THIRTY-EIGHT DOLLARS FOR A ZINE?

*headdesks repeatedly*

Okay, I get that zines aren't cheap to produce (although it would surprise me greatly if it cost that much). And I get that zines have historically been an important part of fandom. But nowadays there's this awesome invention that lets you distribute your fanfiction and fanart to the entire world for free. It's called the internet. Surely making your work available as widely as possible, as cheaply as possible, is more in keeping with the nonprofit/gift economy ethos of fandom?

(And no, I don't accept the "but some people don't have internet access" argument. There's hardly a place in the world anymore without internet access, and if somebody can afford $38 for a zine they can afford dial-up. Zine distribution is more exclusionary than internet distribution, not less so.)

*****

My mood is a lot better now after taking a nice walk in the sunshine. I can tell I'm readjusting to Minnesota weather--I saw that the temperature was 41 degrees (that's 5 degrees Celsius) and thought "I'd better go out; it would be a shame to waste this lovely warm afternoon."

So, in the spirit of being less grumpy: today's fannish5 asked what 5 fannish things you're most grateful for.

( my answers )

Today's fannish5 asks: Five canon events that would cause you to leave a fandom (or at least think seriously about it).

( my answers; spoilers galore for Angel, Harry Potter, Robin Hobb's novels, and Nip/Tuck S4 )

Here are my answers to the unpopular opinions meme.

vandonovan asked about ( Blake's 7 )

vandonovan also asked about ( Martha Jones )

ms_treesap asked about ( Dawn Summers )

biichan asked about ( the Eighth Doctor )

absinthe_shadow asked about ( Kerr Avon )

phlebotnum asked about ( Owen Harper )

I'm one of the weekly reccers at giles_fic_recs, and my focus is on reccing great older stories that newer arrivals to the fandom may never have read.

As I try to find stories to rec, I'm realizing how much the Buffyverse fandom has shrunk. For instance, the Better Buffy Fics archive is gone. The Giles Slash archive is gone. Many individual writers have disappeared without a trace, along with all their stories. And the big archives that remain (such as Unconventional Relationshippers) aren't being updated much because few writers post to mailing lists anymore.

It's a bit sad, really. And it's making me think about how dependent most of us, as fanfic readers and/or writers, are on LiveJournal. If fen do start migrating out of LJ at some point, whether because of TOS concerns or some other issue, I hate to think about how much fic, and how much fandom history, is simply going to be lost.

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