#md fanzine

[withered--s0uls]

"It was not your fault"

Hello! Take this as a teaser for the @md-fanzine! This piece, along two other drawings of mine, as well as many other artists art will be included in it!

Please take a look at the zine once it releases <3 and be sure to support the other artists who participate in it!

🔗 My Carrd ☕Ko-Fi❤️

[murder-drones-zine]

Artist and Writer Applications are OPEN!! Artist apps: {HERE} Writers apps: [HERE] Art done by @jamieenthusiast

[fanhackers]

I interviewed the organizers of the Media Fandom Oral History Project, and they shared about the project and what makes it important! The project collects oral histories (interviews) from fans about their fannish experiences. Oral histories help fans define for ourselves what it means to a fan, and they help preserve our histories for future generations. 

The project needs volunteers! Email oralhistoryfandom (at) gmail (dot) com if you want to get involved. 

The full interview can be found under the cut. 

-Lianne, Fanhackers volunteer

Q: Can you briefly introduce yourself, the project, and its purpose?

Morgan Dawn: I am Morgan Dawn and have been a slash fanfiction fan since the 1990s. I entered fandom during the last years of paper fanfiction and the beginning era of online fandom. 

The Media Fandom Oral History Project’s goal is to capture our history in our own words and with our own voices. The idea came when I was sitting at our kitchen table with my friend Sandy Herrold. We realized that fans talking to other fans in informal settings was the perfect way to showcase our community and our connections. What could be more fannish than talking about and sharing the things we love? We started interviewing fans at conventions, then moved to phone interviews and have finally switched the project into a Do-It-Yourself Mode with fans taking the lead interviewing their friends and choosing what they want to preserve.

The recordings are submitted to the University of Iowa's oral history collection and are available online. We are hoping to provide transcripts for all of the interviews. The University of Iowa has one of the world's largest fanfiction fanzine collections. You can see the list of interviews at Fanlore, one of the OTW’s projects. 

Franzeska Dickson: I am Franzeska Dickson and have also been a slash fan since the 90s. In my case, I started as a 13-year-old screaming about Scully on alt.tv.x-files during the first season. (I was a NoRomo, as I recall, mostly because I thought Mulder wasn't nearly good enough for her.) I remember being floored when I was told about fanfic. I have no memory of being told that slash existed. I guess it didn't seem like a big deal. I spent the late 90s and early 00s in anime fandom before swinging back to oldschool Media Fandom and later to other Asian fandoms.

I ran into Morgan at a con and informed her that her recording plans were all wrong and she needed the type of voice recorder that linguists use in the field… I ended up with the recorder and the bulk of the early interviewing work.

Q: Speaking as if to someone unfamiliar with oral history and your project, why is the Media Fandom Oral History Project important?

MD: The recordings allow us to speak directly to future generations of fans and control the discussion of what it means to be a ‘fan.’ By having fans talk to other fans we bypass the dominant narrative of how fans interact with the TV, movies, books and comics. It is also an opportunity for marginalized members of our community to talk about their experiences. There has been much scholarship surrounding live action and anime fandoms. Some of it has been done by academics who are fans themselves and it has been wonderful to see the growth of Fandom Studies. But oral history offers every fan the ability to use their own words to talk about the things they remember and what matters to them.

FD: The early zine generation is rapidly dropping dead, and even when they aren't, I'm always running into younger fans trying to do research who have zero clue who's still alive or where to find them. If we wait for people to do their secondary academic research, it will be too late. Primary sources now or we won't have them!

The scope of fans who are interested in fandom history is much wider than the people who can make the right connections to talk to someone older. It's particularly true for early zines, but it's even true for something like Livejournal: I could rustle up thirty people in five minutes who'd be able to speak cogently on that fandom history. A lot of would-be history researchers currently in undergrad would not. For the future academics, the meta writers, or merely our curious fellow fans, it behooves us to record our history in our own words.

Q: What has the Media Fandom Oral History Project accomplished so far?

