Why Zines?

I started making up imaginary worlds as a child, but didn't create a zine until Summer 2025.

It felt like the right format for expressing my ideas. Zines are playful, informal and underground, yet can also be serious if necessary. And my stuff shares those traits.

I'm not a huge fan of ideologies - I have ideals, but believe in being pragmatic towards there achievement. Stil, though, making something as weird as these zines requires some kind of explanation.

I'll start with the things my work is opposed to. I am:

1. Antifascist, antiracist;
2. Authority-sceptic if not outright anti-authoritarian;
3. Anti-AI and soulless production;
4. And very, very anti-Monoculture.

The Monoculture is my perpetual enemy. It is a many-faced monster which my zines aim to combat.

The Monoculture is the worldwide loss of biodiversity due to environmental degradation. It is the parallel mass extinction of the world's languages we are currently experiencing. It is racists and autotune vocals and AI slop.

The Monoculture, in all these forms, is the result of human pride, the desire of power to reorder the world in its own image. It is the sin of believing that an individual's own vision is the correct one, and that they have the right to impose it by reason of power and privilege.

But that's not how I understand the world, and my zines are an expression of this.

I do not believe that any one culture or viewpoint is inherently correct or better than another. And more importantly, I do not believe that there ever was a time in which a single, high culture existed, from which our present diversity somehow degenerated.

Diversity in all life is inherent, not regrettable nor deniable. Human efforts to suppress it will only succeed in damaging the entire world system, from which none can truly benefit.

What's that got to do with fantasy zines, then?

Well, soemthing, at least. It means my worlds are not to be viewed objectively. It means they contain no absolute good or evil. Although they are teeming with life, threats to their ecologies (of all kinds) are pressing concerns. And if that motivates readers to defend the natural goodness of the "real" world which is all around us, then that's an added bonus for me.