Low budget, library-made, collaborative DIY zine project based around the pre-Xrd Guilty Gear games.
🔥🔥 This is a mature (18+ only) project. Applications will be limited to people 20 years of age or older 🔥🔥
ABOUT:
The goal of this zine is the creation of something viscerally handmade — a throwback to earlier zines made entirely at home or in libraries as opposed to printed by expensive manufacturers. It will be 20 pages (5 sheets, front & back, folded) and printed at a local library, then folded and stapled entirely by hand. All interior pages will be black & white, with the outer cover sheet being in color.
To push back against censorship and purity culture, this zine will be open to mature themes and concepts, such as sex, sexual fetishes, and nudity, though the final zine may not contain all of those. It will also allow and embrace LGBTQ+ representation and headcanons.
NO AI.
ZINE INFO, BRIEF:
13 total contributors (10 artists, 2 authors, 1 Radguy)
20 pages (5 sheets, folded)
Color cover, black & white interior
Limited to characters from before Guilty Gear Xrd (Guilty Gear (1998) to Guilty Gear Vastedge XT (2013)). Guilty Gear Xtra is not allowed.
Yknow I'm kinda sad that the stereotype for I-no mains is just like horny simp loser because like. It really does feel like people just assume they heard her grab animation line and went "god I wish that were me"
But that, I feel, excludes the people who looked at I-no herself and went "god I wish that were me"
My girlfriend asked me to bring mine. Salt crunches under my thrifted combat boots as I walk up her driveway. I hang my jacket in her cloak room and take a moment with the provided mirror to check over my white tank, flecktarn pants, and red bandana. I don't think I could be any clearer without a messenger bag or a dumb hat.
As I step into the living room, heads turn; my girlfriend stands, approaches me, and plants a kiss on my lips to signal who it is. I grin at the family I've been asked to meet. They're all so white, and there's far-right bullshit playing on the TV.
I find a seat, and I get my arm around her waist, and I pull her in. I made sure when I was getting dressed that there were still traces of grease on my arms from cleaning my rifle earlier—just traces, her dress will be fine. It's a frilly piece; if memory serves, the first she bought after coming out as a girl.
She leans into me contentedly. I lick my canines at a guy who's probably her older brother, and he glares back. With my free hand, I push my tits up slightly, and he glares harder. God it's so easy fucking with these types. We'll talk politics later and I'll fucking dogwalk him.
I haven't been seated more than a few minutes when someone enters from the kitchen. An older sister?—no, hand on her ass: that's the brother's wife. She's blonde, and it's pinned back, and she's wearing the blue-white checked gingham shirtdress. She sets a tray of something on the coffee table for the men.
I kiss my girl again for emphasis, then get up and follow shirtdress into the kitchen. The men laugh softly, but it doesn't matter; I'll score all those points back over the dinner table later.
"Hey," I say, leaning against a cupboard. "Can I help out?" It's a way for me to get conversation going, start playing the game while also getting the high ground on the men. I tell myself that.
"You the dyke?" she asks without turning around.
It's not because I've never seen one of these dresses in real life before. That's not what it is. She looks like she walked off a television set or out of a fascist's dream of a return to "better times."
"I'm Jean's date, yeah," I answer.
"Caroline," she says, turning and gesturing at herself. "Go on, there's prep dishes. I've been working in here since practically last night."
I step up to the sink. The dishes are already sorted, waiting for free hands to clean them. I remind myself as I get to work that this is just part of playing the game. Her heels click as she makes her way back and forth across the kitchen, moving oven trays. Brown pumps to match her brown belt to match her gold hair. God I'm gay.
Dishes are easy. I stack pots upside-down to dry and I towel off expensive knives. My hands are elbow-deep in my work when I feel a hand on my ass. I toss my head back and grin. Caroline looks me in the eye coldly. Anything I do to get her hand off me is going to involve either raising my voice or flinging soap everywhere.
I mean, I'm here to make a scene, but not like that. I let it happen. She squeezes, then nods, and turns away, back to her work like it didn't happen. I dry my hands when the drying rack is full and can't take any more dishes.
"So," I start, shoving my hands into my pockets and leaning against the sink. "Nice place."
"The Lord has been good to us," Caroline says with a practiced pleasantness. "Why don't you go back to your date?"
Hell, why don't I?
"Surely you've got more I can do," I say. "Mind if I smoke in here?"
"You will do no such thing. In fact, you will apologize for suggesting it." Her voice is a whip.
I lock eyes with her. I think I've overplayed my hand. Now I can't go back to Jean without looking beaten and shirtdress won't give me more work unless I—her eyes are ice-blue and her makeup is perfect.
"Yeah, sorry. Wouldn't wanna fuck up the spreads you've been working on." I keep my smile as casual as I can.
"Sorry, ma'am," she presses.
I sigh internally. Fascism runs on shame, power, and shame. I should have expected at least one person in this household to be good at those games. Well, a woman can sacrifice a piece here and there and stay in the game. Plus, "ma'am" is cooler when butches say it.
