Personal Excavation: Fannish fossils
Sat, Feb. 7th, 2009 09:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
scarlettinaCoupla days back, my friend Brian helped me bring some boxes up from my storage unit, the idea being that I'd figure out what was in them, then do one of three things: rearchive the contents, dispose of the contents, bring the contents back into the rotation of daily living.
As previously mentioned, one of the boxes contained my junior high school and high school yearbooks. This same box, it turns out, contained a number of offset-print, perfect- or comb-bound Star Trek and Starsky & Hutch fanzines printed in the mid-to-late 1980s.
When I moved from New York to Seattle, I made choices about what was going into storage, including the 'zines. I kept out the 'zines in which I had stories or art. I packed away 'zines I wanted to keep for one reason or another that didn't have my work in them. So for the first time in about 15 years, my issues of 'zines like "Vault of Tomorrow," "Guardian," "Nome" and "Mind Meld" are seeing the light of day. I also have copies of then-classic novel-length stories including "Legend's End," "Courts of Honor," "The Thousandth Man," and more. There are also the notorious, then-controversial "Sun & Shadow" and "Broken Images," the contents of which probably look tame now in comparison to some of the explicit fanfic being published on the web. These are thick books printed on 8.5 x 11 paper, all richly (if more often than not, inexpertly) illustrated.
I never thought these things would become the fossils they clearly are. I was most definitely a post-K/S-emergence fan (I was 16 by the time the first fall-off in slash fan-ac began), but the tradition, obviously, has continued to this day, although in a considerably broader and more mainstream way.
These relics have personal relevance for me in the friendships they recall and represent, and a particular period in my life. It was a time when a female support structure was a safe haven for me, when I was learning basic social skills I'd missed growing up. I am profoundly grateful to that community of women. I also remember the day I was done with it. It was a clear and fairly clean break. It was, for me, a kind of graduation day.
Perhaps storing the 'zines and the yearbooks in the same box represents an equivalency, different kinds of mementos accrued and then bundled together for what they all represent: learning, growth and moving on.
As previously mentioned, one of the boxes contained my junior high school and high school yearbooks. This same box, it turns out, contained a number of offset-print, perfect- or comb-bound Star Trek and Starsky & Hutch fanzines printed in the mid-to-late 1980s.
When I moved from New York to Seattle, I made choices about what was going into storage, including the 'zines. I kept out the 'zines in which I had stories or art. I packed away 'zines I wanted to keep for one reason or another that didn't have my work in them. So for the first time in about 15 years, my issues of 'zines like "Vault of Tomorrow," "Guardian," "Nome" and "Mind Meld" are seeing the light of day. I also have copies of then-classic novel-length stories including "Legend's End," "Courts of Honor," "The Thousandth Man," and more. There are also the notorious, then-controversial "Sun & Shadow" and "Broken Images," the contents of which probably look tame now in comparison to some of the explicit fanfic being published on the web. These are thick books printed on 8.5 x 11 paper, all richly (if more often than not, inexpertly) illustrated.
I never thought these things would become the fossils they clearly are. I was most definitely a post-K/S-emergence fan (I was 16 by the time the first fall-off in slash fan-ac began), but the tradition, obviously, has continued to this day, although in a considerably broader and more mainstream way.
These relics have personal relevance for me in the friendships they recall and represent, and a particular period in my life. It was a time when a female support structure was a safe haven for me, when I was learning basic social skills I'd missed growing up. I am profoundly grateful to that community of women. I also remember the day I was done with it. It was a clear and fairly clean break. It was, for me, a kind of graduation day.
Perhaps storing the 'zines and the yearbooks in the same box represents an equivalency, different kinds of mementos accrued and then bundled together for what they all represent: learning, growth and moving on.
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no subject
Date: Sat, Feb. 7th, 2009 07:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Sat, Feb. 7th, 2009 07:23 pm (UTC)Sorry, should've added to the original post... Yes, me too. I called it off when it was no longer fun, when I realized that most of what I was doing was what I was also doing for my day job. The very last straw came when I saw a story I'd rejected turn up in another zine--utterly unedited. And that zine won a fannish award. WTF? So yeah, all the trouble I was going to to winnow out 'bad' stories, and edit good ones? What a waste. I was done.
no subject
Date: Sat, Feb. 7th, 2009 08:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Sat, Feb. 7th, 2009 08:59 pm (UTC)I'm not a packrat, either. Do I still get to come hang out in the bar with everyone else?
no subject
Date: Sat, Feb. 7th, 2009 08:29 pm (UTC)But I really should do my homework. Which is what I'm going to do.