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laurasimonsdaughter · 2 years

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A wild (mother) goose chase for a lost fairy tale

In august 2020 Forbes published an article about how writer and illustrator Pete Jordi Wood had uncovered a “charming gay fairytale” that “has been lost for 200 years”. In particular a story where a sailor wins the hand in marriage of a handsome prince. Wood is quoted as calling it an “unbelievably and fabulously gay” plot, and: “an ancient tale with a positive portrayal, of a guy who can be read as gay or asexual, but certainly queer”.

Obviously I was wild to read it, but sadly Wood’s adaptation of the fairy tale had been published as a limited edition children’s book and virtual exhibition that I could not access. Even more disheartening, the folklore sources were not named on his website, and his research was only available in a limited edition essay collection and zine that I would have to buy.

To make matters worse, the Forbes article said that Wood had translated variations of the story from Danish, German and Frisian. That was absolutely too close to home for me not to go looking for it! Except I had very little to go on, because again, Forbes didn’t give sources.

The article said only this:

Wood called the story “The Dog And The Sailor”

The protagonist is an adventurous sailor with an overprotective mother who defeats a beautiful evil witch and wins the hand in marriage of a handsome prince.

Wood found it in the Stith Thompson’s six-volume Motif-Index of Folk-Literature under a tale type called “The Dog and the Sea” which existed in multiple languages (Danish, German, Frisian and others), but not in English.

It was first written down in the 1800’s.

I could find only one mention online with more information, on the Simmons University website:

“Originally a Danish folktale documented by the folklorists Nikolaj Christensen and Jens Kamp, this story has been translated into English for the first time by Pete Jordi Wood.”

The consequence of all this is that I have been hunting for this fairy tale for a very long time and with the help of two amazing Danish followers and a lot of frantic internet searches, I’m finally convinced that I have! So, if you want to follow me into my obsession, you can find it all under the readmore.

Of course the first thing I did was try to find this tale type “The Dog and the Sea” in the Stith Thompson Motif-Index, but it was a dead end. I couldn’t find any fairy tale called “The Dog and the Sea” or “The Dog and the Sailor” anywhere. What I was able to find was a podcast called “There’s a Story for That” that gave a recap and review of Wood’s “The Dog and the Sailor”. So now at least I knew the full outline of the story:

A beautiful, evil witch curses a faraway tropical kingdom, charming everyone into submission, transforming them into animals and sinking the kingdom to the bottom of the ocean.

An English boy called Ruan wants to become a sailor and his protective mother eventually lets him go after he fails at being a tailor.

She gives him her life savings, a medical balm and a dagger.

Ruan joins a sailing crew, shipwrecks in a storm and washes up on the shores of France.

When his money runs out he gets so desperate that he contemplates walking into the sea, but at that moment a curly haired dog emerges from the waves and offers to help him. He fills Ruan’s purse with money and instructs him to pay double for everything he buys.

When he has spent all the money Ruan returns to the dog, gets a thousand gold pieces and is instructed to get a ship and a crew.

They sail off, but the sea witch sends a storm dragon to sink them. The dog defeats the dragon while the crew hides below deck.

They find the dog grievously wounded, but Ruan heals him with his mother’s balm.

The dog tells Ruan to go out in a row boat and jump into the sea, much to the terror of the crew.

Ruan sinks to the sunken kingdom unharmed and the dog leads Ruan to the town, where a beautiful woman (the witch) comes to meet him.

She promises him half of her kingdom if he’ll be her spouse. Ruan refuses and stabs her to death with the dagger. She explodes into dust, leaving behind only a belt with silver keys.

Ruan enters the castle and the dog is already inside to lead him to the dungeon, where they find a caged lion.

The dog instructs Ruan to cut off his head and tail and swap their places. This turns the lion into an old man, the king.

The king praises Ruan for being the only person who managed to resist the witch. All the animals in the castle turn human, including the dog, who is the king’s son.

The king suggests Ruan and his son rule the kingdom together. Ruan wants to accept, but feels he has to return to his mother. So the king gives him a ship full of gold instead. By then the kingdom has risen to the surface again.

Ruan sails back to his mother, who praises him, but tells him to go back to marry his prince.

He returns and marries the handsome prince.

The next step was looking at the mentioned authors, I was lucky enough to come across a book by Stephen Badman, who had translated a large selection of the fairy tales Jens Kamp published in 1879 and 1891 and published them in 2016 under the title “Folk and Fairy Tales from Denmark – Stories collected by Jens Kamp”. I couldn’t be sure that the right story was in there, but it was! The book included a story called David Cotterson (David Husmandssøn), which was clearly Wood’s source, but did have notable differences:

The witch and the kingdom are never mentioned in the beginning.

The hero is called David, his nationality is not given, he has two parents and no parting gifts are mentioned.

He shipwrecks and washes up on the coast of England.

The helpful dog is described as “large, black and shaggy”.

The dog gives David first five hundred ducats, then a thousand ducats, and the third time two thousand ducats and the assignment to have a ship built.

Again the crew hides from a storm and the dog gets injured, but the dog gives David a flask of healing oil to cure him with. It is never said that the witch causes the storm.

The dog warns David explicitly that he will meet a beautiful woman near a golden castle, who would attempt to seduce him, but that if he gives her as much as a kiss all will be lost.

He gives David a sword an instructs him to cut her down, take her keys, and go to the castle where he will be waiting for him.

As soon as he kills the woman he hears his crew shout, because suddenly the land has risen to the surface again.

Only now it is revealed that the woman was an evil witch who had sent the land to the bottom of the sea.

Once transformed back into humans, the dog and lion explain that the evil witch had been the king’s second wife.

The king offers David half the kingdom as a reward, but David wants to go home, so they fill his ship with treasure instead.

David says goodbye to the prince and the king, sails home to England, sells his ship, shares the riches with his crew, returns to his overjoyed parents and settles down with them to live a long, happy life.

I personally really enjoy this folktale. It’s fun and quite unusual. I’ve posted a more complete summary here for extra context. Also, Badman’s translations are very pleasant to read, I really recommend buying this book. Now I’ve read his source, I’m inclined to agree with one part of Wood’s claims, that you could read it as asexual. It’s pretty rare to find a fairy tale like this that doesn’t end in a wedding. But the fact that this Danish tale doesn’t end in a marriage, unlike Wood’s adaptation, does rather dampen the “lost gay fairy tale” claim.

But there are other versions of this story! I thought it might possible that one of the stories might have ended with “rule side by side with my son”, which really would be very easy to read as a “gay marriage without calling it a marriage”. So, I wanted to see if Nikolaj Christensen had also collected a variant. Sadly, Christensen’s work is even more obscure than Kamp’s outside Scandinavia. Again, Stephen Badman has translated some of them, but I had no idea what the folktale would be called and I couldn’t exactly justify buying several books just in the hope that it would be in there.

As far as I could tell, there had been only one complete collection of Christensen’s work: Folkeeventyr fra Kær herred (Folk tales from Kær Herred), by Nikolaj Christensen, published by Laurits Bødker with Akademisk forlag; København (1963-67). The index is available online and it seemed to me that “Matrosen og kongen” (The sailor and the king) or “Et sømandsæventyr” (A sailor tale) had definite potential to be the story I was looking for.

So, I decided to ask my Tumblr dash for Danish help. And let me tell you, the Danes delivered. @violetdesolation messaged me that they had found the book in their university library and kindly offered to send me some scans. They found both “Matrosen og kongen” and “Et sømandsæventyr” for me, but noticed that the book they got didn’t include all the folktales in the index I found. We both looked for a dog that turned into a prince, but found nothing.

But by then a second helpful Dane had gotten their hands on the book and this time it was the complete version! They kindly offered to skim the whole thing for me and just to be sure I gave a whole list of story elements to look out for. And that is how we uncovered that “Et sømandsæventyr” (A sailor tale) was actually the story I was looking for! Only it was just different enough from “David Husmandssøn” that I hadn’t noticed! In this version the protagonist was Dutch instead of English and in the end it never even clearly says that the dog turns into a prince! But it was definitely a variant of the same story. It has many similarities with Kemp’s version, but a few key differences:

The protagonist is called Johan, only his father is mentioned, and they are said to be Dutch.

He shipwrecks and washes up in France, not England.

Johan actually tries to drown himself.

The talking dog is specifically said to be a poodle.

There are a lot of details missing, like the description of the storm that injures the dog or the specific method to transform the lion back into a human.

The witch is described merely as “beautiful” and while she does suggest marriage to Johan it is never said that no one else could resist her or that many have tried.

While the dog does say he is a transformed prince, the story never states that he becomes human again (hence why Violetdesolation and I didn’t find the story on first glance).

This king does not speak and this witch is not revealed to be his second wife.

As a reward Johan may choose between becoming a minister in the saved kingdom’s government or to leave with as much gold as he can carry, he chooses the gold and goes home, but his father is not mentioned again.

If you want to read the full story, you can! You can find the scans of the Danish text that the kind @violetdesolation provided here, and a full English translation can be found here, courtesy of the second Danish folklore sleuth, who preferred to stay anonymous. I also want to give a big shout-out to @ymfingsteadilyon who also offered to get the book from their library.

So now I had confirmation that this was indeed a Danish fairy tale first recorded in the 1800’s, that, while sadly lacking a gay wedding, did definitely invite being read through a queer lens. However, the article had claimed there was also a German and a Frisian version. Which probably meant there was also a Dutch version and I was determined to find it (and see if it ended in marriage).

It was at this point that I finally finally found the tale type with both “dog” and “sea” in it. The correct name wasn’t “The Dog and the Sea”, it was “The Dog in the Sea”, ATU type 540. To my intense frustration the most complete online ATU index had no examples in that category whatsoever, but at least I knew it existed.

And now I knew the correct name for the tale type, I found this. A German fairy tale encyclopedia from 1990 (the online version was behind a paywall, but I managed to find the book: Enzyklopädie des Märchens, Walter de Gruyter & Co, 1988/1990, ISBN 978-3-11-011763-9) that had a whole entry on this tale type including sources. My German was just good enough to understand these things:

This really was the correct tale type for both Christensen’s and Kamp’s stories and a summary was indeed given in Aarne and Thomson’s folklore classifications.

They presumed that Christensen’s version from 1855 was the oldest.

There were also Swedish and Finnish versions, but these deviated rather a lot from the Danish ones.

There was possibly also a Russian version that might fit this type.

There was also a Dutch version from a publication from 1900/1901.

So, what was this Dutch version they wrote of? The source given was “Huizenga-Onnekes, E. J.: Groninger volksvertellingen 1. Groningen 21958, 60-64; Vk. Tijdschrift voor nederlandsche folklore 13 (1900/1901) 200-202;”, but luckily I didn’t need to go looking for it. Because with the correct tale type I could find it in the Dutch folktale database.

And while it is correct that this story was first published in Dutch the 1900’s, the written source it was based on is from 1804. Which makes the Dutch version the oldest traceable source of this piece of oral folklore! Possibly explaining why Christensen’s version has a Dutch protagonist and why Kamp’s version is the most elaborate, being the most recent one. Because the Dutch version is far shorter and far less interesting:

The protagonist is a skipper who wrecks his ship and washes ashore in great misery.

A black dog comes up to him and offers help, which the skipper accepts despite fearing the dog is the devil.

When the ship is built the dog stays with the skipper so he can pay for everything, including a crew and provisions.

As they sail the dog keeps warning when there is to be a storm. First one that lasts half a day, then three days, then a week.

At last they reach a shore (not underwater) with a golden castle and the dog says it is his father’s castle.

The dog instructs the skipper to spend three nights in the castle and to be silent no matter how bad it gets.

The castle turns out to be haunted and the skipper is horribly tormented, but after the three nights the dog takes the skipper to a room with a large sword and instructs him to behead him.

Doing so turns the dog into a human, who explains that his father had cursed him to become a spectre of a dog.

He rewards the skipper with enough money to last him a lifetime and the skipper leaves with his riches.

This version was written down by 11 year-old Gerrit Arend Arends, who kept a journal around 1804 in which he recorded the stories that seamstress Trijntje “Soldaats” Wijbrands told him. The journal was discovered by his great-great-granddaughter E.J.Huizenga-Onnekes, who eventually published all 17 folktales in: Groninger Volksvertellingen I: Het Boek van Trijntje Soldaats (1928).

The story about the sailor and the enchanted dog is the 15th story in the collection and while it has no name there, I have seen later versions of it called “De dankbare hond” (The grateful dog) and “De hond die geen hond was” (The dog that wasn’t a dog).

So there we are! With a lot of kind help from unexpected places, my honour as a Dutch hobby folklorist is restored. Sadly we were not rewarded with a canon gay wedding from 19th century folklore, but a very good story nonetheless, that is indeed very inviting to read through a queer lens, and a rather triumphant end to a what started as a very wild goose chase.

EDIT: Since writing this, this tale type was added to Wikipedia, with additional interesting references! I wish I had looked for it there again between the beginning and the end of my search, because this took me so long it was published in between.