MD: We have completed 57 interviews. The first few years we went to in-person conventions and used a digital recorder to interview anyone who was interested. In 2017, a graduate student named Megan Genovese obtained funding and did 24 interviews over the phone in a single summer. During the pandemic, we moved into a DIY (do it yourself) phase - instead of a single person doing the interviewing, we now invite fans to contact their friends and spend an hour chatting about their fandom history. They can use their smartphones, Zoom/video conference recording or reserve a time slot on our international audio conference system. 

We have recorded the history of some of the earliest slash writers, publishers and artists. We have preserved the memories of the first fan who created the first fanvid using a slide project and cassette audio tape. We have heard from fans who organized conventions and started letter writing campaigns to save shows. The interviews include filk singers, fans whose passion is meta, and fans who created and ran some of the first fiction archives. These fans are creators, organizers, supporters, and devotees and have so many stories to tell.

Q: In what ways do you hope the project will grow in the coming years? Or, what are your hopes for the project's future?

MD: We’re a small project and it is difficult to scale with our current resources. By shifting to the DIY phase we’re hoping to encourage fans to take the reins of their fandom history and never stop telling their personal fannish stories. The DIY project also allows fandom communities to leverage off our existing “infrastructure” - we can offer permission forms, an international recording platform (if needed), and a place to archive the interviews.

FD: All fandom history resources suffer from a strong predilection for the researcher's friends or their part of fandom to be the main focus. I hope people from very different parts of fandom will interview their friends about areas other people haven't found important or accessible enough to record.

Q: What help is needed, and how can people get involved?

MD: We need 2 intake coordinators to answer questions, e-mail and collect permission forms (Participants must sign a permission form allowing their recordings to be archived at the University of Iowa). We also need help with outreach to communities that may not be aware of the project - anime, BL fans, cosplayers, filkers, fans in other countries. This is not just a historical project looking backwards. We want to capture our community as it is today and hear from fans whose experiences differ. The central focus has not changed - fans participating in transformative fandom - reading, writing, creating fanfiction, fanvids, podfic, art, managing discord communities. But it all starts with intake coordinators who can keep track of participants and follow up to get the recordings. Each oral history also has a written transcription, as we want this project to be as accessible to as many people as possible. We’ve tried some automated transcription services, and the results are very uneven. This means there’s another opportunity for volunteers, people to listen to the recordings and to help transcribe the contents. 

Q: Is there anything else you'd like people to know about the Media Fandom Oral History Project?

MD: It's a way for fans to be heard. They can describe their experiences on their own terms, in their own words, and take back some of the power of storytelling, rather than having others tell their stories for them.

It's a way to help preserve and honor fan experiences and fan history.

Envision you and your friends, talking about the things you love, your community, and what they mean to you, and describing and preserving these things for history. 

Plus, it's really fun!

FD: If you don't want 'fandom history' to mean just one kind of fandom history, speak up while you can, whether that's here or in essays or in your own projects!

[yadchi-i-guess]

md finale spoilers, you know the drill

This fragment of a piece is also for the MD Fanzine "After the Fall!" I'm super proud of this one :]

[queerzestzinefest]

Tabler spotlight: Meet Ben Kantt, aka Crappy Lil Comix, is an ace, trans, disabled artist from Baltimore, MD. They are a cartoonist, photographer, printmaker, and more. @crappylilcomix #QueerZestZineFest #QZZF #QueerZine #zine #zines #ZineFest #qzzf24 #VirtualFest #zinester #Zinesters #ZineFair #ZineCultural #ZineCulture #ZineMania #ZinesTakeOverTheWorld #ZineMakers #ZineMaking #perzine #fanzine #MiniComics #GraphicNovel #compzines #ttrpgzines #litzines #FeministZines #QueerZines #PoliticalZines #POCzines #DisabilityZines #DIYzines October 21, 2024 at 02:56PM via Instagram https://instagr.am/p/DBZaTRkTYf_/

[scavenger-toll]

i wanna apply for the md fanzine but im scared

[azrawolf]

VIP

Vip

Art I made for @md-fanzine

[rhodeybugg]

It is my great pleasure to announce that I'm helping to work on the After The Fall MD fanzine by @md-fanzine !!!

