Finding Yourself At The Whole World’s Lunch Table

Diversity & Inclusion at Cellarius, Part I

“Patch” — By Harim Oh, based on a character created by Alex de Campi

Cellarius is billed as a decentralized storytelling platform. We’ve described our particular story as adding to the tradition of science fiction and specifically cyberpunk, pushing that subgenre out even more to create our own new version, “Blockpunk.” There is a lot of excitement behind blockchain technology and decentralization, which underpin the Cellarius platform. But what does blockchain really mean for humanity? What can it really change? How does it enhance our ways of life? These are the questions I spend a lot of time thinking about in my role on Cellarius, where I’m responsible for Community, Ethics, and Inclusion. I’ve been thinking about these themes in science fiction pretty much since my school years.

Let’s get some lunch.

I got into collaborative storytelling at an early age. The lunchroom in middle school was as much a place for digesting food as it was for pontificating about which “Dragon Ball Z” characters were the strongest. Each week we’d watch Toonami and a lucky few would catch subtitled episodes of “Dragon Ball Z” on the International Channel late Sunday nights. Back at the lunch table, we’d start with an interactive recap of the week’s episode. This was for the friends whose parents didn’t have cable TV or who couldn’t make it to someone else’s home to watch it. I tended to focus on the oral tradition, as a verbose child (and adult) who wasn’t that good at battle rapping or sketches. I’d get bored with discussing what we thought would happen in the next episode and instead would outline what I thought should happen. The most devoted fans would bring drawings and sketches to the table. We’d get to battle-rapping about certain characters, even playing certain parts, all to recreate and express our passion for this TV show.

“Grace” — By Kim Sokol

One thing we never debated much was race. We had a variety of lived experiences and class backgrounds, but it was under the umbrella of a generally segregated community. I grew up in Detroit, a city that was rapidly becoming Blacker due to White flight. At one point, nearly half the city was White Orthodox Jews, but their presence was harder to feel as a child since they went to different schools, houses of worship, and even grocery stores. My peers and I occupied social spaces that were mostly Black: schools, barber shops, grocery stores, churches.

With that lens, we had a shared understanding of the races of our favorite characters and would make these inferences based on culture as well as appearance. There was no debating, we all just knew. Panthro of the Thundercats was Black. Jet Black of Cowboy Bebop was Black. Both characters had bald heads and sounded familiar. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I learned their English voice actors were Black men. Clearly Piccolo from Dragon Ball was also Black. He had darker (green) skin than his peers. He was different from his Saiyan friends and he came from a different cultural context. He was from another planet, actually. As my peers and I branched out from the city for summer camps and sports matches, we too encountered an alien world, one much larger than our own, in which our customs and appearance were not as common. For once, we’d be in a space where most people were not like us. But like Piccolo, we knew who we were.

This was the time of Harry Potter and the Lord of The Rings movies, which featured far more orcs, goblins, and elves onscreen than Black people. I couldn’t identify any Black, Asian, Native American, or Latinx characters in those movies, at least not in central roles. Among friends, we’d joke that White people could imagine dragons before seeing people of color in such settings.

As we got older and met more people, the fandom became more diverse. I learned about Chaldean people, the complexities of race for my mixed friends, what immigration was, made friends with the few Asian and White students in school, and learned what queer meant as some of my peers explored their identities. My own world opened up, and so did our fandoms. We went from figuring out who was Black in anime to discussing gender in our new favorite film, “The Matrix.” Trinity was a badass, but also familiar. We had some teachers like her, women who were very intelligent, strong, and confident. Like with anime years ago, in this now multi-gendered group, we’d discuss what we thought would happen in the next movies, how we felt about casting, and what we thought the characters’ motivations were. We seemed to be tuned into which characters were relatable to us, and therefore more recognizable. With a more critical eye, I started to realize just how White and male-dominant anime, sci-fi, and comics are.

NOT characters from Cellarius. (Image © Warner Bros.)

College happened, and so did the internet, with high-speed internet and online multiplayer games like Halo becoming the norm. I didn’t quite find my “group” again for many years until graduate school in Seattle. As adults, our lives involved a lot less time at the lunch table. Being adults, alcohol, dating, and parties tended to be the ways to form bonds. Again, I connected with a large group of people from complex backgrounds. I’d never lived in a place with so many Asian people. I learned about how varied Asian cultures and histories were. A Filipino friend and I would bond over conversations about colorism.