#the dog and the sailor #another one for laure goes off the deep end #and down the rabbit hole #danish folklore #danish fairy tale #dutch folklore #thanks to everyone who helped!#and the friends who had to hear me yell about this :P #and my sister for the editing of this monster post <3

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dkgwrites · 4 years

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Great to See You Writing Again!

I recently posted a fic which received nothing but love (thank you kind and gentle readers), but it also received a lot of comments from folks who were “glad to see me writing again” or "happy that I was back”. It made me go back through my fics to se how long it had been and what I had posted.

In May, I posted fic with twelve very short chapters (because I made it for Insta, originally) which was around 18k. Then I signed up for a zine (which I ended up helping to mod) and a Big Bang. Those both had reveals in October.

Zine fic: around 5k

Big Bang fic: around 82k

That’s 87k to be written in June - September (posted in October). For December, I did a prompt challenge of 12 fics in 12 days.

Holiday challenge: around 41k

Then I wrote a short fic in January which got me so many statements (and again, everyone was so kind, so this is not meant to disparage anyone) that left me confused.

January fic: 9k

So between the months of June to January (it was a little under seven and a half months),I posted around 137k of fanfic. That’s close to two full-length novels. I also worked full-time and helped to get a zine out.

Now, I’ll ignore job details, life, and the pandemic, but I’d like to address how long it actually takes to write a fic. If you’re a writer, you’ve posted a new chapter and on the same day gotten a comment of “update soon”. (If you’re a reader, please don’t do this. I’m on bended knee. Forever remove that phrase from your vocabulary.) I don’t think readers have a sense of how long it takes to create that piece of storytelling.

I write fairly quickly. When I’m on a roll, I can write around 1k an hour. That means the words are flowing, and I’m well-versed in a subject. If I need to do research, you can tack on another 1-3 hours per thousand words. Let’s look at an 82k pieces (which for me was an art heist au, so I had to do a ton of research on art, thefts, museum security, etc.). Outlining also takes time. This all happens before you start to write the story. I’ll say that fic was about 160 hours of work to pick a realistic and round number. If it was my FT job, that would have been four (4) weeks to get to a first draft. It still needed to be revised and edited. That probably took another eighty (80) hours. So 240 hours of work, and let’s assume I worked on it twenty (20) hours a week. That’s twelve (12) weeks or three months... if I’m on a roll and because I write quickly.

As a reader, maybe you devour an 82k fic in a day, but that was three months of work in my life if things are going well. Sometimes, a day of writing is watching a blinking cursor and then going back and reading earlier parts that you wrote to try and find the last drops of inspiration like the conditioner in a bottle left upside in the shower. Readers, this is not meant anyone to be put off on commenting. If folks didn’t want to hear from you, they wouldn’t post their work. However, I think we need some transparency in the process. In traditional publishing, authors put out 1-2 books (a novel length being around 80k) every 3-5 years. These people are getting paid to do so, and it may well be their FT job.

Fic writers love their fandom. We are willing to tap our fingers sore to add to the creations. Love them in return with a comment like “I loved this” or “this line was my favorite <quite a line>”. If you feel so included, write them whole paragraphs (which they will read again and again like a secret love letter). Please, communicate with your favs, but now that you know the time that goes into it, consider your words. We’ve spent a lot of time considering ours.

#writing #my writing #fanfic #fanfiction #comments #readers #how long does it take to write a story #we really love our readers #this is how to love us back the way we want to be loved

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countessofbiscuit · 4 years

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Suppressive Fire

(Sev/Scorch, E, 3.9k words)

Two bros, chillin' on a top bunk no feet apart 'cause they're vode. . . .

Fleet Support, Ord Mantell, barrack block 7 Alpha, six standard weeks after Geonosis

She’d be built like a tank. That was Requirement the First.

She’d be humanoid, or near enough. Her arms would number ... four. Yes, four arms, each of them doing something clever. Two to open my ass, two to pinch my nipples, her long tongue going to crazy town on my cock, burning off my pubes with her caustic breath—

Sergeant Draka. The near-human-tank was Sergeant Draka, sure as day.

Scorch grabbed this realization with one firm hand and tugged.

Her species was shab-if-I-know: some unhappy hybrid who’d washed up on the far edge of the Outer Rim and been scraped into one of those fringe clans that never removed their helmets. Her folks developed a reputation for ritualized kidnapping that didn’t sit right with Jango. He’d ripped Draka’s helmet off in a duel, apparently, and spending ten years training the spawn of her enemy was the price she’d agreed to pay to regain her honor. All those kids and nowhere to run: a bitter form of torture for both parties. Her trainees were an insular, silent bunch with a tendency to tactically acquire your shit when you weren’t looking, but they got the job done.

Scorch had first seen Draka at a parade for the prime minister when he was three. He’d never forgotten it: she had fangs and yellow eyes and ears that twitched at the tips like they were catching your current of fear. No wonder they’d encouraged her to keep a lid on.

Then Scorch was six and change and he’d stumbled upon her in a hallway. She’d had a cadet upside down, smoking him good for something. “What are you gawping at, Six-Two?” she’d snarled, her generous chest heaving, three spare arms tensing in his direction. “Shift it. Unless you want your balls torn off next.”

Scorch had been a little scared and a lot turned on.

Sergeant Vau didn’t have to use many words to put the fear of Fett under your skin. He was a conservative man. Sergeant Draka regarded a shebs-chewing as the highest form of oratory and her calling in life. Whenever Scorch stood downwind of her in the combat hall, he could feel his eyebrows being singed off a second time.

Sweating a little, Scorch’s core tensed as this fantasy tightened vividly in his holographic mind.

She puts two hands around my cock, one hand on my nipple, one hand clawing under my balls—

Scorch flipped her on her back.

She uses all four arms to spread her trunky legs, hairy as a man’s, wide in invitation—

“Knock it off,” barked Sev.

She was gone. In her place was the knowledge that his brother was clued in to what Scorch was doing on the bottom bunk and determined to make it stop.

But the pressure under Scorch’s balls held firm and his erection stood fast. Sev was an oaf with shit timing. There was a reason they gave Scorch the fiddly wires and det controls. He stretched his fingers and reset his grip. “Not happening, vod.”

“Do you have to be so loud about it?”

“Loud?” Had he said something? Lost control of his breathing?

“Yes. Loud. Like you’re slugging a hamm sandwich.”

Scorch frowned. “Have you ever had a hamm sandwich?”

“I don’t want one now.”

There was some improvement to technique needed there: Scorch was always open to feedback—to the challenge of reducing the marginal noise of a wank. “You embarrassed?” he found himself asking, strokes resuming. Less hamm-fistedly. His orgasm had slumped a little and he'd have to tenderly call it back up.

“I’m embarrassed for you,” Sev said.

Scorch closed his eyes, picturing something ...

Sergeant Draka was back, and now she was holding him and Sev upside down. The arrival of RC-1207 into the sim wasn’t throwing Scorch off. In fact, it was encouraging. Exciting. He even leaked a little at the idea. What was a commando without his squad? Chafed, apparently. He should’ve brought Sev into the game two nights ago, after they’d been rudely pulled from stasis in preparation for some op known only to Boss.

Scorch didn’t remember decant. But Sergeant Vau, who'd wasted no time rocking up to his watery exile when Jango had put out the word, said they’d been ugly, annoyed, and ornery. The nursery techs had given them mock, miniature Deeces to keep their fussy hands and mouths occupied.

Coming out of stasis had to be worse—they were issued Deeces again, but they weren’t left alone to soothe themselves to sleep with weapons. Now their waking moments belonged entirely to some Jedi named Zey. They’d been forced to run a gamut of proprioception and endurance tests, cleaned their spanking new Katarn and cleaned it once more for luck on Boss’s orders, and told to familiarize themselves with their upgraded HUD systems.

Scorch had and he'd found it wanting: no pre-loaded heavy-isotope bangers or high-definition tailhead reference holos. Did he have to do everything himself in this shabla army?

After submitting to all this with only mild complaint—Fixer had sworn in full sentences—the op order was still not forthcoming. Classic hurry up and fekkin' wait. Wait for instructions they didn’t even need. Coordinates, intel support, and a broad objective would have sufficed for a commando tasking: top brass still had a lot to learn. It had left Delta with more downtime than they liked and had left Scorch wanting nothing more than to take care of that perennial need in his groin. And each time, he had to get a little more creative.

“What’re you thinking ‘bout, Sev?” he teased, poking the boundaries of this sim. Longnecks hated that: it’s why they let the commandos have off-world field trips to forsaken places where they couldn’t peel back the corners without dying. “Something profane? Something a little non-regulation?”

“The shab is wrong with you.”

“I’ll tell you what I’m thinking ... ” The opportunity for candor—without Fixer on the opposite bunk telling him to pipe down or Boss around to make it happen—was interesting. And as far as Scorch knew, this slap-dash prefab of a support base didn’t have surveillance bugs like their dorms on Kamino. The range and assault course here weren't even specced for lasers; they had to waste live rounds on discs and be honest about getting locked onto. Not likely.

With nothing left to hide, Scorch rolled away from the wall and relaxed onto his back, his cock stiff and spry. He pulled his hood up and over his wet glans and back down again, as far as he could take it, skin smarting nicely at the stretch. He went on, “I’m thinking about Sergeant Draka.”

“Stop,” Sev said.

“Her thick thighs in my face—”

“Stop.”

Scorch spat in his hand and throttled his shaft. “Biting our balls … ” Okay, maybe that was a little weird. But if Fixer’s quick work of the base pyrowall in the anxious hours before chill-down was anything to go by, weird could be good. Better than good.

“Don’t make me come down there,” Sev growled. Not unlike Sergeant Draka, actually.

Scorch couldn’t help himself. “Oh yeah, do come down here ... ” He bucked into his fist, as if to jerk out that ball of bliss from behind his sack. The mass of him tensed rigid under one fixed goal. His fumbled around for something in the sheets with his free hand. “Come down her thick legs ... ”

If anything could singe Draka’s hairs, it’d be Sev’s spunk. Scorch loved a blast, but Sev would sprinkle baradium on his Oaties every morning if he could. Sev would spill like a gutted aiwha, animalistic and uncontrolled, and Draka would hiss and gnash her teeth and—

And suddenly, Scorch was over the line. His base clenched hard, choking his groan of release. He convulsed and came thickly into one of yesterday’s socks.

“Shab,” he croaked, his vision returning, his limbs pooling with pituitary pleasure. “Blew up real good.”

Somewhere above him, Sev huffed. “Three nights in a row. You’re disgusting—you know that, right?”

“Stasis, my shebs. I’ve never had such busy balls in my short life.” Scorch twisted languidly to the edge of the mattress and sat up, squeezing his cock clean. “Cooking blanks like they might get lucky.” The knotted sock got buried in tomorrow’s laundry and Scorch borrowed some of Boss’s wet wipes for the cleanup. Sarge wouldn’t miss them.

“The rest of us are fine,” Sev countered.

Scorch glanced at Sev over his shoulder. His brother looked like a corpse who’d taken up reading in the afterlife. Base bunks weren’t much cosier than a stasis pod, but something else was keeping Sev’s spine stiff. Something that might affect squad performance if it wasn’t addressed: a bad case of self-inflicted blue balls.

Scorch pulled up his pants and ambled over. “You know ... you say that. But this says something else.” He grabbed Sev’s perky junk.

Happily for his brother, Scorch’s grip was light. So when Sev knocked Scorch backwards at the throat, he didn’t take Sev’s sack with him. A scuffle ensued, half-hearted on Scorch’s side, though Sev was obviously in one of his fuck-off moods. He always was crankiest after a nap; it’d take him days to shake off stasis. And he was still pissed about Procurement’s theft of his helmet, with its authentic Gamma blood enshrined in red paint. That di’kutla squad had been shipped to Triple Zero, and until Sev butted heads with them again, he’d be as scratchy as a flea-bitten akk.

Using the shallow bunkrail, Scorch flung himself up and collapsed onto his brother, asking the cantilevered cot to bear the weight of two commandos. He was a trusting soul. The tussle continued until Scorch allowed Sev to secure a headlock, rather than drag them both onto the floor. They’d just gotten out of one unnatural bath and he didn’t fancy a dunk in bacta.

Scorch tapped Sev’s thigh. “Alright, alright,” he said hoarsely. Sev’s hold loosened a fraction and Scorch scooted out from it. Sitting up, he grabbed the holozine that had gotten pinned against the wall: some monthly edition of erudition that called itself Lasers & Blasters. “Didn’t know you could, Oh-Seven.”

Sev snatched the ‘zine to stuff it under his pillow. “It’s above your cadet-grade.”

“I think everyone knows you’re the knuckle-dragger around here, not me.”

“I think everyone knows I’m the hero of Geonosis, Killer of Sun Fac.”

Scorch made a theatrical noise that sounded like a broken, wet bes’bev. “Woo-hoo! You hit the broad side of a bantha!”

Now Sev really tried to catapult him onto the floor. But Scorch’s close-combat situational awareness noticed that his brother’s cockstand was holding strong.

