#pop culture zine

[c-show]

C. Show

[marvinpontiac]

— [PAGES FROM THE PASTELS’ ZINE “PASTELISM”

[kobbers]

Time for a sneak peek - I'm representing the original Mirage turtles in @turtlestogetherzine!

I really leaned into treating this as a fun emulation exercise, and especially wanted to highlight the fact that even in its gritty indie days, TMNT was always a bit silly. 🐢❤️❤️❤️❤️

Proceeds are going to the Sea Turtle Conservancy, so get yourself some Turtle goodness while supporting actual turtles!

🍕 turtleszine.bigcartel.com 🍕

[stick-by-me]

Beach day!

By @meggalice for the @turtlestogetherzine!

New follower sticker for: @portalsphere!

[magicianarcana]

i was a victim in the persona 5 shuake zine theft of 2022. this is my story….

[popcultlitmag]

Questions to ask in preparation for Gothic/Grotesque issue for Autumn

Some things to think about why preparing for open submissions: What is your definition of grotesque?

In what ways can love be grotesque?

If you plan themes of body horror, what is a way to play with that idea without insulting disabled and physically different persons?

[sunderwight]

Okay, concept:

Luo Binghe grew up very poor prior to arriving to QJP. And when he first got to QJP, he was ostracized and neglected. So there are probably a lot of phrases, terms, and ideas that he didn't know were things until SY arrived and started actually teaching him. Right? So the bulk of what he did learn, he learned directly from Shen Yuan's own slightly messy attempts to fake ancient scholarly credentials.

Plus, QJP is supposed to be the peak of scholars and well-read, fancy intellectuals, and YQY probably also doesn't know shit about most of that stuff (having also been a former illiterate street child) and of course is incredibly predisposed to take Shen Qingqiu's side on virtually anything. Especially something frivolous or linked to their shared past, such as someone, say Qi Qingqi, accusing Shen Qingqiu of making up a literary reference or "gibberish" word. If something Shen Qingqiu says is something no one else seems to know, that just proves he's more worldly and well-read than the rest of his peers. Also, Shang Qinghua will probably know it, and despite his many (many) character flaws, Shang Qinghua reads a lot too. There's really very little to convince a former street child turned Demon Emperor whose former education began and ended with Shen Qingqiu specifically and Meng Mo (wildly out-of-touch with human culture anyway) to suspect that some of the difficult-to-source references his master makes really have no worldly source (in this world).

So Luo Binghe, in his quest to become as knowledgeable of all things about his shizun and keep up with him as well as possible, and maybe also put down some arguments he's overheard once and for all, eventually gets annoyed because CLEARLY there is a wealth of cultural knowledge contemporary to Shen Qingqiu and Shang Qinghua that didn't survive to his own generation. His efforts at hunting down all the sources being referenced and origins of certain philosophical ideas or terminology keep coming up empty in certain departments. He's been over the entire QJP library with a fine-tooth comb, but QJP focuses on things pertaining to cultivation, history, and knowledge. Obviously, there are gaps. The archives are unlikely to keep pop cultural references and lowbrow literature, and Luo Binghe begins to suspect (from what tastes his master seems to share with his shishu) that that is that actual source he's missing.

The trashy yellow books and romance literature of their generation! Bawdy poems and lewd artworks so on! Heck, that's probably even where the shared "code" (bad English) comes into play -- disciples are always trying to sneak forbidden material past their teachers and smuggle naughty books into the dormitories. Knowing Shizun and Shang Qinghua, Luo Binghe honestly wouldn't be surprised if the two of them were racketeering that shit in their own disciple days. Shang Qinghua acquiring materials, Shen Qingqiu acquiring buyers, both of them making their extra spending money off of secretly supplying Cang Qiong's population with contraband fiction and art.

Also, that would explain why both Shen Qingqiu and Shang Qinghua get flustered and refuse to elaborate if someone asks them what this or that strange turn of phrase refers to. Shen Qingqiu has a very thin face for actually discussing erotica, and Shang Qinghua doesn't like being caught doing illegal shit.

Luo Binghe desperately needs access to trash lit that's older than he is. However, most of that stuff is not printed to last, and turning it up is like trying to find old Spirk zines without the internet.

Shang Qinghua, the obvious go-to source, also seems to not really have anything that old anymore (intimidating him is laughably easy, if he had anything he would have coughed it up by the second or third time Luo Binghe asked and frowned at the same time), and if Shen Qingqiu did have anything he wouldn't want to be questioned about it. Asking too much might even get it destroyed in an act of excessive embarrassment.

Which means there is just one other person Luo Binghe knows who might be able to lead him to some sources. One other person he is absolutely, 100% certain was extensively reading trashy literature around the same time that Shizun was a young man. Someone who would know where to go to even begin looking for it.

Luo Binghe is going to have to ask Tianlang Jun for help with something.

