the twisty paths of fandom

[arduinna]

I am awash in nostalgia right now. I'm sorting through some old zines with an eye to selling and/or donating a bunch of them, and came across my copy of Twogether, the Due South zine that was the sequel to Two, both put out by IIBNF Press.

Due South was my first real zine fandom, such as it was; my first zines were ST:TOS, but I only had a handful, bought used out of a box at a dealer's room at an SF convention back in the mid-80s.

But after I got online and found FK fandom (omg people other than me watched FK! and taped it! and talked about it! *\o/*), I found out about DS fandom. I'd been watching DS since the pilot movie, and loved it, and was over the moon to realize it had a fandom. It even had a slash fandom!

It even had slash ZINES. omg.

So somewhere around 1995, I ordered my first-ever brand-new zine. I'm pretty sure it was Cry Wolf, from Ann O'Neill in England. I had to wrap up my cash very carefully to mail it off, and I had no idea if it'd made it until a month or two later, when suddenly there was a package for me, with a digest-sized zine full of Fraser/Ray stories. A (tiny) book of Fraser/Ray stories! It was to swoon.

I was hooked. I bought the next Cry Wolf, and two volumes of Pack Mates, all from England, and hey all of a sudden, I was a real zine fan! I had a collection.

And then Bernice advertised Two, and I bought it, and wow. It was amazing. Twice as thick as the Pack Mates zines, beautifully laid out, chock full of stories, like my old ST zines. I was still very much in my fannish honeymoon phase, and read pretty much anything and thought it was all good, but my memory of that zine is that it was aces. I mean - how can a zine with fuzzy stickers of moose in it not be awesome? (I'm not kidding. Random fuzzy stickers. I loved that zine so much.)

It even inspired me to write my first-ever LOC to a zine; I'd sent comments to online writers before, but I'd learned that part of the deal with zines was that if you read one, you were supposed to send a LOC. So after I finished it, I wrote... the stupidest LOC ever. *g* I had no idea what I was doing!

And it's not that I remember writing the stupidest LOC ever; I'd completely forgotten that I LOCed the zine, and if I had remembered, I probably would have thought that I wrote something reasonably coherent and useful.

But (here's where I tie in the first paragraph) tonight, when I looked at my copy of Twogether - the sequel to Two, remember? - I flipped through it to the back, where the letters of comment were, and there's my name. omg. (I had the same omg reaction when I got the zine, thinking back; for some reason, I hadn't expected the letters to be printed. *facepalm* I'd thought Bernice would just pass the feedback along to the authors. Total newbie, me.)

None of which is what triggered this post.

What triggered this post was looking at the other letters, and having a jawdrop moment. See, some of the names in there I remember from back then. Most I don't. Three in particular, I don't.

One right after the other, I saw letters from sakana17, sherrold, and movies_michelle -- all women I became friends with a few years later via other fandom means, and whom I'm still friends with. (*waves!*) And there we all were, sitting in the same LOC column together in 1997, in a zine printed in Australia and shipped halfway 'round the world.

I really love seeing how far back fannish connections actually go. <3

(Also, man, DS was some kind of mega-vector. Freakish.)

Comments

[marycrawford]

Aw aw aw aw aw. That was so cheering and nostalgic to read! I too have written LOCs and seen them published, and at one point I mentioned wanting to read some story or other, and a complete stranger sent me the entire zine, all the way from the US, omg! (I do not remember the story, or who sent it me, alas, but I know that the zine had a gorgeous drawing of Spock pulling his shirt off on the cover...) It was a jawdropping moment of fannish kindness, and it wouldn't be the last. <3!

[marycrawford]

Also, irrelevant to any of the above, your "reply on DW" code bit on the LJ post is better than any of the other versions I've seen so far -- could you post the code so's I can steal it? Plz plz?

[arduinna]

hm - think I should post this as its own top-level post? This is it:

<span style="font-size: smaller;"><a href = "%%url%%">Original post on Dreamwidth</a> | <a href = "%%reply_url%%">Leave a comment on DW</a> | <a href = "%%comment_url%%">Read %%comment_image%% comments on DW</a>.</span>

(oh thank god for comment preview, I originally forgot to hand-code the < and > in. You nearly got a footer. *facepalm*)

[marycrawford]

Hee, thank youuu! And yeah, I think top-level post would be good. I think a lot of people want to find a good usable version, and it's a lot easier not to have to code one's own!

[arduinna]

aw! That's hugely sweet, and I know exactly what you mean. Man, the people who sent me zines or tapes in my early days to let me read or watch things... <3!

I must say, writing all this up, I realized why I get so gobsmacked at people who don't take international fandom into account when it comes to zines - I think every single zine I ever bought in DS was from either the UK or Australia. *g* (Looking back, I can't believe how much cash I used to put in overseas mail!)

[kass]

Oh, man, what an awesome story!

[arduinna]

Isn't it? Seriously, I was beaming for hours. It's the little things, man. *g*

[cesperanza]

OK, this is awesome. I'm grinning like a loon.

[arduinna]

Me tooooooooo.

[the_shoshanna]

Heeeee. They could all have met in Vietnam Due South!

Sometimes zines are like the Twilight Zone of fandom, in that so many people appear there as young things. (And sometimes with their real names that I'd just about forgotten, too.)

[arduinna]

They really are - it's so odd, looking through them sometimes! And yes on the real names; there were a few names there that I looked at and thought, "I bet I still know her in fandom, I just have no idea who she became." *g*

(I know so many people from Due South! Either from actually knowing them then, or finding out later we were there together (like therienne). It really is freakish.)

