BLOG - Monsterfuckers in an age of censorship (Patreon)

Original Post

Once or twice a year, I make riso prints for a project organized by Nova and Mali. I do it quite a lot, actually. Many of you recognize me or came to know me through the Classics project, or you’ll recognize the Boyish Girlish poster at cons from the Cover Me Queer pulp art book project. This autumn, we’re putting together In Their Clutches, a two-toned risograph monsterfucker zine.

This beautiful collection of art features illustrations from 30 artists. We all came together to draw monsters and their prey. Each artist has an illustration in this book that will be printed in crimson and black risograph ink. Pending funding and availability from our printer, the cover will be black with white toner ink, and the booklet will be saddle stitched with red thread. The end product will be 4.25 x 5.5” which will look so charming on your shelf amongst your other prized riso zines and art objects.

Along with this zine, the Kickstarter features some exclusive rewards like stickers, enamel pins, and prints! Floh did such an amazing job working on the cover design, logo, and rewards. As for me, my hand in this project is in the pre-press and print production stage, coordinating with the printer and making sure everything will look nice. I also have an illustration in this zine!

Sidebar: Zine vs Art Book/Anthology/Collection

My fellow zinesters and I have had many a conversation about the distinction of “zine” as a separate entity from expensive art books or anthologies. Zine, in short, conveys a publication that is scrappy, something accessible, something anyone could make by themself or with a few friends in an afternoon at the library with a saddle stitch stapler. A few years ago (pre-pandemic era) you could be in fandom zines that fit this description. Overtime, the polish creeped up on these projects and before we knew it, we were still calling them zines despite being perfect bound, UV spot gloss, gold foil, hardcover 200 page books. After some mild conversation and course correction, it feels like the online art and indie pub world has settled into calling these more expensive books “art books, collections, anthologies, etc.” and saving the term “zine” for something that’s more or less staple bound.

For In Their Clutches, I feel that this is a zine with a lot of polish. It’s a saddle stitched art book. Multiple people are working on it, but at the end of the day, it’s all being printed on tabloid sheets of paper and trimmed and stitched by some extremely talented artisans in Tennessee. It’s also very small! It exists in an in between world. idk, I’m calling this one a zine, and you’re welcome to have a dialog with your friends about the distinction.

But that’s not why we’re here! We’re here to take a peek behind the curtain at the things that we’re up against in making this project.

Step 1: Finding a Printer

When Nova approached me about making this zine, I knew I wanted to give it extra special treatment. I had been tabling with Fend at a few different conventions, getting to know their work and what they make. Fend is an extremely talented printing wizard, someone I look up to in the world of press and risography. I knew their print shop in Tennessee had some really fucking cool treatment options, like white toner and thread binding. Combining these with risograph, I could just feel the creativity crackling as they showed me samples at Anime Expo. (That’s right, planning for this project began back in spring. Anime Expo, when Fend and I were still talking out possibilities for printing, was in early July. We only just launched the campaign last week at the end of September, and the campaign will go until the end of October. Then we have to print and ship and… These things take SOOOO much time.)

The only hang up in working with Fend’s print shop would be making sure their coworkers would feel comfortable printing something like this. And hey, I get it! It’s sexy, it’s weird, it’s not in everyone’s comfort zone. Fend was really amazing in communicating with me and their colleagues in relaying just how sexy we could go with this project, and at the same time, I was also very open to just going to another print shop (even if it meant losing some of the bells and whistles).

In the end, WonderPress pulled through. As I’m writing this, we haven’t gone to print yet, but I think what we’ll end up making is going to be absolutely beautiful and unique and special.

Step 2: Getting It Funded

Kickstarter has been the home for most of the Nova and Mali publications. We’ve had several extremely successful crowdfund campaigns come to fruition on this platform, and it was naturally the first place we thought of to take the project. After Floh’s gorgeous design work creating assets and images and writing copy for the Kickstarter page, we submitted the page for Kickstarter’s review, expecting a thumbs up and a launch shortly after.

Not this time!!

Maybe you have heard, but if not, allow me to tell you: Visa and Mastercard and their peons Stripe and PayPal have been cracking down on us faggots. In the name of protecting people (lol, lmao) credit card companies and payment processers have been threatening to revoke services to platforms that accept money for adult work, except under very, very specific conditions. It’s cruel, it’s conservative brainwashing, it targets queer and trans people above all else, and it disproportionately affects people who already don’t make that much money to begin with.