[dreamofbecoming]

listen i know we all love steve “completely ignorant of queer culture to the point that bisexuality is a surprise” harrington being roasted and educated in turns by robin and eddie, yadda yadda, good stuff. i read “they made a horror version of rocky?” in a fic recently and cackled. also a big fan of “he knew he was bi from the start and just never talked about it” as a trope, love it excellent well done

but what about steve who realizes after starcourt that the most important person in his life now has this thing that’s a major part of her life that he knows nothing about, and what if he fucks it up? what if he says something ignorant or rude by accident, and hurts her? what if he loses her because he didn’t know the right thing to say? what if he can’t keep her safe because he doesn’t know what to look out for? absolutely fucking not, this steve says

and listen she’d never say anything, because she can tell that he can tell how much she likes teasing him and teaching him things, so he plays dumb, and she thinks it’s very sweet. but she notices when the zines she keeps under her bed that she buys at that one secret bookshop in indy when she can sneak away on family trips start going missing, always one at a time, and replaced in a few days with another disappearing. and she finds the new ones he must have gone to buy the weekend she was at her aunt’s house hidden in the back of his closet when she goes to steal one of his sweaters. and she notices when he slips more of her queerer movie recommendations into his personal take home pile rather than the movie night stack when he thinks she’s not looking.

she doesn’t notice when he drives to indianapolis after she tries to explain to him why she can’t just ask out a cute girl, tries to impress on him the fear attached to every moment of attraction that he simply has never had to feel, but later she finds a crumpled receipt from a diner in one of his jacket pockets when she’s looking for his keys, and the address is across the street from the bar the gorgeous woman at the bookstore told her about, the one she memorized the address of but hasn’t worked up the guts to think about visiting, and she knows he must have gone looking for a place like that, must have been trying to understand, must have been scoping it out to make sure it was somewhere she could feel safe, after she told him she never had.

so when eddie nearly pops a blood vessel when they clock each other and she mentions that steve is the only person she’s ever come out to before, her hackles come up. because she gets it, she does, he’s only known king steve until recently, so it makes sense that he would be afraid, be concerned for her safety.

but steve is her person, and no one- no one- has ever made her feel as protected or as cared for as he does. no one has ever tried as hard to understand her, no one has ever put so much work into making her feel safe and seen and loved. and she thinks maybe even if no one else ever does, that’s ok. because she has steve, and more importantly steve has her, and that means no one gets to question his ally credentials in her presence without a dressing down to remember, no matter how well they mean or how recently they helped save the world.

(and maybe she’s not as surprised as she could be when he figures out bisexuality all on his own, because she’s been reading all the same pamphlets he has, after all. and she’s seen the way he looks at eddie, i mean come on. maybe no one else has noticed, but then, nobody knows steve harrington like she does.)

[zot3-flopped]

Sylvia Plath did not stick her head in an oven for this! When Taylor Swift took the Grammys stage last month to claim her award for Best Pop Vocal Album for Midnights, she saw that spotlight as an opportunity to announce her 11th studio album: The Tortured Poets Department. The follow-up cut to audience members—Swift’s music industry peers, mind you—told us all that we would ever need to know, and the collective disinterest across the crowd echoed through our TVs.

Folks from all walks of life took to social media to express a multitude of reactions. Swifties clamored to their beloved monarch’s forthcoming era, while others lambasted the terminally cringe title and artwork and ridiculed Swift for making a night recognizing musical achievements across an entire industry about herself—knowing perfectly well that it would send her fanbase into a surge that would, no doubt, overpower the excitement around the ceremony itself.

Quite a few people questioned whether or not that moment suggested that a critical—definitely not commercial—tide would turn against the world’s most-famous pop star. And, perhaps it has—but, to most, it will look like nothing more than a single ripple in Swift’s ocean of successes.

Swift remained relatively hush-hush about The Tortured Poets Department up until its release, leaving her fans, admirers and haters alike with nothing but an album title to ponder about. And it’s a bad title.

If you have never been in Swift’s corner, her taking the route of labeling her next “era” as “tortured” was likely catnip for your disinterest. If you are a fan—not necessarily a Swiftie, but even just a casual lover of her best and brightest work—you might be beside yourself about the first Swift album title longer than one word in 14 years.

In terms of popularity—certainly not always in terms of quality—no musician has been bigger this century than Swift, which makes it impossible to really buy into the “torture” of it all.

This is not to say that Swift being the most famous person in the world makes her immune to having multi-dimensional feelings of heartbreak, mental illness or what-have-you.

But, she has made the choice—as a 34-year-old adult—to take those complex, universal familiars and monetize them into a wardrobe she can wear for whatever portion of her Eras Tour setlist she opts to dedicate to the material.

Torture is fashion to Taylor Swift, and she wears her milieu dully. This album will surely get comparisons to Rupi Kaur’s poetry, either for its simplicity, empty language, commodification or all of the above.

And, sure, there are parallels there, especially in how The Tortured Poets Department, too, is going to set the art of poetry back another decade—as Swift’s naive call-to-arms of her own milky-white sorrow rings in like some quintessential “I am going to take pictures of a typewriter on my desk and have a Pinterest mood-board of Courier New font” iPhone fodder. 2013 called and it wants it capricious, suburban girl-who-is-taking-a-gap-year wig back!

