Endless Thread - #BlackFaeDay

Episode Date: May 12, 2023

Once upon a time, in a magical land of Oklahoma, fairy Jasmine LaFleur wanted to create a hashtag to unite Black fairies all across the land. And she did. Since 2021, on the second Saturday of May, Black fairy enthusiasts have united around #BlackFaeDay to show the world that Black fairies are real, and that there's space for them online and off. In this episode of Endless Thread, we look into #BlackFaeDay, and how important it is to those who celebrate. And what we find isn't a hashtags to riches story, but a fairytale about how the internet can be a place where dreams bigger than your follower count can come true. Producer Quincy Walters also examines what it takes to become a Black fairy.

Support for endless thread comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink Software, to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at Mathworks.com. Support for WBUR comes from Is Business Broken, a podcast from the Mayrotra Institute at Boston University that explores questions like, why is innovation in healthcare so hard? Is ESG just greenwashing? of course, is business broken. Listen, wherever you get your podcasts. WBUR Podcasts, Boston. The internet can be a sad, dark, scary place. This weekend will mark a year since an 18-year-old, radicalized in white supremacy online, stepped away from his computer and walked into a grocery store in a black neighborhood in Buffalo to murder people just because of the color of their skin. Tonight, authorities believe Gendron was living two lives, one in the pleasant suburb where he grew up, the other in the darkest reaches of the internet. And police also say the suspect used social media to live stream the attack.

But the internet is also a place where there's unity and magic and community. And today, endless threat is going to follow that thread with help from Quincy Walters. Yes, Amory, because on that same day a year ago, In a dark twist of internet irony, something wonderful was happening. Black people around the worlds were uniting around a hashtag to celebrate fantasy. The hashtag is called Black Fay Day, a day where black fairies populate the internet and woodland areas to frolic in magic. Quincy, this is a trend that you have found to be growing, right? The black fairies are multiplying?

So they are Ben, though just like finding all fairies, you kind of have to know where to look. So earlier this year, I went to the most magical place of all to find them. The Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. I'm here reporting live from the convention room floor of Pax East, 2023. I think it's a video game convention, but that's not important. I see anime characters. I see video game characters. I see Jedi, people walking around with big weapons,

but I'm looking for a specific mythical creature. I'm looking for black fairies, and I don't know where to go. Pax East is the annual convention held here in Boston that centers around video games and anime, and it's a pretty good spot for somebody to spot black fairies in real life. finding fairies, especially in a modern convention center, can be hard. Excuse me, do you know where I could find this? I bumped into an acquaintance of mine, black comic book artist L.J. Baptiste while on my search,

and I told him about this hashtag. So you don't know about Black Fay Day? No. So, okay, so Black Fayday is this day where black people get together and sort of, enchanting areas and they don wings and elven ears and have basically a magical day. That's incredible. Eventually, I found who I was looking for. I'm Lala Navali. I founded Boston Black Faye's, which is inspired by Black Faye Day.

Black Fade is a hashtag that started on Twitter a few years ago. Lala, what does it, what does it take to be a Black Ferry? What it takes is to be, number one, black, most important thing. And then number two, to just enjoy fairies, like, genuinely. So with that said, is it possible for me to become a black fairy? Of course. You already are. I'm sensing it off of you. You're giving, like, the Black Fay vibes. Really?

In what way? Just, like, I don't know. I feel the joy off of you and your interest in this. Like, the fact that you want to uplift this. I think it's like, when you first reached out to me, you'd never heard of, like, Black Fay or Black Fay Day and all. this stuff. So I think just the fact that you heard of it and you're like intrigued by and you want to learn more. Like, you know, it's, I think it's part of my destiny to realize my black fairiness. Yeah.

Okay. You're coming into your own. Today we are here to bear witness to Quincy realizing his black fairiness just ahead of the second Saturday in May, also known as Black Fay Day. I'm Ben Brach Johnson. I'm Amory Severson. I'm Quincy Walters and you're listening to Endless Thread. We're coming to you from WBUR, Boston's NPR station. A quick flitter-down fairy memory lane here. The word fairy comes from fay, a magical being, and the English suffix airy, so of the fay or relating to the magical being,

and the term dates back to the 13th or 14th century, but it's around the 15th century that you see the singular word fairy being used to refer to the magical being. And these fairies came in all sizes and forms and temperaments, and some had benevolent intentions, others did not. But they all possessed magic and a sense of enchantment. But Quincy Black Fay Day is a 21st century IRL fairy event, but it's also a bit of a fairy tale of the internet, yes? Yep, that's right, Amory, once upon a time there was a fairy named Jasmine LaFleur. Actually, I'm really black. I can't tell you enough. Like, there's a lot of fantasy around the wings and the ears and everything, but I'm still black, no matter what.