Kickstarter didn’t terminate the project or anything. You can go pre-order your copy of this zine through Kickstarter. They did, however, request that we cover up the nipples and other body parts in alignment with the regulations of Stripe (one of their payment processors). Stripe wanted us to cover up male nipples if the pecs were juicy and full enough. They wanted us to shave bush off the women in the illustrations. The men can’t have muscular pecs and the women can’t have bush?? Be so for real right now!! I’m sorry, did you want these drawings to depict adults or not?? Shut the fuck uppppp!!!!!!!

And unfortunately, it isn’t so easy as switching payment processors for these platforms. Other commonly recommended alternatives who are seen as higher risk payment processors are still subject to the guidelines from Visa/Mastercard. If these guidelines were really about “protecting children” or whatever the fuck, they wouldn’t be wasting their time over drawings of monster meat. These weirdos are hungry for oppression, and we need to stop them. Here are not one, but two websites that can help direct your ire. Defend sex workers! Defend queer people! Defend artists! Defend adults who just want to fucking jerk it, bro! It’s one of our basic human rights.

Step 3: Spread the Word

The Kickstarter made half its goal in just a few hours! Half of the contributors came from the Kickstarter email blast that came automatically from Kickstarter to previous supporters of Nova and Mali’s projects. If you’re an artist reading this blog post and you’ve made it this far, please, hear my cries: make a newsletter. Email marketing is so much MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH more effective than social media!

Additionally, while newsletter services also have restrictions on what you can send in your emails, they aren’t going to instantly catch you posting a stray scrap of nipple and ban you for life from Instagram. Tumblr won’t even let us blaze the posts. Even Bluesky recently announced policy changes that requires all adult imagery depict consenting adults. Which, on the surface most people would agree with, but it’s broad and vague and weaponized to punish people to conform to a specific idea of what art can be. People are overly concerned about some weird concept of “consent” in a collection of singular images, with no narrative, wherein you could completely interpret the story however you like. It’s all in the eye of the beholder.

They’re monsters, for fuck’s sake. They aren’t real. Saw didn’t actually happen to some guy. Game of Thrones isn’t a documentary. Did you know vampires and werewolves count as necrophilia and beastiality under Visa’s rules? Get a fucking grip, bro!!!!!!! Sorry, side bar done.

In short, social media blows chunks, but I’m posting there anyway because it’s a marketing platform. So I play the game, I jump through the hoops, I pretend like it’s not on fire so that the people looking at the posts feel positive and maybe want to give me a dollar. Meanwhile, I post to my blog to pretend like I have some control on the internet, even though my blog is hosted on Squarespace, which could nuke me from orbit at any time. It’s maddening.

(PS: I know, I know. I oughta host my own website. Listen, pal… one day I will either have time or money to make a website or have someone build it for me. Subscribe to my Patreon to make that happen lol)

Was it always like this?

As I said at the top, I’ve been working on Nova and Mali publications for, uh, this whole time— years and years— and that is, wow, just so touching to think about how far we’ve all come as a group making art books and indie publications by queers for queers. That said, I was curious if we had to jump through this many censorship hoops last time we published a monsterfucker book, and the answer is: NO!! WE DID NOT!!

Here, the very first image on our 2023 Kickstarter for And They Were Monsters has full on nipple sucking right next to the Kickstarter stamp of approval. It has been two years since then, and we can’t even show boy nipples if the pectoral muscles are too round? Come on! Be serious!!

I feel like I’m going insane. I won’t be silenced, I won’t be stopped. I can’t even talk about the actual technical process of risograph file set up in this blog post because I feel like so much of the hard part of this project has been jumping through these flaming hoops. It’s also highly embarrassing to be in a country so scared of sexuality in art while so objectifying to women in the day to day life. The governing powers that be have always tried to silence creative people from making work they think is too taboo, too degenerate, too queer. The conservatism in this country is elevating. We can’t roll over. We can’t let them have this. We deserve to make art freely and enjoy work.

They can try to make us feel monstrous, but desire and joy and creativity are human gifts we share with each other.

🖕🖕🖕