June 29, 2024 • 33 mins
Unique, quirky and subversive, zines have a long feminist history. In this classic, we flip through the pages of the past and future of zines, and discuss how people are fighting to diversify and preserve zines.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha. I come to stuff
I never told you production of iHeartRadio, and today we're
bringing back one that was a really fun, surprising one.
I think for us in different ways. When we get
(00:26):
into July, I start thinking about a lot of nerd stuff.
I have so many thoughts. Listeners is keeping me awake
at night? How many thoughts I have about nerd stuff?
Right now, We're going to have to do a huge
episode on it. We're working on something with Joe. But
I've just got a million thoughts turning around my head.
But we did this episode a while back on the
(00:47):
feminism of fanzines, of zines, and it was really interesting
because you and I had different experiences when it comes
to our memories around them. And then after we did
this episode, I remembered that I had there had been
more zines in my life than I recalled while we
were talking about this, and it was just it was
(01:10):
a fascinating one. And because I do as we move
closer to what I call Colon season, for me a
very nerdy time, I was just thinking about that and
some of the zines that I have had, and with
a lot of the flux going on, right now and
(01:30):
nerd them what the future is and also how it
can be this place where there is more representation, which
is something that we talked about in this episode.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
You bought me a witch zine I did. I love it.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
It's cute. I love this too. I love it too,
And as always, listeners, Yeah, if you have any zine
suggestions or memories, please let us know. But in the meantime,
please enjoy this classic episode. Hey, this is Annie and
Samantha and welcome to Steffan. I never told your production
(02:07):
of iHeartRadio, and I have to give you some behind
the scenes. I'm kind of laughing right now because we
have outlines that we work off of, right and I
admitted in a passed episode my s key isn't working
(02:31):
on my laptop, which is one of the most painful
keys to not be working right. And instead of fixing it,
I've put everything off lately because I've been so busy.
I have a lot of interesting workarounds, and I can
tell by this outline that I was very frustrated already.
(02:52):
That's so funny. I'm sorry, it just cracked me up.
I've found some ways around it, but it's not been
the easiest thing to do.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
I will say in one of the outlines, you definitely
missmelled my name.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Because you start with And that's the other thing is
I said, my spell check isn't working, and I.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Was like, huh okay, yeah, you.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Could like see my descent into anger in this outline.
And another thing about this outline is it was originally
a Monday Mini. I do think it's going to be
a shorter one. But every time we say that, it
never works out. But we'll see. But I was researching
it and I think we could come back and revisit it, honestly.
So we're talking about zines. Originally I was specifically talking
about fanzine, So we are going to talk about zines
(03:42):
at large in this one. Do you have any experience
with zines, Samantha.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
I will say I did not know what zines were
until I moved to Atlanta. I think that was around
two thousand and six, two thousand and seven, and I
always called it zines, which he was how little I
knew about it and trying to understand it because there
was a whole like atl collective group that gets together
and does them, and I was like, what is this?
(04:10):
It's really fascinating, and then it got really like trendy.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Yes, so I was very scared of it.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Yeah, and we're going to talk about that because they
are experiencing a boom right now. I didn't realize resurging.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Are you kidding? It's been fifteen years.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
Well it's been longer than that, but they are experiencing
a resurgence. I don't have much experience with scenes. I
had one nerd one that I just kind of found
at a thrift store once, and I really liked that one.
It was like mostly Star Wars, what a bunch of
other stuff, and I just happened to find it. It was
really cool. And then Atlanta used to have dope girls zes.
(04:50):
Well see I get confused with Zene Andziin too, But
I'm going with scenes because magazine. I feel like that's
what it's got to be, right.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
I think you're right. I just really could not grasp it.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
Yeah, and nope, girls are still around, but yeah, but yes.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
Right, yeah, I don't think they don't do the zine anymore,
or at least the last I heard they had retired it.
They might have bought it back, but they are still around, right. Yes,
it was very popular. But one of the reasons I
wanted to talk about this was I got this inkling
that something was up a couple of weeks ago, because
people started posting fan fiction that they'd written literal decades
(05:28):
ago and would say like, hey, I wrote this in
nineteen whatever, here it is, and I was just kind
of like, oh, that's interesting. I mean, yeah, I appreciate it.
And then, as you know, mar Jade, who is a
Star Wars character from Legends that I'm very very excited
to talk about on fictional women around the world, she
started popping up a lot more and I was like,
(05:49):
why are people talking about mar Jade? Not that they shouldn't,
but it's just kind of like, huh, I wonder if
there's a reason for this. It turns out there there is.
There is a movement that is primarily led by women
to digitize old fanzines, to preserve them, to save them
because otherwise they're just gonna be lost. And it's a
(06:12):
whole thing. It's really really interesting. I also am currently
reading one of the best Like I know I've said
it before, but there's some fan fiction you read and
you're like, yes, this could be published and be better
than half the stuff they're putting out, maybe even more
than that. And I'm reading one right now that's a
result of this, and it's so good. It's like reading
a book. It's all no good. But yeah, since we
(06:36):
have been on a tech kick lately, I'm always zoned
to talk about fan fiction, and this is happening right now.
We thought we would go over it fairly briefly, because honestly,
it was a much bigger topic than I thought it
was gonna be. Yeah, you can see the episodes we
did on fan fiction. You can also see the recent
(06:56):
ish many that we did that was called a love
letter to fan fiction, but was primarily about Arcave of
our own, which is one of the biggest fan fiction sites,
which is we're going to talk about in this conversation.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
Right, Okay, so let's talk about this. What are zines
not Zien Smith, not science? I'm having to repeat this
to myself. Well, they encompass a lot of things, but
here are a couple of key things involved.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
One is that they're.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
Typically self published or published by an independent small publisher.
This has mainly been a way for marginalized folks to
exercise their voices more freely outside of mainstream media. So
as a part of that, they are usually not published
in large numbers and are for smaller communities and are
frequently very niche, and they aren't commercial. There's often a
(07:40):
lot of contributions and connections to the zine world, which
was what I saw in Atlanta.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Yeah, so a lot of people, you know, well if
you if I have Zene and you have Zene, will
work together and collaborate and conditions a lot.
Speaker 4 (07:52):
Yeah, I remember that, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, And I
always feel like I have to caveat things zines aren't commercial,
but I do think we have seen with the popularity,
magazines try to get in on that, as always happens
in capitalism.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
So I think there could be an argument made that
some of them aren't commercial, but like at their heart,
at their core, they're not right commercial. Okay, So a
brief history depending on how you define zines, because I
even wrestled with this and I don't know too much
about them, but I was like, doesn't it go back
way further than this? But most people say they go
(08:33):
back to the nineteen thirties with science fiction zines, so
fans trying to like collaborate with short stories and share
their fandom with each other. The zine is short for fanzine.
