“Roof, you’re overinterpreting again!” He made no reply, but called to the person behind the counter, “Two copies of Liz and the Blue Bird on Blu-ray, and a volume from Oxford’s Very Short Introductions.” Then he lined up nine copper coins. They deliberately raised their voices again: “You must have been doing some other ******* again!” Roof’s eyes widened. “How can you sully my good name with these baseless accusations…” “What good name? The day before yesterday I saw you with my own eyes, trotting out those tired theories critiquing consumption to rehash the historical background of the first White Album again.” Roof flushed scarlet, the veins on his forehead standing out as he protested, “Interpretation doesn’t count as overinterpretation… Interpretation!… When it’s arts criticism, can you call it overinterpretation?” A string of incomprehensible expressions followed, something about “driving in an empty signifier” and “traversing the fantasy,” setting everyone roaring with laughter: merriment filled the tavern, inside and out.1
Hello, readers. I’m Roof’s second head. On behalf of Lab on Roof, let me offer you a belated New Year greeting: may the coming year bring more reading, more thought, and more to show for them; fewer late nights, fewer illnesses, and fewer worries.
Roof was founded on July 22, during our first head’s summer vacation. As of today, February 22, that should count as half a year. We began with nothing, received help from many people along the way, overcame many difficulties, and have a few modest achievements to show for it. This article is an account of ourselves for our readers—and even for our own members. For the past six months, the community has been in a turbulent state of becoming. Perhaps, apart from the first head and me, who serve as its quilting points, even our members have found it hard to form a clear image of Roof itself. As we have said before, there has never been a complete, totalized Roof community: our members in fact come from different directions and have different ambitions.
Some readers and fellow critics may be curious about the identities of the first and second heads. They want to know what sort of people are behind the chair, beneath the phantom’s mask (and we cannot help being startled: Kindred Spirits on the Roof, one source of our name, whose “full ver” came out not long ago, is itself a ghost that cannot be inscribed in the symbolic order!).2 If you insist on following the trail, you can find out a few things. Roof’s Bilibili feed,3 for instance, reported that our first head did preliminary planning for the Fudan University Comics Club’s Touhou live event next semester (an impromptu tie-in at our first head’s request). But better to let both of us stay hidden behind the chair! Do not throw [the director as an individual] out of a pre-ontological state and into the light cast by order. Do not look for a permanent, primordial tree root—let the rhizome grow at its edges!
Management under commercialism, then, is despotic (despotisch) in form. As large-scale cooperation develops, this despotism develops its own distinctive forms.
…What is at issue here is not only increasing individual productive power through cooperation, but creating a productive power that must, by its very nature, be collective power.4
How does Roof organize itself? In short, three terms: voluntary/volunteer participation, freedom, and self-discipline. Whether an author writes an article is, in principle, a matter of willingness, freedom, and self-discipline. Once it is written, they send it to the group; everyone reviews, discusses, and proofreads it, and then it goes out. Of course, we do sometimes chase people for articles. Say A promises a piece on such-and-such this week, then fails to deliver: everyone can understand a reminder in that situation. It does not violate the principle of voluntary participation.
Alongside the writers, Roof’s developing collaboration involves three other teams: theory, video, and translation. The theory team vets submissions to keep out errors that would make us a laughingstock among people who know the subject (as far as possible—this is an ideal). The video team turns articles into audiovisual work; here, too, it is mostly a matter of individuals volunteering to do something. Translation has its own group chat. People recruit translators and proofreaders for a particular article or video and work together on fan translations, each committing to an amount of work and a deadline of their own choosing. Each project lead coordinates the work through to completion.
Now, about money. Authors receive a base payment for submissions, independent of clicks or readership figures: a modest 50–99 yuan at present. This comes from personal subsidies from the first head and me, tips of a few yuan at a time, and Bilibili’s creator incentives. Naturally, our income falls far short of our expenses at the moment. What’s more, all the other members, from me to the video makers, work unpaid, powered by love. Roof can make this promise: if we have a surplus in future, first, we will disclose our finances—more fully within the group; externally, since creators’ information is involved, we will probably give only a brief report. Second, we will reason collectively about how to use that surplus in common. Beyond the division into these three teams, some friends also have other jobs, such as serving as our representatives in the group chats of friendly “companies.” There are also people responsible for coordinating the video and translation teams.
