Month: December 2017

Rose/Water – No Longer Confused
Hollie F
Latibule_Art

A couple notes before I get into the swing of things. First, I am not completely sure how the zine creator wants the title to be displayed. This is my best guess. Second, the photo does not due justice to the gorgeous colours of this zine.

Rose/Water is an A7 sized full colour zine about being different and finding your true identity.

Aesthetically, this zine is beautiful. It’s one of those zines that I keep flipping back and forth through repeatedly. It makes me want to get out my watercolours. The line drawings follow the same style as the drawing on the front, the watercolours telling the story alongside the words.

What a lovely story it is, too. In fourteen little pages, Hollie tells a story that so many people exist – about feeling so alone until finding a path beyond blue or pink. Though it is about moving beyond blue or pink, I think it speaks to everyone who has not fit into whatever they were told to fit into.

This is a zine I would always want spare copies of to give away because it’s just so sweet. I’m not sure if/where Hollie sells these, but if you can find a copy, grab it.

Enby Life: Stories, poetry, & art by non-binary people
Sally King, Wolfram, Madi, Keira Huolohan, Luca, Nicki Warren, Rae White, AlexB, Nikki Nicnevin, Doc, Izzie Austin
Editing & Design: Rae White
https://raewhite.net

Enby Life is a half-fold black and white zine collection of stories, poetry, and art by non-binary people.

When I first pick up a zine, I don’t just read it. I flip through, get a feel for the paper and binding, so on and so forth. Well, I didn’t last too long flipping through this zine before I stopped flipping and got to the reading part.

Enby Life teaches you about more than what non-binary is but what it feels like. The pieces touch on things like labelling, frustrations, confusion, acceptance, and more through comics, poetry, writing, and all the variety you could want in a zine. I love the art and comics, but I equally love being made to slow down by longer prose pieces.

Every piece in here made me stop and think.

On the aesthetic side of things, there’s a lot to love about this zine. The type is huge, so there is absolutely no worry about eye strain here. Even the smaller type is easily a point or two bigger than I’m used to seeing (no, I did not look weird comparing font sizes in various zines), and it’s all in a nice sans serif font.

Even more, the comics, art, photography found inside are all well done and can keep you flipping back and forth between the pages even after you’ve finished reading the zine.

I greatly appreciated the glossary of terms in the back of the zine. It’s like a little nod of acceptance that not everyone is 100% knowledgeable about these things right from the get go and even lists links for where to learn more. When a zine (or any media) comes from a place of teaching rather than expectation, open minds find it easier to learn.

I really enjoyed this zine. It’s a lot of fun, and I think it’s good for people to either find that they aren’t so alone and/or to learn about what life is like from other perspectives. Grab a copy.

PS. This definitely needs to be a series if you’re up for it, Rae.

My Mad Fat Zine
Seleena Daye & Holly Casio
seleenalaverndaye.co.uk
coolschmool.com

My Mad Fat Zine is a black and white half-fold love ode to the UK television show ‘My Mad Fat Diary’.

Seleena and Holly have very possibly made the longest, most well thought out fanzine I have ever read. From episode synopses to set designs and musings on ‘where are they now’, this zine really gives you everything you could want to know about this show.

With so many topics in the show like mental health, fat girl sex, family, friendship, 90s nostalgia and more, they certainly had a lot to write about. But they always kept it within the context of the show and how they felt about the topics’ representation within it. I enjoyed reading about how they deconstructed what could have been otherwise dismissed.

With synopses and character arcs discussed, I wondered if that level of detail might spoil the show for me, but I actually feel like I could watch it in a more thoughtful way now. Even knowing where a lot of things are going, there’s still a lot to be discovered and enjoyed.

I appreciated that Seleena and Holly also included their criticisms of the show. This isn’t blind adoration here. They comment on some rather significant plot holes and even write about imagined episodes in ‘the lost year’ between seasons two and three.

Along that same line, I liked reading about how both Seleena and Holly dismissed the show before falling in love with it. Something about that little detail made me laugh and made their fan-feels a bit more authentic to me.

My Mad Fat Zine references a lot of things I’m not familiar with and is about a show I’ve never seen. But I think a mark of a great fanzine is winning over people like me, and this zine has definitely done that.