics. Or you could possibly use a guest to actually draw NEW people who have never been to a convention before.

When it comes to Anime, it’s a bit tougher than a comic book or film convention to get the right kind of guest. The guests at anime conventions don’t often have the star power to pique the interest of people who aren’t already anime fans. However, the possibility for having a guest as a draw is still a possibility. While I was discussing anime conventions with an associate of the blog, he had mentioned that at one point he was in contact with a PR group that was promoting guests for various conventions in honor of a Robotech anniversary. Now, mind you Robotech isn’t something the mainstream anime fans are appreciative of. Naturally they’re gonna whine that “This part of the series came from Macross, and this part of the series came from some Tatsunoko production…” But that’s not the reason that those guests are there. Those guests are there to support longtime fans of anime who are still interested in Robotech. The guests are not there to support people who are honestly gonna be at the con anyway. The guests are there to help attract new people to the convention. After all, there’s a reason video game voice actors David Hayter and Nolan North keep getting invited to Anime Expo.

So you’ve got your businesses working and the guests booked. What about the convention itself? How do you pick a model for a convention that is successful, guaranteed to draw a crowd and assure your return in investment? The answer to that is simple: you research. This is probably going to be the most controversial thing I say in the article, but it really shouldn’t be. At this point there’s dozens of successful anime conventions all over the country. Do what they’re doing EXACTLY. At least for a start. Then you can figure out what you can do to make your own convention unique and special. You gotta know how to bake a pie before you can take a slice out of it and dump the cool whip on top.

A little warning here: this is where it’s gonna get really scary for a current anime convention staff-member or founder, so if you’re reading up to this point, I will once again make the point that this is NOT an expert opinion, it’s just my opinion as an observer, okay? Take a deep breath, pull your pants further up your waist and brace yourself. This one ain’t pretty. Here goes.

Here in El Paso, unlike the period of time when LCAD and Wintercon was first founded, there are now two very successful conventions run locally: EPCON and Frank N’ Con. In the past both of the founders of these events have reached out to the current founders of anime conventions for possible aid and partnerships, and they’ve been either put aside or rejected. Without naming names I am aware that one founder even intended to loan money to a convention, but was turned away. The reason for that is he had asked the anime convention founder for a return of investment. For giving them this amount of money, he expected more back, and the anime founder rejected the offer because they couldn’t afford it. This idea of making MORE money off of a small initial investment was an alien idea to them. Without getting into the sticky personal elements of this business exchance, which I honestly shouldn’t because I don’t have a full idea about went on, the convention founder who was turned away didn’t expect that he would have been turned away, because that’s the way he always did business with people when he was running his own convention. Which, I may add, is a successful one.

I’m aware this may potentially hurt my reputation among anime groups for years, potentially forever, by my saying this but it needs to be said; more than anything else I have to say in this article. You need the help of people like this. These are people who started up conventions within two years and made them the most successful conventions in the area so far. Hell, when it comes to Frank N’ Con, they had a successful turn out in their first year, mainly due to the long list of celebrity guests they had there, so I’m not speaking entirely out of experience when I say you want their opinions and their advice. Associate with them, network with them. Make sure they play a role in helping bring your convention to the next level.

The definition of a convention, according to the Mirriam-Webster online dictionary, is “an assembly of persons met for a common purpose.” What’s most important about a convention of any subject is that as many different people are involved from as many different disciplines. You got some people who work in the industry? Great! Some people who run a local shop? Awesome! Some guys…who know how tor run a live action roleplay? Sweet! Some people who….write a local blog? Impressive! Do you have people who are there to help even though they may potentially be direct competitors? Well…if they want to help. That’s what a convention should be about. All of us. Together. To celebrate a common goal. That goal being a mutual love and respect for this art form from the east.

But there’s still one more issue when it comes to accomplishing that in this particular anime fandom. One distinct obstacle towards us having what could potentially be the creates anime convention here or anywhere.

I’ll discuss that in my next article.