“Sev,” he said, panting a little when they’d reached another stalemate, “the only people who know Sun Fac’s name are us, some spooks, and that random forward air controller.”

“Shove off.” Sev kicked him with his boot. He wore them to bed like an animal.

Scorch shook his head. “Not until you take care of yourself.”

“You have some shabla nerve, vod.”

“Rule 45: there should be no happier union than that between a commando and his weapon. But you’ve neglected yours.” He cast a judgemental eye at Sev’s tented pants. They’d been sleeping, shooting, and shitting cheek-by-jowl for their entire lives: Scorch didn’t know why one more bodily function would be that much worse. In that moment, he had more sympathy for his brother’s dick than his brother’s karked-up dignity. Or his own.

He glanced at the chrono. Boss and Fixer still had half an hour at the range and they’d probably hit the mess on the way back. Time enough for a little more equipment maintenance; Scorch believed he was being supremely generous offering what remained of his. He flopped over into a plank above his brother, who was still lying deathly prone. “If you’re not gonna help yourself ...”

“What?” Sev sneered. “You’ll do the honors?”

“Maybe I will. I am better than you, after all,” Scorch grinned. Suddenly, he sensed a game that he wanted to win. They were all like that. Competitive. Not so much against each other, but with each other. Getting screwy Sev off would be the ultimate victory: no one would lose and everyone would leave happy.

“You can’t.” Sev’s disinterest was as threadbare as his pillowcase.

“Alright, vod. I’ll take that bet.” Scorch dug the heel of his hand into his brother’s persistent erection. Sev’s eyelids fluttered. No greater tell in the book. “I bet I can get you off before Boss and Fixer get back. Just this once.”

Sev circled his hands around Scorch’s throat, hissing through perfect teeth bared tight, “You—can’t—Sergeant—Vau—would—”

Scorch scoffed. “You see Sarge here? He’s fucked off to his castle with his kaminii retirement fund.”

Vau had never promised he’d be there on the other side, but ... did he know they’d done a good job? That they’d been singled out for the assassination of the bugs’ chief lieutenant? That they’d survived—no, that they'd excelled, when hundreds of other squads hadn’t? Did he even care? Scorch had to wonder.

He shoved those thoughts aside with conscious effort; they wouldn’t do him any good. Better that Vau wasn't here anyway: he would sniff mightily at this interpretation of no brother left behind. “Hells, he’s probably rubbing one out to a portrait of the dead missus right now,” Scorch continued.

Sev’s grip tightened for their sergeant’s honor. “He wouldn’t—”

“He would. Stars love the old chakaar, Sev, but he’s only flesh and blood.” Actually, that’s all Vau was: cragged skin and blue blood twisted ‘round a frame that seemed to boast a few more bones than average. There must have been a heart in there, too—see: Mird—but Delta had spent their entire cadethood seeking it out to little good. Especially Sev, though he’d slot you for saying so.

Oh, Sev’ika: flesh and blood, plus a lot of bile and bad humor. He stank out the backend when he’d scarfed down too many ration packs, but what would splatter out the front? Scorch was beyond curious now, as he palmed his brother’s package through his clothes.

Sev’s hands held firm, but it was half-hearted, his thumbs only tickling his brother’s trachea. His nostrils flared. He was afraid. No, even better—he was desperate.

It was all the vindication Scorch needed. “That’s right—breathe. Relax. Six-Two’s got you.” He tugged Sev’s fatigues down, hitching the elasticene band behind his balls. Sev grimaced. Yeah, it might not be comfortable yet, but just wait; a little pressure there goes a long way.

“That hurts,” growled Sev.

“Gonna hand me the game?” If Sev had lost sight of his mission objective, he really was gummed up. “Jerking off through a fly feels like doing it in formation,” Scorch said.

Sev turned his head to the wall. If he’d done it at all, that was clearly how.

Scorch took his theoretically-identical brother in hand and felt the heft and heat of a dick that was still an inch left of familiar, however many times he'd seen it. Sev was throbbing. His hands fell away, as deliberately limp as the rest of him, like he was trying to absent himself from his body.

“So ... Sergeant Draka—” Scorch began, realizing he’d just been staring at his brother’s kad for longer than was right. He mentally constructed the fantasy again, deliberately this time, while he warmed up to the idea of working someone else’s shaft. Sev’s shaft. He imagined what Sev might like to hear, because Scorch sure as shab wasn’t keen on hardening up between his brother’s legs himself. That would just be strange. “She’s got you under two hands and a squawking bug under the other, honkin' great tits ready to smother the both of you ...”

Up until he’d found his brother’s cock in his hand, Scorch had fancied himself an honest commando. He really did. Then he had to close the dissonance between his not-insignificant-interest in Sev’s pink tip and, well, Sev: that awkward grump-a-lump who couldn’t look at a sapient or sentient, droid or organic, without scaring them away.

Scorch did it by telling himself this was just his own his cock in a mirror. A learning experience, if nothing else. And his tongue loosened to remember the bet. He began rubbing with intent. “She snaps its neck. Crunch. And isn’t that just your favoritest sound, Sev, ol’ boy?”

“Not her,” Sev said hoarsely.

Manda, he really was giving this to Scorch in the bag. “Who?”

“—don’t know—I don’t shabla know.”

“Easy, vod. You got a lifetime to find out. Well, half of one.”

“Shut. Up.”

Scorch changed the program and flicked a thumbnail right under Sev’s hood. Scratched out whatever dream Sev had building behind his scrunched eyes. It was irrelevant, whatever cleaned the pipes. If his brother didn’t want to say, who was Scorch to ask? The silky give of his hard-on and his nasally gasps vouched that Sev was having an a-okay time. Scorch wouldn’t have a hand, otherwise.

Sev bubbled from his tip. Scorch felt himself flush, but he was more intrigued than anything. It really was like watching a holo of himself. Obviously, Scorch was more handsome, mostly because he wasn’t a fucking psycho ... but a cock was a cock. He lengthened his movement with the slick aid of precome, fisting all the way down to Sev’s slightly lighter curls.

Suddenly, Sev’s fingers wrapped around his. For an alarming half-second, Scorch feared his wrist was about to be snapped. Goodbye dominant hand and superhuman reaction times.

But Sev just held on, eyes pinched shut, arm as unyielding as a barrel.

The situation became more straightforward. Emboldened by the team effort, Scorch stroked faster. Harder. He read the lines in Sev’s fierce face like a manual for a weapon he’d been handed five years ago. A clone lifetime. A batcher’s intuition. He shucked Sev’s sheath down as hard as he could. Twisted his wrist at the top further than Sev’s delicate skin wanted to go. Scorch figured his brother liked the bite of pain. “You feelin’ the heat? You gonna spill all over my fingers, Sev’ika?” he teased.

Sev heaved like he might throw up, and he coughed out only two words. “Do. Not.”

Yeah, he hates that kind of chummy osik and yakking. It was almost sad how much Sev knew what he didn’t want, but couldn’t voice what he did. Even Fixer grunted in approval when something wriggled across the ‘pad’s screen; at least he had some idea what kind of parts he fancied. It was a very broad pool.

Sev just looked embarrassed to be asked.

“Someone’s gonna love your shit, Sev,” Scorch encouraged, coming at it again from a different vector. If he didn’t show his wacky brother some love, who would?

Vau hadn’t been there to bestow that curt nod. They didn’t want to be spoiled. Scorch and his brothers weren’t Skirata’s pups: they’d survived Geonosis because they weren’t. But ... Delta was here and Theta wasn’t and Vau had no karkin’ clue what a close-run thing it’d been. Didn’t know how the knife-edge of his training had probably made all the difference and how chuffed they all were about it.

Or how Sev had made that one-in-a-million shot to Sun Fac’s fighter with half his visor splattered in bug spray. Scorch would remember that for the rest of his short life: angry tendrils of smoke rising behind Sev as he turned contemptuously away from his kill, his helmet gooey with Geonosian.

There were brothers, and there were your brothers: the ones who’d made you better just by being there beside you. Sev was one of those.

Scorch didn’t have to improv osik, now. The words came as easy as his muscle memory as he pistoned his palm along Sev’s angry cock. “Fuckin’ proud of you, Sev: bane of bugs and sniper extraordinaire. Wish Vau could’ve seen it, I really do. I’ll have CLONINT’s guts for rappelling lines for wiping Boss’s cache.”

Sev’s free hand had bunched into the sheet, his knuckles whitening. He stilled suddenly, tense as the second before the opening salvo. Here it comes.

“Ooh, so that’s how Sev breaks. Result!” Scorch had imagined Sev’s orgasm would be like squeezing blood from a stone. Not at all: it came as surely and naturally as his own. Scorch watched intently. Who knew their balls became one in the moment of triumph like that? As Sev’s practically disappeared into his taut body, Scorch had to think on his feet to save his brother’s freshly-laundered fatigues—or, on his knees and elbows, as the case was.

Thunking his other arm across his face, Sev lost the bet with a violent shudder—and without a sound, probably so he couldn’t say he’d enjoyed it. He squirted fully but cleanly onto the open spread of the ‘zine, thanks to Scorch’s management and direction. A long, messy line of cloudy white right across the cross-sectioned barrel of a Magna-Caster-100. Thank fuck for flimsi.

Shaking off Sev's hand, Scorch dropped the wilting cock. It was not attractive, and he prayed the ladies wouldn't think the same, warring with himself about whether he could succumb to the mortification of going limp in someone’s mouth. Maybe it was better to pull out and stripe them? It merited further research on Fixer’s ‘pad, just in case.

“Target softened. Should make things easier for you. Hope you took notes,” Scorch said, oddly transfixed by the description of the ‘Caster’s invisible quarrels he’d spotted on the page. He was growing itchy for a time-sensitive rummage—Scorch would wager his lower left nut that Delta could now go toe-to-toe with any of Draka’s squads for acquisition. With any luck, this mysterious upcoming op would net them some exotic toys.

He shifted his weight, feeling the need to move before that idea made him stiff again and everyone got the wrong impression.

“‘m not soft, di’kut,” Sev mumbled from underneath his arm.

Scorch patted his thigh. “Sure you’re not.”

“Getting soft will get us popped.”

Scorch was halfway off the bunk, but he stopped to squeeze Sev’s fucked-up head. “Hey, ner vod. Look at me—look at me,” he demanded. Sev let his arm fall behind his curls but he kept his gaze elsewhere. “No need to quote Sarge to me. Or go grey over stupid stuff like him.”

Stuff like distraction—a dirty word in Vau’s lexicon. What did they have to get distracted by, anyhow? Grainy holovids? They had enough room in their over-engineered skulls for a few of those, and if they ever got to touch the real thing, Scorch figured they wouldn’t lose their heads. Right? Civvies were so unexceptional, after all. Probably couldn’t tell a maranium blast from a benign xenon light sculpture. Brothers, especially your fellow commandos, were the only company worth keeping—even Vau said so, and Skirata had said Vau had wined and dined New Mando aristos and had bedded a fekkin’ princess in a past life.

Eventually, Sev’s sour mug puckered in something like thought. “If you fucked up my range scores, I’m going to piss in your pack.”

Scorch laughed, dumping his feet onto the floor and wandering in the direction of Boss’s ration bars. Mess was a whole two hours away and Scorch had a month’s eating to make up for. “Sev’ika, no one could fuck up your range scores. You just pregamed with Lasers & Blasters.”

The ‘zine smacked the back of Scorch’s head, wet side flat.

Yeah, we're still good, Scorch thought, as he finally manhandled his stroppy brother onto the floor. And we always will be.

(also on Ao3)

#republic commando #delta squad #repcomm #sev #scorch #clonecest #biscuit fic

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houseofvans · 5 years

Photo

WORKSHOP SHOUT OUT | SKATEISM | VANS US OPEN

It’s the last weekend of the Vans US Open of Surfing, but we’re not ready to go just yet!

We’ve still got some of our favorite workshops over the week to share –like the fun folks over at SKATEISM who hosted a zine making workshop at Van Doren Village. We caught up with Tobias from SKATEISM to find out what folks created, more about the zine making process, and what special gift they're giving out on this final weekend.

Introduce yourselves and tell us a little bit about Skateism. My name is Tobias Coughlin-Bogue, and I’m the online editor for SKATEISM. The magazine was founded by Christos “Moch” Simos and Oisin “Osh” Tammas in Athens. It began as just a little local Athens skate blog in 2012, but when Osh signed on they started doing more English-language posts and international coverage. Moch is one of the only out skaters in Greece, and at some point he and Osh realized that the stories they were most interested in telling centered around that… as well as some other areas of skateboarding they felt had been neglected like skate charity, global scenes, and women’s skateboarding. They also realized they wanted to make a magazine, as a place for underrepresented populations in skateboarding to see themselves in a proper print publication. Two years and four issues later, that’s exactly what they’ve done and we’re very proud to present Issue #4 as the Pride issue, focusing on the experiences of LGBTQ+ skaters.

