me: *remembers that out of the three main protagonists of the new star wars movie not one of them is a white man. that the most shipped pair is an interracial coupe with a black and hispanic man and that we are gonna get a female jedi as main hero*
I figured since I get discount for working in a mall I might as well spread the love! What’s on the line for the lucky winner;
One Pop!Figure of each Crystal Gem
A surprise cash amount
Questions and Answers:
Boy! This is a cool giveaway. Do I have to follow you to make my entry count? Nope!
Do likes count? NO! Reblogs only, spread the love.
How many times may I reblog this here post? As many times as you like! But please be considerate of your followers. They followed you for a reason and seeing this one post 50 times in a row isn’t it.
Does my askbox need to be open? Yes, if it’s not, you are disqualified.
Will I be notified when I win? Yes, BUT you must respond in 24 hours or you are disqualified.
Do I have to be 18? You must be comfortable giving away your address online. I would prefer if you were 18. If you are younger than 18, check and see if your parents/guardians are okay with it!
Is this US only? In the spirit of the holidays, no. I am willing to ship internationally.
A surprise cash amount?How ominous! What factors into that? My Christmas bonus, and other things.
When will the winner be announced? December 26th, 2015, whenever I feel like it/get off work!
Why is Garnet out of her box? That’s my Garnet figure. They had sold out of Garnets when I bought these. You will receive a Garnet in the box.
If you have any other questions, feel free to ask me!
Don’t push yourself to the point of not enjoying cosplaying anymore.
Cosplay is supposed to be fun, not a burden or obligation. Overworking and pushing yourself too hard can leave you burnt out and tired. Remember to take breaks and remind yourself that it’s not the end of the world if you take things a little slower.
An open letter addressed to Erica Wise, the unknown staff member in some position of authority, Ryan Kopf (@ryankopf), and the core staff of Con+Alt+Delete.
Hi, Erica. You may not remember me but I am the wife of the artist that you blacklisted from your convention this weekend after you were rude about a piece of artwork displayed on our table and I flat out told you that you were wrong about your facts. You then had someone, of unknown name and authority, tell us that WE were the rude ones, that you at Chrono, LC believe in a safe environment where customers are expected to be treated nicely and we were making it unsafe. Your staff member, of unknown authority and name, did not want to listen to anything we had to say on the matter and and tried to justify your queerphobic actions by informing us, “Well she’s a lesbian”, as if that fixed anything or made the poor treatment and gross negligence any better. She then walked away, confirming that we are no longer welcome at any of your conventions, leaving us and everyone who had not only heard the earlier interaction but this one as well, absolutely dumbfounded.
Now please do not misunderstand. Being banned from your group of conventions is no big loss and I am in no way attempting to apologize for something that you incited in the first place. I am however crafting this letter in the hopes that it reaches those who need to read it. As your person of unknown authority/name did not let me enlighten her as to just how far she and you overstepped, I would like to inform you how our weekend at Con+Alt+Delete went.
Let me start by saying that signing up for this particular convention was actually sort of an accident. In an attempt to make enough money to feed ourselves and pay rent, we try to attend as many conventions as possible. We were looking to vend at an event in December to close out our con season, so when this convention came up on the list we jumped at the chance. It wasn’t until after we had paid, that we realized it was a convention run by THAT group. I won’t elaborate on that group TOO much, as I’m sure everyone is aware who I’m referring to. (If you are not aware, then try these links here, here, and here. And those are just the first page of a google search for the name of the con chair.) So with this in mind, we simply decided to stay wary and go through with it. After all, one con wont hurt and if we’re careful we should be fine. Sadly, we were wrong.