I'll be sharing a wip of one of my 3 submissions once i get em done :3

[quordleona03]

8 shows for your mutuals to get to know you better

I was tagged by @marley--manson

Blake's 7 - I once described my relationship with Blake's 7 as like the one you might have with your first girlfriend. You came out together! You two were the first lesbians each of you had ever met; You share so many lesbian firsts together. You split up before you were even going to uni, you may not see each other very often now, but there's still that sweet, sweet, unforgettable first attachment. That was me for Blake's 7. The first show I ever wrote fanfic for. The first show for which I had a proper fannish obsession. The first show for which I ever spent three days weeping and writing obsessively after I was left in a state of misery and shock after the fourth season finale . I have a complete set of B7 DVDs sitting on the shelf above this computer. I haven't actually watched them but sometimes I offer them flowers.

2. Doctor Who. This was my very first convention - the Doctor Who 20th Anniversary Con at Longleat, Easter weekend 1983. My parents asked me what I'd like to do for Easter, and were more than a little startled when I told them, but they paid my train fare and my con membership and let me go and I had my very first experience of fandom standing in those queues. I have dipped into and out of Doctor Who since I first watched Tom Baker flaunt his ever so long scarf.

3. Star Trek: TOS - and the original four movies. I watched these without as much obsession, but - I read James Blish's novelisations, I still have a collection of the good Trek novels on my shelf, I once organised a group reading of the Price of the Phoenix at a slash con, I have written Spock/McCoy fanfic (it's the Mirror episode, mostly) and I have been to K/S cons. I quite like DS9 and ST:tng too - I've written fanfic for tng - but Star Trek before it needed a TOS label was the first fandom I got to share with friends in person, as opposed to friends I knew by post and fanzine and at cons.

4. Cagney & Lacey. I loved this show. So did my mum. This is the only fandom I ever shared with my mum, and we loved it the same way: two kick-ass women who were best friends and also the only two women cops in their precinct. I was not conscious enough of racial issues in the US at the time I was watching it to be conscious that the New York Cagney and Lacey moved in was very unexpectedly white at all times, but I'm afraid I would see it now. On the other hand, if anyone can point me at *good* recordings of the episodes I would love to watch them again - my mum had the complete set recorded on VHS tapes and, well, gone with the dinosaurs and my late mother's estate.

5. The Professionals. Such a British show. Written and aired well before the anti-drunk driving campaigns, Bodie and Doyle and Cowley drink to excess, show no signs of being drunk, and then drive fast cars and wave guns around after drinking to excess. I wrote Bodie/Cowley fanfic for it because at the time I discovered the fandom, it felt like every Bodie/Doyle story and then some had already been written (and were still being written) but also because I really adored the way Gordon Jackson and Lewis Collins interacted with each other. Cowley and Bodie were both ex-soldiers doing a secret-police job: Doyle was a former cop transferred to CI5: the best fanfiction written covered the brutality and the danger and the kind of personality that thrived on it. The political viewpoints expressed by Bodie, Cowley, and Doyle were so far from being mine that it felt reckless to write them, and I enjoyed that: but the background to the story - 1970s UK/London - was so close to my real life (1980s/1990s Scotland/SE England) that it felt sometimes impossibly easy to write.

6. House MD I had been vaguely aware that Hugh Laurie had moved to the US and was doing a show about a doctor in an American hospital and I was entirely uninterested - US doctor/hospital series (with ONE exception) had never appealed to me. And then I saw a poster, at the bus stop, on my way home. It is a rule that anything she see advertised on public transport is bad, but I looked at the unshaven and somehow agonised face of Hugh Laurie, whom I remembered well from quite other series, and I though: Okay, I'll give this a go, and I watched one episode - somewhere in the first season, I do not recall which one, oddly enough: and I was hooked. I never wrote much fanfic for it, but Greg House and his coterie of characters - Wilson, Cameron, Chase, Foreman, and Cuddy - and to a certain extent the later ducklings - were formidable ingredients for story telling. I own every season on DVD.

7. The West Wing. I have been a politics nerd for most of my life, and a friend who was aware of this tempted me into watching an early episode of TWW (it may even have been the pilot episode) by telling me it was a drama about politics - not so much about elections, but about the behind-the-scenes work that makes politics. I watched it from season one, and I own every season on DVD.