Soaking our book reports in coffee or having our moms burn the edges with a kitchen lighter cannot come back into fashion; the cyclical notions of culture cannot make the space for such retreads.

There is nothing poetic about a billionaire—who, mind you, threatens legal action against a Twitter account for tracking her destructive private jet paths—telling stadiums of thousands of people every night that she sees and adores them.

Tavi Gevinson says it well in her Fan Fiction zine: “When 80,000 people are also crying, you become less special, too.” If Swift can return to one of her dozen beach houses across the world, kick up her feet and say “I’m a poet of struggle,” then who is to say that millions—maybe billions—of people with access to a notes app and a social media account won’t dream that dream, too?

Maybe that looks like a net-positive, but it’s inherently damning and destructive to take an art form that has long stood on the shoulders of resistance, of love and of opposition to power, systematic injustice and climate warfare and boil it down to the new defining era of your own 10-digit revenue empire. “My culture is not your costume,” yada, etc.

The Tortured Poets Department does begin with a shred of hope that, just maybe, Swift knows what she’s talking about—as she sneaks in a cheeky “all of this to say,” textbook transitional phrasing for poets, on opening track “Fortnight.”

But “Fortnight” unmasks itself quickly as a heady vat of pop nothingness, though it isn’t all Swift’s fault. “I was a functioning alcoholic, ‘til nobody noticed my new aesthetic,” she muses, attempting to bridge the gap between a behind-the-scenes life and on-stage performance—only for it to occur while propped up against the most dog-water, uninspired synth arrangement you could possibly imagine.

Between producer Jack Antonoff’s atrocious backing instrumental and the Y2K-era, teen dramedy echo chamber of a vocal harmony provided by out-of-place guest performer Post Malone, “Fortnight” chokes on the vomit of its own opaqueness.

“I took the miracle move-on drug, the effects were temporary,” Swift muses, and it sounds like satire. This is your songwriter of the century? Open the schools.

The Tortured Poets Department title-track features some of Swift’s worst lyricism to-date, including the irredeemable, relentlessly cringe “You smoked then ate seven bars of chocolate, we declared Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist / I scratch your head, you fall asleep like a tattooed golden retriever” lines glazed atop some synthesizers and drums that just ring in as hollow, unfascinating costuming.

Aside from the Puth nod, which I can only discern as a joke (given the fact that he is one of the 150-most streamed artists in the world and is one of the blandest pop practitioners alive—I don’t care if he can figure out the pitch of any sound you throw at him), I think Antonoff should stick to guitar-playing. Get that man away from a keyboard, I’m begging you.

Synths can be, if you use them correctly, one of the most emotional and provocative instruments in any musician’s tool-box. There’s a reason why keyboards defined the 1980s; they rebelled against the very oppressive nature existing outside of the cultural company they kept. There’s resistance in electronic music that, while they brandish an aesthetic that, to a layman’s ears, seems like technicolor hues for any infectious pop track, it’s a genre that aches to tell its own story. That is simply not the case here, and that electronica hangs Swift out to dry when she drags us through the lukewarm “I laughed in your face and said, ‘You’re not Dylan Thomas, I’m not Patti Smith’ / This ain’t the Chelsea Hotel, we’re modern idiots” lines, only to hit us with a softly sung F-bomb that sounds like a billionaire’s rendition of that one Miranda Cosgrove podcast clip.

I used to rag pretty heavily on Reputation—mostly because I thought (and still do, mostly) that it sounded like Swift had given up on making interesting, progressive pop music; that, in the wake of her (arguably) best album, 1989, it seemed like she’d lost the plot on where to go next. But as she’s put out Midnights and The Tortured Poets Department back-to-back, I find myself clamoring for the Reputation-era more than ever—at least seven years ago, Swift wrote songs like she had something to prove and even more to lose.

That was the always-obvious charm of Reputation, even despite the downsides—that she took a big swing from the echelons of her own musical immortality, that the comforts of winning every award and selling out the biggest venues in the world were no longer pillowing her aspirations. Even though that swing didn’t land, she still made it in the first place—and Swift is at her best either when she is clawing upwards (Reputation) or faced with nowhere to go but into the studio and noodle with the bare-bones of her own sensibilities (folklore).

You get something like The Tortured Poets Department when the artist making it no longer feels challenged, where she strikes out looking.

The mid-ness of The Tortured Poets Department will not be a net-loss for Swift. She will sell out arenas and get her streams until she elects to quit this business (a phrase decidedly not in her vocabulary, surely).

She will sell more merch bundles than vinyl plants have the capacity to make, and rows of variant LP copies will haunt the record aisles of Target stores just as long as Midnights has—if not longer.

Perhaps, in five or six years’ time, we will speak of this record just as we now do of Reputation. But right now, it is obvious that Swift no longer feels challenged to be good. The Tortured Poets Department is the mark of an artist now interested in seeing how much their empire can atone for the sins of mediocrity.

Can Swift win another Album of the Year Grammy simply because she released a record during the eligibility period? The Tortured Poets Department reeks of “because I can,” not “because I should.”