As a ten year veteran of artist alley, let me say that this was one of the worst set ups I have ever seen, and trust me, I’ve seen some bad ones. We were after all, at the infamous DashCon. We were lucky enough to snag a spot right on an endcap so we could at least utilize more space, but even that took maneuvering and even then, it was still incredibly cramped. The hallway where you set tables up was so congested and claustrophobic at times, that I surprised that the fire marshal wasn’t called by hotel staff. It was a nightmare and sadly it is one that we sometimes have to deal with. However the icing on the cake came when staff, of any kind, were non-exsistant. We couldn’t find anyone the first day aside from the one we got the one badge from. Other then that, it was impossible to find anyone. A few trickled in and out but nothing solid, no one checking badges, nothing the first day. The second day was a whole other story when a few members of staff showed up for a badge check because someone had gone into the dealer room, posed as a dealer and stolen money. When asked for our badges, we explained to the staff member that we had only one, and that we had emailed Molly (also of unknown authority. She was simply the one answering the emails) and told her of our situation. I am currently unable to stand for long periods of time due to an illness and couldn’t stand in a line to get a badge. Molly informed us that if we brought the paperwork, they would convert the second badge that we had purchased to an artist badge. The first thing out of this staff member’s mouth was “Do you have that email and the information? Molly is not the easiest person to work with.” We know conventions are chaotic and it can be hard to track down paperwork, so we were prepared and did indeed have everything printed out. We handed it over to him. He was very nice and handled the situation for us, however knowing that our first point of contact for the convention was someone that had a reputation was not promising.
Anyway back to the nightmare that was the table. First of all, allow me to explain that my wife, the lovely and talented artist, is on the autism spectrum. She is very high functioning and she doesn’t always like to through the autism card around if she doesn’t have to. It make her feel like she’s using it as an excuse even though she is simply trying to make people understand that her brain and social understanding of conversations are different from neurotypicals. Now even though she is classified as high functioning, she does suffer from some of the same issues that many neurodivergent people face. Noise sensitivity and overstimulation are two things she suffers from daily. Knowing what to expect from most conventions, we’ve learned to deal with the occasional loud guests and sudden startling noises. Usually these sorts of things are not problems, as there are staff to ask guests to quiet down. This convention on the other hand, with little to no staff anywhere, I constantly had to ask people to please keep the volume low. I couldn’t tell you how many times I had to ask people to stop shouting, to stop playing their music at high volume, to stop screaming, stop playing musical instruments, etc. Being in a cornered area, the sound echoed down the hallway and we caught every stray noise. It was constant, it was endless. More so than I have ever experienced at a convention. Now am I blaming you for this? Of course not. While it would have helped to have staff around to have a little control, we do expect to have to deal with this sort of thing. This little explanation serves as simple setting. Giving you and everyone else who reads this a little bit of context.
Second, I would like to take an educated guess and assume that none of you have run an artist alley table for ten years. While it is incredibly rewarding, it is also incredibly stressful. Not only in logistics of stock, production, travel, paperwork, and labor, but also the mental and emotional toll that artists face when sitting for hours behind a table. It’s demanding. Especially when you have more than one person an hour making snarky comments about the artwork. I have no idea what it was about this particular convention that brought out the absolute worst in people, but we had so many horrible comment made about things. Usually we get one or two comments about the prices or about how someone doesn’t like the style. Most of the time, all we can say is “Sorry, it is what it is”. Other times we just grin and bare whatever abuse is thrown at us in hopes that they will at least buy something. Before my wife started her full time job, you can not imagine the abuse that we took, in hopes that we wouldn’t lose a sale. The loss of a sale, meant we might not pay rent. This convention, as I said, we received far more nasty, underhanded comments then I have even received. “I wouldn’t pay that much for that.” “That doesn’t look like [insert character].” “Wow that’s a weird style! She looks like a bug.” This was just a sample of some of the comments that we silently let pass. The ones that involved levels of racism, sexism and homophobia were met with, “No we don’t do that.” followed by me raging internally. Again, I have no idea what was going on that brought out the worst in people at this convention but in my ten years of doing this, I have never gotten this many people saying nasty comments.