Back in 2021, Jasmine, who works a number of different jobs, including collection preservation at public libraries, was sitting at home in a magical land of Oklahoma all alone on the internet. I didn't have a big following or anything like that. But I've always been a fan of fantasy, and it just so happened to be that I couldn't find a lot of people that looks like me in fantasy or depicted in fantasy in positive ways. So I tweeted about it on March 2021, and I just said, you know, I love seeing us whimsical and magical. So let's dress up on May 8th, 2021, and it'll be called Blackfe Day. So why May 8th specifically? It's spring, her favorite time of year, which if you're some kind of wood nymph kind of tracks.

And Jasmine, her grandmother, and her great grandmother all have birthdays around them. Okay, so Quincy Jasmine picks the second Saturday of May. Yeah, and the hashtag kind of organically ballooned. It started trending on Twitter and on TikTok. So, you guys want to see some fairies? Black Fay Day is all about creating the representation that we want to see in fantasy. So, of course, I'm going to go overboard. I have no chill when it comes to the Fay.

I will put on wings, pointed ears, hooves, horns, and glitter at any point, anytime, any day for any event. for any event. Like any typical fickle fairy as the hashtag blew up, Jasmine, flitted between one emotional end of the spectrum, thrill, and another anxiety. Introverts nightmare sometimes, but it's a, no, it's really a blessing. I am sort of an influencer now. Like, I know that I can have this very strong. strange power where I can endorse something and things, you know, happen in a positive way.

Or I can say, I don't rock with this and then drama happens. So I have to be very careful with the things that I say now. There are many people who view me as like one of the authorities on Black Fantasy right now. And that's terrifying because I'm like, I'm just the girl that made some hashtags. So if Jasmine's an influencer, does this mean this particular black fairy is bringing in some treasure here? So this isn't a hashtag's to Rich's fairy tale. It's one of those wholesome stories about building community. It's so much bigger than me. It was really a miracle, I feel like, because I still don't even use Twitter that much. It's overwhelming to me. But for me to make a random, yeah, tweet and it do what it did, anybody can do that.

Anybody has the potential to just speak on what they feel in their heart, and it manifests into something greater. So every once in a while, the internet is a place where almost overnight, wishes bigger than your follower account can come true. Yeah, and as Black Fairies trended across social media, Jasmine was eventually crowned. Empress Halcyon Crow. There's a coronation video on TikTok. But she wasn't a lone magical beast in this effort.

She was joined by her partner, Carlos Williams, who, for the purposes of this story, he's... Lord Strife, a handler to guild mistress, Empress Halcyon Crow. That's a muscle behind me. My face honor is that of a red-eyed demon. because, you know, nobody necessarily controls Lord Strife. So that was why I selected that of the red-eye demon. And I'm also the, you know, protector. By the way, these names are called Fay Sonas.

Maybe you've heard of fur sonas in the furry world. Empress Halcyon Crow and Lord Strife were actually set up by a mutual friend in a cosplay Facebook group. There's a whole other world out there on the internet friends. Many worlds, in fact. Many separate worlds. There are so many online communities. And speaking of which, according to cosplaycentral.com, when Black Fay Day came on the scene in 2021, there were about 28,000 tweets for the hashtag, making it one of the top trending hashtags of that day.

And Jasmine says through Black Fay Day, she's been able to, chant and educate. Because a lot of people get the misconception that fantasy is just very European and, you know, that's it, which we do understand that like some of the fairy tales and things that we do know are popularized, you know, come from European cultures and things like that. However, there's global stories of, you know, mythical creatures or fantastical beings in every culture. Jasmine loves going to Renaissance fairs and festivals, and she works with organizers to make sure those spaces are more inclusive. And I had a conversation once where someone who identified themselves as one of the organizers for a rent fair in this country and had been in that arena for about 40 years. They said, well, the reason why you guys aren't represented is just you don't have an interest in this history. You don't have an interest in medieval history.

And you don't have an interest in this and this and that. And it wasn't until we Disney-fied our festivals that you all started to come and attend. And she was like, it's okay that you like fantasy. But some of us want the historical aspect, you know. So it was this weird conversation. I'm like, wait, what makes you think that I'm not interested in medieval? time. What makes you feel that way? Jasmine's point here is that there's an assumption being made about how interested black people as a group might be in medieval history, right? Yeah, just because you're

dressed as a mythical beast doesn't mean you're not interested in real historical fact or the real historical backdrops in these events. So Jasmine feels there's two levels of assumption here, being made about people who look like her, which leads to not feeling welcome in fantasy community more generally, even if festival organizers have told her otherwise. And then they say, Jasmine, there's no discrimination and fantasy. We love all beings. A space where there's zero discrimination? Talk about a mythical fantasy. Well, believe it or not, discrimination in the fantasy world and the real world around fantasy is a consistent problem.