On “I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can),” Swift tries stepping into the shoes of the country renegades who came before her—the Tammy Wynettes and Loretta Lynns of the world. But her self-aggrandizing inflation of importance, glinting through via a seismically-bland bridge, is backed by a minimal set dressing of guitar, drum machine and keys.

“Good boy, that’s right, come close,” she sings. “I’ll show you Heaven if you’ll be an angel—all mine. Trust me, I can handle me a dangerous man. No, really, I can.” On “Florida!!!,” Swift calls upon Florence + the Machine to help her sing the worst chorus of 2024: “Florida is one hell of a drug / Florida, can I use you up?”

Even Welch, who is a fantastic pop singer-songwriter in her own right, delivers a grossly watery verse: “The hurricane with my name, when it came I got drunk and I dared it to wash me away.”

Not even the typos on the Spotify promotional materials for this album could have foretold such offenses. I won’t even get into the sonics, because Antonoff just rewrites the same soulless patterns every time.

What separates The Tortured Poets Department from something like Reputation is that, on the latter, Swift made it known what was at stake and who she was making that album for—herself, in the aftermath of her greatest long-standing criticisms (“Look What You Made Me Do” triumphs exactly because of this).

On The Tortured Poets Department, there is a striking level of moral nothingness. The stakes are practically non-existent, and the album sounds like it was made by someone who believes that they had no other choice but to finish it, as if Swift fundamentally believes that her creative measures are firmly embedded in the massive monopoly her name and brand currently hold on popular music. That’s how you get meandering pop songs about hookups, wine moms, Stevie Nicks comparisons, Jehovah’s Witness suit mentions, hollowed-out, tone-deaf nods to white-collar crime in lieu of empowerment and, topically, Barbie dolls.

(Don’t even get me started on the Anthology lyrics, which feature these absolute barn-burners: “Touch me while your bros play Grand Theft Auto” and “My friends used to play a game where / We would pick a decade / We wished we could live in instead of this / I’d say the 1830s, but without all the racists / And getting married off for the highest bid.”) This album and its hackneyed grasps at relevance exist as “Did I just hear that?” personified, but in the most derogatory sense of the notion.

My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys” features another low-point in Swift’s lyrical oeuvre, as she sings “I felt more when we played pretend than with all the Kens, ‘cause he took me out of my box”—perhaps a measure of her capitalizing on the Barbenheimer mania that none of us could escape, not even the musician who spent most of 2023 flying across the world from one country to another.

But you, us, the listener—we want to believe that Swift makes these records because she has the artistic will, drive and interest to continue giving us parts of her story in such ways that they exist as an archival of her life.

But the problem is that, on The Tortured Poets Department, Swift is packaging her life into a form that is easily consumable for the 17 or 18 years olds who pour over her music. Just because her Eras Tour film is on Disney+ doesn’t mean she has to strip her songwriting (which we know can be, and has been, phenomenal) down for the sake of it being digestible by a wide spectrum of ages.

And, sure, maybe that makes the work accessible. But on The Tortured Poets Department, Swift makes Zoomer jargon her bag—titling a song after one of the most popular video games in the world and conjuring flickers of “down bad” and “I can fix him”—and it feels like she’s cosplaying because the Fountain of Youth was out of order.

Now that Swift is in her 30s, it sounds like she is infantilizing her own audience more than ever before—that singing to them at a level that could force them to reckon with something more akin with adulthood would be some kind of kink in the coil or her consumeristic threshold, that writing lyrics that sound like they were penned by a 30-year-old would, somehow, deter the interests of the billions of people who adore her.

If making one, continuous coming-of-age album is what Swift has been doing for 15 years, folklore and evermore were hiccups in the timeline—existing as the most fully-formed renderings of Swift’s own insecurities and concerns. They mirrored our platitudes towards an uncertain future with sweet, stirring remarks about isolation and heartbreak and the unavoidable, hard-worn truth about getting older. On those records, her larger-than-life living seemed, for once, to truly feel as close to the ground as ours.

Now, though, Taylor Swift is at the top of the mountain. Far better artists have made far worse records than The Tortured Poets Department, but you can’t read between the lines of this project. There is nothing to decipher from a place of quality.

Sure, Swift’s fan base will pour over these lyrics for the rest of their lives—insisting they know, for certain, which song is about who. But you cannot place a bad album on the shoulders of lore and expect it to be rectified.

We are now left at a crossroads. Women can’t critique Swift because they’ll run the risk of being labeled a “gender traitor” for doing so. Men can’t critique her because they’ll be touted as “sexist.”

And, sure, Swift is probably too easy a punching bag in this case—and most of the time, I would argue she is undeserving of being a victim of such barbs. But, you cannot write about someone being a “tattooed golden retriever” and get away with it and still retain your title as the best songwriter of your generation. You just cannot.

Sisyphus should be glad he never got the boulder to the top of the mountain—because Taylor Swift is showing us that such immortality and success ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. And, when you’re standing on the peak alone, who else is there left to hit?

In a recent interview with The Standard, Courtney Love said that Swift is “not interesting as an artist,” and I think The Tortured Poets Department proves as much. She has nothing to fight for, no doubters left to drown.

