The Empire is Falling

zine review:

The Empire is Falling

Rubacha’s The Empire is Falling series begins with the personal, as it will inevitably end. In part one, we are dropped into a moment from her life, where she reflects upon the quiet moments that seem to have hidden importance. She quickly transitions from meditation to a rant about the numbness of modern society. This leads to her cause, a non-violent revolution against “the empire,” or our world as it is.

The second part is completely about Rubacha’s planned revolution. Her prose is wonderfully naïve and delusional, written with the kind of impetuous youthfulness that makes even anarchy seem adorable on paper. She spends the entire zine sifting through our time, naming what may be salvaged and what must be discarded. Her ranting may get tiresome after a while, but one can’t help but be charmed by the fact that she’s at least not “numb.”

However, Rubacha seems to lose her focus in the third volume. At first it seems that she’s simply moving her political ideals back into the personal realm, as if to show how her philosophy is practical in everyday life. However, it quickly becomes apparent that she has decided to rationalize a singularly dark chapter in her life with cries of “free love” and “loving” indiscriminately as opposed to “being in love.” Polyamory can be a political lifestyle choice, certainly, but it’s clear that in this case we’re dealing with cheating, pure and simple. If this were a perzine, wherein Rubacha worked through her issues with a sympathetic audience, it would be relevant and interesting. However, in the context of the series it is woefully out of place, and a little insulting to the reader. (J. Blackmore)

Zine, Elisha May Rubacha, [email protected], postage or trade