That was the original use. And remember this was before
the internet and zines were away for fans to connect
(08:53):
with each other. It was sort of like, it's always
interesting these iterations of technology because I've heard people who
were like one generation before me talk about like old
message boards online, and that was like the precursor, and
then the precursor to that is zines, and so yeah,
it was kind of like a way to connect. These
fans would speculate with each other, they would share theories
(09:16):
about their favorite works, they would work together on arts
and stories, including fan fiction. Yes, but they were also
sometimes called per zines or personal zcenes, which I love,
and they were often handmade, right.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
That's again this is what I know, Atlanta, And I
did not know that it had spanned so far back
because it was themed so niche and for again, the
ones that I saw in the early two thousands were
more about music and art. Yes, so it was a
little different and it was very hip culture.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
Yeah, yeah, I'm old, stop it.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
So yeah, zines saw a surge of growth in the
fifties and sixties against kind of like what I'm saying
with counterculture movements that were eager to support smaller, independent
publications and the underground press, and also saw it as
a way to connect with others with similar ideas, a
space for people to have a voice outside of mainstream media.
(10:19):
Mini designs from this time combined art and politics and
activism and writing in experimental and new and eclectic ways,
which that's carried on. That's how I knew it more
so than those fan zines, right.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
I think you also just said zions, but we're leaving
it in because I think it's hilarious having a day.
Let's go yeah, okay, well, yeah, that's one of my
and we're going to talk about this more. But that's
one of the things people keep saying of why zines
are so unique is that you don't know what you're
gonna get in them already. They're like a really unique, random,
(10:54):
well not necessarily random, but just a lot of different
things that you can't really anticipate until you open it
up and look at it, right, and to your points,
(11:16):
Punk music zines really took off in the nineteen eighties,
often combining music and politics, and it offered something unique
because these znes really captured the whole esthetic and vibe
of a subculture. And the nineties is when feminist scenes
like Riot Girl really came onto the scene. And this
(11:38):
was a reaction to sexism within these punk music scenes
and within the writing of punk music, and it went
on to inspire so many other znes written by women
and girls about feminism, often in conjunction with something very specific,
which all coincided with third wave feminism. Quote about it
(12:00):
from the Sally Bingham Collection at Duke University's Rubinstein Library.
Feminist practice emphasizes the sharing of personal experience as a
community building tool, and zines prove to be the perfect
medium for reaching out to young women across the country
in order to form the revolution. Girl Style and Yeah,
forty thousand zines were being published by nineteen ninety three
(12:23):
in North America. I believe right. Yeah, So you might
be thinking, but wait, I've heard so much about the
death of print, and in terms of the environment, that
might be a good thing. But zines are still out
there and have recently seen some major growth, and much
of it is in the arena of intersectional feminism, led
(12:46):
by more women, queer folks, and people of color. However,
just like with most things, there is still work to
be done in terms of inclusivity. One of the big
criticisms of the nineties feminist zines was that they were
largely done and based around middle class white women, and
that is changing, especially with external pressure on the publishing world,
(13:09):
but major issues that were compounded by things like the
pandemic still remains. So like it was seeing this really
great growth in terms of inclusivity, and then the pandemic happens,
and also capitalism ruins everything, and some big magazines are
blurring the lines between magazine and zine, especially by copying
the aesthetic of things like riot girls try to appear
(13:30):
like they are that thing, when that's sort of the
opposite of what zines are about. And as part of
the whole thing behind the popularity of zines amongst women
and marginalized folks is that you can talk about feminism
or whatever really without an ad about plastic surgery or
something in your publication, which you know, if you want
(13:51):
it all for it. But the history of magazines when
it comes to selling women a very specific image of
how they shoed look is not good. So there's it
also gives creators the space to write about other things
than women's issues or race issues, which a lot of
the writers reported like I'm tired of being asked only
to write about this. I want to write about fun
things too, or like not that those can't be fun,
(14:14):
but like you know.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
Right, and I know a lot of it was like
I love music of all kinds and they only asked
me to do the specific genre of music, and it's
not what I'm interested in, Like I've saw that, Like
they would talk about things like that again, like dope girls.
Their whole thing was like let's talk about weed and
kind of well, no that wasn't their whole thing, but
like bringing it in and like normalizing what that looks
like in a culture that is so uptight at that
(14:38):
point in time. But yeah, it's very interesting to see
all of that. And again, what I witnessed was people
taking space and creating their own art, and a lot
of the zines, not Signs, not of the zines that
I saw at that time interweaved their artwork in the story.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
So it was really interesting to see.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
Yeah, yeah, that's something else I've loved out recent fan fiction,
which we are going to get to, I promise, but
i'd love when they do that where they have like
art interspersed in the story, like I love them and
I'm really gonna rude the day if it is Zienes
and not Zene Samantha. But it was me. I promise,
(15:17):
it just makes sense to me.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
I'm pretty sure, right, I think I was corrected when
I first said that.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
You okay, well, we'll see. We could have just looked
it up, but we're too into it now. Here's a
quote from a Guardian article written by Ruth Jamison. If
modern feminism is multifaceted by nature, there now seems to
be an independently published magazine or zine for every one
(15:42):
of those faces. There's Sabbat, which explores modern witchcraft through
a feminist lens, Typical Girls, which sets out to show
there's no such thing, the women only Zene Girls Club,
female general interest mag Lira or Lyra, and Private Eye
meets Vogue, satirical glossy mush pit Riposts, the smart magazine
for women burnt Rote, which showcases the talent of South
(16:05):
Asian women, Galdam, the print version of the popular website
for women of color of the same name, and feminist
indie mags Lady Beard and fruit Lands are amplifying women's voices,
championing female writing, and challenging ideas about what a women's
magazine can be. These publications tap into a rich history
of female protest in print. Here's the quote within the article.
(16:27):
Obviously there are lots of women in the media, but
they rarely control every aspect of a magazine. It's even
rarer that they own it, says Phoebe Lindsay of Fruitlands. Historically,
women have taken control of the way they are not
represented by publishing on their own terms. Think of Spare
Rib and the Riot Girls zines of the nineties. By
having our own magazine, we can control and direct every
(16:48):
element of our message. The lack of diversity in the
media is unbelievably frustrating, says Galdam's opinion editor Heather Barnett.