So where does she turn? Well, to boredoms of celebrity thinly veiled as sorrow everyone and their mother can latch onto—because we’ve all had to “ditch the clowns, get the crown” at some point in our lives, right?

The billionaire is having an identity crisis, but there are no social media apps for her to buy up. So she sings like Lana Del Rey and writes meta-self-referential songs about looking like Stevie Nicks.

What’s hollow about The Tortured Poets Department is that the real torture is just how unlivable these songs really are. No one can resonate with “So I leap from the gallows and I levitate down your street, crash the party like a record, scratch as I scream ‘Who’s afraid of little old me?’ You should be.” And normally, that wouldn’t be an end-all-be-all for a pop record—but when your brand is built on copious levels of “I’m just like you!” as the demigod saying it to their fans does so from a multi-million-dollar production set, it’s hard to not feel nauseated by the overlording, overbearing sense of heavy-handed detritus we’re tasked with sifting through on The Tortured Poets Department.

Love’s words to Lana, her advice to “take seven years off,” should be applied to Swift. Now, that doesn’t mean that, to make a good album, you must sit on material for years and labor extensively through the sketching, shaping and recording in order for it to be transcendentally landmark. But it’s obvious now that not even Taylor Swift wants to be the head of an empire—that she, too, can’t outrun the damning fate of being plum out of ideas by hopping in her jet and skirting off to God knows where.

See you at the Grammys.

****

[inkpopzine]

⭐️Welcome everysquid to INK POP! ⭐️

The for-charity zine that explores the pop culture and daily lives of the people in the Splatoon universe and asks, what do their lives look like?! What are they passionate about?

We hope you stay tuned for more info coming very soon!

Art by: @spaceagecore

[librarycards]

hello! i apologize in advance this is probably something that you get asked a lot. but do you have any recs on literary magazines to submit to? im a trans poet, ive been writing for over a decade but never shared anything and ive been wanting to try to send my stuff to get it published somewhere. obv ive been google searching but theres so many big and small publications and i was wondering if you have ones you like especially and/or tips on how to choose a magazine/journal to submit to. thanks a lot! <3

no worries, thank you for reaching out!! i've been publishing for like 8 years + an editor for almost 4, so i always appreciate the opportunity to help people new to the world find ethical publications that will treat their work with the care it deserves.

first and foremost: there are going to be pubs out there that are awesome and i don't know about. you may be the one to discover them for yourself! one aid in finding the best mag for your work is the wonderful, writer-created chillsubs. it's a fantastic platform that keeps a huge list of mags and presses and their relevant stats, and lets you create an account and bookmark those you're interested in. everyone i know uses them, and it's very worth it given the sheer volume of mags out there.

i also have some recs of my own, ofc. i'm going to list them below. if they pay (which i prioritize) I'll mark them with a $. some are trans/queer focused and some aren't, but all are pubs i've either edited and/or published with and can confirm their ethics + respect for writers.

manywor(l)ds - my mag! i'm co-founder and eic. break genre _ shapeshift with us. ($)

Sinister Wisdom - old, well-regarded lesbian+ lit mag, now open to everyone who is/loves a dyke. I'm guest-editing an issue on Madness with them, now open for submissions!

fifth wheel press - run by a beloved friend and comrade of mine. i've published here. excellent transparency, care, great for first-timers. ($).

kith books - headed by trans literary icon kat blair. a mag/press/community centered around bodymind non-conformity and noncompliance.

Honey Literary - QTPOC-centered, unabashedly pop-culture + social justice oriented. the vibes are simply immaculate.

Whale Road Review - not queer/trans focused, more oriented toward....'grown up' poetry/prose/pedagogy papers. Katie Manning (eic) is a fucking gem.

Graphic Violence Lit - just had my first experience publishing with them, and their care + consideration for the whole writer is amazing. they publish boundary-pushing work.

beestung - one of the brainchildren of Sarah Clark. nb/gq/2s SFF. I just edited a few guest issues w them and have published with them. amazing work. ($)

A Velvet Giant - genrequeer work. the editors are experienced, enthusiastic, and amazing at promoting writers long after publication. it's a family! ($)

Ethel Zine + Press - handmade with love by Sara Lefsyk (as you can see, trans/nonbinary/2s sarahs dominate indie publishing, as well we should :3). Sara is a sensitive and care-full editor and bookmaker whose every publication is a work of art.

Protean - pro- as in proletariat. awesome left mag with a mix of politics and culture and everything in between. they take reprints! ($)

Mudroom - publish your work along with a picture of your mudroom/shoe rack. very responsive editors who will hype you tf up. ($)

The Institutionalized Review - for psych survivors. the editors concreteness of vision and dedication to their community know no bounds.

Just Femme + Dandy - queer and fashion-focused! led by the inimitable Addie Tsai. They pay *handsomely*. ($)

In addition, there are also some "big" mags I have had excellent experiences publishing with and wanted to shout out. These are harder for a beginner to break into, but worth keeping on your radar + have been fantastic to me as a writer.

