#wo the zine

[drwernicke]

I made a zine! About a fictional videogame! Sponsored by a dear industry friend, who I approached while panicking about my food insecurity and bills.

WO, the Zine, is the reprint of the instruction manual of a videogame made for the AKASA Entertainment System stands as evidence for the existence of Hole Eye Games, a developer who went bankrupt shortly after the release of said game. WO, panned by critics as being too dark for its core audience, is mostly forgotten by the casual player, though it has developed something of a cult following in the passing decades. Hole Eye Games' other titles fared no better, and are mostly forgotten. However, WO might have just saved two kids who chanced upon it in their late teens. WO, the zine, reprints the game's manual in its entirety, including the handwritten notes of Fiver (Jonah Lovelace) and Rosary Sepulchur (James Patron) as they traded the cartridge and the booklet back and forth during the darkest days of their lives. Solace can come in the strangest forms. Sometimes, it comes as a videogame about being a giant rabbit and climbing into your best friend/crush's corpse to defeat Satan.

If you want your own copy, you can buy it here!

It's 48-pages long, full color, glossy cool paper and stuff. I'd be super grateful for any support you can give, and spreading the word. I'm too shy to talk about my stuff. I don't even know where I should be talking about it.

Fun fact: I broke my left arm (my radial neck) and my right hand (my trapezium) while in the process of making this. Not due to the process (it was a stupid skating accident where a giant dude barreled into me hockey-style), but the fact it's actually been made and is out now is something of a miracle to me.

Another fun fact: the printing studio I hired for the project was so helpful, understanding, and knew what I wanted to a T. And the weirdest thing is, I found them from a ten year old Reddit post where they were discussing making a SNES-style manual with another Reddit user. I sent them a message, and what'd you know, it turned out they live in the same country and the same province as I do. What are the odds?

Thanks so much for reading this far! Videogames were my main source of escapism through a very rough childhood, and have continued to be, and I felt I owed that its due homage. I also wanted to emulate what it feels like to love something that may be critically panned for being unentertaining, but is still very dear to your heart because of what it means to you and your friends. I'll stop yapping now. Thank you so much. ❤️

[andythelemon]

✨ PRE-ORDERS NOW OPEN ✨

♥️ Beat of my Heart! ♥️ A Shojo Poster Collection

A nostalgic, sparkly and lovingly-rendered tribute to 32 shojo manga. After 2022’s Jump for the Stars! shonen anthology, we're excited to present its long-awaited counterpart. Every order comes with a shojoke sticker pack!

A5 | 40pg | saddle stitch

Artists: Andy �� Jununy – Koi – Myst-A – Jokerita – Bailie – Jimmy – Xenia – Shazleen Khan – Deads – Prince – Vi – Sailor – Jou – Laura – Maobabie – Enorae – Lou-Anne – Sam C. – Amy Matsushita-Beal – Roll – Abi – Mei – Jacqueline Li – Karyn – Maya – April – Nice Day, Bucky! – Kogawa – CJ - Tia

Pre-orders close June 1st. Please contact the store if you have any questions not answered by the listings/FAQ. Thank you for the support! 🌸💖

[devilsrains]

eroica fanzines

"diamond" from guns and red roses #1 (1989) by heather bruton

[xamaxenta]

Im not sayin u should buy the op pkmn zine except u should bc i rly want the stretch goals to unlock 👉🏽👈🏽

[tlanwen]

i am so god damn burned out aaAAAAAAUEAUEAGHGEHEEAAAAAAAAAAAA

[shoujoromancezine]

🌸Hitomebore Zine Preview🌸

Page Artist: @/khiwatari(twitter)

Here's a peek at this beautiful illustration of Full Moon Wo Sagashite for you! 🌙🎶 You can see the full view of this piece and many more when you preorder the zine! hitomebore.bigcartel.com

[upsidedownsmore]

Hollowframe 57 + Umbra, my submission for the TennoCon 2024 Community Showcase!

Sorry that it took this long to post! This update is special for many reasons, and I'll go through them all here!

First up, Dante AND Jade!