"Sorry, ma'am. They're good-looking pastries."
"They are," Caroline says approvingly, and I feel the pressure from her gaze loosen, and I realize I wasn't breathing.
At her direction, I find a bowl and whisk in a high cupboard, and heavy cream in the fridge. God, this fridge is big. Between all the shelves and drawers in that fridge, it probably has as much floor space as my entire stupid apartment. Every scrap of food in here, stolen from labor. It disgusts me.
"You lost?" shirtdress asks, and I realize I've been staring into the fridge for a long minute. I feel her behind me. I grab the cream, swing the fridge door shut, and she shoves me face-first into it.
The metal bowl hits the floor loud. I fight out of her grip and turn around. "The hell?"
"You okay in there?" calls a man's voice from the living room.
Caroline gives me the coldest grin I've ever seen. "Are we?" she asks me in a barely-audible voice and she steps in closer. I can feel her breath on my cheek. "What do I tell my husband? Do I tell him you touched me? He's killed freaks like you before, you know. He's police."
"Carrie?" asks the voice, still refusing to come in. Men will really do anything other than go into a kitchen.
"Say I win," Caroline hisses. "Say it right now. You came to play with my idiot husband and his idiot brothers, but you didn't bet on me. I run this damn house and I'll run you too, bitch."
The calculus is quick. I have to stay safe, especially since Jean has to live with these creeps. I get to go home afterwards and live my life. My pride will survive one rough night. And holy shit she's—the way she moves, and her choice of scents, I need—I can still come back from this, and staying near her is the way to do it.
"Yeah," I try to whisper back, "you win." It doesn't come out as an undignified gasp. It doesn't. And she nods.
"We're all right, hon," Caroline says in her outside voice. "Nothing's spilled or broken!"
We both hear the figure by the door move away. Caroline doesn't back away from me. She's still inches from my face. My eyes are on her lips, and her eyes are on mine.
"Pick up the bowl and finish your job," she says, and as she turns away she rakes my cheek with her nails. I gasp, touch the side of my face with a shaking hand: no blood.
Whipping cream isn't really all that hard. I turn over the situation in my head as I work. "How do I come out of this one ahead?" I try to ask myself, and it keeps turning into "How do I get her that close to me again?" I didn't want a kiss from shirtdress, I was Jean's girlfriend, but I was still mad I didn't get the one she'd dangled right in front of me.
Maybe I should just get one, just one, to come out of this ahead.
"You know," I say as cheerfully as I can, "the social position of the white woman as thing-to-be-protected-with-violence is conditional on their belief in their sexual ownership of you."
"I am completely loyal to my husband," Caroline says serenely, "and if you believe I have implied otherwise, that is wishful thinking."
She pauses for emphasis. "You're compromising with yourself right now, trying to figure out a way you can have me. It's on your face and in the way you're dog-panting."
I freeze for a moment, gears in my head jammed, nothing to say.
"I ought to walk out there and tell your date you're an unfaithful whore." Her voice makes me shake.
"That's an insult that only means anything to a good Christian woman," I shoot back, still managing my smile.
"Oh?" Caroline approaches me again and I back up into the counter without meaning to give any ground at all. My ass is against the marble countertop. "What's an insult a communist would find meaningful? 'Bootlicker?' 'Quisling?' I could make you those things—"
I gasp without meaning to and I feel my heels leave the floor as I keep pushing myself backwards, onto the counter...
"—if you weren't all those things already." She stops just out of kissing distance, again. "You're letting me do this to you. You want it."
I shiver.
"Prove you want it," Caroline says, and she dips into kissing distance. "Take it and show me what you are, bitch."
All thought of coming back from this lies in broken clockwork pieces at my feet. I justify it to myself: she threatened to have me killed. Mostly, though, I just can't stop breathing her in and I can't get away from her perfect, lethal eyes and her just-ironed dress, and—I close my eyes and kiss her.
She gets a hand on my chest and shoves me further back onto the countertop, just an inch, just enough so my weight isn't really on my feet anymore. I feel her other hand on my thigh through the fabric.
Caroline breaks the kiss and forces me to look at her. I had never thought that the light in someone's eyes could be so literal. She hisses at me again. "Did you have insults you were going to use for me, too? I bet you came prepared. Come on, I want to hear them."
She pushes my legs just a bit farther apart.
"You're a goddamn fascist," I whisper, trying to rally.
"'Ma'am,'" she reminds me. "Say it and you get another kiss."
"You're a goddamn fascist, ma'am."
She delivers the promised reward: a quick kiss, lips parted, and my chest clenches. "Another one."
"You're a traitor to women everywhere, ma'am."
This kiss is just a moment longer, and I feel her tongue, prompting me to join her, and then the kiss is over again. "Another one."
"You're a colonizer and a sellout, ma'am."
