Hello,
Thank you! Additionally, thanks for your patience. I've recently had trouble finding a home, and I lost connection to protonmail while I was drafting this.
here are my answers, each after their questions:
Hi again,


Here are my questions: 


- Can you introduce yourself? How old are you, what is your current activity…? Anything you’re comfortable sharing.
I just turned 22 and I'm a student in the United States. I'm majoring in Math, which I'm actually finished with, as well as English, with minors in Linguistics and, hopefully, Cybersecurity.
- How and why was Lainzine born?
The Lainzine was born on a lain-themed imageboard (Rest In Peace) run by a guy called Kalyx. I read some talk on there, about how it would be cool to have a magazine of our own, and I decided to do something about it. We were inspired by zines like 2600 and Phrack and the culture around them as well as the aesthetics and attitudes in the anime Serial Experiments: Lain. Because the forum was anonymous, I can't tell you who originally asked for it or whether those lains made a substantial contribution, but I'm the person who materialized to start the project when I made a thread as editor-in-chief.


After I did that, many people sent articles to my old openmailbox.org email address, or we talked on IRC (Internet Relay Chat) and they sent files over that. Discussion of workflow, aesthetics, what formats the release should take (every format we have the resources for) occurred over a mix of email, the intended-to-be-secure messenger Tox, and an IRC channel that no longer exists - I asked everyone who wanted to help to set notifications on the word "zine team." I remember vividly one very long email consisting of project-management-related questions a specific author had about the nature of the lainzine, which was definitely a grounding moment for what we came to look like. We've since moved on to our own IRC channel, #lainzine on irc.freenode.net, where anyone can come say hello, and have an official email: lainzine@protonmail.com.


Looking at Volume 1, the core team consisted of 4 people - me and Tilde, the editors, as well as Ivan and Dylan, who were typesetters. Each pair discussed between ourselves decisions specific to our portion of the work. Tilde and I read every single article we were sent, and copy-edited them. We don't go much farther than spelling and grammar improvements without consulting the author, because we prefer to workshop pieces with the author rather than re-write them. After that, we sent all the content -  including artwork - to the typesetters for them to use. Since then, I've operated sort of a swing position, making decisions and doing the work nobody else does.


When the zine started out, we asked people to send any content they felt was relevant to the community itself - it was a very self-advocating kind of submission process, with the understanding that we could reject any work if it was too off-base or off-color. With some exception, we didn't get those, in fact many people seem nervous about whether their content is relevant or good enough - saying, "would this be a good topic for the lainzine?" Most everyone who's asked that had a good topic.


- How many people are taking part in the project (editorial team + freelances)? 
I'd say our latest volume is the product of 9 or 10 people. The editorial team is very ephemeral, but there are 2 people currently active - myself and President Reagan, who's doing layout. We're getting a lot of help from a very nice artist, layout person, editor, writer, and site designer, shmibs, whos contributed all of those things before and is helping me with this email. There are a handful of others who we've asked for advice or have volunteered to do various activities if we reach out. We haven't yet needed to, however. Content-wise, we are publishing articles by 7 other writers. Some writers stay in touch across a few releases, or take on other roles before they leave or get busy, and some will just send us their piece and that's all we hear from them. These weren't all the content we received, just the content we thought could fill the normal size of one of our volumes. There's 2-3 pieces we received already that we're saving for volume six.