This is the first time I've added two frames to the project at once, rushing to get both finished in time for Tennocon. In order to do so I had to skip making backgrounds for them, however I still plan on making them as soon as I'm able!

You can find more details about the delay and my change of plans regarding their solo compositions in the thread here

In addition to the two new frames, I also took the liberty to rework and tweak a bunch of the older designs that I felt weren't fitting the goal of the project well enough. It was nice drawing simpler designs again! (old on left, new on right)

Here's a timelapse of the changes made to the poster! Tumblr can only have one video per post, so you can find a twitter reply with videos for Dante and Jade here!

Now to get sappy, cause this poster had two journeys through Tennocon! The first being that it got accepted into the community showcase, so here's pics of that! What an absolute honor omg

The second journey was my own personal print, which got signed by so many amazing and lovely people from DE!! I'm SO glad I got the poster printed for myself from Mercury Blueprinting the day of TennoVIP oh my lorrrrd

I might as well add that you can also find all this in my new ArtStation portfolio! Link to it here:

Aaand if you want to check out the Hollowframe Google Drive folder for free or more, it's now available on my new Ko-fi! Link to it here:

Previous Hollowframe update:

I think that's it! There's no way I would have ever guessed how far this project would go when I started it 3 years ago. Thank you guys so much for the support throughout the years, just absolute insanity and i'm losing my ability to word good i still cant get over iiiiiiiiiiiit

[agerezine]

The interest check is officially open! It will remain open for three weeks so until June 20th, we hope you will take the time to fill it out and let us know what you want to see in the zine <3 Link below!

And here is the link for the fandom interest check!

In the meantime feel free to join our 16+ discord!

[dpxdc-worldscollide]

Contributor Spotlight: TheWritingOwl

Meet @thewritingowl! One of our talented writers for the World's Collide Zine!

What are you most excited for with this Zine?

TheWritingOwl: Can I say everything? Lmao, no but really I'm most excited to see how everything comes together and what all of our individual contributions create. :) I'm just so excited to see projects like this in the dpxdc fandom, and I am just so excited to see more content like a zine. :)

What is your favorite DPxDC Headcanon?

WO: Lazarus Waters being just a Nastier Version of Ectoplasm. :)

What is your favorite DPxDC Fanfic?

WO: Leap Before You Think by Tourettesdog and close enough to be whole again by hailsatanacab.

Check out an excerpt of TheWritingOwl's writing:

“Danny, you do not have any blades on you.” “Says who?” “Danny.” “Dami.” “Alfred will be upset if you brought weapons to school again,” Damian said with the same tone as someone who had gotten in trouble multiple times for bringing weapons to school. Danny snorted. “Can’t be mad if I can’t access them in human form.” Damian frowned. “What does that mean?” “Oh shit, we better hurry or we’re going to be late.” Danny began to sprint down the hall. “Danyal, what do you mean you cannot access your weapons in your human form? DANYAL!”

To read more of TheWritingOwl's work check it out here

[psyga315]

A breakdown of an analysis of female portrayal in media

Originally the entire post was going to be a takedown of the post, but to iamafanofcartoon's credit, a lot of the points they make are valid. However, given their bias towards RWBY, some double standards come up ironically as they bring up double standards.

"A lot of people are incapable of viewing female characters as anything other than an innocent saint or a portrait of pure evil. Arguably the best characters are morally ambiguous ones who live in the gray area between good and evil, but women are much less often afforded that distinction than their male counterparts."

This is the biggest piece of irony ever when you remember how they treat Ironwood, someone who has moral ambiguity (at least in Volume 7) or even how they regard Ruby lying to Ironwood as something that isn't something morally ambiguous, but rather 100% guaranteed the right thing to do.

"I’m been having a huge problem connecting to media. The only women around are very young or very old and their main defining feature is usually motherhood."

They say as the protagonists of RWBY are women who are very young.

"A lot of the time if there is a military high ranking female character or just female leader that is masculine or butch she will be the villain to be defeated by the traditionally feminine or at least more feminine heroine/love interest of the hero."

Oh, military being evil is just a trope in of itself. You should be familiar with it because you like to bring up a certain someone who fits that trope to a T over and over:

Wonder why he gets shit.

