Reference blog

I dont want you here

[shochet-deactivated20260727]

collage i started last year & finished half-assed last month-ish

[nmzinelibrary]

Hello and welcome to the New Mexico Zine Library!

You can call me Rata de Pan, or just Rata, I am the owner and runner of this account. I go by it/he/they pronouns and I am AuDHD! I will aim to post my own zines here semi-regularly, however I do have a very busy schedule and may leave for extended periods of time.

All of the zines I create for this will likely be political/relate to social justice. I would like to ask that any zines that are submitted be the same, but that is not required. I've found that zines are a very quick and easy way to spread information, and I think having an online archive people can visit so they can print out and distribute these zines will be a good way to spread that information even further. Times are scary right now, and I want to do my part in helping to spread information as far as I can as quick as I can.

Feel free to print out and distribute any zines you find on this library! That's what it's here for!

What are zines?

Zines are small handmade art books that are self published. Usually the circulation of these zines is very small, since they're typically only distributed locally, but my hope is that people everywhere will add and distribute zines from this library.

Who can submit zines to the library?

Anyone and everyone! So long as your zines aren't derogatory towards minority groups and don't contain misinformation, I will post any that are submitted! The more specific requirements are on the submissions page.

Who counts as minority groups?

I count any group of people who has historically been oppressed by the people who are in power to be a minority group. For a non exhaustive list:

LGBTQIA+ people

BIPOC

Women

Disabled people

Immigrants

People who are not Christians or atheists

Lower class people

Houseless people

Etc.

So, I will absolutely not tolerate discrimination towards those groups. Period.

As for a list of those I don't consider to be minorities:

White people

Cisgender heterosexual men

Any conservative/right leaning political group

Christians

Police officers

Politicians

Billionaires/Extremely rich people

I will accept zines that are critical of these groups. If you are a member of any of these non-minority groups and you see a zine critical of said group, I would like to request that you refrain from immediately blowing up and dismissing them out of hand. I know it can be hard to listen to criticism and it's easy to get defensive when you feel attacked. However, getting mad and blowing up doesn't help anyone, and can actually make the issues they brought up worse. Please listen, consider what you can do to help, and then help.

How can I make zines?

I have a couple of templates for zines that are in the format I will use when making zines and an instruction manual on how to make one yourself!

^ zine template with text

^ zine template without text

^ zine instructions

Happy zineing!! :3

[eyelessfog]

a character who truly, legitimately goes “but why does that matter?” about their feelings when someone who cares about them asks. and the sudden falling of everyone around them’s faces as they realize that this person doesn’t recognize themself as someone who needs or should be taken care of. i want Everyone to hurt. surprise at the idea, worry for them, horror at not having noticed. do you see this person who doesn’t think of themselves as a person?

[garaks-padded-cell]

RULES OF FOLLOWING GARAKS-PADDED-CELL

Thats right

Theres a new sheriff in town

You MUST watch phantom of the paradise and report back to me. Dont even try to avoid it.

[cosmicstrays]

being physically nonhuman and/or having a body like a theriform doesn’t automatically unlearn you of racist and anthrocentric propaganda and ideals. matter of fact being any level of nonhuman or alterhuman doesn’t automatically unlearn you of it either. changing what names you put on yourself doesn’t change the fact that you are still living a lifestyle supported by a habitat that is shaped by systemic racism and human supremacy and sustained by willful ignorance of the everyday evidence of those facts.

this goes beyond the physical nonhumanity misunderstanders in the community too. i’m sick of white alterhumans posting endless lists of labels and microlabels as proof they’re “woke” when being anti-racist and woke isn’t in your fucking identity and self-talk, it’s in your actual actions towards others or by yourself, ESPECIALLY in your reactions to getting criticized for doing something that goes against what you “identify as” standing for.

[slightly-sigilant]

As someones who've been put off from interacting seriously with the otherkin/nonhuman/therian communities for over a decade for this exact reason, we could fill several pages with ranting on this subject. Maybe we will, someday, but for now I'll offer some reading that I strongly recommend to anyone trying to unlearn these toxic patterns.

Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer, a Potawatomi botanist, is a brilliant and hopeful read about the ways that indigenous peoples learned from and related to the land, and the ways that the rest of us today can draw from that knowledge to realize kinder, more reciprocal ways of living with the world. Check your local library for it if you can't afford a copy; if mobility is limited, check to see if your library offers ebooks via Libby.

For a shorter read (but honestly do read Braiding Sweetgrass if you at all can), The Myth of a Wilderness Without Humans is an article that addresses a number of the same topics.

Some additional context: one of the most subtle but insidious forms of racism that we see in the community is this attitude that Humans Are Inherently Bad For Nature (which then often generalizes to Humans Are Inherently Bad). People so often treat this as Obvious Fact, when... it's really not! The idea that humans and nature Can't coexist, that they are Fundamentally Separate, is a myth constructed by an exploitative and imperialist society, which erases all of the indigenous cultures that have very different ways of relating to the earth and its beings.

Racism is a many-faceted beast, and to be clear, this is only one facet of it, but it's one that's so pervasive and so unquestioned in the community that I wanted to call attention to it in particular.