- How would you define Lainzine editorial line? 
When the lainzine started out, it was just a place to talk about our interests and share them with the world. We wanted to have a presence we could call our own. After the first release, there were a number of discussions in the Voice-over-IP program, Mumble, involving people on the staff of that release, including Kalyx, on what the lainzine was and what it could be. We were inspired by the scene growing around the lainzine, and brought to the volume what we thought that scene could use. Someone with the handle kk7 wrote down her objectives in contributing, which is what inspired our first submission guidelines. In that moment, there was a certain pragmatism about reality, a distaste for authority, intimacy with technology, and a desire to be subversive and genuine. Those documents no longer exist, and the scene they served really doesn't exist either - it was bought out in some respects, and the rest of us scattered all over the wired. But Lain still exists, and we continue to find inspiration from her. We've written new guidelines since then which put in practical terms what we like: https://lainzine.neocities.org/submissions.html


Another way to answer your question: the purpose of each lainzine is the purpose its contributors found reading the lainzine. I can't say what everyone else feels in contributing, but we all think it should continue. We love lain, and we want to share our passion with the world.


- About Serial Experiments Lain — I don’t take any risk by saying you’re probably a huge fan. Can you tell me you personal story with the anime? Why do you like it enough to launch a zine in its honor?
I came to Serial Experiments: Lain shortly after joining Kalyx's website. After joining that community, you pretty much wound up watching SE:L. It wasn't a requirement, but you could tell who hadn't really seen Lain.


Ever since watching it the first time, there's a line from SE:L that comes back a lot. It's one of the most popular quotes from the show, but "No matter where you go, everyone's connected." That was in 1.2: GIRLS, where Lain goes to a place called cyberia with some friends. They invited her because they noticed a girl who was there before, but with a completely different demeanor. A lot more self-certain, and seemed to be running things. Her friends seemed to be interested in what would happen, and they invited her to come with After she arrives, a man with a gun shows up, talking about how he knows nothing about what she's looking for, and how he doesn't want to be a part of it. He points the gun at Lain, and his hand is trembling, and we can see the red dot on her face. I think Lain tells him that there's no point in killing her, because even in death they'll be connected. After that, he shoots himself. Its a little bit like at the end of the show, where Lain deletes herself, and wonders why she's still here. Or at the very beginning, when Chisa tells Lain that she is not dead, and only left the material world to live in the Wired. There was a sense of how selfhood and identity exist in communication, but the end realized it the other way, too: that our origins also depend on us.


I've struggled to find a sense of self my whole life, and the show Serial Experiments: Lain helped me realize where I came from, but also how much I could do with that. And in a social sense, I've had a lot of experiences that were, um, lets say the 6 degrees of separation concept but for certain interests - running into the same people, places, patterns and ideas moving through cyberspace feels like I've been taught something very important by Lain that's always being realized.


The show also really speaks to me visually, too. There's an expressive minimalism to it - its like Lain is only showing us what we need to see, and in that space there is room for so much more which comes out in the symbolism. It's very cozy, even in some of the "scarier" elements, its bewildering but also entrancing. I was sucked into it visually at the first episode and kept watching until I had seen the whole thing in one day.


- How would you explain Serial Experiment Lain’s longevity and relevance, 20 years after its original diffusion? 
Serial Experiments: Lain is about being a child on the internet, which speaks to more people every year. The wired is a place anybody can explore, which is wonderful but also has a lot of danger. With her role in Protocol 7, Lain feels trapped between the schemes of the Knights, Masami Eiri, the Men in Black, and their mysterious boss, who all want to use her. I think a lot of us feel trapped in the machinations of different people right now, and Lain is reminiscent of a more comfortable, personal wired which isn't trying to be in control of everything.


- What are you planning and hoping for Lainzine’s future? For Serial Experiments Lain’s fandom’s future?
It would be nice for the lainzine to become stable as a publication: we can get ahold of some infrastructure for producing physical volumes, as well as other merchandise, so we don't have to go through third parties to print stuff at markups. There were also some really cool articles in the latest release, and I'm glad we could release something that teaches nice and useful stuff, but also has personality or adds meaning to what you've learned. We plan to keep doing that.


For Serial Experiments: Lain's fandom, I'm hoping that it will continue to be a nice community and have creative things in it like fauux.neocities.org. I also really hope that everyone is staying safe and taken care of, the world is harsh but we can look out for each other.


>Thank you very much for your help! 
Of course!!