I'm going to pause and heavily commend I Am A Fan for bringing up the overuse of the term Mary Sue and how it's now used as a phrase to shut down any female protagonist who just happens to be just a little too much in the screen time, especially given its ironic origin being that it was to parody the "I get into Starfleet, befriend literally everyone, and then tragically die" trope that cropped up in several Star Trek zines.

There's a lot of debate with Rey and the sequels, but we'll leave that for another day. All I will say though is that holy shit, the defense for Rey here is top notch, especially that part where they compare Rey's handling of weapons to Luke's handling of weapons.

A lot of the post starting from when they criticize the overuse of Mary Sue is actually a really solid read and I recommend you giving it a look, even if you don't agree with what they say.

That said, it comes crashing down over to here:

"You heard of The Bechdel test: Two women have to talk about something other than a man. There is no time window."

Ignoring the fact that the Bachdel test isn't meant to be taken seriously (something that the linked page literally points out), RWBY failed this test numerous times.

Ruby: (putting the pamphlet away) Yeah! Great idea, sis! (holding out her hand as she clears her throat) Hello, Weiss! I'm Ruby! Wanna hang out? We can go shopping for school supplies! Weiss: (seemingly enthusiastic) Yeah! And we can paint our nails and try on clothes and talk about cute boys, like tall, blond, and scraggly over there!

That's just the straight up example. "But Psyga, she was being sarcastic!". Okay. Well, the condition is that they have to be talking about a man and not specifically someone they're dating, so pick your poison with these two Bumblebee exchanges. One has them talking about two men!!!

Blake: I had someone very dear to me change. [...] you're not him. And you've never done anything like this before. So... I want to trust you. I will trust you. But first, I need you to look me in the eyes and tell me that he attacked you. I need you to promise me that you regret having to do what you did. Yang: (wipes her eyes of tears, then says as calmly as possible) I saw him attack me, so I attacked back.

Yang: Do you… (loud exhale) Do you think we should've told Ironwood about Salem, before he put so much on the line for Amity? Blake: Sounds like you do. Yang: (sighs) I trust Ruby, but I think he deserves to know what he's stepping into. We all did.

But you wanna know the most batshit insane part? Stretch the definition, and you can have RWBY fail this test first try.

Glynda: I hope that you realize that your actions tonight will not be taken lightly, young lady. You put yourself and others in great danger. Ruby: [Roman and his gang] started it! Glynda: If it were up to me, you'd be sent home... With a pat on the back... (she notices Ruby's smile) ...And a slap on the wrist. (she demonstrates with her riding crop, which Ruby barely avoids as she gives out an "Eeek!) But... [Ozpin] would like to meet you.

Like, I would bring up that Rick and Morty pointed out how it's not meant to be taken seriously, but then I remembered it's called Rick and Morty and not Rikki and Morticia, so it might not even be in I Am A Fan's radar.

"Go watch RWBY or Legend of Korra. Both involve a deconstruction of tropes. Both involve women standing up against an authority that demands respect based on being authority, not based on respect. Both shut down the white male savior trope so hard, that men and women who love the patriarchy despise both shows."

What they don't tell you is that the "standing up against authority" bit in RWBY only lasts for two Volumes and it ends up making the main character's deep-rooted depression outright suicidal because their actions in doing so had lasting consequences to their psyche. Not to mention that up until Volume 6, they had been following the instructions of authority.

A straight white male one at that who in Volume 4 went into the body of a person of color and has to possess him in order to continue giving instructions. And that's when the girls start to question his authority and even yell at him. If that's not fucking yikes, I don't know what is.

Korra's standing against authority is more "let the bad guys depose the authority and then we'll clean up the mess" but that's neither here nor there.

Also, I don't think adding a fe in front of male counts as shutting down the white male savior trope.

But of course, anything that Team RWBY or Korra does is immediately held to a double standard and ripped into for anything that they do NOT because they’re flawed or because of writing decisions. Its because they’re LGBT women that they’re held under a microscope.

