The Other Side
Te Hao Boon, Jennifer Nichole Wells, Ghostwulf
IG: @tehaoboon
www.jennifernicholewells.com
ghostwulf69@gmail.com

The Other Side is a one act play zine about three snails and the mysterious Other Side.

This is definitely a first for me. I don’t come across a lot of fiction zines in general, and this is the first script zine that I’ve ever seen. When you’re creating zines, I think there is a bit of a special allure to the possibility of having created the ‘only one of its kind’.* With multi-coloured snails and road signs (promising trouble for snails) on the front, how could I not be drawn in?

Aesthetically, this zine is pretty fun. I wish all the scripts I’d read as a teenager came with pictures and little line drawings on the pages. It reminded me that, while this is a script, it’s still also a zine.

I must admit that the zine lost me a bit content-wise, but I feel like my editing and theatre background influenced that. I would have thought that a play about snails would be for a younger audience, but there’s swearing and other not-quite-so-young content. ‘Bae’ and ‘mommy’ are used, and I got distracted wondering if they were being used ironically because they stuck out so much in the dialogue. At one point, a snail used the last of his rations… Rations which were never packed in the first place.

I can be forgiving of editing errors and the like in zines because I make them myself, and there aren’t a lot of zine makers who can hire an editor. But a script is still a script, and if that’s the main aspect of what you’ve created, I’m going to look at it as such.

There are limitations with a script that make it harder to engage readers, and I feel like the team who created this made up for some of those limitations with the cut and paste aspects. It also remains true to the script form by listing the characters and setting the stage, so to say, for the setting. However, I feel like the play itself could have done with some workshopping (or more workshopping, if that’s the case).

*I’m not saying this is the only script zine out there. Merely that this is the first I’ve seen.

Wiseblood 67
Fishspit
fuzzybunnyflatbunny@gmail.com

In Wiseblood 67, Fishspit talks about his experiences with depression and using ECT – electroconvulsive therapy – for treatment.

Fishspit has a writing style that isn’t for the easily offended, but he takes a different tone in this issue. I can’t help but feel for him for a number of reasons as he talks about his experiences. Right from the start, you really get a sense of the desperation to get past the depression no matter what the cost.

I find it interesting to read people’s stories about depression and how they describe it. Fishspit describes how, for him:

…sometimes it’s a mosquito…a small pestering depression…a tiny dark spot on the soul, but then! Oh my! It can become a gorilla! Consuming me absolutely.

I was incredibly angry while reading one part of this, as the idiocies and aggravations of insurance companies run far and wide. What he had to go through just to get the ECT treatment gets me all kinds of frustrated with the US medical system. (I grew up in it and know what it’s like in a better system.)

There were bright spots to be found in this zine, however, with the kind treatment from some of the nurses and doctors involved.

Also this is different to Fishspit’s usual style, both somewhat in content but also in being one overarching piece rather than smaller pieces. I like it when people who have a series switch it up every now and again. I quite liked the change in this zine, though I will also welcome a return to the usual in the next zine (if that’s how Fishspit does things).