Zine fair adventures

[lizbee]

I always feel a bit apologetic about my love for zines -- maybe I'm a Fake Zine Girl -- because I'm less into the punk/anarchist side of zine culture, and more into the arty and fannish side. On the other hand, I can't be the only one, because I walked into the Festival of the Photocopier on Saturday with $30 in small change, and spent it all in the first two rooms.

(This was a mistake. You need to look around, decide what you like, then buy. I know this! Why did I blow all my money on ... okay, I love every single thing I purchased and have no regrets, but still.)

Highlights (with links to other people's Instas where I can find them, because I did not take a single picture of my haul, and also I'm at work):

• a zine by a Japanese-Australian woman, covering the Instagram and zine cliches of people who have spent a week in Japan and decided they're experts now
• (spotted, but not purchased: three zines by people who spent a week in Japan and decided they're experts now)
• The Mass Effect Fanzine (because I will always buy a fannish zine, but it does help if it's about media that I love)
• (I elected not to buy the glossy Voltron shipper zines, because they were expensive and ... look, some things do need to go to the people who will appreciate them)
• Tall Sad Girl And Short Punk Girl Are Friends, a queer YA novel in a dozen pages. You can read the full text here.
• all the cat zines
• ALL THE CAT ZINES
• including volume 3 of Alex c Clark's Cats of Brunswick I Have Touched

I did a lot of other things over the weekend, but I also found time to finish a zine I started a few weeks ago, start and complete another one, and begin two more. 

Comments

[alexseanchai]

idk what you're apologizing for :P like politics is not the price of admission, right?

[lizbee]

Anarchists are the worst and I shouldn't feel bad for hating them.

[sholio]

Awww, this makes me miss my zine days. I'm glad it's still going as an art form and hasn't been completely eaten by the internet.

[lizbee]

If anything, the culture has grown in the last few years -- for one thing, it's an inexpensive way to share art.

[sabotabby]

I wanted to like zine fairs. But I always had to be the one running the table (anarchists are the worst) while everyone else got to see all the zines and workshops. So now I have a reflex where I never want to go to any.

[lizbee]

ANARCHISTS ARE THE ACTUAL WORST.

I want to table next year, but definitely not alone!

[sabotabby]

After the revolution it'll be each according to their ability, each according to their need, but until then you're going to do all the boring work because we want to grab beers with the Montreal comrades.

[kerravonsen]

I'm surprised that zines still exist. I thought everything was on the web nowadays?

[lizbee]

Nah, zines are bigger than ever, but not really text-based anymore. There was a zine panel at Continuum last year, and a lot of the older people were quite miffed that current zine makers aren't really interested in feedback or letters of comment. But it's almost the only medium that doesn't make it easy for your consumers to talk back at you, that's half the appeal.

[kerravonsen]

Not text-based? You mean they're image-focused? That's one of the things I really like about classic fanfic zines: they were illustrated. Not that it's impossible for web fanfic to be illustrated, but it generally involves going off and looking at what someone did on DeviantArt instead of being actually with the story.

[lizbee]

Not text-based? You mean they're image-focused?

Yeah, a lot of zines now are all art, no text.