Jasmine says she was warned not to come on certain days of rent-fests. Cultural days where those types, like the racist groups, feel like that's their day to be there. So, you know, it might be a Viking day or, you know, a Scottish day or something like that. And there's nothing to say that that's inherently racist or that's what they're trying to signal. in celebrating those days because, you know, those are historical and cultural things that should be celebrated. But there's been some vendors that even told us, okay, like, yeah, most of the time the fair are safe, but don't come on this day. And so it was things like these that Jasmine was trying to bring to folks' attention in real life.

And online, she and Carlos, the red-eyed demon, were finding that in some ways it was easier to find fellow black fantasy fans and organize online. So when they decided to start Black Fade A in 2021, the Chalarian call, of course, had to come in online groups. Hear ye, hear ye. Meet us in the woods. I love it. And the call to fairy arms worked. That's the story that we hear so much from people,

is that I needed this. I didn't realize how much I needed to be able to play, how much I needed to be able to go frolic and see other people who look like me. There's a woman who we call our fairy auntie who mentioned that they were into fantasy and stuff from the 70s, you know, on forward, but never felt like they belonged

and never felt they had a way to express themselves in that realm until this came along. More Fay Play in a minute. At Radio Lab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science. Neuroscience, chemistry. But we do also like to get into other kinds of stories. Stories about policing or politics. Country music.

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Discover how the magic is made at WBUR.org. creative studio. So Quincy, this is a story about inclusiveness in the fantasy world when it comes to black people. And people like Jasmine, Lala, and Carlos trying to both make larger fantasy spaces more inclusive and welcoming to black fairies and build safe spaces for black fantasy fans. Yes, but Carlos made this deeper point, too. The ability to lose yourself in fantasy can be a... bit of a privilege. It's something that we talk about a lot is as black people having the

ability and access to play as adults, something that we might have been either denied or had cut short as children because, you know, we have to grow up fast. You know, you see the little white kids running around still in their two-toos and their cowboy boots and their vest and everything. Running around the grocery stores having fun. Meanwhile, you got to stay close. to your parent. You gotta pay attention, you know, for people around you because it's so much danger in the world from every angle, from every direction, even people who are supposed to protect you at times. Lala, the organizer at the Boston Fantasy and Video Game Convention, says the thing she likes about Black Fayday is that it's something that can unite black people

online without it having to be political or a protest. Because I feel like sometimes for black folks, we feel like when we take up space, it has to only be advocacy reasons or something in a way that we're being like tokenized. And we have to represent something huge. But sometimes all that we want to represent is just joy and the things that we enjoy. And that's what Black Fay Day founder, Jasmine LaFleur, had in mind when she made the hashtag once upon a time in a magical land called Oklahoma, which really came into. to its own last spring, when the online excitement moved offline and into the Black Faye Day Gala in Atlanta. It was the fairy tale gala, Land v. C.

So we had mermaids, we had knights, we had performers that did, like, fantasy drag and things like that. It was a day where black fairies and elves were really allowed to relax and be carefree. We had just had a free park meetup in Atlanta at Freedom Park, and it was so beautiful. I mean, you see little kids and grownups and everyone dressed as magical creatures. They were skipping and frolicing together. Some black fairies were giving massages to black knights, other black fairies were twerking. We literally had a mass frolic.

in the park and it was gorgeous. And so, you know, the sun had said and we were saying our goodbyes and a friend calls me and says, are you okay? You know, they're frantic. You can hear that they had been crying. And again, Jasmine experiences being not allowed to experience the fantasy world for very long. Correct. So this was the second year of Black Fay Day.

This time it fell on May. 14th, 2022, and it had gotten bigger than the last year. So Jasmine had feared that someone had gotten hurt at one of her Black Fay Day events. Then came back Saturday and opened fire, capturing the shock and terror in the shooting's aftermath as the gunman was arrested. Oh my God, he shot so many people in there. And while thousands of Black Fays across the country were celebrating magic and being Black and escaping an anti-black world, a white man broadcasts a live stream of himself going into a grocery store, murdering anyone Black. And I know we're in a very hateful world.