Now let’s look at what happened at the end of the day and give you our perspective. We’re tired. We’re hungry. We have about an hour of teardown left and a three hour drive home, only to get up tomorrow and go to work. We have been constantly asking people to stop screaming all weekend, we have been receiving more than the usual share of rude comments all weekend, we’ve been informed for two possible thefts that have taken place and to our knowledge, the only security that we have seen, started late Saturday. It’s been a very hard convention for both my disabled self and my autistic wife. But you know what? After all the noise, and rudeness, and claustrophobia and security problems? It all would have been fine. Like I said, these things are part of the job, and we were both leaning towards the side of “Yeah, despite all of the issues, this con has a lot of potential. I’d try it again next year.” Because we’ve been doing this for ten years. We understand that conventions are chaotic and sometimes there are growing pains. It happens. We grin and bear it because we love doing it. There have been conventions that are SO BAD that my wife and I look at each other and say, “Never again.” But this wasn’t one of them. Despite everything.
That all changed in the last 30 minutes of the convention,
Enter a group walking by and deciding it was appropriate to make remarks about two characters in the artwork on our table. Now if I was feeling charitable, I would say that those remarks were probably not meant to offend the artist. However, they did. Not only did they offend us but they were a not so subtle reminder that this entire convention had been filled with nasty comments, unwanted opinions and rude people that had no understanding that the comments they are making are about someone’s WORK, and she’s RIGHT THERE. Not only did you choose to start the altercation, you chose a subject that I personally have to deal with. Queer erasure. This is a subject I feel very passionately about because I see it happening everywhere. So it upsets me when I see one of the first queer characters that I fell in love with, being reduced to the heteronormative mediocrity that is so prevalent in our media.
Yes, other readers. Let me make that clear. Erica Wise, VP of Chrono, LLC, came up to a table run by two queer people and insisted that Sailor Uranus was not a queer character, but indeed a cis man. Go ahead, laugh. It was funny then, and it’s funny now. I mean…. it was funny when a group of people tried to insist Tenou Haruka was STRAIGHT, but a cis man? That’s a new one even for us, and we’ve been doing this for TEN YEARS. So let’s clarify. Sailor Uranus is pretty firmly a butch lesbian in the anime and closer to genderqueer/fluid/nonbinary in the manga and other incarnations. No matter what incarnation you go with, she is not a cis man. That’s not an opinion. That’s just a fact. Which is what I told you.
So from our perspective, another rude con goer came to our table, chose to engage us in conversation using inflammatory language in which they erased a queer character’s identity, and they expected us to just let it go. No. I was done. We were done. I was not going to deal with any more rude comments in the space we had paid money for, about a subject that I am not going to back down from. I was done being the nice saleswoman. I was done putting on a smile through someone’s blatant disregard of our space and the artist’s hard work. I had, had it. So when you rolled your eyes and stuck up your nose and said, “Ok, I’m not going to argue with you,” (as if you hadn’t started this and were trying to be the bigger person) I didn’t have any problems saying to you, “Oh there’s no argument, you’re wrong.” I still don’t feel the least bit sorry.
I would also like to set the record straight and inform you that I had no idea that you were the VP of the convention, but had I known, my comment would have been the same. You came to our space that we paid for, were incredibly rude and when we refused to back down, a person of unknown authority informed us that we were banned from any of their conventions. My first reaction of course was to attempt not to laugh. We had heard horror stories of course of people being banned for small infractions like disagreeing with someone, but to truly see it in action was like a movie. Perfectly timed drama at 6pm! It was laughable that you and your person of unknown authority were so offended that you felt the need to ban us, just to make sure we never came back to disagree with you. Or wait, what was it you said? “Making the con an unsafe environment.”
Let’s talk about an unsafe environment.
Security was a joke and to hear about two instances of theft in a weekend was just shameful. If vendors don’t feel safe, they are not going to want to vend there and part of keeping an vendors safe, is having some sort of constant security during business hours. Speaking on the subject of safety, your top priority should also include making sure the hallway isn’t a fire hazard. All it would take would be one accident, and all those people in the dealer room and side artist rooms would all get stuck at the bottleneck that you created by stuffing your vendors and artists in a hallway in the basement. Thankfully there was only one instance of absolute horrific stand still traffic because someone thought it would be a good idea to put a panel room in the middle of all of that. This environment was not physically safe at any point during the convention.