Take us through your workshop and what were you doing with attendees at the Vans US Open? Essentially we facilitated everything to make a zine except shooting photos or binding the final copies. We had prints of images on hand for people to cut and glue onto cardstock, creating what’s called a “master” page. Masters are what zinemakers make photocopies of that they then bind together into their final zine. We started the workshop by talking a little bit about what zines are and why we think they’re so cool. We covered the zinemaking process, and then dived right into it.

What about zinemaking do you think is super fun and accessible? Zinemaking was a fundamental part of the pre-internet skate culture. While it isn’t exactly a necessity anymore, when it comes to communicating our own unique visions of skateboarding it’s still super fun to do. It forces you to take all the things that catch your eye at an event like the US Open, that might be a quick Insta story or something, and put them all down on a page together in a thoughtful way. Plus we like writing about skating, and zines incorporate a lot more text than some of the forms of storytelling we do on social media these days.

As far as being accessible, well zines were kind of the social media in skateboarding (and punk and queer scenes too) before social media existed. They were cheap to make and there was a broad network of people sharing and exchanging them around the country, all interested in the same kind of subcultural topics. If you had an idea you wanted to share, you could just paste the images and words that capture it best to some backing paper and get to photocopying. Then mail it out to a distro or drop it off at the skate shop and — boom — you’re a publisher.

Obviously a lot more work goes into what we do with something like SKATEISM, which takes hours and hours of reporting and editing and designing to make, but I at least got into the world of skate media via zines, and I have a huge soft spot for them. For what I do, and what a lot of people getting into media these days do, learning to publish fast and loose is actually really helpful, because that’s the pace digital media operates at.

What type of materials did you have on-hand for folks to work with? We shot a few photos of the first weekend of the event on Kodak Fun Savers (a very accessible and enjoyable way to source art for your zine!), and made photocopies of the best exposures. Plus, we had copies of some pages from past issues of SKATEISM… And of course all the scissors, glue, card stock, staplers, and other stuff folks needed to put together their own master pages. We encouraged attendees to supplement the images we’ve provided with writing and drawing that documents their own experience at the event!

Are there any rules to zinemaking? Have a good time doing it and don’t be hateful. That’s about it.

Any tips you’ve learned over the years for readers who may want to try creating a zine on their own? Just start doing it. To borrow a concept from Ira Glass, you know what you like to see on the page, so keep trying until the stuff you make starts to look like that. Don’t stress out too much if it doesn’t work out at first. Technically speaking, it’s really important to think in terms of spreads (two individual pages facing each other is one spread), and understand that a magazine is essentially a bunch of sheets of paper stacked up, stapled, and folded in half. Making sure that the individual pages in the spreads line up correctly can be tricky, so it might help to take a bunch of blank sheets of paper, bind them, write page numbers on them, then remove the staples and use them as a template for what to paste on each master page as you’re working.

What other zine techniques can people incorporate besides cutting and pasting? Doing it by hand is obviously the classic method, and will get you the most zine scene cred. But I am not ashamed to admit that, after two issues of cutting and pasting my first zine, I started scanning my photos and putting it all in InDesign. There is no shame in using layout software, and it will give you a whole new appreciation for how much thought and effort goes into every single print publication you ever read. It’s not just what they’re writing and which photos they’re publishing, but where on the page that stuff is, where it is in relation to the other stuff, what color and font things are, what angles they’re tilted at, what the background is, and so on... It’s definitely a different look and feel than handmade, but now that design software is so accessible, we think it’s every bit as DIY.

What did participants create and walk away with after the workshop? Well, besides hands on experience making zine master pages, we’re going to take our favorite masters and make a limited run of a compilation zine to give out on the final weekend of the event.

So we’d like anyone who enjoyed the workshop to come back and grab a copy of that! And failing that, just a better understand of the zinemaking, DIY ethos that skateboarding was built on. Skateboarders have always made their own spots, their own rules, and their own fun. That definitely applies to their media too.

Who are some of your favorite zine makers? In the areas we’re focused on, you can’t not mention Xem Skaters by the Swedish nonbinary skater Marie Dabbadie. They’ve been making a rad, unapologetically genderqueer zine for years, and have done loads to change the conversation around gender in skateboarding. Of course, The Skate Witches are killing it too. In terms of general zines that I like, I grew up volunteering at the Zine Archive and Publishing Project in Seattle, which had copies of really rare ‘90s skate zines like Pool Dust, so I tripped out on those a lot growing up. Not ‘cause I’ve ever actually skated a real pool, just because they had this really scrappy, no bullshit aesthetic and made skateboarding look so cool.

Recently, I was on a team for Thrasher’s “Zine Thing” Challenge in Seattle, which gave people two weeks to shoot a zine with Fun Savers; two weeks to do writing, editing, and layout; and then gave awards in different categories. Looking through the compilation book of all the entries still blows my mind. It’s a great reminder that skateboarding is full of cool, creative people, and everyone has a wildly different experience of it. I still can’t pick a favorite, although Leo Bañuelos' ’Skaters in Drag’ article is pretty legendary.

Three words that describe what Skateism is all about? The underground and overlooked. Sorry that's four!

Who or what were you most excited to check out at the Vans US Open? Personally, I’m excited to finally skate Cherry Park (nearby). But that’s just because my joints are falling apart and I can only skate low ledges. At the Open, I was excited to see all the pros skate the course, especially the women. Women’s skateboarding has been growing at an insane pace in the last few years, and the level of talent is out of control. When I started skating, I never thought I would see little girls back-smithing huge hubbas and female pros filming back-tail-kickflip-outs for their video parts, but here we are. The rate of progression is so exciting to me, and I feel like people will definitely be throwing down for the event.

FOLLOW SKATEISM | WEBSITE | INSTAGRAM

#Art #Vans #VANSUSOPEN #SKATEISM #ZINE #ZINE MAKING #WORKSHOP #HUNTINGTON BEACH #SKATE MAG #PRINTED MATTER #COLLAGE

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rotten-zucchinis · 7 years

Note

I'm that same anon that called the trials BS... thank you so much for your reply. I'm a college aged female and the idea of not drinking was frustrating, and the statistics seemed poor at the time. I was so desperate to be normal and not be ace and be able to drink that i put myself in a lot of risk. I did get the REMS information, but totally ignored it. I stopped using Addyi after two months and was left feeling defeated and broken. (1)

I’ve got so much regret for throwing myself into something i didn’t understand and maybe doing real damage. I’ve seen so little discussion of this drug in the ace community and the damage it can do, the damage I did. I told my doctors and therapists and parents i was broken and wanted a fix. I told my boyfriend it would fix our sex life. I told myself it would make me normal. I’ve never really vented about this before… thank you. You’re doing a good thing. (2)

I think that a lot of aces go through experiences of feeling broken and of desperately wanting to be normal. I know some people’s journeys about that are more or less linear while other people’s are not. And these things can take time, no matter the journey.

I sincerely hope that you’re in a better place now– or at least moving toward one. And I hope you find the space to talk about it if you need to.

There actually was a lot of ace discussion about Addyi / flibanserin in 2015 back when the FDA was making their final decision about approving it, and that went on for a while after it became available. Here are a couple discussions I had collected for my Q&A post which are therefore easy links for me to dig up ( cw for discussion of reparative therapy and sexual violence [ discussion1 ; discussion2 ; discussion3 ].

You can probably find some of more extensive discussions on tumblr by search tags with various permutations of words involved in “asexuality and flibanserin” “Addyi and asexuality” “hsdd and asexuality” etc. but just be advised some of the content– especially comments on posts– is pretty hostile. ( There was a lot of resistance from some people folks telling aces to stfu because it apparently didn’t affect us and would “obviously” never be prescribed to any aces… and other even less pleasant stuff. Clearly they are wrong, but that doesn’t make the hostility less harmful. )

I haven’t seen much about it lately, though @nextstepcake seems to be keeping up with news updates about flibanserin-related things.

If you are looking to talk about this stuff more extensively on an anonymous basis, you could certainly start a new anonymous blog or write a zine ( either online or on paper ).

If you were looking for a wider audience ( which might encourage a wider readership / response ), you could try submitting something to this month’s Carnival of Aces. The July 2017 topic is “Ace-ing it up offline” [ details ] and there are usually ways of submitting things anonymously. While talking about your struggle with aceness and flibanserin in the offline world probably isn’t what the host expected, it does seem eerily on-point to me with the description of “how you approach asexuality in physical, offline spaces”.

Or, I also edit a zine “f-ace-ing silence” about ace stuff people aren’t really talking ( enough ) about in ace spaces or that they feel alienated from or silenced about in ace spaces… I’m still putting together what will probably be the last issue, but there would certainly be space to write about that if you feel like it. And it could be anonymous. [ info here ] ( Deadline is still kind of up in the air.)

As an addendum, I would very much like to see service providers– especially healthcare workers– providing information about asexuality, and talking about aceness and about not wanting to have sex as valid possibilities that don’t need to be “cured”. I’d like them to be entirely challenging the idea of “normal” sexuality ( in ways that resist compulsory heterosexuality and compulsory sexuality ). And I’d like for them to be doing that before recommending any treatment aimed at increasing anyone’s sexual desire. ( And I think that would help a lot of people who aren’t ace too. )

They are at the forefront of this mess for so many people, and they have a lot of power– it often goes toward making things worse, but it has the capacity to be used to make things better. Your therapists and doctors could have told you that you weren’t broken. I hope one day those people will be telling people that.

A lot of us are working toward those changes, in various ways…

I am hopeful for the day when nobody else will again have to go through what you did.

#flibanserin and asexuality #addyi and asexuality #hsdd and asexuality #compulsory sexuality #questions #my ramblings in response

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long-arm-stapler · 4 years

Text

Episode 3: Ali Giordani

00:13

Maira: Maybe this has something to do with

[Alg laughs]

Maira: Tight, the recording volume was all the way down! And now it's just off the charts.

Alg: Now it's just off the charts.

Maira: I'm probably going to cut all of this out.

Alg: Oh, no.

Maira: Maybe I'll keep it. Okay, who know? Hello, and welcome to the third annual episode of Long Arm Stapler, a podcast about zines. I'm Maira.

Alg: I'm Ali, or Alg.

Maira: Today, I have Alg with me.

[both laugh]

Maira: Okay, I just worked an 8 hour shift and I'm very delirious, but this should be fun. Um, so we are two thirds of Queer Anxiety Babiez Distro. But Ali also does their own stuff, which we are going to talk about. Um, yeah. So, tell us a little about your experience with zines. And yourself I guess? Whatever you want to talk about.

Alg: Yeah! Um, my name is Ali, or Algae, or Alg, I have a lot of nicknames. I guess I first got into zines, like I remember I went to Portland to visit my cousin, and she took me to a zine library and I was like, "Whoa."

Maira: Was it at the IPRC?

Alg: Yeah it was at the IPRC.

Maira: Oh! I love the IPRC.

Alg: So it was so good and so exciting, because I was like, "Wait, you can publish things? And you don't have to go through publishing houses?" Because I find that to be very intimidating for no reason.

Maira: Oh no, it's intimidating.

Alg: Yeah, so, I- but I didn't really, I've actually found the first thing I ever got published in a zine, it was in Oatmeal Magazine, which I might read.

Maira: How long- so, you worked on Oatmeal for how long?

Alg: Um.

Maira: Was it you and Claire from the beginning?

Alg: No, Oatmeal was started by Claire Stringer and Trisha, I'm forgetting her last name right now. I think they started it in like 2011 or something. And then Trisha moved to North Carolina to start grad school, and I like timidly asked Claire if I could help edit it in 2015? And then we did it together for two years and it was such a good experience, and I found such a good artistic community through it, and I think during that time, you all had asked me to help run Queer Anxiety Babiez, and it was so kismet and great.

Maira: I really enjoyed your Twitter presence. Because we hadn't met-

Alg: We hadn't met, no.

Maira: You submitted to one of my zines and I think I followed you on the Queer Anxiety Babiez Twitter. and I thought, "They're funny, they should join us."

[Alg laughs]

Alg: I have a good Twitter presence.

Maira: Yeah, for sure. Kristen, the other member of Queer Anxiety Babiez, we were like, going through a mental list of people, because you know, we're so elite.

[both laugh]

Maira: And you know, people are just flocking to join our Distro.

[Alg laughing]: As they should, though.

Maira: And so it was like, it was a pretty short list, we just said, "Yo, let's get Ali in on this."

Alg: Yeah I remember I got that text that said, "Can we talk to you about something?" And I was like, "Oh my god, what did I do wrong?"

[Maira laughs]

Alg: Did I somehow just offend these two people, yeah, we didn't, I would say we met a couple of times and then we became friends when we went to Portland together for Portland Zine Fest-

Maira: Yeah, yeah!

Alg: That was like, a very sweaty zine fest.

Maira: God, it was so hot in there.

Alg: It was so hot, but I still had a good time.

Maira: Yeah, I got my Hunting for Weed hat, that I actually talked about at work today. And showed my coworker a picture from your Instagram.

Alg: Wow.

Maira: But yeah, we drove up to Portland Zine Fest last year?

Alg: Yeah, this past summer.