Galdam are changing that by providing a platform where women
and non binary people of color can write about whatever
they like.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
Yeah, so, the article continues.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
The boom in independent magazine publishing has shown that print
is not dead.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Now.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
Independent women's magazines are setting the standard for a more
progressive women's media. They are changing the face of women's
magazines and have their sights set on the media as
a whole. As Connery and Taylor says, quote, the number
of women who are running independent magazines is inspiring.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
We're everywhere getting done.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
It seems print is not only not dead, it has
also come back as a woman. Yes, I like that,
And here's a quote from Women's Media Center. Sus Meyers
is a graphic designer who, along with five other people,
organizes the NYC Feminist Zine Fest, the event that has
been happening since twenty eleven and offers a space to
first timers and old school zine makers to present their
(17:48):
work and exchange ideas. The event started with three hundred
dollars raised on GoFundMe and the purpose of quote promoting
the self published work of zine sters of all genders
as they explore a variety of feminist topics through print media.
The fact that zines are quote created without any mediating
influence from advertisers is an important aspect of the form.
(18:10):
Meyer said, a zine can be a lot of things,
and because of this, its precise definition can be wonderfully,
willfully difficult to pin down.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
She added, Yes, and this is one of the things
I love doing this research is there's a lot of
collections or events like this for zines, and I would
love to go.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
I'm pretty sure Lanta had a zene fest. I'm pretty
sure in the early two thousands they actually did, or
mid two thousands they did have a zine fest, which
also like what's happening cool?
Speaker 1 (18:37):
Now you know? Now you know. Many zines are available
in digital form. Some argue that they were essentially pre
Internet versions of blogs. Others argue that the physical nature
is key to what makes a zine a zine, and
that's why one of the reasons why at least they're
experiencing a surge during the time social media, like people
want something kind of different where you can be random,
(18:59):
it's in your hands physical. But this brings us to
why my fan fiction sense was tingling, because the digital
bit is not necessarily about not offering a print option.
A lot of people are arguing it's about preserving for
future generations. So as discussed inner episode on Archive of
(19:19):
our Own or AO three, which is one of the largest,
I'm pretty sure the largest fan fiction platforms in existence,
we talked about how it's just one piece of the
nonprofit the organization of Transformative Works, and as part of
their mission to preserve older fan fiction largely published in fanzines,
they recently launched the fanzine scan hosting project in collaboration
(19:43):
with Zenedom and basically, the goal is to preserve these
physical fan fictions on their site. And I have seen
some of the results. Was what was happening. I was like, oh,
look at this, and a handful of my favorite authors
have sort of fallen off the map to participate in it.
That was another thing I saw where they'd be like,
(20:05):
I gotta go scan some what was what did they say,
Cody one zines, I'll be back, And I was like, what, okay?
But yeah, I've seen these fan fiction that are decades
old and they're so well written, and I'm just like, wow,
(20:26):
I understand why you were published. And I'm so glad
it was saved. I'm so glad I'm reading it right now.
And as mentioned before many times, most fan fiction is
created by women and other marginalized folks, which means that
those folks are largely spearheading this project.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Love to see it.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
For years, Zingdom has been scanning and archiving this material,
but this new project came in part out of frustration
that AO three's technology didn't really allow for uploading scanned
at fanzines, which I was wondering.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
I was like, can they do that?
Speaker 3 (20:58):
Morgan Dawn, who was leading the project, describe the difficulty
of uploading the scans and that once uploaded, they can't
be edited and many errors are often introduced. Don was
trying to upload a novel link fanfic with this process
to AO three and twenty twelve, but got annoyed with it,
so just put up a Google Drive link to the pdf.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
Sou's like something I would do, But it was.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
Taken down because the link was not fan work, which
is weird, citizen.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
It's a link to fanwork, it's not fan work actual
fan work. Yes, and I have experienced this whole hassle
of converting a PDF. I hear you, just sees you.
I hear you, Yes, I really do. This led to
a whole discussion about preserving fan history, a lot of
(21:49):
this history in zines, and how that fell to the
fans because the fans are the ones making these things.
Don started Zendom to take on this whole thing, uploading
and converting dot with permission I'm going to talk about
the more in a second, and only a handful of volunteers.
But because of that, it just wasn't working like Don wanted,
Like the volunteer in the scheduling and the organizing and
(22:11):
all this technology, it wasn't working. So Don reached out
to Open Doors. A part of the organization of Transformative
works with the mission, and their mission is by the way,
preserving quote those Spanish projects that might otherwise be lost
due to lack of time, interest, our resources on the
part of the current maintainer to join in. So Don
(22:33):
reached out to them. Mission seems like it fits right
in with what Zeemedom's trying to do. But because of
things that we talked about in that fan fiction episode
on IO three of crackdowns on Tumblr, the shutdown of
Yahoo groups where a lot of fanfic was hosted, this
process got really really delayed. So it wasn't until I
think twenty nineteen that they started working together. Another thing,
(22:59):
like Okay First AO three is also run by volunteers,
and one of the things we talked about in that
episode is that their technology is old, like it's not
super old, but it needs to be updated. But it's
just like gotten so out of control that they also
are struggling with that stuff. Another thing is the tech divide.
It's kind of been an issue because a lot of
(23:20):
fanzines were written by older people who might not be
the most tech savvy to scan and save their work.
And another thing, and this is what I found really
fascinating and I would love to expand on this, but
people often wrote under pen names and are hard to find.
So Don talked about like calling people and having these,
(23:40):
you know, maybe never finding them, or maybe finding out
that they had died, or maybe connecting with an old
relative who was so thrilled, like maybe they had lost
that relative who wrote it and was so thrilled to
have this kind of piece of like oh I didn't
know they wrote that or whatever. Because they can't upload
them without permission, they have to get the permission first.
Speaker 5 (24:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
So with this project, thousands of physical fanzines have been scanned.
Most yeah, we're found through Facebook groups are just reaching
out to the names they found in the zines. But
there are thousands and thousands and thousands more to go.
One volunteer has eight thousand Star Trek fanzines alone alone,
(24:34):
and I want to talk about this. I want to
do the bigger episode on this one day because it
was so interesting. But the Kirk Spock fan fiction archive
was one of the first to be imported to AO three,
and it was being run by a fan who'd taken
on the task of maintaining an archive of zines in
that arena. Notably, this fandom is also the source of
a lot of our more modern Spanish spaces and understanding,
(24:56):
including Slash and the ripple effects that that had, and
a lot of the women writing about why they were
writing Kirk AND's back is a romantic couple, and they
were talking about how they identified with Spock is not
belonging anywhere and getting all this like guff for the
It was just really interesting, really really interesting to see
the ripple effects of that. Open Doors is starting to
(25:17):
archive Zendom's links and is working with universities and other
institutions to make these scenes available online to the public,
which it hasn't previously been the case, Like some universities
have these collections, but you had to be a student
and go in person to see them. So that's a
piece of it too. From a twenty twenty two article
(25:38):
by Jay Costello. And this is a long quote, so
bear with me. It means not being forgotten, said Maggie Nowakowska,
the co editor of Geek Elders Speak, an anthology of
essays by older women in fandom. Now Akowska herself is
seventy three, and I hope I'm not put shuring your name.
