#i felt bad bc i've never participated in such an event before and idk if it's okay to write so muuuuch but no im done with that

[imperatorcopia]

was feeling super bad for writing a fic of 2250 words (still not fucking finished...) for an event. for a specific prompt but then i remembered. i can do whatever the hell i want

[castawaytheblood]

Oof, I can relate the OP.

To do some math for everyone, the current exchange value in Venezuela-USA is 4M Bolivars for each dollar. It can, and will, rise as soon as the day ends. That's just how most of us here deal with it.

I've seen some fanbooks (which, let's be real, they are fanbooks/art books, not zines, but y'know) go between 40-80$ in price. That's... A quarter of what I have to pay for my college trimester/half of what I pay for my college trimester. Even worse, that's half/a full shopping cart for a month.

I have... very mixed feelings about what is happening in fandom, in economical areas, ofc. I could make a post about the rest of the issues I see, but yeah, for now, I don't particularly want to on that.

On the one hand, it's... Harder to access zines (I'd basically scour the web seas for a free zine, if it allows it to be, but the majority? pay for them, which is reasonable, to an extent, but I still can't in good conscience understand it). Not only zines, but also fic, bookbinds of fic (some fanbinders do commissions, which does end up making some fic able to survive a purge/more lasting than other fic, simply because the author had more money), anime, videogames, media in general. Netflix was one example, but Crunchyroll, too, is in there. By virtue of not being from the US (or not being able to use a VPN for too long), I miss access to a ton of media, for good or bad.

(please don't take this as if I am blaming people for having money and things, that's definitely NOT what I wanted to convey, lol).

I mentioned before having to pirate... Basically every piece of media I had, and it's completely true, tbh. Since I was a kid I took to piracy to enjoy media. My earliest (and best, let's be real) memories of playing games were when I finally got the game in physical copy, which meant that I could finally play well without risking the loss of memory cards and stuff (it was on my 3DS, tbh).

And this not only extends to videogames, it goes for well, everything. Books, too, I had to pirate. Movies as well. Series, dramas, anything I couldn't (and there were MANY) get my hands on, those things I had to look for on the internet

(ah, those old memories of me having to crawl through 20 google pages, searching for something very, very specific).

IDK, I do wish things were more like the earl(ier) days, though I'm taking a bit of a break in fandom stuff, it'd be nice to see more fests/events that don't involve screeching over which paper dolls people are smushing together. Most of the time, there are events I either a) can't participate bc I'm not in the fandom, b) the event's date is VERY inconvenient for me and my schedule and c) it'd be hard for me (specifically) to participate, because the people involved are most likely going to scream over the stories I've written (though it would be more of a matter of WHICH story I've written that raises hackles).

Ah, well. One day I WILL get to making an event, though let's pray I can get enough strength of will to do it.

Edit: I felt very seen by a certain paragraph, due to IRL political/economical parallel with OP, to wit:

"Given where I was born, I was always told I don’t belong in certain spaces. I am by default not allowed to enter certain countries and spaces without going through lengthy approval processes and without being able to prove I can afford being in that space."

God, do I feel seen in that (there have been a few incidents of hate crimes towards Venezuelans in other Latin American countries, hell, just a day ago my father was attacked for simply being Venezuelan in public).

"To tell me I don’t belong in a place or that I don’t deserve to be in a space based on the place I was born and the currency I earn is casual discrimination in a smaller scale, and one that is not often thought about by the people perpetuating it. And to experience it as bluntly as that above — well, let’s say I have never felt as alienated in an online space than I did about four days ago, but it is an alienation I feel regularly in my real life, especially when I visit the USA."

This also hits me hard because... In online fandom spaces... I do feel that isolation creeping in. Like trying to speak in a common language but no one ever gets to speak back to me, no matter how much I try to talk.

God I had a tear running down my face.

Good stuff.

This kind of hints at the definition of a gift economy without fully going into it. But basically, gift economies are places where “payment” is in intangible social benefits. You buy community membership with your labor/products/kindness/presence. It’s not very compatible with commerce in the same way that offering to pay your grandma for the cookies she baked you is not a friendly or normal way to interact within a family.