Maira: And it was a long drive."

[Alg laughs]

Maira: I'm a professional. As we sit on my living room floor, Ali walked into my apartment and I was listening to the Space Jam soundtrack because it was released on VHS on this day-

Alg: Oh.

Maira: In whatever year.

Alg: So you're celebrating.

Maira: Three eleven. Three eleven was an inside job.

Alg: Oh, three eleven.

Maira: Shout out to Poliana because I totally jacked that.

[Alg laughs]

Maira: Zines!

Alg: Zines, yeah. I guess I could talk more about that, my love of zines. I just did, I guess I can talk about "Advice to Our Younger Selves"-

Maira: Yeah!

Alg: That was a project I started, and I really want to make a second issue of it, so look out for submissions, but uh, I got sort of obsessed with the idea of taking myself out for a pancake breakfast. Like taking all my younger selves out for a pancake breakfast. Because I actually wrote about that in one of my pieces that I submitted to Oatmeal for the first time. And I was like, "That would be so cool, I would love to do that." And then I just created a zine about it. And everyone, like I got so many good submissions. [clears throat] The release night was really special to me, because it was a couple people's first time reading, which I love to facilitate, because everyone- it's really nerve-wracking to read in front of people.

Maira: Yes.

Alg: I remember the first time I did it my voice was just shaking the whole time, and my voice is always shaking, but it was-

Maira: Especially shaking.

Alg: Especially shaking, because it's like I write really personal things on my phone, and then to see them in print and read them out loud to people? It's such a different experience, but it's always very validating to me. My least favorite thing is when I read something about like, suicide or body image, and people come up to me and say, "That was so brave."

Maira: I, okay-

Alg: That's such a pet peeve of mine. I don't know.

Maira: I- like, it is but it shouldn't be brave. Like, it's like when if I wore a swimsuit people would be like, "Oh my god you're so brave"-

Alg: So body positive.

Maira: And it's like, no I'm just fat and wearing a swimsuit.

Alg: Exactly! No-

Maira: Leave me alone!

Alg: Yeah I mean, I know- now I usually preface things by saying like, "Please don't tell me I'm brave after reading this," because all of my piece are very personal but, I remember that happened a lot the night I read this really personal piece about sexual abuse. And I was like, "I can't handle this anymore. Please stop saying I'm brave." I don't want to be brave.

Maira: Put it on a t-shirt, like "Don't tell me I'm brave." Maybe I'll make buttons! We can sell them at the next zine fest.

Alg: Yes. Oh, I would actually, that's a good idea.

Maira: Yeah, dude, we can make one tonight. I've got my button maker. Let's fucking do it.

Alg: Let's just do it.

Maira: Not right now, because we might get distracted.

[Alg laughs]

Maira: And the button maker is a little noisy.

Alg: Oh my god.

Maira: Yeah, let's do it.

Alg: Zines. I love them. I wish I had something more profound to say about them.

Maira: What's your favorite zine? Or like how did you get into zines? Wait, you already told me.

Alg: Yeah, through Oatmeal but I think before that, I was just really into the idea of doing self-published work. And I was very intimidated, I would say, by the zine community, at first. Because I feel like it can be very intimidating when you go to a zine fest, and now that I'm on the other side of it - yeah, sometimes I'll talk to people, I like really try to be outgoing, but you've sort of been sitting there for 4 hours and it's just like, I hope I don't come off as short to people. Because that can be scary.

Maira: It's draining.

Alg: It's scary. It's draining.

Maira: Sitting on the other side of a table?

Alg: Yeah, it's surprisingly draining. So-

Maira: And then when old men just read your-

Alg: Oh my god.

Maira: Really personal work, and then look you in the eye afterward, and then expect you to talk to them about it. And I'm like, "This isn't written for you."

[Alg laughs]

Alg: Shout out to Kristen for doing the bike bros, "No Bike Bros" stuff, because they ahd to deal with all these bike bros coming up to them being like, "What is this about? Is this about me?" And it was like, yeah, it's about you. If you have to ask, it's about you.

[Maira laughs]

Alg: But yeah, I think I really, really got into zines after I went to- the first zine I was in was "Totemeal," which was an issue of Oatmeal, they're really big on the puns. We got big on the-

Maira: Was there a tote bag involved?

Alg: No, there wasn't, but it was like, "Totemeal: The Baggage Issue."

Maira: Oh, I get it.

Alg: Which I loved, yeah and then I went to that zine release and was like, "Wow there's a whole bunch of people who love writing and sharing," and Oatmeal really became a beautiful experience for me. To get real cornball, but, I think we might try to do another issue, but Claire is very busy with grad school. It's awesome, but I also really miss Oatmeal.

Maira: Yeah, Oatmeal was one of those things that I had always heard of it, and I always thought it was really cool, and then I like, was intimidated by Oatmeal? I'm pretty much intimidated by anyone whose zines are not like-

[Alg laughs]

Maira: I stole printer paper from work and I don't know, zines that look nice.

Alg: Yeah-

Maira: And Oatmeal looks really nice.

Alg: Yeah because Claire does an awesome... shout out to Claire Stringer.

Maira: Shout out to Claire.

Alg: Because she does the most beautiful illustrations for it, and yeah, it always looks very professional.

Maira: I've just got all this fucking handwriting all over mine, "Wah, I'm sad," but in cursive.

[Alg laughs]

Alg: I know, now that I have the Kinko's code, I'll never be printing at home ever.

Maira: Oh my god, shout out to the Kinko's code. Maybe not a shout out? I don't know.

Alg: Yeah, if anyone from Kinko's is listening-

[both]: Don't!

Maira: Don't listen to my podcast.

Alg: All the Kinko's people who subscribe to zine podcasts. Folks really have to deal with so many zine people.

Maira: Oh my god, yeah.

Alg: Yeah.

Maira: They're always like, I don't know, I went to a, I think it was twenty four hour FedEx when I was in LA when I was down there for some zine fest, with my friends Alan and Ari, and the people who worked there were just glaring at us the entire time. Because I feel like when you go for zine stuff, and I got glared at with um, Niko and Mando when we were prepping for Dear Diary. Um, because when you go for zine shit, you spread out-

Alg: Yeah!

Maira: All over, you take over every single self-service copier, and you put your shit everywhere, and you've probably got snacks.

[Alg laughs]

Maira: And you're trying not to make a mess but you might be. And you're stealing their staples-

Alg: Yeah.

Maira: To put in your own stapler. Again, if you work at FedEx, don't @ me.

Alg: Yeah, my thing is I always have to ask them to refill the paper, like-

Maira: Oh.

Alg: Also, zinesters, don't go to the Fedex in downtown Berkeley.

Maira: Oh no, that's the one we went to-

Alg: They're so rude. They're so rude there.

Maira: Yeah! They were- It closes at 8 o clock.

Alg: It closes at 8 o clock now?

Maira: Yeah, because they kicked us out at 7:59. And my friend, Niko, was very like, "No, I'm printing these copies, I paid for them, we're staying til they're done." And they were like, [high voice] "It's 7:59, you need to go."

Alg: Damn.

Maira: "You damn punks, get out of my store!"

[Alg laughs]

Maira: That's what it felt like.

Alg: No, totally.

Maira: So we went to the twenty four hour one in San Francisco, and we were there for fucking hours, and they were rude to us there, too. I think just hate zine people.

[Alg laughs]

Maira: It's always old people who just maybe you're just angry?

Alg: I mean, yeah if I had to work at a twenty four Kinko's, I think I'd be a little angry, too.

Maira: Yeah-

Alg: But also-

Maira: We're just trying to get by.

Alg: You're at work right now.

Maira: Yeah, you're at work, just be nice. I work customer service too, damn.

Alg: I know, I know.

Maira: I feel like I'm very polite when I go in, and I'm not like, [monster noise].

[Alg laughs]

Maira: That's actually the noise I make when I leave my house any time I interact with a human. But yeah like, I don't know, I feel like I'm pretty understanding of like, customer service shit because I've been in it for years. And it's just like, be nice.

Alg: Just be nice.

Maira: I'm sorry that people are mean to you all day.

Alg: At least be passive aggressive.

Maira: Yeah, oh my god, I would so much prefer passive aggressive.

Alg: Right? Like I was such a passive aggressive asshole when I worked service jobs.And then there's the occasion that I have no one to be passive aggressive to.

Maira: Yeah, you need that outlet.

[Alg laughs]

Maira: Maybe- are there passive aggressive zines?

Alg: Oh my god, there should be.

Maira: Just a zine full of passive aggressive notes.

Alg: Oh my god.

Maira: Like a collection.

Alg: There should be.

Maira: Oh my god, if you have received a passive aggressive note, email it to us.

Alg: Please scan it or take a pic.

Maira: Scan it, and email it to us and we'll make a fucking zine of passive aggressive notes.

Alg: I think that's actually-

Maira: The light bulb just went off.

Alg: I think that's what I actually really love about zines is you can just think of any random collection of stuff you want to do and be like, "Wait, I'm just going to make a zine of it."

Maira: Yup.

Alg: That's what I really love about it, because I mean some of them are obviously very nicely printed and very glossy and it'll look like perfectly composed photographs which, mad respect to those people because I am not like that at all. But I also love the ones that are like scribbly and just like, made in a hurry.

Maira: Yeah.

Alg: Yeah.

Maira: Um, are you working on anything right now?

Alg: Yeah! Um, I am doing a sort of complicated project with my older sister Sonia, it's going to be a "found objects" zine, so essentially what you do- we were originally going to have people mail all the objects to Sonia, but now it's just going to be like, "Give them to me or Sonia." It's like if you have a found object that you love, um, just give it to one of us and then you'll- we're going to do a huge exchange and you'll get a new found object from like an anonymous person, and then you write about it.

Maira: That's so tight. I feel like that's a lot of orchestration-

Alg: Yeah. It is.

Maira: So kudos to you for putting that on.

Alg: Yeah, we have a spreadsheet going, or we need to make a spreadsheet.

Maira: Oh cool, okay.

Alg: Yeah, because it's going to be complicated. Obviously, everyone is going to want their found objects back. But-

Maira: Yeah.

Alg: I really want to do that so look out for more Facebook posts about it because like I actually need to get on that.

Maira: Yeah, it will be on the Queer Anxiety Babiez Facebook page.

Alg: Mhm.

Maira: And I’ll post about it on Long Arm Stapler, too.

Alg: It’s like it, it’s hard to describe but it’s going to be a really fun project. I think I’m actually going to, because I want to do it in color, because I want to like scan the objects and have them next to other… Like take pictures of them if they’re like larger objects-

Maira: Ooh, yeah.

Alg: Yeah I just need to save up a little money to like, do the mailing costs. But, and then I’m working on another one with Mollie Underwood who um-

Maira: Irrelevant?

Alg: Yeah does Irrelevant Press, yeah and they’re awesome. But yeah we’re doing one that’s… we gave each other ten words slash concepts to write about and we’re just going to write about them and put them in a zine without saying whose is whose. But that means I can’t write anything that like really gives me away-

Maira: Yeah.

Alg: Which is hard because [laughs] all my shit is so personal, but-

Maira: Yeah.

Alg: Yeah! That’s what I’m working on right now and I’m really excited about both of those things because shit has been hard lately, and creativity can be difficult when you’re depressed. But it’s also-

Maira: Preaching to the fucking choir.

[Alg laughs]

Alg: But it’s also so important too, I don’t know, like I like zines that I’ve made because then I can look at them and be like, “Oh I made something and I did something,” and it’s very comforting.

Maira: It’s kind of like that scene in Parks and Rec where-

[Alg laughs]

Alg: Where Ben-

[Alg laughs]

Maira: Adam… Ben is like, “Could a depressed person make this?” and there’s this perfect little doll that looks like him, and it’s like, yeah that’s basically depression in a nutshell.

Alg: Yeah his requiem for a Tuesday. I actually made a meme about that once and it didn’t get as much attention as I wanted.

Maira: Your memes are good.

Alg: Yeah, it’s like me when I submit my writing [laughs] “Could a depressed person make this?”

Maira: That’s how I-

Alg: That’s what I do all the time.

Maira: I like that zines are tangible, because I can be like, “Damn, I was really depressed but I got twenty-four pages.” Like-

Alg: Mhm.

Maira: And I mean, they’re quarter sized, I’m not prolific…

[Alg laughs]

Alg: You’re pretty prolific.

Maira: Um, [exhales sharply] I just like holding them up and being like, “Yo, I was really depressed, but like, something I guess good came out of it?” You know?

Alg: Yeah! Yeah I really like, is it Manic Summer?

Maira: Manic Spring.

Alg: Manic Spring, I really like that one.

Maira: And then it was Manic Spring 2: This Time It’s Summer.

Alg: Yeah, yeah. [laughs] That was good.

Maira: I need to write more.

Alg: Always. I feel like I can only write when I’m distracted and like, trying to procrastinate on other projects.

Maira: Yeah!

Alg: Or on my smoke breaks. I’m going to try to quit smoking this year, so it will be very interesting.