Electric Lit

Split Lip Magazine

The Offing

Nat. Brut

Santa Fe Writers' Project

Bodega

New Orleans Review

Augur Magazine

I hope this is helpful to you + others! the literary world is ever-changing and this is just a snapshot. Hopefully you find some that you like!

[c-show]

C. Show

My past four forays into one page zine making, from earliest to most recent.

[void-flesh]

“You’ve Gotta Check This Band Out” A multi-bandom micro essay zine

Is there a band you’re obsessed with? No matter if its 00s pop-punk, folk music from 1960, a rock band you saw in your friends basement and never forgot- If you’re excited about a musician, I want to hear about it.

The details: What’s a micro essay?

A micro essay an essay around 200-700 words in length. For the purposes of this zine, it can be any format or style, no matter how experimental, as long as its nonfiction.

What can I write about?

This zine is going to focus on bands but is open to works about any musician or musical scene that you feel passionate about

What should I write about?

i’m most interested in looking at how music functions in a broader cultural context, but anything you’re passionate about, I wanna see. This can include but isn’t limited to: - How the sexual politics of a time period affected music - Analysis of how a cover song affects the original piece - Why this band you saw that one time was so rad - How various identity politics and music intersect and interact - Why everyone is wrong about [Insert widely hated album name here] - Why DID that secret chord David played please the lord?

Submissions will be open until June 7th!

You can send plain text and I will lay it out, or if you want to design your own page, including text, illustration, stickers, cut/paste, etc, please make it 5.5in x 8.5in and 300ppi resolution JPG

Please send submissions to merlin.sabal13@gmail.com

Some other rules/FAQs

YES it can be a piece thats already been published as long as you include where it was first published (your blog, another zine, etc)

YES its ok if its a little bit longer or shorter- the word limit is a soft guide, if its 756 words etc thats fine

YES comics are ok as long as they are nonfiction

If you an illustrator who wants to work on illustrating essays, email or dm me!

Contributors will receive a print copy, zine will also be posted online for free, and will be sold at-cost in my shop.

If you have questions plz ask!

[vintagerpg]

Barkeep on the Borderlands (2023) is just fantastic through and through. It’s a system neutral bar crawl through a classic D&D setting transformed by time and capitalism, basically. F. W. Smith recommends Errant or Cairn for the system, but just about anything would work, certainly any D&D derivative. There are some bespoke rules, though: a timekeeping system, a methodology for the bar crawl and mechanics to track alcohol consumption and drunkeness.

So, if you haven’t quite gotten it yet, Barkeep substitutes hexes and dungeons for literal bars. The monarch is ill, you’re searching for clues as to how and why by taking in the nightlife. The really charming part is that this town is the keep from B2: Keep on the Borderlands and that the ongoing festival, the Raves of Chaos, celebrates the heroes who, two centuries ago, cleaned the caves out. That act, and the way the Keep developed in its wake, is very much a presence in the adventure.

Also charming are the bars. There is quite a variety (the zine is technically an anthology, with many bars designed by a different creator, many of whom will be familiar to longtime readers of this feed). Regardless of the writer, each has it’s own vibe (often sending up some sort of pop cultural reference — there is a lot of potential for humor here) and character. My faaaaaaavorite is maybe Our Lady of the Sacred Speakeasy, which has a familiar looking temple in the basement.

Barkeep on the Borderland is an instant classic for me. It looks good, it reads good, it effortlessly takes a D&Dish game in completely unexpected directions. It feels new and fun and welcoming, and I’m keen to seem more from Prismatic Wasteland.

[gummiewerm]

hello everybody!! recently I participated in my (first ever) zine, @inkpopzine ! it's a splatoon zine centering inkfish pop culture and there were a TON of really talented artists involved. my piece is part of a collab, so if you want to see the full thing, be sure to check out the zine!

ALL of the proceeds will be going towards food baskets for gaza, so id really appreciate it if you all could check it out! INK POP comes out March 16th!!

FREE PALESTINE 🍉🍉🍉!!

[dateamonster]

webcomics*! webcomics baby!!! i grew up reading these bad boys like they were the sunday funnies. im serious i would get up early in so i could check my daily roster of webcomic updates before leaving for school.

webcomics sort of feel to me like my generations version of zines. not that both those things arent still around, i just mean that, in the same way that there was this big boom of super creative zine self-publishing in the 70s through the 90s thanks to the increasing access to copy machines, and later home printing, the early 00s-10s was sort of the moment people seemed to collectively realize they could kind of just upload whatever they wanted to the internet and people would actually see it, leading naturally to another boom in indie art and storytelling.

a lot of the comics that popped up around this time were sort of... rough. raw. weird. there were no rules about what a webcomic had to be other than 1) a comic and 2) on the web, so there was some freedom to be as messy or as precise as the author wanted. this led to some real bangers, and some absolute flops. but regardless of how it turned out i think theres something to be admired about the sheer amount of creativity going into these projects that, for the most part, were purely passion-driven without any guarantee of greater recognition or success.