One reason for preserving and celebrating that history is the
fact that so many of the franchise is key to
(25:58):
phantom history. Likes Star Trek and Star Wars have a
reputation of being for boys, whereas fanfic and fanzines have
traditionally been a space dominated by women. They don't think
we ever existed. They don't know that women did all
these things, says Nawakowska. Julie Baza, an Australian fanzine author
and publisher who volunteers with Open Doors, also emphasizes that
(26:19):
preservation isn't just about making sure the best fan fiction
is available to readers. It's about preserving the culture and
history that got us to where we are now. It's
really interesting to get an idea of the bigger picture,
she says, what tropes are being written about and why
at different times, how have things changed. For instance, fan
fiction has often been celebrated for its ability to give
writers and readers a chance to explore their gender and sexuality.
(26:42):
This terminology has changed with words like lemon denoting explicit
sexual content and even slash denoting male male relationships falling
out of favor, but knowing how and why they were
used as important in understanding how same sex relationships and
women's sexualities were even more police than they are today.
(27:02):
At the same time, preservation can also demonstrate the sheer
breadth of fanworks. Baza shared some scans with me, which
include a series of haiku inspired by eighties sci fi
movie Buckeru Bonzai. For instance, when you open up fanzine,
you'll see cartoons, you'll see essays, you'll see poetry, you'll
see snarky little comments, you'll see letters of comment said
now a Kawska, And that's a totally different experience than
(27:23):
just reading one story, which I love. They were kind
of talking about that in terms of, you know, like
if you go to fan fiction dot net, which is
what they're talking about with the slash. The reason we
say slash is because if you said, like Kirk and
Amper sans block. That's a friendship. If you say Kirk
slash block, that is a romantic relationship. But that's not
(27:48):
everybody uses fanfiction dot Net anymore, Like that's not how
it is necessarily on every site, although it is still
in my case that's what I usually see. But I
love that, and I love like this idea of when
you open a fanzine. It's not like when you click
a tag and you know what you're looking for and
you know what you're gonna get probably, but you could
get a series of Miker that's amazing.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
That's amazing.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
Yes, yeah, wow, you just brought me back it really,
like I forgot about this. Yeah, it's been so cool. Yeah,
it was cool. It's something that I'm like, I love it,
but I would never have the courage to do it
because I'm not artistic. I think I actually participating in
putting like a Stanza in one. I could be making
(28:35):
this up, but this seems familiar, like I'm having a time,
or maybe I was just around when people did that.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
I don't remember.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
I remember buying because I loved going to local readings,
like we have a lot of good writers in Atlanta.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
We know this.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
iHeart has been blessed with some of our writers recently
of fiction, including yourself, including There was a thing called
Write Club, and I don't know they're still going in
I believe our one of our producers, Mike Johns, was
a part of that. She was a big founding and
beginning of that, and I remember hearing her read uh there.
(29:09):
So shout out to one of the producers of iHeart
and Our Family rather who began this and seeing different
writers go up and give an essay and have a moment.
But in that same group, they did zine clubs and
I think they still do Actually, now that you say that,
I feel like it's been years since I attended one
(29:29):
of those, but I think they still do it. Yeah,
And I know Right Club is I think a national thing,
but it's the Right Club in Atlanta was started by them,
and I remember them selling independently published books and independent zines.
Like now that i'm thinking about it, and it's been
several years since I've attended one, they still do that,
(29:51):
and I love that aspect of it because it brings
a lot of personality to these writings and yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
Wow, you've really got me back. And as in fact,
I just had to look through.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
Twitter because it's not part of your world, you don't know, which,
thank you very much for bringing it back.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
Into my world.
Speaker 3 (30:10):
There's one group called Queer Circle and I believe they're
based out of the UK that did a thing called Atazine,
which they did in December, which they brought over one
hundred zines submitted by different people from all over the world,
all of the world from the queer community. And I'm like, hell, yeah,
this stuff like that is so amazing and I forgot
(30:31):
the impact of things like this.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
Yeah. Yeah, this was a really fun one to research
because I kind of knew about them, but I didn't
know too much. I'm so glad that this project is happening,
that these fanzines are getting preserved, because I there was
a lot of other Honestly, we talked about this before, Samantha.
Sometimes we just want to quote like entire articles because
it's like, Okay, yes, this is it. But a lot
(30:56):
of the older women they interviewed were like, yeah, oh,
I don't want to I don't want this to get
lost because I think other people will still enjoy it
and it's such a good marker of where the fandom
was then, so why should it get lost just because
you know the Internet wasn't around then, right, So I
don't know. It makes me very happy.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
Yeah, it encompasses so many mediums to this that it's
a phenomenal thing and that being digitized would be an
amazing thing to preserve things. I would love to see
some of the nineteen thirties zines. I want to know
what those are. Someone give me a copy, because they're
also like aesthetically pleasing because for me, I love variety
(31:33):
and it doesn't need to be clean. I need, like
I love it's not chaos, but the variety within it
and the way they bring it together that I'm like, yeah,
this is fun. This is an amusing thing that you
can see and it's someone's take of whatever they're publishing
or whether they're trying to send out.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
So yeah, huh yeah yeah. Well, I mean, like I said,
I have been enjoying the fan fiction. Everybody, thanks who
is doing that up looking it because I've been like
blown away, legitimately almost texted you and I was like, I'm
reading a fair fiction that is so much better than
so much of the official stuff out there, Like wow,
(32:09):
And it would have been lost, It would have been lost,
and that's just yeah, I don't, I don't want it.
I'm I don't. I'm very happy. Uh So if anybody
listening is participating in this or has any thoughts about this,
that would be great. Uh. But yeah, it is pretty
beautiful to bring like one topic and see all these
different takes on it, all these I don't know, it
(32:32):
is really cool. Pretty much anyone can make one. There
are tutorials online if you're interested. Uh, if you have
made one, oh my goodness, let us know, yes, yes,
And if you have any suggestions, because we did go
over some in that middle part, but there are a
lot right now and it's a lot is happening, and
(32:52):
especially in yeah, kind of the intersectional feminist realm of zine.
So send to those our way.
Speaker 3 (32:59):
Yeah, maybe we can do that as a book club somehow.
Speaker 1 (33:02):
That'd be cool. I think we could. I think we
could well. In the meantime, if you got any of
those suggestions or thoughts about this at all, you can
email us ATEFPIA mom Stuff at iHeartMedia dot com. You
can find us on Twitter at most Stuff podcast or
on Instagram a stuff I've Never told you. Thanks as
always to our super producer Christina.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
Thank you, Christina, Yes, and.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
Thanks to you for listening. Stuff on ever Told You
the Direction? From iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
you can check out the heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
or reeve you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha. I come to stuff
I never told you production of iHeartRadio, and today we're
bringing back one that was a really fun, surprising one.
