Zine are amazing fandom creations that I can no longer partake in
2022 really made me sit back and think about what I wanted out of writing and what I wanted out of fandom. I had thought of them as the same thing as my experience interacting with fandom was purely through writing. As I made the realization that I wanted to write original works to be published, I learned I needed to separate the two.
There was this unhealthy connection to how "quality" my writing was to how much I perceived I deserved to have my voice heard in the fandom. A lot of upset came from not being heard, not getting into zines. These are normal disappointing feelings everyone can understand, but what I feel doesn't get talked about enough is the opposite end of the spectrum: When you *are* in all the zines and modding all the things and running all the events and *are being* a leading voice in the fandom. There's a responsibility there not to gatekeep, yet people with this mentality of quality=deserved fandom voice will 1000% gatekeep under the pretext of "bettering/heightening" the ship with "quality" works/zines/events. They cannot be argued against because they are "just trying to make the fandom better," because "low quality works/zines/events make people less interested in the fandom in general."
And I absolutely bought into this. I realized how wrong I was last year.
Cultivating joy and enthusiasm is what makes a quality fandom, not quality works.
Zines do not need to be coffee table production books to be worthy of making or consumption.
You should not have to read pages of tutorial on how to run a zine or event.
Events do not need a billion caveats and rules beyond 18+ or not.
If it gets treated as a job then it will be cultivated as a job. It will come with right and wrong ways of procedures. Expectations to be better than the "non-quality" participants leading ultimately to the pedestalling of creators and mods, heralded as the One True Voice to direct the community. This ship doesn't do this, that ship doesn't do that. If we treat fandom like a JOB with a title and duties and expectations soon fandoms will be codified to one or two zine/event tutorials.
The issues isn't making tutorials available--gods know these people making them are trying to expand the process to *anyone.* The issues is why the fuck do we need a procedure to begin with? How the hell did we let zines turn into an indy publishing business? Why is heading down to your kinkos with a pdf collection of stuff not good enough anymore? When did we let capitalism take our joy of creating?
And while I'm at it, why does one person with the privilege of time and a passion of care and details trump a person barely carving the time out to slap together a ship weekend?
I got frustrated. I witnessed people bully others over the arbitrary quality of projects and recognized my participation in the vacuum chamber of "spilling tea" had encouraged this behavior to permeate.
So I've turned away from modding zines any more zines, on applying and aiding projects, on participating in events that require pages of rules and servers. I've taken to cultivating my smaller community and refusing to give a damn about my greater fandom value. If I'm to worry about the fandom experience full of people I don't know, encouraging more to flock to the ship/fandom, all I'm doing is turning my life into marketing customer service hell.
And you know what? I've learned to have a shit ton more fun since I stopped caring about my ranking of quality. I'm less sour. I'm less mean-spirited. I'm enjoying a broader reach of people in fandom again. I'm excited to love my fandoms and ships and excited to see the many ways other people love their fandoms and ships.
And love is not codified.