obviously webcomics are still around, but the culture surrounding them has shifted quite a bit. most people who are willing to put in the work of a longform serialized comic In This Economy are also doing so with the hope of being able to profit or at least sustain themselves financially on their work. theres no shame in that! but it has made the webcomic scene more competitive, more polished, less experimental. capitalism at work, you know.

people arent really as incentivized to try new things and dare i say get a little weird with it when innovation doesnt pay the pills. however that doesnt mean that there arent still artists out there who are challenging that.

i got the idea a while ago that i wanted to put together a list of webcomics that have been really influential to me and my own creative efforts, but i realized that list would be a mile long and wouldnt really give me the breathing room to talk about why those works resonate with me. so i decided instead to make a list specifically of my (currently) most beloved, most influential webcomics that i feel like are doing something unique that sort of pushes the boundaries of what is considered a "normal" comic.

presented in no particular order, with all attempts made to be spoiler-free, below:

nasty red dogs and feast for a king by kosmicdream (18+)

delicious, dark, meaty comics. ffak in particular is like this massive sprawling scifi stream of consciousness thick with blood and viscera and. a lot of highly transsexual erotic cannibalism tbqh.

personally i find nasty red dogs a lot more like easy to get into story-wise, but both are just chockablock full of this beautiful grotesque unapologetic and downright indulgent physicality. its pages dripping with every fluid you can think of and some you cant, and its also compelling surprisingly empathetic characters set against a backdrop of otherworldly rituals, cosmic pre-apocolypses, and worlds inside of worlds inside of worlds. body horror heaven lives here.

mr boop and crimehot by alec robbins (very 18+)

if youre at all into weird webcomics youre probably already well familiar with mr boop, and if you arent theres really nothing i can say other than Please give it a shot, but if you havent been keeping up with alecs work since then you might not be as familiar with his current project crimehot. and thats a damn shame because it is all the comedy, unabashed horniness, and surprisingly understated storytelling of mr boop taken to its absolute max.

crimehot is set in a future where nearly every aspect of human life and culture is controlled by an all-powerful all-seeing computer algorithm. but who cares about all that when theres a ragtag team of ultra sexy ultra horny master thieves going on wacky little misadventures together!

alecs style is blunt and simplistic in a way that comes off as juvenile at first glance, and then uses that presumption to completely blindside you with its actual content, reminding me weirdly enough of memeable classic tails gets trolled. in spite of their potential as works of ironic comedy however alecs comics really give me this impression of total earnestness. crimehot in particular is so blatantly un-erotic, with its complete lack of any subtlety, comically exaggerated (and surprisingly diagetic) anatomy, and impossible physical positions, that it circles back around into becoming, indeed, kind of hot. i think silliness can be hot so sue me!

blind alley by adam de souza

departing completely from my last couple recs, blind alley is a cozy, peanuts-inspired comic strip about the day to day lives of the children of blind alley. its also occasionally a deeply unsettling horror-mystery that has just barely begun to show its hand more than two years in. its distinguishing factor to me comes from the fact that the cozy exterior doesnt seem to be there to conceal or divert your attention away from the growing sense of unease that infiltrates its panels on an increasingly frequent basis as the story progresses. it feels more like the two elements live side by side, horror and mundanity, otherworldly creatures and secret conspiracies living peacefully alongside lazy summer afternoons and goofing off with your friends. it perfectly captures the anxiety of knowing that theres something the grown-ups arent telling you, the powerlessness of being a kid.

blind alley feels to me sort of like if those "what if Nostalgic Cartoon was secretly DARK" media theories were actually real, and actually scary. i might be getting ahead of myself as the series likes to take its time and is really only just starting to peel back the layers, but what ive read so far feels makes me feel like this could be something very special.

boy island by leo fox

beautiful beautiful beautiful first of all. the dreamy, surreal visuals? the colors?? oujhjh.. boy island is set in a world split violently in two, divided into boy island and girl island, and surrounded on all sides by a sea of monsters mutants and ghosts, those sorry souls who committed the trespass of trying to cross from one land to the other, or even live outside of either! a boy named lucille must strike out on his own to make it to boy island, but in doing so begins to discover things about the world and in fact himself that reveal an even greater mission.

im making this all sound very dramatic. its a trans story. its about trans people, being trans. its also about surviving the ripples of a world laid out for you by your parents, managing grief for the ones that didnt, and a funny little blue guy named jounce. also did i mention its gorgeous? hot fuckin diggity it is gooorgeous.

vivians ghost by hal schrieve (18+)

speaking of trans comics!! (plot twist: theyre all trans comics suckerrrr) look, all of hals comics are fucking baller and im sure the book zes got coming out will be too, but ive like Imprinted on this one. its attached itself my brain. much like the main protagonist collin has been attached to by his suicide victim best friend and ex highschool bf viv!

the sketchy art style threw me off at first but it quickly becomes part of the charm and meshes very well with the chaotic pace and gutpunch emotional moments. theres a strong element of magical realism that i honestly think comics as a medium were made for. viv is a ghost, and viv is grief, and guilt, and fantasy, and shame, and glorious trans revenge taken form, and hes not even the only apparition in this story, taking the stage alongside cameos by jesus christ, a detransitioners fursona, almanda palmer, and (checks notes) gonzo for a second there i think.

as a disclaimer (or incentive, depending) no one in this story i think is someone you could really call a good person. some of them are in fact plainly terrible. they are all so undeniably fucking fascinating though. and viv himself gleefully inhabits that moral gray area, deliberately and loudly disturbing any image of himself as a pure perfect victim, blurring lines and thrusting both the characters and audience out of their comfort zone. its a challenging read thats not going to be everyone for sure, but i definitely think its worth the read.