I think for us in different ways. When we get
(00:26):
into July, I start thinking about a lot of nerd stuff.
I have so many thoughts. Listeners is keeping me awake
at night? How many thoughts I have about nerd stuff?
Right now, We're going to have to do a huge
episode on it. We're working on something with Joe. But
I've just got a million thoughts turning around my head.
But we did this episode a while back on the
(00:47):
feminism of fanzines, of zines, and it was really interesting
because you and I had different experiences when it comes
to our memories around them. And then after we did
this episode, I remembered that I had there had been
more zines in my life than I recalled while we
were talking about this, and it was just it was
(01:10):
a fascinating one. And because I do as we move
closer to what I call Colon season, for me a
very nerdy time, I was just thinking about that and
some of the zines that I have had, and with
a lot of the flux going on, right now and
(01:30):
nerd them what the future is and also how it
can be this place where there is more representation, which
is something that we talked about in this episode.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
You bought me a witch zine I did. I love it.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
It's cute. I love this too. I love it too,
And as always, listeners, Yeah, if you have any zine
suggestions or memories, please let us know. But in the meantime,
please enjoy this classic episode. Hey, this is Annie and
Samantha and welcome to Steffan. I never told your production
(02:07):
of iHeartRadio, and I have to give you some behind
the scenes. I'm kind of laughing right now because we
have outlines that we work off of, right and I
admitted in a passed episode my s key isn't working
(02:31):
on my laptop, which is one of the most painful
keys to not be working right. And instead of fixing it,
I've put everything off lately because I've been so busy.
I have a lot of interesting workarounds, and I can
tell by this outline that I was very frustrated already.
(02:52):
That's so funny. I'm sorry, it just cracked me up.
I've found some ways around it, but it's not been
the easiest thing to do.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
I will say in one of the outlines, you definitely
missmelled my name.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Because you start with And that's the other thing is
I said, my spell check isn't working, and I.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Was like, huh okay, yeah, you.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Could like see my descent into anger in this outline.
And another thing about this outline is it was originally
a Monday Mini. I do think it's going to be
a shorter one. But every time we say that, it
never works out. But we'll see. But I was researching
it and I think we could come back and revisit it, honestly.
So we're talking about zines. Originally I was specifically talking
about fanzine, So we are going to talk about zines
(03:42):
at large in this one. Do you have any experience
with zines, Samantha.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
I will say I did not know what zines were
until I moved to Atlanta. I think that was around
two thousand and six, two thousand and seven, and I
always called it zines, which he was how little I
knew about it and trying to understand it because there
was a whole like atl collective group that gets together
and does them, and I was like, what is this?
(04:10):
It's really fascinating, and then it got really like trendy.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Yes, so I was very scared of it.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Yeah, and we're going to talk about that because they
are experiencing a boom right now. I didn't realize resurging.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Are you kidding? It's been fifteen years.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
Well it's been longer than that, but they are experiencing
a resurgence. I don't have much experience with scenes. I
had one nerd one that I just kind of found
at a thrift store once, and I really liked that one.
It was like mostly Star Wars, what a bunch of
other stuff, and I just happened to find it. It was
really cool. And then Atlanta used to have dope girls zes.
(04:50):
Well see I get confused with Zene Andziin too, But
I'm going with scenes because magazine. I feel like that's
what it's got to be, right.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
I think you're right. I just really could not grasp it.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
Yeah, and nope, girls are still around, but yeah, but yes.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
Right, yeah, I don't think they don't do the zine anymore,
or at least the last I heard they had retired it.
They might have bought it back, but they are still around, right. Yes,
it was very popular. But one of the reasons I
wanted to talk about this was I got this inkling
that something was up a couple of weeks ago, because
people started posting fan fiction that they'd written literal decades
(05:28):
ago and would say like, hey, I wrote this in
nineteen whatever, here it is, and I was just kind
of like, oh, that's interesting. I mean, yeah, I appreciate it.
And then, as you know, mar Jade, who is a
Star Wars character from Legends that I'm very very excited
to talk about on fictional women around the world, she
started popping up a lot more and I was like,
(05:49):
why are people talking about mar Jade? Not that they shouldn't,
but it's just kind of like, huh, I wonder if
there's a reason for this. It turns out there there is.
There is a movement that is primarily led by women
to digitize old fanzines, to preserve them, to save them
because otherwise they're just gonna be lost. And it's a
(06:12):
whole thing. It's really really interesting. I also am currently
reading one of the best Like I know I've said
it before, but there's some fan fiction you read and
you're like, yes, this could be published and be better
than half the stuff they're putting out, maybe even more
than that. And I'm reading one right now that's a
result of this, and it's so good. It's like reading
a book. It's all no good. But yeah, since we
(06:36):
have been on a tech kick lately, I'm always zoned
to talk about fan fiction, and this is happening right now.
We thought we would go over it fairly briefly, because honestly,
it was a much bigger topic than I thought it
was gonna be. Yeah, you can see the episodes we
did on fan fiction. You can also see the recent
(06:56):
ish many that we did that was called a love
letter to fan fiction, but was primarily about Arcave of
our own, which is one of the biggest fan fiction sites,
which is we're going to talk about in this conversation.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
Right, Okay, so let's talk about this. What are zines
not Zien Smith, not science? I'm having to repeat this
to myself. Well, they encompass a lot of things, but
here are a couple of key things involved.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
One is that they're.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
Typically self published or published by an independent small publisher.
This has mainly been a way for marginalized folks to
exercise their voices more freely outside of mainstream media. So
as a part of that, they are usually not published
in large numbers and are for smaller communities and are
frequently very niche, and they aren't commercial. There's often a
(07:40):
lot of contributions and connections to the zine world, which
was what I saw in Atlanta.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Yeah, so a lot of people, you know, well if
you if I have Zene and you have Zene, will
work together and collaborate and conditions a lot.
Speaker 4 (07:52):
Yeah, I remember that, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, And I
always feel like I have to caveat things zines aren't commercial,
but I do think we have seen with the popularity,
magazines try to get in on that, as always happens
in capitalism.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
So I think there could be an argument made that
some of them aren't commercial, but like at their heart,
at their core, they're not right commercial. Okay, So a
brief history depending on how you define zines, because I
even wrestled with this and I don't know too much
about them, but I was like, doesn't it go back
way further than this? But most people say they go
(08:33):
back to the nineteen thirties with science fiction zines, so
fans trying to like collaborate with short stories and share
their fandom with each other. The zine is short for fanzine.