When I finished graduate school, I became a social worker, learning firsthand in jails, hospitals, shelters, and treatment centers what becomes of people when we are no longer interested in who they are, how they live, or what they need to thrive. The experiential learning and clinical engagement that my profession required contextualized the importance of seeing people as they are, as well as of investigating my own biases. Social work also revitalized my engagement with science fiction, and I read stories by authors who so richly explored the nearly fictional nature our real world can sometimes take on. Ted Chiang, Octavia Butler, Nnedi Okorafor, Samuel Delany, Harlan Ellison, and Jeff Vandermeer challenged me in ways I would not have been able to appreciate at a less worldly time in my life. Some of the very things I used to question or find my friends questioning, I saw validated by their books, articles, fandoms, or even memes on social media.

So even though my friends had scattered around the world, we tried to stay in touch. My old Seattle friend Igor and I kept up with each other, often talking about comics. Then science fiction. We talked about which novels we enjoyed, which theories excited us, and what we felt was missing from many stories. I remember talking to him about how important it was to be able to see myself in a story. How world-breaking it could be to be reading something and realize that despite all the awards, it didn’t pass a simple Bechdel test, or there were no people of color.

“Agrarian” — By Muna Abdirahman

We moved into a conversation about how collaborative storytelling works. I remember my friend telling me about an idea of bringing together many different stories under one platform to engage in being creative together. That idea eventually became Cellarius. Igor has lovingly reminded me of my off-the-cuff feedback during that time. I told him the idea wouldn’t amount to much if it became yet another venture that told stories about the same small groups of people with the same exclusive demographics as early D&D campaigns.

But despite my skepticism, I also saw that Igor’s idea could become something amazing. It was all about the process of storytelling, remixing, and analyzing story elements. He wanted to bring it all together and see what people do with it. The idea could be more inclusive than most of the science fiction we read because the community would create the story, and so it could reflect all the experiences that are part of the community. It was a gorgeous silvery thread of an idea that connected, in hindsight, all the conversations I’d shared at the lunch table, in high school, in grad school. It was powerful and shocking, like a lightning bolt. It involved this new blockchain technology that was far more impressive and stranger to me than the idea of dial-up internet or online gaming had been years ago. It was this idea of keeping the childhood drawings, the rap battles, the debates, the fan stories, the contests, the informal trivia, alive, and seeing them as an inseparable part of the stories we love. When he asked me if I’d like to be a part of it, the answer seemed clear.

In my role focusing on Community, Ethics, and Inclusion, I am working to ensure that our platform reaches a truly global community and that there is space for them to engage and feel empowered on our platform. I now work in a cohort of passionate nerds who work, in their own ways, to develop an experience that is ethical and inclusive.

A refrain that we repeat often on Team Cellarius is, Science fiction is for everyone. The truth is that it isn’t, at least not yet. But that is the challenge we’ve set for ourselves. We know that the value of this platform is in the ability to tell a wide range of stories and to connect people from many different lived experiences. One of the first steps in our early days has been to reach out to a wide range of artists and readers and spread the word at conferences and events.

Here I am meeting Tananarive Due, Guest of Honor at WisCon 42.

At WisCon in Madison, Wisconsin, we had an opportunity to connect with many different artists and writers at the oldest feminist science fiction convention in the country. There was programming on “Black Panther” and the roles of women in the film. I went to a panel discussing children’s speculative fiction and the roles of girls in those stories. It was a great way to get the word out about our project and to see the admirable efforts from so many different kinds of people to unpack these issues of inclusion.

At the Allied Media Conference in Detroit, I went home! I saw so many Midwesterners who share a vision of radically changing the ways in which we engage with media. We had a vendor’s table with amazing shirts designed by Octavian, our Design Lead. Although I was also accompanied by our Marketing Lead, Sean, we barely scratched the surface of the event’s offerings. I met adrienne maree brown, a writer we would like to work with in the future. I attended her session on Emergent Strategy, a social movement inspired by Octavia Butler’s “Parable of the Sower.” Sean got to make a block print Cellarius Logo with some working artists.

Exclusive Cellarius Swag that made its debut at the Allied Media Conference

Next, we’ll be at EUROCON, a European science fiction gathering that’s been going on since 1972, in Amiens, France. Their major theme this year is African Science Fiction. We hope to celebrate those contributions to the genre, meet writers from lots more countries, and learn more about the many science fiction communities thriving across the world.

The point of going to many different places and interacting with many different people is to share our idea and to begin to build a broad and inclusive community of enthusiasts. We are becoming a part of a vibrant community that is already doing great work to push at the limits of what science fiction means, and we’re getting positive feedback about the promise of Cellarius’ community. It all comes back to the lunch table — many people uniting to tell stories, have fun, and dream up fantastic worlds.

Who’s ready to eat?

This is the first in a series of posts about diversity and inclusion at Cellarius. Stay tuned for the next posts to learn more about what we’re doing to make sure Cellarius is an inclusive platform and how we’re doing so far, how we approach diversity on our own team, and more of our research about the state of science fiction and media today.