(and if this sounds interesting to you but youre not sure you can handle it, hal has other equally good comics that are still heavy on the trans gay relationship drama but much lighter on the childhood trauma.)

what happens next by maximumgraves

if youre reading this on tumblr i hope that youve at least heard of what happens next by now. thee seminal tumblrina art of our time i swear. it starts with a true crime podcast exploring the strange story of griffin and his accomplice milo, trans teen murderers, the latter of which has since been released from the psych hospital while the former continues to serve his sentence. but thats in the past, and in the present milo still has to figure out how to live the rest of his life.

the story moves rapidly, though not necessarily chronologically, in and out of the real world and the online lives its characters frequently inhabit like its guiding you through a twisted dream. its a comic on the internet about the internet from someone clearly well aware of its more poisonous aspects, as well as the addictive quality it can have for someone who has become otherwise isolated from the world.

at the end of the day though the major appeal i think is the characters, how messy and horrible and tragic they can be, which is all you can really hope for from a largely character-driven narrative. to say much more i think would ruin the experience, but ill say what happens next absolutely delivers on its ominous title, and im waiting on the edge of my seat for the next chapter.

preeny has to repeat 6th grade by momodriller

on a Much lighter note, preeny has to repeat 6th grade is a super cute adventure series about a magical little kitty named preeny who on her first day of sixth grade is called upon to go on a great mission. its a sparklefur comic!! ive been really starting to dive into furry art lately, and if youre the kind of person who raises an eyebrow at that statement, fine, whatever, but im talking to the cool people right now so keep it to yourself.

art from within the furry subculture is such insanely creative and passionate stuff, and the focus on this subset in particular, calling back to the early 2000s deviantart xD rAWR s0 rand0m era of online culture, feels so intensely nostalgic it makes my chest ache, despite never being heavily involved in the sparklefur scene myself.

the author states in the comics description that the story takes inspiration from her experiences as an autistic child, and even before reading that man i felt it. what really makes this comic unique to me though is that the majority of characters that appear are based on adoptables the author purchased off of, as she puts it, the children of deviantart. i LOVE that. not only is that probably amazing for the kids, it makes every character feel truly unique and adds perfectly to the overall flavor of the world shes created. there is just not another comic i can think of that feels alive like this one.

broccoli soup by secretpie

ok so i know how we might feel about webtoon comics but hear me out. broccoli soup is probably the first comic ive seen to really exploit the otherwise sort of bland and restrictive format of webtoons, utilizing the excess of white space to enhance the feeling of emptiness that characterizes the protagonist broccoli's time in the blank void they call home as well as to make the sparse use of color really pop in contrast.

broccoli soup is a mysterious series thats a little hard to pin down in terms of genre. a strange little being named broccoli spends their days in a vast blankness drinking tea with their loving yet highly suspicious Best Friend and benefactor, doris. doris has the ability to move between worlds, coming and going as she pleases, while broccoli is only allowed to leave when they are on a mission on her behalf. these missions vary, but the goal is always the same: make everything Polite and Good.

as the story progresses, little by little more friends and more color come into broccolis still new existence. the art style also changes from world to world, which imo is a very nice touch. and! theres music! its an interesting project that dances back and forth between fantastical whimsy and some surprisingly dark moments. and thats the shit i like to see.

thats all for now! though if im lucky there will be many more fun stories and projects to talk about in the future. keep in mind as well that this is like barely half of all the webcomics im currently reading, just the ones that most stick out to me as really doing something special.

until next time yall!!

oh wait sike honorable mentions time

awful hospital by bogleech

the only reason this isnt up there with the rest is bc im woefully behind at the moment. ill get back to it eventually! awful hospital is an interactive multimedia horror-comedy webcomic about a hospital that is. well this hospital is simply sub-par to say the least.

hedgehog's dilemma by mellodilla

this ones still a little new to say much on but so far it looks like a cute series. what most appeals to me is that the art style looks like something that fit in seamlessly with an early 90s newspaper comic strip. in particular it has a strong calvin and hobbes vibe to me. just, you know, about wacky lil lesbian animals living their lives.

ok now im done for real

*for clarity's sake, im using webcomic here to mean "a series of comics that was first published and predominantly exists online" so even if a print version exists, i still consider it to be first and foremost a webcomic. this also includes comics that contain a multimedia or interactive element. if its a combination of pictures and words to tell a story, its a comic.

also my list is probably going to end up massively favoring serialized fiction because thats just what i like to read, but i dont necessarily think thats a required element.