No, it's because people explored the long-standing consequences of their actions and what it means for upending society as a whole. I haven't been in the Legend of Korra discourse but I definitely know the discourse of RWBY to know that them being LGBT has nothing to do with them getting criticized.

In fact, two of the four girls aren't even LGBT in the first place and the other two are B but you keep denying that and call them L.

Or have you noticed that every fixit fanfic for both series involves defending the Patriarchy while supporting toxic masculinity and trying to revive the White Male Savior trope that both shows have tried so hard to bury six feet under?

Have you noticed that RWBY involves four girls defending the patriarchy while supporting toxic masculinity and trying to revive the White Male Savior trope that it ironically tried to bury six feet under?

Because after Volume 3, the plot is about them going from Kingdom to Kingdom and protecting the Academies, which the last King of Vale had essentially turned into castles to house powerful relics.

When all four of these relics are gathered, they summon two brothers who will pass judgement onto mankind and are seen as, so far, one of the only ways to truly deal with the true threat of Salem, i.e. they are the white male saviors.

Despite being even more trigger happy and axe crazy than Volume 8!Ironwood.

And just to show just how much of a tangent I Am A Fan's post is... That's the very last paragraph. Do you see why I call them FNDM-GPT?

EDIT: This motherfucker reposted this from March! https://iamafanofcartoons.tumblr.com/post/711784852348878848/we-need-to-address-how-media-and-media-critics

[donnyclaws]

It.chio is having a thing on the 24th where all sales go directly to artists, wo I think I'm gonna bundle up all my zines into one discounted pack for that so i can cover some aids and appointments. Maybe including a new zine if I finish it but I don't think I'll be able 2 in 2 days lmao, Hut it's gonna be called ephemera and it's jsut me collating my touys and trinkets together

[ghelgheli]

Stuff I Read In February 2024

bold indicates favourites

Books

The Mantle of the Prophet, Roy Mottahedeh

Serious Weakness, Porpentine Charity Heartscape

The Traitor Baru Cormorant, Seth Dickinson

Pamphlets, Zines, etc.

Queer Fire: The George Jackson Brigade, Men Against Sexism, and Gay Struggle Against Prison [link]

Reform or Revolution? Rosa Luxemburg

Armed Joy, Alfredo M. Bonanno [link]

Designing Freedom, Stafford Beer [link]

Yuri/GL

Kill Switch, 1172

Immortal Parody, Kim Jong Geon

Her Tale of Shim Chong, Seri & Biwan

There's Weird Voices Coming from the Room Next Door! Suzuki Senpai

An Easy Introduction to Love Triangles (To Pass the Exam!) / Goukaku no Tame no! Yasashii Sankaku Kankei Nyuumon, Canno

Gentle Flutters, One Useless Dogggg

What Does the Fox Say? Gyeomji & Gaji

Our Dreams at Dusk / Shimanami Tasogare, Yuhki Kamatani

There Is No Love Wishing Upon a Star / Kono Koi wo Hoshi ni wa Negawanai, murasakino/Shinoa

Short Fiction

Serious Weakness but with Girls, Porpentine Charity Heartscape [link]

Dirty Wi-Fi, Porpentine Charity Heartscape [link]

Bist-o-chār sā'at dar xāb o bidāri / 24 Restless Hours, Samad Behrangi [link]

Yek hulu o hezār hulu / One Peach and a Thousand Peaches, Samad Behrangi [link]

Palestine

What Does It Mean To Be Palestinian Now? Noura Erakat, Ahmed Moor, Noor Hindi, Mohammed El-Kurd, Laila Al-Arian 01/25/2024 [link]

"If You Say Anything to Anyone, a Zaka Van Will Run You Over", Brad Pearce 10/18/2023 [link]

The Epistemicide of the Palestinians, Abdulla Moaswes 02/02/2024 [link]

Manufacturing Content, Nora Barrows-Friedman & Matt Lieb [link]

Comparison is the Way We Know the World, Masha Gessen 12/19/2023 [link]

The Story Behind the New York Times October 7 Exposé, Jeremy Scahill, Ryan Grim, Daniel Boguslaw 02/28/2024 [link]