8. M*A*S*H I became obsessed with MASH in two phases - first one about twenty years ago, which sparked a period of about five years writing fanfic: and again, I'm not sure why, in lockdown - suddenly the characters walked back into my mind and I started writing MASH fanfic again. Who to tag, who to tag: @jaelijn @topshelf2112-blog @cplredberet @blistersonmefingehs @bbjkrss-blog (but don't feel obliged unless you want to)

[kyrstenhodge]

Kyrsten Hodge

Biography

Kyrsten Hodge is a queer trans woman from West Virginia and the author of forthcoming poetry chapbook A Whisper Amongst The Fireworks. She is currently working on the fanzine Queer Cobain exploring Kurt Cobain as a gender non-conforming anarchist, feminist, and queer icon. She works in a library, plays guitar, and wants to be your friend. She can found on Instagram.

Bibliography

Kyrsten’s Poetry #1 (24pg b/w zine, Porch Beers Press, April 2023) 

Kyrsten’s Poetry #2 (28pg b/w zine, Porch Beers Press, July 2023) 

Kyrsten’s Poetry #3 (24pg b/w zine, Porch Beers Press, September 2023) 

Forthcoming

Kyrsten’s Poetry #4 (24pg b/w zine, Porch Beers Press, Early 2024)

Queer Cobain: A Fanzine (60pg b/w zine, Porch Beers Press, Mid 2024)

A Whisper Amongst The Fireworks (80pg chapbook, Porch Beers Press, Late 2024) 

Free PDFs

Kyrsten's zines are available as text only accessible PDFs for free. 

Kyrsten’s Poetry #1 (PDF)

Kyrsten’s Poetry #2 (PDF)

Kyrsten’s Poetry #3 (PDF)

Print versions of her work can be purchased via Porch Beers Press (Etsy) or locally at the Red Caboose (Huntington, WV), Taylor Books (Charleston, WV) and Atomic Books (Baltimore, MD).

[postgamecontent]

Earthworm Jim 2 (MD Mini 2)

I mean, after the first game was on the original Genesis Mini, why not put the second game on the Mini 2? The Earthworm Jim games always leave me feeling weird these days. When I was a teenager, I loved both of these games, and the second more than the first. I even did a fanzine review back in the day where I gave this very game a 97% or something like that. I know I loved these games, and yet when I play them now I just don't have a good time at all. Jim 2, like the first game, still looks and sounds great. The controls are responsive, and you certainly can't accuse the game of lacking creativity.

Yet I think it's that last point that ends up hurting this sequel the most. Too many of its stages are dedicated to gimmicks and gags, and some of those diversions are just dreadful. The level pictured above, The Flyin' King, is utterly obnoxious. A lot of my attempts to play this game again end there. Even the tolerable mini-games sometimes drag on too long, like the stages where you're bouncing puppies on a giant marshmallow. The game just never lets itself be an action platformer for very long, and it's too bad because that's the part that's actually decent fun.

Alas this revisit hasn't gotten me any closer to seeing what my younger self did in the game, but I certainly can't argue against it being on this mini-console. It was without a doubt a major third-party release on the console, after all. I'm sure many out there still enjoy it as much as they did back in the day. If I ever build that time machine, I'll have to sit my past self down and figure it all out.

[murder-drones-directors-cut]

Hello everyone I know I've been gone however fret not I did not abandon the blog! In fact I got somethin pretty big planned for it havin to do with a certain MD Fanzine I got accepted into!

[murder-drones-zine]

Intrest checks for Disassembly Required: A Murder Drones Zine are now open! You can find the link here

(Art done by HoloByte)

[ylmckdesign]

Bibliography:

- Behance (2023). fragmentos de distancia [fanzine]. [online] Behance. Available at: https://www.behance.net/gallery/187526649/fragmentos-de-distancia-fanzine?tracking_source=search_projects&l=3 [Accessed 3 Jun. 2024].

- Behance (2023). zine - conversations with my inner child. [online] Behance. Available at: https://www.behance.net/gallery/184523387/zine-conversations-with-my-inner-child?tracking_source=search_projects&l=2 [Accessed 3 Jun. 2024].

