ZInes
My partner and I have been making artzines together for some time now; they handle the illustrations while I focus on the writing and graphic design. It’s a collaboration that grew naturally out of our shared need to create and our desire to build something that feels wholly ours. We publish each zine on itch.io under our collective name, Terminal Sisters Art Collective, a title that speaks both to our sense of kinship and to the digital spaces where our art most often lives.
MISSING-TEXTURE-01 is our debut artzine. Featuring vector art and graphic design by myself and illustrations by Sl4ught3rbvnny, it serves as a portfolio of sorts for our work.
Pipettes & Piglets is an essay zine originally written in 2023. It recounts my experiences working at COVID-19 testing sites during the height of the pandemic. Featuring Writing and collage art by myself and illustrations by Sl4ught3rbvnny, it tells a side of the COVID-19 story not often told.
What keeps us committed to this project is that it’s truly a labor of love. An ongoing effort that demands time, care, and emotional energy, yet continually gives back in the form of mutual inspiration. For us, artzines are more than just handmade publications; they’re a way to carve out a small but intentional corner of the internet, one that reflects our identities and visions without compromise. In an online landscape dominated by algorithms, it has become increasingly difficult for independent creators to cut through the noise. Posts disappear in seconds, platforms deprioritize anything that isn’t easily marketable, and visibility tends to be granted only to those who already have it.
As queer artists, we feel these pressures acutely. Much of our work embraces elements that mainstream tech companies deem “unsuitable” or too unconventional—whether abrasive, surreal, offputting, or simply outside the narrow boundaries of what is considered profitable. Our art often challenges norms rather than conforming to them, and because of that, it tends to get buried or filtered out. It’s frustrating to watch platforms insist on authenticity while simultaneously punishing the real, messy, and experimental expressions that authenticity often produces.
Artzines, imperfect as they are, offer us a vital workaround. They allow us to bypass algorithmic gatekeeping entirely, letting us present our work directly, unmediated, and on our own terms. Each zine becomes a miniature world built from our collaboration—a contained, tactile experience that doesn’t need to appeal to mass audiences to matter. In making and sharing them, we reclaim a bit of agency, remembering that art doesn’t need permission to exist and that there is always value in creating spaces where queer voices can speak in their own strange, beautiful dialects.