Also on the subject of safety, I would like to address how my wife felt unsafe all weekend due to all of the noise and sensory overload. There was no control over any of the guests. Even when there were staff posted at the front of the alley, they did nothing to stop the constant screams and noise like most conventions usually do. There are quite a few conventions that take those on the autism spectrum into account and keep the noise pollution to a minimum or try to in an attempt to help those who are compromised by it. My autistic wife was on edge and stressed at every noise this weekend and while I didn’t have a problem asking people to please stop screaming, I shouldn’t have had to be the only one.
Add to that, while I don’t expect anyone to police customers of their convention, I do expect better out of their staff. I expect the staff of a convention to be respectful of an artist and that space. I expect the same level of courtesy that is expected of me, and when someone enters our space, proceeds to be rude and disrespectful WHILE THE ARTIST IS STANDING RIGHT THERE, you do not have the right to be offended when we are less than cordial.
Finally, since you brought up the subject of “Safe Space” allow me to inform you, person of unknown authority, of what a Safe Space is. Safe space is a term for an area or forum where either a marginalised group are not supposed to face standard mainstream stereotypes and marginalisation, or in which a shared social viewpoint is required to participate in the space. Meaning that by advertising a safe space, you are saying to us in those marginalized groups that we are safe from being expected to participate and conform to oppressions, such as heteronormative erasure. While this “Safe Space” was not advertised on any of your media, you did throw it in our faces that this is understood to be a safe, welcome space. It’s incredibly disturbing that a person of authority came to the booth of two queer people and made us feel incredibly unwelcome by outright committing a queerphobic aggression. To our faces. This convention was not a safe space for us, and while we could have written it off and tried to focus on the more positive aspects, your blatant disrespect of our space and our safety in more ways than one, guaranteed that this was convention was not a place that we could ever recommend for anyone who identifies as queer in the LGBTQIA+ community. It’s not a safe space in anyway shape or form.
This of course was extra heart breaking because even though there were plenty of rude horrible people, we met so many amazing ones too. Our pride scarves got lots of attention from so many queer kids who stopped and told us their stories, who thanked us for the representation and whose eyes lit up at the pronoun buttons. It absolutely breaks both of our hearts that this space, so full of young queer kids was in actuality so very dangerous.
One last thing. As I have stated many times throughout this letter, you said that you were banning us on the grounds that our rude behaviour towards your incendiary comments would make your attendees and “customers”, as you put it, feel unwelcome. Well, I have to remind you of this fact: WE are also your customers. WE, the artists, paid YOU. You did not hire us. We both paid for full weekend badges plus the cost of our table. That entitles us to the full rights of an attendee, therefore, by YOUR OWN STATEMENT, a comfortable and welcoming environment. So if you’re so very concerned about the safety and comfort of your customers, then maybe you should pay more attention to the things you say to them. Because we sure as hell felt unwelcome when you came into the space we paid YOU for and verbally assaulted us. The very nature of your grounds for blacklisting us contradicts itself.
This of course bring me back to my original statement, that I am crafting this letter in the hopes that it reaches those who need to see it. I very much doubt that anyone of authority at Chrono, LLC will care about this open letter and I have no doubt that someone will point to it and laugh at the ‘dumbass bitch’ as they read it outloud to a small group of people, giving me a funny voice. I will however, hope that someone reads this and thinks twice about attending these conventions under the blanket of Chrono. I have never once met staff so blatantly rude and disrespectful in my time ten years working conventions. Because at the end of the day, this isn’t about disagreeing about a character. We disagree with people about characters all the time. It’s not a big deal. Because here’s a secret: Sailor Uranus isn’t real. She’s a made up character who can’t have a gender because she isn’t real. However, the representation she affords queer people, both young and old is VERY real, and the fact that you would exploit your position of authority in a space that is supposedly safe to erase that representation is reprehensible. Knowing what I know now, along with the other allegations towards your staff, even if you hadn’t banned us, I don’t think we’d be coming back.