[movementnudge]

Movement nudge, coach John makes the period stretches more accessible

X

[vespertinecat]

This is the most considerate advice for doing stretches I've ever seen??? Initially I started to go, "...but I can't do that with my knee-" then he showed a way I could do it. I was like... whoa. A video for stretching that is actually considerate towards my disabilities. Astounding and impressive.

[goth-princess-gwennie]

The idea of listening to no black music is bizarre to me. Even if it's not rap like no earth wind and fire? No reggae? No moonstomp? No ska? No classic jazz? No R and B? No disco??? No skindred? No jungle? No even like metal bands with a few black members? No gospel? Not even stuff like alors en dance? No blues music? No mo town? No jazz of any kind? No big band? No soul music? Not even a little James Brown?

[jabbotmohan]

not even yola or tanner adell or brittney spencer or tracy chapman or india.arie or chapel hart or the carolina chocolate drops or rhiannon giddens????

[xoxoviva]

Or…

Hemlocke Springs (alt rock/new wave revival),

the Noisettes (indie),

Skunk Anansie (hard rock/metal),

Tamar Kali (rock/punk),

Valerie June (country/blues),

Santigold (indie),

Bloc Party (post punk revival/indie rock),

O Children (goth),

Lord Scary Black (goth),

Cemetery Sex (death rock)

[gayvampyr]

a few more artists i love:

deepincision (heavy metal)

zulu (metal)

black pantera (rock, metal)

winter wolf (punk, metal)

erzulie (punk, rock)

youth man (punk)

the 1865 (punk)

crystal axis (punk)

pleasure venom (post-punk/hard rock)

the rack (they describe their sound as “hard pop rock”, blends punk vocals and rock)

danny denial (indie punk/rock, queer)

gloom east (alt/indie rock, moody pop blend)

big joanie (synth punk + some more melodic, blues-like tones)

madame st beatrice (gothic, moody and melodic)

shadow age (goth)

saccharin (goth)

the ire (goth, punk)

bastet (goth punk)

here’s a playlist with a good mix of the above genres + some alt & indie from Black artists

[creatingblackcharacters]

CBC Book Club 📚

Book: Mediocre - Ijeoma Oluo

Chapters:

CH5: Fire the Women

CH6: Socialists and Quota Queens

How are we feeling so far?

Did we learn anything?

Share with the class!

Chapter 5 notes

Misogyny is so stupid 😭 like the way it's been enforced systemically isn't, obviously. But the actual concept is just... Ridiculous. It's always been. Just like racism, there's no... Reality, to it. It's just been violently enforced and everyone is supposed to accept that this is Normal. It's frustrating.

I admit, I had forgotten a lot of this chapter until we got to the part I've never forgotten- the glass cliff! How when companies are about to go bust, they hire a woman or a person of color. Especially a woman of color.

Now I always pay attention to when companies hire women, and how those women are treated. When Microsoft hired that Black lady for Xbox, I was like 👀👀👀 oh is this one of those moments?

The bit about Ellen Pao and Reddit... God I can't imagine having to be in charge of such a disgustingly bigoted website 😭 I don't understand the appeal of the website. But then again, I'm on Tumblr, and this place isn't too kind about people like me either, so.

Chapter 6 notes

This one, for sure I was nervous and excited to post from. Ijeoma once again got into what it means to talk about these topics while being a Black woman, and man. Nothing like having the audacity to exist and have opinions that suggest white men (on the whole political spectrum) might not be right. She does this as a job, for her bread and butter. I can't imagine having to suffer like that.

Whatever my disagreements are with Kamala Harris' actual politics (and I have PLENTY), her being a Black woman was very much a deciding factor in a LOT of white and/or male demographics decisions to not vote for her. It was a factor in how her detractors treated her- on both sides!

So when I think to Shirley Chisholm, who actually DID have a progressive platform, one we could have had DECADES ago if we'd just invested in her... Yeah. Misogynoir is killing us and y'all.

Especially because the precise tactic she used is the same tactic that is still derided as "going against harm reduction by not voting Blue". We've seen this pattern over and over again... How many times do progressive Black women have to be proven right? How much worse does it need to get for y'all to listen?

Or Lani Guinier... The cumulative voting idea. It's SUCH a good idea!! One that no one actually listened to, and one that she didn't even have the power to implement- it was just something she believed in. And yet she got dragged all around and betrayed by Bill Clinton because he wasn't willing to stand by a Black woman (his FRIEND, even) with "scary" ideas like... Better representation in government. Crazy.

I resent the "listen to Black women!" refrain. Not because it isn't valuable, but because its unspoken ending is "-if they're saying something that helps maintain white comfort". Because again, with Kamala, that was easy! But for every Black woman who goes against the party line, who has spoken up against the pattern, we are treated horrifically.

Y'all can't only listen to Black women when those Black women are prioritizing you and making you feel comfortable. Equity means uplifting others to an equal standing; sometimes that means you won't be the focus. But that part terrifies people. If you're not actually going to listen... Stop asking us to show up and fix everything!