[dmarley]

Twogether was a pretty awesome zine. I bought it years after it was published at a MediaWest. But reading this gave me nostalgia for my first interaction with you, which was the amazing editing you did for a zine story of mine. I believe it was you who forever broke me of the habit of using phrases like "he sent his eyes around the room." I think about you every time I write "gaze" or "look" instead of "eye" (which is a lot). You have spared my stories many a disattached eyeball. :)

[arduinna]

Hee! <3 I remember that story, and that editing job, so well - yours was the best story in that zine, hands down, and I was so pleased to be able to help with it!

Also, yay, no zombie eyeballs! *g*

[ithildin]

I don't know where my zines are, in a box somewhere buried in the garage, I guess. My first zine fandom was Blake's 7

[arduinna]

I've been winnowing mine down - I sold off a bunch about five years ago, and will be clearing out another batch in this round. Makes me sad, but I honestly don't pull most of them out to read anymore, so best to move them along to someone who'll enjoy them more, or to the University of Iowa so they're not lost forever.

Bizarrely, I actually have a Blake's 7 zine (slash, though); I was buying Pros zines from an acquaintance who was selling a lot off, and I'd assumed B7 would be next on my list of fandoms to pick up (I had/have tapes and everything!), so when she suggested I add her favorite B7 zine to my pile, I said sure. I've had it for, what, 13-14 years now? Never even opened it, because I never did get around to watching more than the first ep of the series. *g* Hopefully someone will want it...

Huh!

[sherrold]

If you'd asked me if I loc'd that zine, I'd have just looked at you funny! No memory of it at all.

On the other hand, it was during the short period where zines still existed, but you could EMAIL to them. Yay! It *really* amazes me that I see that I actually got LOCs (once or twice, at least) that I had to find stamps for.

I gotta go home and find my copy and have nostalgia with you! Yay, RayandFraser!

Re: Huh!

[arduinna]

Dude. You not only loc'd it, you reviewed it. You took up three full columns of text. *G* The closest anyone else came was movies_michelle with about two columns (looks like hers was an online review rather than a direct LOC - that's sort of awesome, to include those!)

Reading the LOCs, I'm regretting selling TWO five years ago, because wow, they're bearing out my memory that it pretty much rocked. I will be strong, though; it'd been at least five years before that since I'd re-read it, and it's just the nostalgia talking. (she said wistfully) (although it's getting harder to convince myself to leave Twogether on the sell pile, even though I don't think it was as strong as Two for me.)

But man, these also have me nostalgic for the days when people actually did review stories and zines; you can actually get a sense of these stories from these LOCs, and wow do I miss the days when that was normal and expected. *looks at more* Man, I am tempted to scan these pages, redact the LOC-writer names, and put them up on Fanlore as examples of how fans used to talk about stories. I won't, but I'm tempted. *g*

And yes, on the email! That's why I sent mine in, actually; physical letters were too intimidating for me, but an email, well, sure! Mind you, that's also why I thought they'd be treated like online feedback and just passed along to the authors. *g*

... I need a Due South icon.

[rhi]

I remember one year at Escapade (I think it was probably '99), they were doing a survey of favorite fandoms. You just wrote out fandoms that you read, or wrote, or vidded, or anything. So, it was a top of your head list. They were very surprised to announce later that the most popular fandom was due South. Apparently it wasn't often at the top of people's lists but it was *somewhere* on a lot of the lists. I always thought that was just perfect somehow, and that Fraser would love it. (Dief, of course, would just think it meant a better chance of donuts. Or pretzels; he's not that picky.)

[arduinna]

Hee! That really is perfect - very polite of the fandom, really, to let the other shows go first while still, you know. Taking over entirely. *g*

I believe it, too; it was one of those fandoms that seemed to get practically everyone, at least a little bit.

[sakana17]

I... do not remember writing a LOC for "Two." *g* But I'm not surprised I did, because it was great zine. I think I still have it, though I've given away so much of my zine collection, I can't swear to it.

This is making me want to watch Due South. Wow.

[arduinna]

Hee - it was short, and this really was a zine you could email a note to, so I think it was easier to just dash something off. I definitely sold mine off, which I'm sad about, but -- I hadn't read it in years, and until this, I hadn't had more than a passing thought about it here and there. But still!

And I know, I am getting so wistful over DS with this! I found some Alter Egos with a bunch of DS stories in them, too, written by the likes of HG, and I'm just - man. There were some good writers in that fandom. I loved it so much.

[movies_michelle]

Wow, that is a blast from the past. Due South really was the fandom that straddled the internet and old-style fandom. It wasn't even close to being my first zine fandom, but I think it might classify as my last truly zine-based fandom, as it was the last one where most of the stories--at least for Fraser/RayV--were in zines. Fraser/RayK was always more online.

And I see in your response to Snady that you mention mine seemed to be more of a review than an LOC. I believe that was from when I was doing zine reviews on a mailing list, which Bernice was also on.

Thanks for posting about this. It's so much fun!

[arduinna]

You know, I'd never consciously thought about the fact that so much Fraser/RayV fanfic was in zines, but you're absolutely right - not just DS zines but mm zines. And tons of it never made it online, woe.

My main zine fandom was Pros, I just got into it incredibly late. *g* DS really did pre-date it for me, which dates me fairly accurately!

I thought it was really cool that Bernice included online reviews; there was one other besides yours, and what a nifty way to let everyone see what everyone else was thinking! More of that line-straddling, and it seemed to work really well.