So it makes me more emboldened to spread joy and happiness and peace when we are people who are constantly oppressed simply because of what we look like. You know, it sounds unreal when you put it that simply, but that's exactly how it is. We're hunted down like animals because of the color of our skin. And when people see a brown or black aerial or bell, there's hate. And it makes no sense to me. Fairies in literature are often targeted and persecuted by evil forces. right? Captain Hook and Tinkerbell.

Yeah, like people of the magical woods and the cruel bellicose characters who go after them. Yeah, allegorically, fairy people are often marginalized. But even with this similarity, blackness in fantasy worlds is still somehow contentious and controversial.

Jasmine says it doesn't even take something as extreme as what happened in Buffalo last year to see the need for virtual space where black people can find magical escape. That doesn't make us enemies. When the new Little Mermaid was revealed, incensed racists came out of the woodwork to extall bigotry on how a half-fish, half-person, is plausible, but making them black is going a little too far.

The recent example I remember Quincy was when Amazon released its big money blockbuster Lord of the Rings origin story series last year. And one of the show's main characters, Arondir, was played by Ismail Cruz Cardova. Nerds on the internet would not have that black elf situation. What people have a problem with is when you change pre-established lore, especially when you do it seemingly for identity politics purposes. And we have so much of that in this series, not only with the casting decisions made for some of the elves and some of the Harfoots and a dwarf, but also the way that Galadriel's depicted.

You know that's agenda-driven. These conversations are about people accusing entertainment companies of forcing diversity into stories that have historically not featured black characters or voices. But Carlos and Jasmine say a point of fact is some of the research they've done suggests that the opposite is happening. So we have essentially, I think, all of the fairy books by Andrew Lane. And in some of the books that have stories and tales that they've gathered, because they gather tales from all around the world and the different colored books.

And the one that has tales from black people that even says in the foreword that the stories were edited to be made. Was it more easily digestible? It literally says that in the foreword. Our experience, our existence, our stories, and our truth have had to be adjusted and modified to make others comfortable. Ben, Amory, esteemed audience, we started this episode by saying this story is a fairy tale from the internet. So I guess now it's time for the happily ever after. through the hashtag Black Fay Day, Jasmine spawned an online community

for black fantasy fans that moved into real life. And just so you know, a group of fairies is called a frolic of fairies. Did you know that, Amory? A frolic of fairies. I know, the things you find out on the internet. And Jasmine says the fairies are indeed multiplying with more frolics coming out of the woodwork.

So I know one trickle effect or ripple that happened on the internet was Enchanted Asian Day, which is celebrated on the second Saturday of June every year. And it happened very soon after Black Fay Day the first year. And some young ladies in the UK were like, we love what you did for your community. And we want to do that for the Asian community because we have lots of stories that we want to tell too. Well, Quincy, thank you so much for taking us on this journey. Do you feel like you've realized your own black fairiness? Yeah, hath you been sprinkled by the magic dust, Quincy?

Do you frolic in the long, dewy grass amongst the saplings and the blossoms? You know, I asked these questions to myself while I was in a magical land called Florida while I was in a swamp. So did Lala overestim? my capacity for magic, or was you right? Was I a fairy all this time and didn't know? But, um, I'm near a pond right now, and it's covered in water lilies, and there are birds singing to each other, and the idea of a utopia like this for black people. is really nice to think about. I wish it were real.

Wow, Quincy, I wish it were real too. But I guess I think people like Jasmine are using fantasy to make real spaces for black people to be together and be safe in their appreciation of this. And that's what Lala is doing as well, right? I'm reading a book about platform nihilism in social media and it says

that the internet is a place that needs more heroes and I feel like maybe Jasmine is in a way making that mark for herself as a fairy hero exactly apply that to the whole world

not just the internet I'm thinking of I read this play in college called No Exit It was a French play. And there's a line from that play that's always stayed with me, and that is, hell is other people. And that is true, I think.

That's the opposite of my life mantra. Well, that's the thing. I would argue that so is heaven. Heaven is other people, too. And so there's obviously a lot of darkness in the world, but there's also a lot of magic. And I'm so glad that they've found a way to make that together. All right, endless threaders, until next time.

Make some magic. Make some magic. Get out there in the woods. Endless Thread is a production of WBUR in Boston. This episode was produced and reported by Quincy Walters. It was co-hosted by really all of us, Ben Brock Johnson, myself. And me, Quincy Walters. and Amory Seabertson.

It was sound designed by the magical fairy dust sprinkling Emily Jenkowski. Endless thread is about the blurred lines between fairy dust and the black hole that is the internet. Oh, yes. I don't know. If you have a magical story yourself to share with us that you want us to tell, hit us up. Endless thread at wbUR.org. Okay. Bye.