[both laugh]

Maira: So… writing is… you’ll just have to take writing breaks instead of smoke breaks.

Alg: Yeah, maybe I’ll do… yeah. So that’s how I feel about zines!

Maira: Tight.

Alg: I love them, everyone should make them, and you should reach out to us.

Maira: Queer Anxiety Babiez with a “z!” I don’t know why I said it like that.

Alg: With a “z.”

Maira: With a “z”!

Alg: No, I mean, yeah I really like that when people like, give us their zines or talk about ideas they want to do and… or even just ask for help because it’s like, if you have the knowledge, you should just share it.

Maira: Yeah, we love sharing knowledge. Um, and I feel like we’re… so technically in October of 2017 we said we were going on hiatus, and like-

[Alg laughs]

Maira: I’ll say it, none of us have gotten our shit together-

Alg: No.

Maira: All of us are just dealing with shit so we’re still on hiatus? But, I don’t know. I want to like… I really miss working with y’all and making zines and like-

Alg: Yeah.

Maira: Crafting.

Alg: I want to have like-

Maira: This is the sappy gay portion of-

Alg: Oh my god yeah, thank you everyone who stuck around for it. The sappy gay-

Maira: The sappy gay portion.

Alg: My corny Italian ass is going to get real right now. No, I mean, yeah I think it’s really easy to self-isolate when you’re depressed and I’ve definitely been doing that because I’ve been massively grieving some losses and I just really want to honor myself and my art and make new things and my birthday is coming up so I really want to have like a Queer Anxiety Babiez reading night, where we just get a ton of people together in my backyard and just read in the afternoon.

Maira: That would be so cool!

Alg: And freak out all my neighbors in Temescal. That’s not until May, so I have a couple of months to figure it out and plan it out.

Maira: Yeah.

Alg: Yeah, because I love readings.

Maira: Yeah, readings are fun. They’re scary but they’re fun.

Alg: Yeah, I-

Maira: Most of the time when I read I like, cry-

Alg: Yeah.

Maira: Because it’s so… weird, hearing my own voice is weird.

Alg: Speaking into microphones is really fucking weird.

Maira: This is weird right now.

Alg: Yeah. Yeah I’m just looking at all your tattoos.

Maira: Oh!

Alg: I’m just never going to get bored of them.

Maira: Thank you! I got some new ones. I got the stapler.

Alg: I know, I really want a long arm stapler tattoo now.

Maira: I think everyone should get long arm stapler tattoos.

Alg: Just to prove to everyone that I’m gay.

Maira: Yeah.

Alg: I have a Cocteau Twins tattoo now and it’s like, “Are you gay and emo? I am!”

[Maira laughs]

Maira: “You think you’re gay and emo? Because uh, look what I’ve got.”

[Alg laughs]

Alg: Look what I’ve got on me.

Maira: Yeah, I literally have “queer and sad” on me.

[Alg laughs]

Alg: That one’s so good.

Maira: Um, based off a patch that Kristen made! That their partner Geraldine-

Alg: Shout out to Geraldine!

Maira: Shout out to Geraldine!

Alg: Shout out to all our buds.

Maira: Yeah! Hell yeah, friends are great. Um, our friend Geraldine, on her first try, carved this really amazing cursive rubber stamp that says, “queer and sad,” and I was like, “Damn, that’s really good.”

Alg: Mhm.

Maira: And so, I went home sick from work one day at my last job, and I don’t think I was really sick, I just didn’t want to be there.

[Alg laughs]

Alg: Capitalism.

Maira: Capitalism. That job fucking sucked.

[Alg laughs]

Maira: I was just sitting in bed, and I did cursive upside-down stick and poke…

Alg: Really? It looks so good.

Maira: Yeah, thank you. I’ve got some Queer Anxiety Babiez tattoos. Or, I have one. Of our old logo, but we need a new logo, because now we’ve got Ali.

Alg: Yep! I’m here.

Maira: I mean, we’ve had Ali, for like a while…

[both laugh]

Alg: Yeah.

Maira: Our business card is just like, these hedgehog stickers I found, I think?

[Alg laughs]

Alg: I mean, I like how our “official picture” is just the one you photoshopped me onto a hamburger. That’s how I want to be seen, as a cheeseburger all the time.

Maira: And I didn’t have any colored photos of myself that I liked, so it’s like everything’s in color except for me and it’s black and white and I’m just staring thoughtfully into the distance.

[Alg laughs]

Maira: Yeah, it’s great. I love it.

Alg: Good times. No, I’m hoping that we’ll all be able to get together soon and get off of our hiatus a little bit, but also the great thing about zines is you can make your own deadlines for them!

Maira: Hell yeah.

Alg: Like, if you have a zine fest coming up, you can be like, “Okay, I’ll get something done by then, but if not, it’s fine.”

Maira: Yeah. I’m… So, I’m going to Grid Zine Fest, I keep forgetting if it’s Grid City Zine Fest or Grid Zine Fest, but I think it’s Grid Zine Fest in Salt Lake City in a couple of weeks.

Alg: Oh yeah, I remember that!

Maira: And I’m like… So, yesterday was the official-official-official deadline for Zine of the Hill 2.

Alg: Mhm.

Maira: Because I’ve been like, remember I made the call for submissions during Portland Zine Symposium last year?

Alg: Yeah.

Maira: I was like, I was like, “You know I kind of want to do this,” and then I was just like, “Fuck it, I’m doing it.”

[Alg laughs]

Maira: And I started drawing Bill Dauterive and-

Alg: In that like 90-degree room.

Maira: Oh my god, it was so sweaty.

[Alg laughs]

Maira: I was just like, I just decided that it was going to happen, and so I like, started posting about it on the internet instead of talking to people about buying my work, I was like, “Got to focus.”

Alg: Got to focus.

Maira: Yeah, so this has been a labor of love that I’ve been working on since July of last year.

Alg: Mhm.

Maira: Um, and I was trying to have it for EBABZ, but you know-

Both: Shit happens.

[Alg laughs]

Maira: Um, so I’m going to have it ready, it’s going to premiere at Grid Zine Fest on April 14th, so if you live in Salt Lake City, lucky you! Or, if you live around there, and you’ll be at the fest… you don’t have to live in Salt Lake City.

Alg: Super fun.

Maira: Yeah, I’m so excited! I definitely got tickets either, well, no, my friend bought us plane tickets-

[Alg laughs]

Maira: Just kind of on a whim. Uh, and it was either before I started working weekends or after, and I was like, “Well, you bought a ticket in my name, I guess I’ve got to go!”

[Alg laughs]

Maira: Thanks, Niko!

Alg: Oh, also, Bay Area Queer Zine Fest!

Maira: Oh, yeah, hell yeah, let’s talk about that. Um, Bay Area Queer Zine Fest I feel like I’ve mentioned in every episode and I talk about it a lot and I finally put it on my resume-

Alg: It’s your baby, yeah.

Maira: It’s my baby!

Alg: You did so much work for it last year.

Maira: After-

Alg: Brag about it.

Maira: Okay, so I put on a zine fest with a couple of other people, and it was after my house burned down.

Alg: Mhm.

Maira: Last summer was a lot.

Alg: Yeah.

Maira: Um, but, Bay Area Queer Zine Fest is coming back this summer and it’s going to be great. I was going to say, “I think,” but no, it’s going to be great.

Alg: It’s going to be great, yeah.

Maira: Um, Alg is going to help organize.

Alg: Mhm.

Maira: We’ve got people interested already; we’re looking at venues.

Alg: Yeah.

Maira: It’s going to be tight, so look out for that.

Alg: And it’s going to be later in the summer this year than it was last summer.

Maira: Yeah!

Alg: Which is exciting because that means I’ll be able to go to the fest itself, because last year it was during one of the festivals I was working.

Maira: Yeah. I was like, I think I also just like started planning it way later than I did last year.

Alg: Yeah.

Maira: Because it comes up a lot on my Facebook memories and I’m just like, “Fuck, I was so much better prepared last year.”

Alg: Time is an illusion.

Maira: Time is fake.

[Alg laughs]

Maira: So is gender, everyone just eat trash, I think that’s a meme of a raccoon that I have on my phone somewhere. And so yeah, it’s going to be in August probably, or like late July.

Alg: Yeah, it’ll be good though, I’m excited for it already.

Maira: Yeah, if you’re queer and make zines, hit me up, or it’s at like… just look up Bay Area Queer Zine Fest, I’ve got my hands in so many fucking different pots right now.

Alg: Yeah.

Maira: That I’m like, “Just hit me up and I’ll direct it where it needs to go!”

[Alg laughs]

Maira: Um…

Alg: Yeah, no it’s going to be super fun.

Maira: I’m so excited, last year was so good.

Alg: I know, I had such… I hate the term “fomo” because, you know, basic.

[Maira laughs]

Alg: For neurotypical people. But, um, I had such bad fomo because I was like, “Damn.”

Maira: We made a moon!

Alg: Yeah. The photobooth…

Maira: The fest itself was really fun and really cool but the thing I was most proud of was we made this fucking 6-foot papier mache moon the night before the fest. And then I stuck a little trans flag in it because like, let’s be real, the moon is trans.

Alg: The moon is definitely trans.

Maira: And-

Alg: So is the ocean.

Maira: Yeah. And then we just like, hung it from the rafters or some shit.

[Alg laughs]

Maira: And yeah, we had a really cute photobooth, and I had the whole week before the fest off of work and I just like, holed up in my apartment and made props.

Alg: Y’all did so much great work for it, and I just heard from everyone that it was very special, so I think y’all should be very proud.

Maira: Shout out to everyone else who organized last year!

[Alg laughs]

Maira: And shout out to everyone who tabled. And to everyone who is organizing this year. Even if we don’t have a coherent- we’re working on it.

Alg: We have a doodle.

Maira: I think we have a doodle, yeah.

Alg: I filled out a doodle today.

Maira: We have a doodle, we’re official.

[Alg laughs]

Maira: It’s not times, it’s just days. But, you know, we’re getting there. We’ve got a doodle! So, we’re adults.

Alg: Yeah.

Maira: I also included like, people who only vaguely expressed interest, but I sent this really official sounding email from the Queer Zine Fest email and I was like, “Thank you for your interest in um, organizing this fest,” and my friend emailed me back and was like, “Yo, I didn’t sign up for this, but okay!”

[Alg laughs]

Alg: Sounds fake, but okay.

Maira: Yeah, so I texted them and was like, “I’m sorry, I thought you wanted to do it! Ahhh!” And they haven’t texted me back. But I don’t think they’re mad at me.

Alg: No, I don’t think they’re mad at you.

Maira: I hope not.

Alg: That’d be a weird thing to be mad about.

Maira: Yeah.

Alg: People have been mad at me about weirder things.

Maira: Yeah, all I did was send an email.

[Alg laughs]

Maira: And assume. And you know what happens when you assume. You’re usually wrong.

Alg: Yeah. You make an ass out of you and me.

Maira: Also, that.

Alg: Read that in Gossip Girl when I was like twelve. And I will never forget it.

[Maira laughs]

Maira: That’s my favorite thing to say, but lately I’ve just been being like, fucking with people and just like, “Ya wrong.”

[Alg laughs]

Maira: I think mostly just to piss off my coworkers.

Alg: My new thing is saying, “We’re all trying to live out loud.”

Maira: Ooh.

Alg: Because I used to say, “Live, laugh, love,” but I feel like, “Live out loud” is like-

Maira: My neighbors have a “Live, laugh, love” doormat. I’ll show it to you before you leave.

Alg: Oh, god. I’m going to take a picture of it, that’s so embarrassing.

Maira: Yeah, I hope they’re not sitting outside.

[both laugh]

Maira: Because sometimes they do!

Alg: Good for them, getting outside.

Maira: Yeah, it’s nighttime, go inside.

Alg: Yeah.

Maira: So, you’re working on something with your sister…

Alg: Yeah! My big sister, uh, Sonia, shout out to Sonia.

Maira: Shout out to Sonia. There’s so many shout outs on this podcast, and that’s what I’m here for.

Alg: Yeah, because like-

Maira: That’s really what this is about, is shouting people out.

Alg: Yeah, again, I’m going to be hell of gay and the best part about zines is community, and feeling, I was going to say like less of a freak, but that there are other people like you is really nice.

Maira: Yeah, everyone can be freaks together.

Alg: Yeah, we’re all freaks together, we all make weird art, and I’m excited for my favorite thing is when older people come to the zine fest.

Maira: Yeah!

Alg: I can’t wait until we’re all older and still running zine fests, it’s going to be so much fun.

Maira: I love just like, the range. I love when kids come to zine fests-

Alg: Yeah.

Maira: Even though sometimes it stresses me out because little kids stress me out, but I love when kids are like, “Oh, what is this! Oh!” and they’re so excited about it. And I wish that I had learned about zines that young-

Alg: Me too, yeah.

Maira: And I wish that I had known that like, creative output… I don’t know, I got like, discouraged.

Alg: Oh, totally.

Maira: From writing fiction when I was a kid. And it’s like, damn if I had just stuck with it I wouldn’t have had to wait until college to get into zines.

