GUYS. THERE WAS DRIVE-THROUGH IN ANCIENT ROME. FINDING OUT THIS ALONE IS WORTH THE COST OF MY MASTERS IN HISTORY.
[From Daily Life of the Ancient Romans by David Matz]
*rolls up to the window* yeah gimme a number V combo
“I’ll have two number IXs, a number IX large, a number VI with extra ambrosia, a number VIII, two number XLVs, one with cheese, and a large goblet of wine.”
The things you find lurking in your basement. I thought these were gone forever but thankfully, I kept them all: my favorite X-Files fics from Gossamer back when I was spending several hours a day on Gossamer, all printed out on various shades of tinted paper and each with a cover I made by hand–as you see–bound in several volumes, and some of these migrated to AO3 but many indeed vanished from the Internet forever. I always meant to do a similar collection of favorite MSTings, back before Web Site Number 9 died, but most of them were both too hair-raising to reformat for printing and just far too long.
Sonetimes, figuring that since I was only altering them for my collection it wasn’t a crime or nuthin’, I would go through stories and rephrase a line here and there, remove passages I didn’t like, on occasion rewrite random paragraphs or change, say, an in-story reference to Sarah MacLachlan lyrics to a band I actually liked; every altered story had a scrupulously enumerated log of “editorial” changes attached as an appendix, since someday I might be called on in federal court to testify to exactly what I had altered and how. I started making larger “edits,” rewriting the occasional ending and once, since I have no shame, reworking a Mulder/Scully story into a Mulder/Samantha one (I still think it worked better that way). Eventually this did, in fact, lead to my sitting down and writing my own fanfic from start to finish, though ironically, other than one never-posted-anywhere practice run I’ve never written any X-Files fic. And that’s how I began to write anything at all.
If you ever want to find a permanent home for these wonderful items….
I had just assumed they wouldn’t take them as they’re not “proper” zines, but thanks for the heads-up! I do actually need to sit down and decide who gets the posthumous keys to my tiny fannish fiefdom (and where to donate that shelf of non-fannish zines, while I’m at it), so this is good to know.
In fact, so many of these “custom zines” were donated to Iowa that we had to invent the name for them. And make a page on Fanlore.
There have been a bunch of posts about Fanzines and the Iowa Special Collection on this blog before, but I (the mod here, Janita) made an extra-excited sound when I saw this post, because it looks like stuff that I have. In fact, for my 17th birthday, a friend of mine printed out a fanfic by one of the authors of the fics pictured above and had it professionally bound in hardcover so that the pages wouldn’t get scrunched and worn out (which happened to my other printed copies). I still have that book, and I tried to dig it out to take a picture just now, but it’s in a box somewhere in the back of my closet, and while I was searching I had a bunch of extra bedding and a pair of shoes fall on me twice, so I reluctantly gave up.
So if you made these custom zines like @braindamageeclipse and I did, why not talk about your own collection on Fanlore?
We made up a term for these types of zines when we started seeing them pop up in the University of Iowa’s finding aide. “Custom Zines”. We then asked Iowa to put the code “(CZ)” next to these zines so that people would not jump to the conclusion that someone had taken their fic and published it for sale without their permission.
im obsessed w physical closeness, romantically….not even sexually just if u date me it’s all hugging all the time we are gonna lay in bed and im gonna cuddle w u, we will stand in the kitchen and i will stand hip to hip w u, u will sit on the couch and i will stroke your hair and kiss your forehead….it’s so intoxicating as a concept
Solutions Without Problems 