Queer &c

Hands off our lives, our stories, and our bodies, AC 06/10/2022 [link]

Trapped in the Wrong Theory: Rethinking Trans Oppression and Resistance, Talia Mae Bettcher [doi]

A Cyborg Manifesto, Donna Haraway

Why Are "Gender Critical" Activists So Fond of Gametes? Julia Serano 02/13/2024 [link]

Pol

Why I Left the PSL… or the DSA or Socialist Alternative or whatever, filler kid 07/20/2021 [link]

Allies Not Accomplices: An Indigenous Perspective & Provocation, 05/02/2014 [link]

Basic Program of the Bureau of Unitary Urbanism, Attila Kotányi & Raoul Vaneigem 1961 [link]

Abolition, Nsámbu Za Suékama 06/06/2020 [link]

The Eye Upon Us Has Turned Upon Them, Nsámbu Za Suékama 07/16/2023 [link]

The Hindu Nationalists Using the Pro-Israel Playbook, Aparna Gopalan 06/28/2023 [link]

Ram Mandir and Hindutva Fascist Myth of Decolonisation, Rida Fathima 02/07/2024 [link]

How the United States Crippled Haiti's Rice Industry, Leslie Mullin [link]

A Talk to Teachers, James Baldwin [link]

Stranger in the Village, James Baldwin [link]

Other

no good alone, Rayne Fisher-Quann 04/03/2021 [link]

Everyone's A Critic, Richard Joseph 01/13/2022 [link]

Neoplatonic kingship in the Islamic world: Akbar’s millennial history, Jos Gommans & Said Reza Huseini [link]

Is `Race Science' Making a Comeback? Angela Saini 07/10/2019 [link]

you’ve been traumatized into hating reading, Ismatu Gwendolyn 02/15/2024 [link]

[radicchia]

Zum Frauenkampftag 2023 gibt es die zweite Ausgabe des Frausein-Zines, in dem verschiedene Frauen ihre Erfahrungen und Meinungen zum Thema Frausein schildern.

Hier findet ihr das PDF.

Hier geht es zum Instagram-Account der Gruppe, wo ihr auch Infos dazu findet, wie ihr eine gedruckte Ausgabe bestellen könnt.

[letterstonamizine]

The Interest Check of Letters to Nami is open! The form is closing on March 10, so tell everyone you know about it while you can and get your say!

Please let us know everything you expect from this love letter to the greatest Navigator on the seas!

Letters to Nami is free-to-access and we're happy to answer any questions!

@opfandombase @opfandomnews @anizines @zinefeed @zine-scene @all-zine-apps

[kathastrophen]

Für die Jahresend-Fanfic-Frage: 16, 22 und 30?

Danke fürs fragen ����

16. Über welchen Charakter / welches Pairing willst du nächstes Jahr unbedingt schreiben?

Stedefreund außerhalb von "Wo ist nur mein Schatz geblieben?". Wobei ich da ja eine Idee habe, wie er nach seinem VE-Einsatz nach Bremen zurückkommt und versucht klar zu kommen.

Irgendwas zum Alex/Niko/Sophie-Polycule.

(Und es gibt noch Ideen zum Spatort und zu Adam Schürk/Robert Karow...)

22. Welche deiner eigenen Fics hast du dieses Jahr wieder und wieder gelesen?

heaven is a place i know when i'm with you & do what must be done (das dringend einen rewrite braucht...) one gotta write the porn one wanna see in the world oder so.

30. Dein liebstes Non-Fanfic Fanwork? (Von dir selbst oder anderen.)

LEGO-Ermittler

split Zine: der würdige Abschluss für diese Fic

trans!Pöschi Playlist: ich liebe jeden Song darin und den generellen vibe

il mio bungalow fanart by @foxesonstilts 💛 immer noch unglaublich, dass meine Fic das inspiriert hat

Kempf/Stedefreund Art by @littledozerbaby 🐍 Bark Boys doing Bark Boys Stuff

Die Spatort-Sachen von @lalalaugenbrot (das und das auch sehr!)

Jahresend-Fragerunde

[lovinglawzine]

❤️Interest Check Open❤️

Let us know how you would love Law.