Alg: Mhm.

Maira: I wouldn’t have had to find them on the internet.

Alg: Yeah, totally.

Maira: But like, shout out to tumblr for-

Alg: Oh my god.

Maira: I want to say tumblr “back in the day,” but it was really like, 2011 and 2010, I feel like that’s when it was in its prime.

Alg: Definitely in its prime. Um-

Maira: I learned so much about zines and gender and myself and memes-

Alg: Yeah.

Maira: Which, I feel like those… three of those things really make up myself.

[Alg laughs]

Alg: Yeah, no, um, and also I’m a big fan of internet connections and I got into writing because of fanfiction.

Maira: Ooh, like fanfiction.net?

Alg: No, I used Livejournal.

Maira: Oh, Livejournal.

Alg: Cannot remember my password, and it’s a private account and I can’t remember the URL, but it was attached to my old AOL account, which is now deactivated, but I wrote like, so much fanfiction as a youth.

Maira: AOL?

[both laugh]

Alg: Yeah, it was what, like, 2005, 2006? Everyone had AOL, it was cool.

Maira: Oh, okay, I won’t make fun of you then. [Alg laughs] I am currently making fun of someone for using AOL in the year of our lord, 2018.

Alg: Um, my therapist uses Hotmail, which I think is really funny.

Maira: But yeah, Livejournal! Which also comes up every time I open my mouth, basically.

Alg: No, I mean, yeah I’m a big believer in connections through the internet. That’s how I made so many friends and stayed alive, I think.

Maira: Oh, yeah.

Alg: Through many dark ti- I remember I got on tumblr in 2009, 2010, which was like, my senior year of high school and I was going through my first depressive episode. And I wrote so much sad, emo poetry.

Maira: That makes me feel really old.

[Alg laughs]

Alg: You’re like, two years older than me?

Maira: Because I was like, on my way out of college?

Alg: Oh, really?

Maira: Well, 2010 I was in my junior year. I think just the juxtaposition of high school with me thinking yeah, I was living in San Francisco at the time. I don’t know.

[Alg laughs]

Maira: Time is fake! We have established this!

Alg: Yeah, the moon is trans.

Maira: If you take anything away from this podcast-

Alg: The moon is trans.

Maira: The moon is trans, and time is fake. And zines are great.

Alg; And I have a great Twitter presence.

Maira: And yeah.

Alg: That’s the only thing you need to know from this podcast.

Maira: Honestly? Um-

Alg: Yeah.

Maira: Yeah. But yeah so, Livejournal, sorry. Tangent.

Alg: Oh yeah, so that’s when I really got into writing and really started, because I remember I watched, oh my god, how real do I want to get? I watched a lot of porn growing up, and was like, “This is all so violent and scary.” And then like, I found Harry Potter fanfiction, and it was all so tender and sweet, and that’s when I was like, “Oh, okay.” And looking back, that’s probably when I started identifying less as like, a girl, because it was like, “Oh, gender can be weird, fun. And you can explore things.” But yeah, I wrote Hermione/Luna fanfiction.

Maira: Ooh.

Alg: So good, my little closeted self. On my family’s computer in my dad’s room. Ooh, good times.

[both laugh]

Maira: I just think back to being younger and had like, had I known about zines-

Alg: Mhm.

Maira: Or like, been exposed to that… Because like, my sister, my younger sister was really into fanfiction, but I never got into it.

Alg: Yeah.

Maira: But I was so into Livejournal, and I’m still friends with like a mill- not a million, people from Livejournal, I don’t have that many friends. But like, I’m still really close with a lot of people I met on Livejournal-

Alg: Yeah!

Maira: Um, and I wish that I had I known about zines or like-

[Alg clears their throat]

Maira: Gender variance? That like, would have been so helpful as a kid.

Alg: Yeah, of course.

Maira: So, we carry this zine called “genderqueer” through our distro, um, that was made by someone from Oakland. And honestly? If you want a copy, we’ll hook it up for free. Because like, I don’t know, I think that shit is really helpful for like, kids.

Alg: Yeah, we’ve definitely had teachers come up to our booth and buy it, or people who are like, “I want to give this to my parents.” It’s a very good, like-

Maira: Gender 101 primer.

Alg: Yeah. That’s usually what we say. And I think it’s so true because it’s hard to have those conversations, and like especially with parents. So-

Maira: I literally took one to my parents’ house, like two Christmases ago, left it half-tucked under a pile of whatever the fuck, and didn’t say anything.

[Alg laughs]

Maira: And just left their house. And I think I got a text like, two weeks later that was like, “Hey, you left your zine here.” And I was like, “It’s for you.”

Alg: “It’s for you.”

Maira: Um, because yeah those conversations are really hard to have. Like, I don’t know, zines are so informative, and you can learn so much from them. And basically, I just really wish I had zines like, earlier in life.

Alg: Yeah.

Maira: For sure.

Alg: Oh, totally. Like, I think it’s just nice to know there are so many paths to creativity. And not everything has to go through these really gross structures of publishing, and you don’t have to be really criticized for your art, that’s what I like about it, is that, because I took like, creative writing classes in college and it was always like, very intimidating and very demoralizing to get all these critiques on my writing. And I make zines now and everyone’s like, “Your writing’s great! You’re doing great,” and it’s lovely.

Maira: Yeah, dude that’s my experience with like, zines now and also my creative writing class that I’m taking. It’s very affirming because like, I don’t know, I like my writing, I feel like it fits a very specific need for me-

Alg: Your writing is great.

Maira: Thanks, but it’s also, I don’t know, I don’t enjoy writing poetry, but we just did a poetry section-

Alg: Hm, interesting.

Maira: In creative writing, and like, I don’t know, I didn’t know about prose poetry-

Alg: Yeah!

Maira: Because that’s what I prefer, I think. And it was really nice to get like, good feedback.

Alg: Mhm.

Maira: No one was ever like, “You suck at poetry, this doesn’t rhyme!”

[Alg laughs]

Maira: Because poetry doesn’t have to rhyme.

Alg: It doesn’t have to rhyme.

Maira: Apparently. No other English class ever told me that.

Alg: Nope.

Both: Um-

Maira: Except for that fucking William Carlos Williams poem, “This is Just to Say.” I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox, that one.

[Alg laughs]

Alg: Oh, that one!

Maira: That one turned into a meme!

Alg: Oh my god, love it.

Maira: There’s a really good one where it’s uh, Lou Bega’s “Mambo Number 5” but it’s that poem.

[Alg laughs]

Alg: Ugh, I fucking love memes.

Maira: I think I’ll post it. [indistinguishable] Comcast, it will be the cover image.

Alg: I need to also find because, well, the classic lyric from pop maven Katie Perry, the “Do you ever feel like a plastic bag?”

Maira: Uh huh.

Alg: Someone photoshopped that onto a Charles Bukowski book. But also, fuck Charles Bukowski. People reblogged it on tumblr and were like, “Wow, this is so beautiful and meaningful.” And it was from a Katie Perry song, which will forever be my favorite thing on the internet. Except for, “I am a dog, I am a communist, I like knives.”

Maira: Oh yeah! Hell yeah!

[Alg laughs]

Maira: That’s my cover photo right now.

Alg: So good.

[36:09 – 36:11 recording blip]

Maira: I am a dog, [laughs] I am a communist, I love knives.

Alg: Yeah, no, my cover photo is “Are you a boy or a girl,” and it’s a drawing of a skeleton-

Maira: That’s one of my favorite things on the internet.

Alg: Yeah, I’m thinking of getting it as a tattoo. It’s like a skeleton and two kids are asking it, “Are you a boy or a girl?” and the skeleton just replies, “I’m dead!”

Maira: That’s-

[Alg laughs]

Alg: I just really want it as a tattoo because it’s my gender. Like…

Maira: I’m dead!

Alg: I’m dead. We’re all dying.

Maira: We’re all dying. And nobody’s really a boy or girl unless you really… I guess that’s not true.

Alg: Unless you feel passionately about it.

Maira: Yeah. I’ve never felt passionately about being a gender, but if you feel passionate about being a boy or a girl, guess what?

Alg: You got it.

Maira: You got it. That’s you.

Alg: Be who you want to be.

Maira: Live your truth. Just do it.

Alg: Don’t be an asshole.

Maira: Yeah, don’t be an asshole.

Alg: Or if you are an asshole, be-

Maira: Less of an asshole?

Alg: An asshole to people who deserve it.

Maira: Yeah!

Alg: Yeah, I was in a Lyft and it was like, this guy from Boston who kept talking about Trump.

Maira: Ugh.

Alg: Because my Lyft had a pro-Trump sticker and-

Maira: Ugh.

Alg: I gave a bad review, which I never give Lyfts or Ubers bad reviews because like, their jobs are hard, but I was just like, nope, not today. You can’t have that. You can’t… I don’t know, it’s always such an odd experience getting aggressively misgendered on a car ride when you’re like, already in an uncomfortable situation and it’s like, “Oh yeah, she was saying this, and she was saying that.” And I was like, who… Sometimes, I-

Maira: Literally-

Both: Who is she!?

Alg: No literally, yeah. That’s actually [laughs] I’m going to make that into a meme.

Maira: Same!

Alg: No literally, who is she? It’s so true. But anyway, zines, prose, I love prose poetry.

Maira: I have a newfound love for prose poetry.

Alg: That was the first style I ever really wrote in, and it has a very dear place to my heart. Sometimes it can feel kind of alt-lit, which I-

Maira: Yeah.

Alg: Don’t really like. Or like, 2012-era like, fucking Spencer Madsen or whatever, whatever his name is.

Maira: Who?

Alg: Um, it’s this guy who was really good friends with Tao Lin, um and he made this thing that was like, he wrote terrible prose poetry, but then he also published an e-mail from his ex-girlfriend who was asking him not to write about her anymore. And then I was like, “I can’t do alt-lit shit anymore.”

Maira: Dude, like, I don’t know. That’s weird! Because I think about all the people that I write about, and they’re all obviously people from my past, but what if they found my stuff and were like, “Stop!”

[Alg laughs]

Maira: I don’t think any of them care enough?

Alg: Yeah, he was using, yeah, I just think in that situation, it wasn’t… I usually write about people who, you know, did me wrong-

Maira: Oh, yeah.

Alg: The situation was like she broke up with him because he was a loser. And then like-

Maira: Oh, and he was just salty about it?

Alg: Yeah, he was just salty about it. And like, did the thing that fucking Beat Generation did where they just, “Ugh, I hate my mom, I love sex, I smoked a cigarette, um.”

Maira: I was so into beat poetry in like, my junior year of high school.

Alg: Oh, me too.

Maira: And I feel like that opened a lot of doors for me, but I also regret it deeply.

[Maira laughs]

Alg: Interestingly enough, the only poem I have memorized is a Frank O’Hara poem, and he was kind of Beat Generation-y, but he was like, cute and gay. Shout out to him.

Maira: Yeah, I was just like, I read On the Road and was like, “Oh my god, it’s so romantic. Let me read,” like we had this class project um, in junior year of high school and it was like, read an autobiography or read a biography.

[Alg laughs]

Maira: And so, I chose a female beat poet, but it was still, thinking back it’s very upsetting.

Alg: Oh, yeah. Like I think back about all the terrible art that I loved-

Maira: So much internalized misogyny.

Alg: Oh my god, so much internalized misogyny. My favorite book used to be The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac.

Maira: Uh huh.

Alg: And that one is I’d say even worse than On the Road, and is romanticization slash, romanticization while simultaneously disregarding women. It’s like viewing them as total manic pixie dream girls-

Maira: The original.

Alg: The original, yeah, where those women, those poor women in those books like were probably very interesting, complex people. But-

Maira: But they got boiled down to like-

Alg: “We fucked in the bath, and then she said I was distant,” I don’t know, I can’t even do a good impersonation anymore.

Maira: Because it sucks so bad!

[Alg laughs]

Maira: I want to talk about something I’m working on.

Alg: Yeah!

Maira: I know you’re the guest, but-

Alg: No, I was going to ask, like-

Maira: Okay.

Alg: I know you’ve talked about why you love zines, but I want to know what you’re working on right now.

Maira: Yeah. Um, I… so I’ve been sober for three years now, no drinking, and it’s been really rough, like especially recently. And I’m pretty depressed right now, um, I wouldn’t say I’m like, super depressed, but it’s like, I don’t know, things are on the up-and-up for me.

Alg: Yeah.

Maira: And now they’re just kind of like, baseline. So, I feel like, I don’t know, yeah. Things aren’t great, so they feel terrible. Even though like, outwardly I feel like things are still going pretty well for me-

Alg: Yeah.

Maira: My stupid brain chemistry is like, “Ha ha! Not today!”

Alg: I just want to feel numb, not depressed, but just sort of numb to everything.

Maira: Yeah! I just don’t really feel anything right now, so last night I started like, crying, and I was like, “I guess I should write about sobriety and depression.” Um, so I started writing a zine last night that I’m going to try to finish in the next few days. Um, yeah.