"That makes two of us," she whispers before kissing me again, and this one she holds, and I give her my tongue, and her hands are under my shirt, and I whine into the kiss and my legs shake. I can hear the wall clock ticking. Caroline drags her nails across my breasts. One of her hands snakes out of my shirt and gets into my hair, gathering it at the back of my scalp.
She breaks the kiss and holds me up by the handful of hair while I pant. "'Bootlicker,' right?"
And I nod without thinking.
"Wrong," she scoffs, and makes a little click sound on the floor with one of her heels. I perk up stupidly at the sound and she sees the need in my face and stifles a laugh. "They're heels."
"They're really pretty heels," I say with a hopeless earnestness.
"And it would be a privilege you don't deserve to get to your fucking bitch tongue on them," she prompts.
"Yes ma'am."
"Beg."
I hesitate for a split second, wanting to be better than this. Her grip in my hair tightens. Pain ripples through me, and I realize I'm not better than this, not alone. I'm not a good communist, a good communist wouldn't try to be Jean's white knight, wouldn't be an idiot hero. God I hope Jean forgives me. I hope she never finds out.
The pain blurs my vision and I start babbling. "Please, Caroline ma'am, I want to lick a fascist's boots, I know what I am, please let me kiss your shoes, you win, ma'am, I lose, please..."
"Fine," she snarls, letting my hair go and stepping back, "use your stupid tongue, and wipe up with your fucking bandana when I say you're done. Dyke."
I do my best to slide off the counter and go to my knees on the floor without making too much sound. She rolls her eyes at the thud.
I lean forward onto my elbows and the hem of her dress is above the back of my head. I lean my head against her ankles and take a deep breath, and she kicks me in the side of the head. "Hurry up."
She can hear the little noises I make as I lap at the leather. She sighs contentedly. "Everyone has a place, you know," she says, and sounds suddenly sympathetic, perhaps maternal. "I wait my husband's table. I take his children to school. I pray, and I pray."
My whole body shakes. I do my best to ignore how wet I am, and I focus on the beautifully-made heels in front of me. They're all I can see. I give up on propping myself up on my elbow and I rest on my cheek on the floor, and with my hands I reach behind my neck and untie my bandana.
"And your place, have you figured out where it is yet?"
I try not to say anything, but I know Caroline hears my heady gasps.
"I think you have. Just don't tell your precious comrades. I know you communists love throwing each other out for being traitors."
I moan wordlessly, and she laughs.
"That's quite enough. Wipe it up. We have a dinner to serve."
"Yes ma'am," I manage. "Thank you, ma'am."
We do serve the dinner on time. I'm seated next to Jean, who squeezes my hand every few moments and shoots me concerned looks through the whole thing. I drink a few in hopes it'll stop my hands from shaking.
Jean's asshole brothers pull me into a debate about immigration, and I acquit myself as well I fucking can given that I can barely speak without stammering and I keep spacing out every few sentences.
Caroline does not look at me even once through the entire two-hour meal. She's beaming and pouring wine and catching up with cousins who've just had their first kids.
After folks start filing out, Jean brings me my jacket and I kiss her unsteadily. Caroline walks over to us. She smiles.
"Jean," she says, and Jean looks surprised to hear her name instead of her deadname, "tonight was wonderful."
Jean nods.
"Don't you think we should have your girlfriend back for Christmas?"
what if you slept all day and woke at night, lonely and frustrated. what if you couldn't go to social events, or even mundane public spaces like stores. what if you couldn't see the sun. what if you couldn't go to the pool, or the beach, or the creek. what if you couldn't eat what everyone else is eating. what if you couldn't eat at all. what if your basic needs came at the cost of your loved ones' quality of life. what if you became agitated, confused, maybe even violent if your needs weren't met. what if people blamed your behavior on demons, or worse, your own inherent evil. what if people saw you as a threat to your own community. what if the default response to your suffering was either indifference or violence. what if people thought you were better off dead, that you no longer count as human, that they're doing you a favor by letting you disappear. what if people assumed you must somehow deserve all of this. what about that.
A couple years ago, there was a post complaining about the trope in vampire fiction where Ethical vampires are shown obtain blood by stealing from blood banks, and how this shouldn't be portrayed positively, because it takes away from people with legitimate medical need. But here's the thing. If vampires don't need to kill humans to live, if they are capable of surviving off of blood from blood banks, then they aren't monsters: there just a person with a disease that means they have a periodic need from the blood bank.
Word is going round the POW camp that the Empress is looking for a captured officer who's willing to sell out. To this special defector, the reward of her choice is offered: a quiet retirement, an administrative sinecure, perhaps a place in the Empress' victorious army—but it's the job itself that's the real reward. The defector, the higher-ranking the better, will be given her uniform back, invited to the Empress' palace, and permitted to attend the upcoming ceasefire talks.
She will not be there to speak, of course. She'll be spending the entire evening between the Empress' thighs. It's unclear whether the Empress imagines that this will give her an advantage during negotiations or whether she just wants it for its own sake, but that's not your place to worry about. So how about it, Major? How's the stamina on that jaw and tongue? You're just Her Majesty's type.
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