deepestbluesky

hi everyone! i had this idea over a year ago (rip) and now i’m finally trying to make it happen. the idea is to have a zine/journal/informal collection of essays about fandom, by fandom. the writing can be formal or informal as you want, and “about fandom” is completely up to your interpretation too! want to write a tumblr-style post about why coffee shop AUs are so popular? go for it! want to write a five paragraph essay about why fanfiction is or isn’t its own genre? also great! my one current rule is that i want this to be rpf-friendly, which absolutely does not mean you have to write about rpf, but does mean that i don’t want any essays about how rpf is bad, and if you share this with other people, please make that clear.

tentative schedule: (feedback and suggestions welcomed at this stage!)
-3-4 weeks to sign up, tell all your friends, help me yell about this on social media, and maybe come up with a topic
-3-4 weeks to talk to other people (involved or not), tossing around ideas, and coming up with a tentative list of topics
-6-8 weeks to write/create your zine contribution! (and there will be a check-in halfway through to see how things are going and get a rough sense of how long everyone’s submission might be)
-2 weeks to turn it into a pdf, get any last minute details ironed out, deal with any crises that i assume will come up
(that would put the posting date some time in march or april)

what formats can my submission be in?
-writing (i want mostly for this to be non-fiction, but if you want to write fic that is itself about fandom, i’d accept that!)
-art (comic, art, photography, whatever! it’s all good! just be aware that this final product will exist as a PDF)
-statistical analysis (idk it seems like that could be really cool)
-whatever you can think of!
-no video/audio because of pdf format. BUT if you have an idea that would have supplemental audio/video, i would def consider it

topic suggestions!
-a fandom-specific trope and why you think it exists
-a trend you’ve noticed over your time in fandom
-an expression of what fandom has meant to you or what you’ve learned from it
-a comparison of the treatment of two characters by fandom
-a close reading of a fic you particularly love (assuming it is publicly available)
-if you have a great idea for a submission that you won’t be able to write and are willing to share, i’m going to create a way to share ideas with each other, and someone else is welcome to take the idea and make their own submission about it!

miscellaneous things! (more to be added as questions come up)
if you want to submit more than one work, go for it! just make sure you can at least finish one by the deadline, and talk to me if you want to do more than one (i want to make sure that everyone gets the opportunity to have equal amount of space). similarly, there is no minimum or maximum word count, but i’d like to have a rough idea of how long things might be before i receive final works.

please have someone beta your submission! i’m okay with intentionally wrong grammar/spelling, but make sure someone else has looked at it. you’re also welcome to send things to me to read as you work on them, but i will not promise to read them thoroughly enough to count as actually beta-ing anything

if you’re submitting art, please submit images as either PNG or TIF format (and ideally 300 dpi but if it’s not that, i’m not gonna be mad)

if you’re submitting text, please submit text via either email or google docs. also, please be clear how much formatting you want me to keep! if you write something that needs specific formatting for whatever reason, we can work that out (including if that means submitting a different format), but if you don’t specify, i’m just going to use the text and make it fit my pdf layout.

when you eventually send in your submission, please also submit a title of some sort! this can be as formal or informal as you like, i just need something to call it in the table of contents

this zine is absolutely open to being critical of fandom and fandom trends. i would ask that you try to keep criticism directed at large groups of people or general attitudes rather than specific individuals (criticism of harry potter fandom: definitely okay. criticism of one specific fanfic author: almost certainly not okay. criticism of very small group of people in a certain fandom that aren’t technically mentioned by name but could easily be discovered: likely to not be okay.). if you have a concern with this, please come talk to me about it.

signing up!
to sign up, you can comment on this post, or you can contact me on any other social media site you know me through.

you’ll need to give me an email to contact you with, and a name you wish to use (could be your given name, could be a nickname, could be a screen name, whatever!).

i’m also planning to set up a discord for this zine, which you are welcome to use or just lurk on or not even touch. i want to facilitate discussion about topics, since we’re all going to be writing for this, so if you have another suggestion for how to do this, pls let me know!

if i’ve missed anything huge or obvious, please point it out to me!