That was the original use. And remember this was before
the internet and zines were away for fans to connect
(08:53):
with each other. It was sort of like, it's always
interesting these iterations of technology because I've heard people who
were like one generation before me talk about like old
message boards online, and that was like the precursor, and
then the precursor to that is zines, and so yeah,
it was kind of like a way to connect. These
fans would speculate with each other, they would share theories
(09:16):
about their favorite works, they would work together on arts
and stories, including fan fiction. Yes, but they were also
sometimes called per zines or personal zcenes, which I love,
and they were often handmade, right.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
That's again this is what I know, Atlanta, And I
did not know that it had spanned so far back
because it was themed so niche and for again, the
ones that I saw in the early two thousands were
more about music and art. Yes, so it was a
little different and it was very hip culture.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
Yeah, yeah, I'm old, stop it.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
So yeah, zines saw a surge of growth in the
fifties and sixties against kind of like what I'm saying
with counterculture movements that were eager to support smaller, independent
publications and the underground press, and also saw it as
a way to connect with others with similar ideas, a
space for people to have a voice outside of mainstream media.
(10:19):
Mini designs from this time combined art and politics and
activism and writing in experimental and new and eclectic ways,
which that's carried on. That's how I knew it more
so than those fan zines, right.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
I think you also just said zions, but we're leaving
it in because I think it's hilarious having a day.
Let's go yeah, okay, well, yeah, that's one of my
and we're going to talk about this more. But that's
one of the things people keep saying of why zines
are so unique is that you don't know what you're
gonna get in them already. They're like a really unique, random,
(10:54):
well not necessarily random, but just a lot of different
things that you can't really anticipate until you open it
up and look at it, right, and to your points,
(11:16):
Punk music zines really took off in the nineteen eighties,
often combining music and politics, and it offered something unique
because these znes really captured the whole esthetic and vibe
of a subculture. And the nineties is when feminist scenes
like Riot Girl really came onto the scene. And this
(11:38):
was a reaction to sexism within these punk music scenes
and within the writing of punk music, and it went
on to inspire so many other znes written by women
and girls about feminism, often in conjunction with something very specific,
which all coincided with third wave feminism. Quote about it
(12:00):
from the Sally Bingham Collection at Duke University's Rubinstein Library.
Feminist practice emphasizes the sharing of personal experience as a
community building tool, and zines prove to be the perfect
medium for reaching out to young women across the country
in order to form the revolution. Girl Style and Yeah,
forty thousand zines were being published by nineteen ninety three
(12:23):
in North America. I believe right. Yeah, So you might
be thinking, but wait, I've heard so much about the
death of print, and in terms of the environment, that
might be a good thing. But zines are still out
there and have recently seen some major growth, and much
of it is in the arena of intersectional feminism, led
(12:46):
by more women, queer folks, and people of color. However,
just like with most things, there is still work to
be done in terms of inclusivity. One of the big
criticisms of the nineties feminist zines was that they were
largely done and based around middle class white women, and
that is changing, especially with external pressure on the publishing world,
(13:09):
but major issues that were compounded by things like the
pandemic still remains. So like it was seeing this really
great growth in terms of inclusivity, and then the pandemic happens,
and also capitalism ruins everything, and some big magazines are
blurring the lines between magazine and zine, especially by copying
the aesthetic of things like riot girls try to appear
(13:30):
like they are that thing, when that's sort of the
opposite of what zines are about. And as part of
the whole thing behind the popularity of zines amongst women
and marginalized folks is that you can talk about feminism
or whatever really without an ad about plastic surgery or
something in your publication, which you know, if you want
(13:51):
it all for it. But the history of magazines when
it comes to selling women a very specific image of
how they shoed look is not good. So there's it
also gives creators the space to write about other things
than women's issues or race issues, which a lot of
the writers reported like I'm tired of being asked only
to write about this. I want to write about fun
things too, or like not that those can't be fun,
(14:14):
but like you know.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
Right, and I know a lot of it was like
I love music of all kinds and they only asked
me to do the specific genre of music, and it's
not what I'm interested in, Like I've saw that, Like
they would talk about things like that again, like dope girls.
Their whole thing was like let's talk about weed and
kind of well, no that wasn't their whole thing, but
like bringing it in and like normalizing what that looks
like in a culture that is so uptight at that
(14:38):
point in time. But yeah, it's very interesting to see
all of that. And again, what I witnessed was people
taking space and creating their own art, and a lot
of the zines, not Signs, not of the zines that
I saw at that time interweaved their artwork in the story.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
So it was really interesting to see.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
Yeah, yeah, that's something else I've loved out recent fan fiction,
which we are going to get to, I promise, but
i'd love when they do that where they have like
art interspersed in the story, like I love them and
I'm really gonna rude the day if it is Zienes
and not Zene Samantha. But it was me. I promise,
(15:17):
it just makes sense to me.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
I'm pretty sure, right, I think I was corrected when
I first said that.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
You okay, well, we'll see. We could have just looked
it up, but we're too into it now. Here's a
quote from a Guardian article written by Ruth Jamison. If
modern feminism is multifaceted by nature, there now seems to
be an independently published magazine or zine for every one
(15:42):
of those faces. There's Sabbat, which explores modern witchcraft through
a feminist lens, Typical Girls, which sets out to show
there's no such thing, the women only Zene Girls Club,
female general interest mag Lira or Lyra, and Private Eye
meets Vogue, satirical glossy mush pit Riposts, the smart magazine
for women burnt Rote, which showcases the talent of South
(16:05):
Asian women, Galdam, the print version of the popular website
for women of color of the same name, and feminist
indie mags Lady Beard and fruit Lands are amplifying women's voices,
championing female writing, and challenging ideas about what a women's
magazine can be. These publications tap into a rich history
of female protest in print. Here's the quote within the article.
(16:27):
Obviously there are lots of women in the media, but
they rarely control every aspect of a magazine. It's even
rarer that they own it, says Phoebe Lindsay of Fruitlands. Historically,
women have taken control of the way they are not
represented by publishing on their own terms. Think of Spare
Rib and the Riot Girls zines of the nineties. By
having our own magazine, we can control and direct every
(16:48):
element of our message. The lack of diversity in the
media is unbelievably frustrating, says Galdam's opinion editor Heather Barnett.
Galdam are changing that by providing a platform where women
and non binary people of color can write about whatever
they like.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
Yeah, so, the article continues.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
The boom in independent magazine publishing has shown that print
is not dead.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Now.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
Independent women's magazines are setting the standard for a more
progressive women's media. They are changing the face of women's
magazines and have their sights set on the media as
a whole. As Connery and Taylor says, quote, the number
of women who are running independent magazines is inspiring.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
We're everywhere getting done.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
It seems print is not only not dead, it has
also come back as a woman. Yes, I like that,
And here's a quote from Women's Media Center. Sus Meyers
is a graphic designer who, along with five other people,
organizes the NYC Feminist Zine Fest, the event that has
been happening since twenty eleven and offers a space to
first timers and old school zine makers to present their
(17:48):
work and exchange ideas. The event started with three hundred
dollars raised on GoFundMe and the purpose of quote promoting
the self published work of zine sters of all genders
as they explore a variety of feminist topics through print media.
