I'm not sure how this works. The first time I tried to get a blog on Paper.wf, it didn't work. I ended up getting on Plume first, despite my concerns with it being in beta still and not being actively developed. I also wasn't too fond of the domain for the instance I was on because it was the only instance I could find at the time. Then I got an account, wrote up my first blog post, and then decided that the purple wasn't for me. That was when AO3 was still suffering from DDoS attacks and I realized that I needed to be able to host my fanfiction elsewhere in case AO3 goes down again.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I like the idea of decentralization. I like the idea of the fediverse as I've seen it so far. I like the idea that even if one instance goes down, the rest of the network still survives. It's not that all data is stored in one place like it is with AO3; data is stored everywhere people can or care to store it. Anyone can access it so long as the others allow it. You don't need to be on the same platform, domain, instance, whatever to see and interact with posts. That's great, I think.

I'm here because I wanted a place to put my fanfiction with a good aesthetic and on the fediverse so that anyone can comment on them. If AO3 goes down again, then readers can come here to read my fics. They can also go to Squidgeworld, but my fic archiving there isn't complete either. Also, I don't think the minimalist aesthetic of WriteFreely can be beat.

I think instead of making another blog to post my fics, I'll just use this one and alternate between blog posts like this one where I really do just blog instead of posting a fic. I think I'll distinguish the two by using tags, so a blog post like this might be tagged something like #thoughts, while the fics would be tagged #fics. I'm not sure how well tags will work on WriteFreely, but it never hurts to try, and I can always come back to edit this later.

It's nice to meet you all! I haven't written anything much for a while, but I think I'll enjoy my time here on Paper.wf. I don't normally blog like this, but there's just something about a blank screen to type on that's getting me to write. I'll be back soon.

I finished my last fandom zine piece about a month ago. It was for the Hetalia World Stars 10th Anniversary Zine, which is a lovely idea in practice, but I have far too many words to say about the organization of the zine community by the mods. Of course, I knew going into the zine that there would be bumps on the road: every zine has its problems, and every first-time zine mod has to start somewhere. However, I have many reasons why I will not be participating in any more Hetalia zines unless I go insane and try to run one myself.

So that got me thinking about the state of fandom zines at this time. The time of this writing is fall 2023, after Twitter rebranded to X, after Mastodon and the fediverse started garnering more attention as an alternate form of social media, and after a whole lot of other things that happened in 2023 that I won't mention. Zines are in a tough spot right now, in my opinion. Twitter was the main social media where they'd spread the word about themselves, find their creators and customers, and so on, but now that Twitter has rebranded to X and a whole lot of bullshit is going on, doing the things that they wanted to do for their zines is a lot harder now. And as far as I can see, Mastodon still doesn't have a large enough audience to really replace X as The Zine Site.

But that doesn't even scratch the surface of the problems inherent to zines themselves. Things like the anti-writer bias in favor of artists, finance mods turned scammers stealing zine profits, shipping mods who don't ship their products for years on end. I'm a writer, and I've been both lucky and wise enough to mostly avoid the people who don't actually do their jobs, but I'm tired of zines. Finishing my last zine (for the foreseeable future, anyway) with the Hetalia zine isn't exactly a great note to end on either.

There's only really two things that I would actually want to write at length about in the zine scene. Sure, scammers and people who don't do their jobs are still out there, but there's enough said about those that I don't need to talk about it. What impacts me the most as a writer who's been doing zines for three years straight now is the anti-writer bias and just plain old burnout.

So let's begin with the anti-writer bias. This is most apparent in zines that evaluate applications to choose who to participate in the zines. Most Genshin zines say they'll pick 20 to 30 artists. That's great. Plenty of artists for a zine. But then when you as a writer scroll down to see how many writers they'll accept, the number is more like 5, 7 if you're lucky. 10 may as well not even be a zine anymore. What gives?

I understand that writers take up more space in a zine, and in physical zines, pages matter. Artists only need one page, maybe two, but writers with a word limit of just two thousand can span 10. I get that it can get expensive, but if you're adding 10 more artists when you could add one more writer, then I have to ask, why? Why not add another writer? Not to mention that now you're taking on the costs of compensating 10 more artists as opposed to just 1 more writer. Not to mention that zines are increasingly becoming art-focused instead of writing-focused like how they originally began (and still do continue to be, just not in fandom zines).

Maybe I'm just upset because I'm a writer. But if you think about it, the predominant forms of fan creations are fanart and fanfiction. I'd reckon there's about the same number of fanartists and fanfiction writers in a fandom. Allowing more fanartists to participate in a zine at the expense of fanfiction writers just doesn't seem fair to me. Sure, you might have 100 something artists competing for 25 artist slot, but then you also have 100 something writers competing for 5 writer slots. It hardly seems fair, but that's the case with fandom zines these days.

I'm not going to talk about the problem of fanfiction writers being undervalued in fandoms because let's be honest: all creators are undervalued in fandoms. But I've had enough with talking about how zines are unfair to writers, even if it's not the most coherent argument. It's not supposed to be an argument. It's just a complaint.

I'm sort of losing steam as I'm writing this, but I think I can discuss the second reason fairly quickly before I get tired of writing too much about complaining.

The second problem with the current zine scene is just burnout. Sure, it might just be because people don't manage their time well enough and take on too many responsibilities, but if you keep tabs on zines, you'll see that it's always the same handful of artists in every zine, the same handful of writers in every zine. I'm lucky to be able to count myself as a writer in so many zines across so little time, but the thing is that you get tired of participating in zines so much. Your hands start to hurt, your mind can't come up with new ideas, and the zine themes get less and less interesting. That's me right now: hands that hurt, no ideas, and none of the currently running zines are that interesting to me. Zines have oversaturated themselves to the point that the people they are waiting for can no longer participate.

I've quit zines for now because of burnout. I don't know if or when I'll start applying for and participating in them again. Honestly, with all I've seen from the zines I've participated and the zine scandals that go out on Twitter, I don't know if I want to participate in a zine that I'm not running myself. Maybe I'll just go back to how zines were originally: just a place for a group of likeminded individuals to put together a nice little book.

#thoughts