problem solved [3 PDF literary zines]
we looked into it. it wasn't you. the record speaks for itself.
Print resolution PDFs
Illustrations by Val Pierce
Fine edition
– unavailable
Printed edition
– unavailable
Digital edition
– $25
Print resolution PDFs suitable for printing at home.
Contents
- don’t let the bastards grind you down, 56 pg
- it’s a shame we’re not soulmates, 106 pg
- protect me from all your bullsh!t, 25 pg
Description
On closer inspection, not your problem at all.
Problem Solved is a collection of four literary zines about narcissism, trauma bonding, abuse, and the slow erosion of self that happens inside relationships, designed to make you doubt your own perception. These zines are not for the faint of heart or the easily offended. hell, even those not easily offended might find themselves clutching their pearls.
The collection is about how these harmful relational dynamics work, why they work, and what they cost the people inside them. But it’s not all doom and gloom. The writing is second-person and first-person, literary and precise, dryly humorous and devastating in equal measure. Educational content on narcissism, trauma bonding, and relational pattern mechanics runs as sidebar and footnote material alongside the literary voice — because you have already lived it firsthand, you don’t need the masterclass version of events.
The collection covers the charm offensive and what follows it. The confidence erosion that begins before any individual relationship and is exploited inside one. The narrative rewriting that happens after — the version of your story that circulates in rooms you aren’t in, pre-framed, pre-distributed, requiring no input from you. And eventually, what becomes available once the mechanisms can be named and escaped with clarity.
Each zine stands alone — a reader can enter the collection at any point and find herself without needing the whole arc. read in sequence, and they build into something larger: a complete picture of a system that is designed not to be recognized, written by someone who went all the way through it and came out the other side with documentation and a press.
These zines are not a healing guide. They are what comes before that. the naming of the thing. The roar before the gentle work. The part where you finally see it clearly enough to put it down. We hope other women feel seen and heard and less alone while sorting through our personal chaos, gremlin closet, knee deep in our dirty laundry.
The collection includes:
don’t let the bastards grind you down — on keeping your self-esteem when someone is actively trying to dismantle it
it’s a shame we’re not soulmates — on trauma bonding, and a dating roster that would make satan blush
protect me from all your bullsh!t — on narcissism and the particular grammar of being loved by someone who cannot
We believe that devastation, faithfully witnessed, becomes something luminous and strange. We have made art of catastrophe. Someone had to. for the girls still in the ruins. for the ones who made it out changed.