The fact that zines are quote created without any mediating
influence from advertisers is an important aspect of the form.
(18:10):
Meyer said, a zine can be a lot of things,
and because of this, its precise definition can be wonderfully,
willfully difficult to pin down.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
She added, Yes, and this is one of the things
I love doing this research is there's a lot of
collections or events like this for zines, and I would
love to go.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
I'm pretty sure Lanta had a zene fest. I'm pretty
sure in the early two thousands they actually did, or
mid two thousands they did have a zine fest, which
also like what's happening cool?
Speaker 1 (18:37):
Now you know? Now you know. Many zines are available
in digital form. Some argue that they were essentially pre
Internet versions of blogs. Others argue that the physical nature
is key to what makes a zine a zine, and
that's why one of the reasons why at least they're
experiencing a surge during the time social media, like people
want something kind of different where you can be random,
(18:59):
it's in your hands physical. But this brings us to
why my fan fiction sense was tingling, because the digital
bit is not necessarily about not offering a print option.
A lot of people are arguing it's about preserving for
future generations. So as discussed inner episode on Archive of
(19:19):
our Own or AO three, which is one of the largest,
I'm pretty sure the largest fan fiction platforms in existence,
we talked about how it's just one piece of the
nonprofit the organization of Transformative Works, and as part of
their mission to preserve older fan fiction largely published in fanzines,
they recently launched the fanzine scan hosting project in collaboration
(19:43):
with Zenedom and basically, the goal is to preserve these
physical fan fictions on their site. And I have seen
some of the results. Was what was happening. I was like, oh,
look at this, and a handful of my favorite authors
have sort of fallen off the map to participate in it.
That was another thing I saw where they'd be like,
(20:05):
I gotta go scan some what was what did they say,
Cody one zines, I'll be back, And I was like, what, okay?
But yeah, I've seen these fan fiction that are decades
old and they're so well written, and I'm just like, wow,
(20:26):
I understand why you were published. And I'm so glad
it was saved. I'm so glad I'm reading it right now.
And as mentioned before many times, most fan fiction is
created by women and other marginalized folks, which means that
those folks are largely spearheading this project.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Love to see it.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
For years, Zingdom has been scanning and archiving this material,
but this new project came in part out of frustration
that AO three's technology didn't really allow for uploading scanned
at fanzines, which I was wondering.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
I was like, can they do that?
Speaker 3 (20:58):
Morgan Dawn, who was leading the project, describe the difficulty
of uploading the scans and that once uploaded, they can't
be edited and many errors are often introduced. Don was
trying to upload a novel link fanfic with this process
to AO three and twenty twelve, but got annoyed with it,
so just put up a Google Drive link to the pdf.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
Sou's like something I would do, But it was.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
Taken down because the link was not fan work, which
is weird, citizen.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
It's a link to fanwork, it's not fan work actual
fan work. Yes, and I have experienced this whole hassle
of converting a PDF. I hear you, just sees you.
I hear you, Yes, I really do. This led to
a whole discussion about preserving fan history, a lot of
(21:49):
this history in zines, and how that fell to the
fans because the fans are the ones making these things.
Don started Zendom to take on this whole thing, uploading
and converting dot with permission I'm going to talk about
the more in a second, and only a handful of volunteers.
But because of that, it just wasn't working like Don wanted,
Like the volunteer in the scheduling and the organizing and
(22:11):
all this technology, it wasn't working. So Don reached out
to Open Doors. A part of the organization of Transformative
works with the mission, and their mission is by the way,
preserving quote those Spanish projects that might otherwise be lost
due to lack of time, interest, our resources on the
part of the current maintainer to join in. So Don
(22:33):
reached out to them. Mission seems like it fits right
in with what Zeemedom's trying to do. But because of
things that we talked about in that fan fiction episode
on IO three of crackdowns on Tumblr, the shutdown of
Yahoo groups where a lot of fanfic was hosted, this
process got really really delayed. So it wasn't until I
think twenty nineteen that they started working together. Another thing,
(22:59):
like Okay First AO three is also run by volunteers,
and one of the things we talked about in that
episode is that their technology is old, like it's not
super old, but it needs to be updated. But it's
just like gotten so out of control that they also
are struggling with that stuff. Another thing is the tech divide.
It's kind of been an issue because a lot of
(23:20):
fanzines were written by older people who might not be
the most tech savvy to scan and save their work.
And another thing, and this is what I found really
fascinating and I would love to expand on this, but
people often wrote under pen names and are hard to find.
So Don talked about like calling people and having these,
(23:40):
you know, maybe never finding them, or maybe finding out
that they had died, or maybe connecting with an old
relative who was so thrilled, like maybe they had lost
that relative who wrote it and was so thrilled to
have this kind of piece of like oh I didn't
know they wrote that or whatever. Because they can't upload
them without permission, they have to get the permission first.
Speaker 5 (24:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
So with this project, thousands of physical fanzines have been scanned.
Most yeah, we're found through Facebook groups are just reaching
out to the names they found in the zines. But
there are thousands and thousands and thousands more to go.
One volunteer has eight thousand Star Trek fanzines alone alone,
(24:34):
and I want to talk about this. I want to
do the bigger episode on this one day because it
was so interesting. But the Kirk Spock fan fiction archive
was one of the first to be imported to AO three,
and it was being run by a fan who'd taken
on the task of maintaining an archive of zines in
that arena. Notably, this fandom is also the source of
a lot of our more modern Spanish spaces and understanding,
(24:56):
including Slash and the ripple effects that that had, and
a lot of the women writing about why they were
writing Kirk AND's back is a romantic couple, and they
were talking about how they identified with Spock is not
belonging anywhere and getting all this like guff for the
It was just really interesting, really really interesting to see
the ripple effects of that. Open Doors is starting to
(25:17):
archive Zendom's links and is working with universities and other
institutions to make these scenes available online to the public,
which it hasn't previously been the case, Like some universities
have these collections, but you had to be a student
and go in person to see them. So that's a
piece of it too. From a twenty twenty two article
(25:38):
by Jay Costello. And this is a long quote, so
bear with me. It means not being forgotten, said Maggie Nowakowska,
the co editor of Geek Elders Speak, an anthology of
essays by older women in fandom. Now Akowska herself is
seventy three, and I hope I'm not put shuring your name.