- Behance (2024). образы ветра. зин / wind shapes. zine. [online] Behance. Available at: https://www.behance.net/gallery/189455237/obrazy-vetra-zin-wind-shapes-zine?tracking_source=search_projects&l=14 [Accessed 3 Jun. 2024].

‌

 - Behance (2024). ZINEZŐ 2023. [online] Behance. Available at: https://www.behance.net/gallery/189775765/ZINEZO-2023?tracking_source=search_projects&l=15 [Accessed 3 Jun. 2024].

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- Behance (2024). The bad day story. [online] Behance. Available at: https://www.behance.net/gallery/192865347/The-bad-day-story?tracking_source=search_projects [Accessed 3 Jun. 2024].

- Behance (2019). Moosh Graphic Novel. [online] Behance. Available at: https://www.behance.net/gallery/83862275/Moosh-Graphic-Novel?tracking_source=search_projects [Accessed 3 Jun. 2024].

‌

- Keller, J. (2021). Little Books, Big Issues: 20 Books To Help Children Process Tough Topics. [online] Amex Essentials. Available at: https://www.amexessentials.com/books-for-children-about-tough-topics-difficult-issues/ [Accessed 3 Jun. 2024].

‌

- Behance (2018). Graphic Novel - The Balloon - Personal Project. [online] Behance. Available at: https://www.behance.net/gallery/71062909/Graphic-Novel-The-Balloon-Personal-Project?tracking_source=search_projects [Accessed 3 Jun. 2024].

‌

- Popova, M. (2016). Duck, Death and the Tulip: An Uncommonly Tender Illustrated Meditation on the Cycle of Life. [online] The Marginalian. Available at: https://www.themarginalian.org/2016/05/04/duck-death-and-the-tulip-wolf-erlbruch/.

‌

- Blurb (2019). How to Start a Comic Book in 9 Steps. [online] Blurb Blog. Available at: https://www.blurb.com/blog/start-a-comic-book/.

‌

- www.itsnicethat.com. (n.d.). Celebrating 200 issues of the It’s Nice That Weekly Comic. [online] Available at: https://www.itsnicethat.com/features/weekly-comic-200-issue-celebration-illustration-310322.

‌

- www.itsnicethat.com. (n.d.). Conscious Comics: How four creatives celebrate unique species from around the world. [online] Available at: https://www.itsnicethat.com/features/conscious-comics-on-the-edge-illustration-partnership-231123.

‌

- Popova, M. (2015). The Heart and the Bottle: A Tender Illustrated Fable of What Happens When We Deny Our Difficult Emotions. [online] The Marginalian. Available at: https://www.themarginalian.org/2015/05/14/oliver-jeffers-the-heart-and-the-bottle/.

‌

‌

- ‌McCloud, S. (1993). Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. New York: HarperCollins Publishers.

‌

- Danziger-Russell, J. (2013). Girls and their comics : finding a female voice in comic book narrative. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, , Cop.

‌

- Hayes, L. (2015). Not funny ha-ha : a handbook for something hard. Seattle, Washington: Fantagraphics Books.

- Madden, M. (2007). 99 Ways To Tell A Story : Exercises In Style. London: Jonathan Cape.

‌

- ‌FUNDAMENTALS OF CHARACTER DESIGN : how to create engaging characters for. (2020).

[yadchi-i-guess]

heeeeey I'm making art for the MD fanzine!

tiny lil sneak peek (if the ppl in charge have a problem with it I'll take it down)

[tonantzin-ar]

✨✨✨Print fest ✨✨✨ Este fin de semana nos encuentran en el Print fest, en Bolivar 8 en el centro histórico de la cdmx. En este evento especializado en ilustración priorizaremos la obra gráfica: prints, postales, stikers, obra original y algunas cositas de diseño. Aunque obvio llevaremos Fanzines. Vayan y llévense un pin o una postalita. En las fotitos algunas cosas que tengo a la venta y podrán conseguir este 4 y 5 de febrero pero que también pueden pedirme por MD 📩 Ahí nos vemos. #print #fest #liebre #hare #pin #enamelpin #pinesmaltado #zine #fanzines #risograph #postcard #postal #poster #febrero #local #love #CDMX #creative (en Bolivar 8 Centro Histórico) https://www.instagram.com/p/CoOD_wZOSIi/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=