At the beginning/end of each quarter, Roof’s production headquarters makes its ritual call in the readers’ discussion group to recruit members for the new quarter. (By “ritual” I don’t mean merely going through the motions—ahem. I mean that capable folks who want to join at other times are very welcome too.) If you expect—yes, you yourself expect—to have the time and interest next quarter to write criticism or make videos, you can apply to join Lab on Roof’s production headquarters. Along with this recruitment, headquarters simply moves to a new QQ group. Friends who will not have time to continue in the new quarter—because they are preparing for graduate entrance exams or looking for work, say—stay in the old group, or hang out in the readers’ group. This is how Lab on Roof keeps participation fluid and retains its capacity to act, while ensuring each person’s freedom of choice and dignity and upholding voluntary participation and freedom. The director, committee, and membership are renewed each quarter along with the production headquarters’ group chat. The director is chosen through a combination of internal election and consultation; the outgoing and incoming directors consult and appoint new committee members (who can, of course, accept or refuse this symbolic mandate). Committee members generally take on the role alongside other duties, with full authority to coordinate progress across the different areas. Production headquarters tries to keep purely administrative membership to a minimum. The director represents the community in its external dealings; internally, the work includes reviewing submissions, reminding committee members to keep their work on track, and thinking through and discussing new projects.
Free people coming together to cooperate: this is the kind of association we want to sustain/achieve. Members who contribute also have the right to make decisions about our common undertaking through debate as equals, grounded in public reason.
It feels so quiet. Not a soul on the streets reading or liking anything. It’s a world away from everywhere else. Ah, maybe they’ve moved all the readers over there. Still, there’s nothing we can do about it. Look how sad you are. …(Silence.) Ah. (Inner monologue.) That’s right. Nothing we’ve done up to now has been in vain. As long as we keep moving, there will be a road ahead!5
These have been troubled times, and some friends may be wondering: can we keep going? My answer is this: within a scope and scale we find comfortable, I see no reason why we cannot. Since freedom, voluntary participation, and self-discipline apply from top to bottom, we need nothing beyond the modest authors’ payments to get ourselves moving.
Our first head decided early on that, in matters of form—not content—we should reduce production stages and labor without costing us our readers’ goodwill. Take our recent audiovisual adaptations of articles: we have not used spoken narration. It would mean a great deal of work for the narrator, the video maker, the article’s author, and the coordinator. And where would the money for the narrator’s necessary payment come from? Besides, we really do not want to see people making demands and criticizing the narrator’s voice yet again. That takes us away from our original purpose of sharing the content. Cutting these production stages also lets members of the video team complete their tasks relatively easily, independently, and on their own initiative. I won’t bring in Plato’s views on education through poetry and so forth to offer even stranger reasons. With costs this low and our scope this small, continuing to operate is no problem.
Of course we want more people to know about our diverse, open-ended content, and we will take steps to “market” it. But there are things we will do and things we will not. In the days ahead, Lab on Roof will blossom in both articles and videos, offering arts criticism from a richer, more comprehensive range of perspectives, focused chiefly on ACGN—animation, comics, games, and novels. Please give us your support. We cannot help saying it: those who actually own and judge Roof are the anonymous reader-subjects who long for better arts criticism!
How worthy Hui was! A basket of food, a gourd of water, a shabby alley: others could not bear such hardship, yet Hui never lost his joy. How worthy Hui was!6
Before I end, one issue still needs clarifying: how does Roof regard other independent critics? Does Roof seek to bring other critics into some all-encompassing system of its own and dominate the field? I will put it this way: whether on Zhihu or Bilibili, Roof fully respects and supports critics of every stripe in making a space for themselves and establishing their own outlets. Roof’s priority is to foster a more diverse critical ecology with higher standards across the field, not to gather all these writers into some all-encompassing system under its own name. Critics are free to gain attention in their own independent capacity, on Bilibili or Zhihu, and Roof will support and cheer them on. On the basis of these freedoms, we very, very warmly welcome critics to feed us articles here at Roof. We insist on openness and an orientation toward freedom, both internally and externally. Seeing more critics spring up is an even greater pleasure!
The first head and I have already poured all our energies into building the platform. For now, we have burned through both our inspiration for writing and our practical wisdom. We take joy in the work. In the coming summer quarter, the third head will take up the baton for breaking the continuum of history. It is worth pointing out that the director is not the community’s strongest member in any particular area. At least in my case, my knowledge is shallow across the board, and sometimes I struggle even to understand the articles people submit. The director’s job is closer to that of a “purodyūsā” / P / producer.7 Friends, please do not invent myths of some “big shot” and attach them to an utterly empty wooden chair. There should be an account of ourselves like this one every quarter. This article will also serve as a base text for subsequent changes. As I said at the beginning, it is not only for our readers: it is also something for our members to contemplate.
We will stay vigilant about our own work, using theory more carefully, reviewing submissions more thoroughly and seriously as a matter of method, and taking greater care in our expression to guard against arrogant dogmatism. This is the ethical stance we pledge ourselves to!
We will strive for perfection in the quality of articles by our various authors. But if we fall short of some friends’ expectations, we can only ask for tolerance and room for critics to grow. Until our paths cross again!