One reason for preserving and celebrating that history is the
fact that so many of the franchise is key to
(25:58):
phantom history. Likes Star Trek and Star Wars have a
reputation of being for boys, whereas fanfic and fanzines have
traditionally been a space dominated by women. They don't think
we ever existed. They don't know that women did all
these things, says Nawakowska. Julie Baza, an Australian fanzine author
and publisher who volunteers with Open Doors, also emphasizes that
(26:19):
preservation isn't just about making sure the best fan fiction
is available to readers. It's about preserving the culture and
history that got us to where we are now. It's
really interesting to get an idea of the bigger picture,
she says, what tropes are being written about and why
at different times, how have things changed. For instance, fan
fiction has often been celebrated for its ability to give
writers and readers a chance to explore their gender and sexuality.
(26:42):
This terminology has changed with words like lemon denoting explicit
sexual content and even slash denoting male male relationships falling
out of favor, but knowing how and why they were
used as important in understanding how same sex relationships and
women's sexualities were even more police than they are today.
(27:02):
At the same time, preservation can also demonstrate the sheer
breadth of fanworks. Baza shared some scans with me, which
include a series of haiku inspired by eighties sci fi
movie Buckeru Bonzai. For instance, when you open up fanzine,
you'll see cartoons, you'll see essays, you'll see poetry, you'll
see snarky little comments, you'll see letters of comment said
now a Kawska, And that's a totally different experience than
(27:23):
just reading one story, which I love. They were kind
of talking about that in terms of, you know, like
if you go to fan fiction dot net, which is
what they're talking about with the slash. The reason we
say slash is because if you said, like Kirk and
Amper sans block. That's a friendship. If you say Kirk
slash block, that is a romantic relationship. But that's not
(27:48):
everybody uses fanfiction dot Net anymore, Like that's not how
it is necessarily on every site, although it is still
in my case that's what I usually see. But I
love that, and I love like this idea of when
you open a fanzine. It's not like when you click
a tag and you know what you're looking for and
you know what you're gonna get probably, but you could
get a series of Miker that's amazing.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
That's amazing.
Speaker 3 (28:13):
Yes, yeah, wow, you just brought me back it really,
like I forgot about this. Yeah, it's been so cool. Yeah,
it was cool. It's something that I'm like, I love it,
but I would never have the courage to do it
because I'm not artistic. I think I actually participating in
putting like a Stanza in one. I could be making
(28:35):
this up, but this seems familiar, like I'm having a time,
or maybe I was just around when people did that.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
I don't remember.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
I remember buying because I loved going to local readings,
like we have a lot of good writers in Atlanta.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
We know this.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
iHeart has been blessed with some of our writers recently
of fiction, including yourself, including There was a thing called
Write Club, and I don't know they're still going in
I believe our one of our producers, Mike Johns, was
a part of that. She was a big founding and
beginning of that, and I remember hearing her read uh there.
(29:09):
So shout out to one of the producers of iHeart
and Our Family rather who began this and seeing different
writers go up and give an essay and have a moment.
But in that same group, they did zine clubs and
I think they still do Actually, now that you say that,
I feel like it's been years since I attended one
(29:29):
of those, but I think they still do it. Yeah,
And I know Right Club is I think a national thing,
but it's the Right Club in Atlanta was started by them,
and I remember them selling independently published books and independent zines.
Like now that i'm thinking about it, and it's been
several years since I've attended one, they still do that,
(29:51):
and I love that aspect of it because it brings
a lot of personality to these writings and yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
Wow, you've really got me back. And as in fact,
I just had to look through.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
Twitter because it's not part of your world, you don't know, which,
thank you very much for bringing it back.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
Into my world.
Speaker 3 (30:10):
There's one group called Queer Circle and I believe they're
based out of the UK that did a thing called Atazine,
which they did in December, which they brought over one
hundred zines submitted by different people from all over the world,
all of the world from the queer community. And I'm like, hell, yeah,
this stuff like that is so amazing and I forgot
(30:31):
the impact of things like this.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
Yeah. Yeah, this was a really fun one to research
because I kind of knew about them, but I didn't
know too much. I'm so glad that this project is happening,
that these fanzines are getting preserved, because I there was
a lot of other Honestly, we talked about this before, Samantha.
Sometimes we just want to quote like entire articles because
it's like, Okay, yes, this is it. But a lot
(30:56):
of the older women they interviewed were like, yeah, oh,
I don't want to I don't want this to get
lost because I think other people will still enjoy it
and it's such a good marker of where the fandom
was then, so why should it get lost just because
you know the Internet wasn't around then, right, So I
don't know. It makes me very happy.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
Yeah, it encompasses so many mediums to this that it's
a phenomenal thing and that being digitized would be an
amazing thing to preserve things. I would love to see
some of the nineteen thirties zines. I want to know
what those are. Someone give me a copy, because they're
also like aesthetically pleasing because for me, I love variety
(31:33):
and it doesn't need to be clean. I need, like
I love it's not chaos, but the variety within it
and the way they bring it together that I'm like, yeah,
this is fun. This is an amusing thing that you
can see and it's someone's take of whatever they're publishing
or whether they're trying to send out.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
So yeah, huh yeah yeah. Well, I mean, like I said,
I have been enjoying the fan fiction. Everybody, thanks who
is doing that up looking it because I've been like
blown away, legitimately almost texted you and I was like, I'm
reading a fair fiction that is so much better than
so much of the official stuff out there, Like wow,
(32:09):
And it would have been lost, It would have been lost,
and that's just yeah, I don't, I don't want it.
I'm I don't. I'm very happy. Uh So if anybody
listening is participating in this or has any thoughts about this,
that would be great. Uh. But yeah, it is pretty
beautiful to bring like one topic and see all these
different takes on it, all these I don't know, it
(32:32):
is really cool. Pretty much anyone can make one. There
are tutorials online if you're interested. Uh, if you have
made one, oh my goodness, let us know, yes, yes,
And if you have any suggestions, because we did go
over some in that middle part, but there are a
lot right now and it's a lot is happening, and
(32:52):
especially in yeah, kind of the intersectional feminist realm of zine.
So send to those our way.
Speaker 3 (32:59):
Yeah, maybe we can do that as a book club somehow.
Speaker 1 (33:02):
That'd be cool. I think we could. I think we
could well. In the meantime, if you got any of
those suggestions or thoughts about this at all, you can
email us ATEFPIA mom Stuff at iHeartMedia dot com. You
can find us on Twitter at most Stuff podcast or
on Instagram a stuff I've Never told you. Thanks as
always to our super producer Christina.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
Thank you, Christina, Yes, and.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
Thanks to you for listening. Stuff on ever Told You
the Direction? From iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
you can check out the heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
or reeve you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff Mom Never Told You News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Samantha McVey
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!