Alg: Yeah.

Maira: And try to have at Grid Zine Fest. And then I’m also working on Zine of the Hill 2, which, I got a lot of really good submissions that I’m very excited about.

Alg: Nice! Y’all should have a release party for that.

Maira: Okay, so, Niko was like, “Have it at my house, and we can…”

Both: Barbeque, yeah.

Maira: But…

Alg: I’m excited to just cosplay as Dale and chain smoke and talk about the government and conspiracies.

Maira: Oh my god. I’m going to do my Bobby costume again probably.

[Alg laughs]

Maira: I have green shorts, but the green shorts I was wearing that Halloween had this like, zipper pocket across the butt.

Alg: Sure.

Maira: And they didn’t have any other pockets.

Alg: Makes sense.

Maira: So, like, I’d stick my phone in it, and my best friend would be like, “You look like you took a shit in your pants.”

[Alg laughs]

Maira: And I was just really drunk because I drank at the time, and was just like, “I’m Bobby Hill!”

[Alg laughs]

Maira: Which, you know, doesn’t justify anything.

Alg: No, but-

Maira: I was just like, look, I found these shorts, they fit me perfectly, they have a butt pocket, like…

Alg: Yeah.

Maira: An amazing butt pocket. I don’t know.

Alg: We’re all living in the darkest timeline right now, is my theory, so those shorts seem to fit well with the darkest timeline, only having a pocket in the back.

Maira: Yeah.

Alg: Yeah, like that makes no sense.

Maira: They were really stretchy. Like that nice, stretchy denim.

Alg: I love that. I like, ripped my only pair of jeans that aren’t mom jeans. I guess dad jeans. Gender is fake. Um, unless you don’t want it to be. Um, and I’m really disappointed, and now I have to find more work pants [laughs]. And that’s my really dumb, 9-5 work story of the day.

Maira: Oh, man, I’m so happy at my current job, I can wear shorts and tights.

Alg: Mhm.

Maira: Like it’s 2012 again.

Alg: Ugh, I know, it’s an iconic look.

Maira: It’s just cut up t-shirts, shorts, and tights. And they can be ripped tights.

Alg: Ooh, nice.

Maira: Which like, most of my tights are ripped because I’m clumsy as hell.

Alg: And tights rip so easily.

Maira: Oh, my god! They do!

Alg: Well, I’m glad you brought that up, because I have a pair of ripped tights that I wore last night, and someone commented on them, and it was really strange.

Maira: In like a negative way?

Alg: It was like, “Wow, I haven’t seen anyone wearing ripped tights in a really long time.” What a weird thing to say to somebody!

Maira: Yeah.

Alg: Like, I’m also bad at conversations at parties, but like-

Maira: Not that bad! That’s like, another level of bad.

[Alg laughs]

Alg: That’s just like, how to make people uncomfortable at parties. Yeah.

Maira: Which is usually my forte.

[Alg laughs]

Maira: Honestly. Actually, I don’t really even, I don’t go to parties. But if I do go to parties, I don’t talk to anyone.

Alg: Yeah.

Maira: I just like, talk to the people I came with. I don’t know-

Alg: Yeah.

Maira: I don’t make friends. I write sins, not tragedies, okay.

Alg: Yeah, the only difference between martyrdom and suicide is press coverage.

Maira: I’m shrugging right now.

Alg: Yeah.

Maira: I know none of you can see this, but I’m shrugging.

Alg: I’m excited to listen to this.

[Maira laughs]

Alg: It’s very meta to talk about me listening to this but, I love podcasts. So, I’m very excited to be here, and I think it’s a cool project and-

Maira: Thanks!

Alg: Maira is great.

Maira: Thanks! Um-

Alg: Um, I wanted to, is it okay if I read?

Maira: Oh my god, yeah.

Alg: This is like, the first thing I ever had published in a real magazine, it was in the Totemeal issue which I referenced earlier, but I have a terrible short-term memory, and I’m assuming a lot of our listeners do as well. Um, okay, so this is called, “Reminders.” Abandonment is necessary for self-invention. It’s okay to be ugly. Touch a frozen orange to your neck and look at the objects around you. The abuse you have experienced does not negate the harm you have done to others. This isn’t supposed to make you happy; it’s supposed to help you survive. Take note of places that are not sites of violence. The exciting and the terrifying exist in an imperfect dichotomy. Drink water, take your drugs, talk to at least four people each day, stretch, breathe, and check your email. Destroy and rebuild, and destroy and rebuild, and destroy and rebuild, and destroy and rebuild. That’s it.

[snapping sounds]

Maira: This is me snapping.

Alg: That’s me snapping at myself.

Maira: Something you do after poems.

Alg: Yeah.

Maira: Um-

Alg: Yeah I remember I was just so scared, and then um, I don’t know. I just really like reading my old writing and being like, “Wow! That was like, three years ago.”

Maira: That was fucking great.

Alg: Thank you.

Maira: Um, I like, getting ready for Dear Diary Zine Fest re-looked at… no-

Alg: Revisited?

Maira: Revisited! Yes!

Alg: We’re writers.

Maira: Academia.

[Alg laughs]

Maira: I can’t even say that right. Uh, yeah I was revisiting a lot of my old work because I feel like, back then I was just like, really raw.

Alg: Mhm.

Maira: And I was putting everything I was feeling onto paper-

Alg: Yeah.

Maira: And it reminded me of… it was like, 2014.

Alg: Yeah.

Maira: And I was just like, I don’t know, it’s cool to revisit your old stuff and just be like, “Damn.” And we talked about this earlier-

Alg: Yeah.

Maira: It’s just like having something tangible like, “Yes, I was depressed, but look at what I got,” and-

Alg: Oh, yeah.

Maira: It reminded me of the first time I ever read.

Alg: Mhm.

Maira: Um, so, I have this really, really, really personal zine called “This Goddamn Body,” I haven’t read it in a really long time because whenever I read it, it makes me cry.

Alg: Oh, yeah totally.

Maira: Because it’s about mental illness, trauma, and bodies.

Alg: Mhm.

Maira: But at the time, I was like, really, really passionate about it. And I always tell people it’s my favorite thing I’ve ever written.

Alg: Mhm.

Maira: But I’m afraid to revisit it for that reason.

Alg: Oh, of course, yeah.

Maira: But I was reading a piece, a poem I wrote in that zine and I just like, I couldn’t… I finished it but I just started sobbing halfway through because it’s, it’s about like sexual abuse and being a kid and gender and like-

Alg: Yeah, how scary being a kid is, honestly. It’s a scary time.

Maira: Yeah, just all the fun, fucked up shit that comes with, I don’t know, being a weird kid. Reading is hard [heavily sighs]. Poetry is hard. But it all feels good… most of the time it feels good in the end.

Alg: I think so.

Maira: It feels very like, satisfying.

Alg: I always get an adrenaline rush after I read.

Maira: Yeah!

Alg: People… because I like making things sad and funny, I feel like is my style. Um, because life I think is very sad and also very funny. It’s like a really depressing sitcom, in my opinion, is how I view my life.

Maira: Yeah.

Alg: Um, and, I always like when people laugh when they’re supposed to laugh. But, and then go like, “Hmm,” when they’re supposed to, it’s just really… I don’t know, I love reading and I love hearing other people read. And I need to organize something soon because I really… it’s one of my favorite things.

Maira: Yeah, that reading at E.M. Wolfman was really fun.

Alg: Yeah! I don’t… I’ll have to send you, I actually posted in like a comment, because that piece was my favorite one I’ve ever written. It was a piece about, it was right after my grandma passed away, and I wrote a whole piece about her and childhood and it was really wonderful to read. And I got a lot of good feedback from it, and… good times.

Maira: I don’t want to read anything this episode. Just because-

Alg: Yeah!

Maira: I think I want to start reading my own work on this podcast.

Alg: You should! I would love that. I would love to hear that.

Maira: Yeah.

Alg: Everyone should read all their work always.

Maira: Yeah.

Alg: [singsong] Because zines are about sharing.

Maira: Yay, communism.

[Alg laughs]

Maira: That’s where that went because I’m a dog and I love knives.

Alg: I am a dog and I love knives.

Maira: Do you have anything else you want to plug? Or talk about? Or-

Alg: Um, yeah! Just in general, look out for, I mean I think I use Instagram the most out of any social media app, because it’s like, public – I don’t have a private Instagram account for some reason.

Maira: Do you want me to like, link your Instagram?

Alg: Oh my god, that would be cool.

Maira: Okay.

Alg: @velvetdad, very memorable username.

Maira: Quality content.

Alg: Quality content.

Maira: The content that I am personally here for.

Alg: Just memes and videos of me dancing with very personal captions. Even though like, a lot of my coworkers follow me now. But I’m like, whatever!

Maira: Dude, yeah my, so, all of my coworkers- most of my coworkers follow me, and two of my partner’s aunts follow me.

Alg: Oh my god.

Maira: And I’ll post like, like lately I’ve been posting like, “I’m very depressed, please hang out with me,” and like, Ben’s aunts are like, “Oh, I’m so sorry.” Like it’s so sweet and I’m just like, “ohhh.”

[Alg laughs]

Maira: And then I’m like, why do I post this on the internet?! And then I’m like, wait the internet is weirdly my safe space.

Alg: Oh my god, it totally is.

Maira: Shit-posting my emotions.

Alg: My thing is I can’t be stoned and go on Instagram. I’ll be scrolling through my own account like, “What the fuck am I doing?”

Maira: Oh, I do the opposite.

Alg: Really? [laughs]

Maira: Okay, sometimes, even when I’m not stoned, I’ll like, scroll through my own internet presence, and I’ll just be like, “Damn, I would be friends with me.”

Alg: Yeah.

Maira: “I post some good shit.” And I’ll just look over at my partner and he’ll be like, shaking his head but also like, “Yeah, I mean, okay, we’re dating so I obviously like what you post.”

[Alg laughs]

Alg: Yeah. My thing is I’ll go through and be like, “Why can’t I just date myself?” I mean, you can, whatever, single positivity. But literally, I wish I just had a clone so I could date myself.

Maira: Yeah.

Alg: That’d be so much fun, we’d make such a good pairing, have like, the erotic nightmare of having sex with yourself. I think about that all the time. This is Ali.

[Maira laughs]

Maira: Thanks for listening, everybody! We’re going to end on that note.

[Alg laughs]

Alg: No!

Maira: That’s a strong finish.

Alg: That’s a strong finish. We stuck the landing, we did it.

Maira: Ten! I’m holding up a placard that says 10.

Alg: Um, thanks for listening, thanks for having me.

Maira: Yeah, thanks for coming over.

Alg: This was really fun. And not as scary as I thought.

Maira: Yay!

[both snapping]

Maira: Snaps! Snaps all around. Alright, thank you for listening again to Long Arm Stapler! If you have any questions, shoot me an email: [email protected]. Hit me up on Facebook, whatever, I’m always on the internet.

Alg: Mhm.

Maira: Um, yeah, bye!

[51:52 outro music begins]

Alg: Bye!

#podcast #podcast transcript #Full Transcript #transcript #queer #long arm stapler #ali giordani

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chloehenderson · 5 years

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2019 was a mixed year for me. Fantastic ups, and melancholic lows; it really was the year of ups and downs, dips and peaks.

My 2019 started with an epic high! I graduated from the Birmingham School of Jewellery with my Masters degree with Distinction in Jewellery & Related Products.

In January, sadness hit the Henderson household when the best dog in the world voyaged over the rainbow bridge. Bailey you were the goodest boy and we miss you so much.

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In March, we had a German adventure, and I achieved my first ever international exhibition! The Masters class of 2019 from the Birmingham School of Jewellery showed Oscillations Exhibition as part of Munich Jewellery Week 2019 and I was lucky enough to be able to screen my film The Chimera Artist to an international audience. I am so proud of this achievement, and while I have not pursued my Chimera work as much as I wanted this year, I am feeling re-invigorated by the new decade, and I am excited to put all the exciting plans that I have had stewing away in my mind for the past year into action… stay tuned…

The Chimera Artist also made an outing to the Out of the Blue Makers Marque later on in the year. It was here that more of the story was established, and The Filmmaker started to get active in his search for The Artist again… I think 2020 will see a lot more goopy blue infections…

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I tabled at my first ever zine fair this year! and then did it again a month later! I am getting more and more into zine culture, and the DIY art of making and documenting ideas, so it was really nice to take my little zines out into the world and meet like-minded folks at the Solid Gone Zine Fair and the Duplicate Publishing Fair. I hope to immerse myself more into the little world of the zine-makers in 2020, and will hopefully make a bunch of new zines too!!

Poor mental health got in my way a lot this year, and it has only been towards the latter months of 2019 that I have started to actually try and deal with my own head instead of just ignoring things and muddling through life. I am plagued by both depression and anxiety, and when I look around at the state of our poor little planet, I feel it is only going to get worse… so, of course, I need to address my issues. I think my biggest issue is the thing I have titled The Overwhelm. I am easily overwhelmed, and knowing that fact really irritates me. I don’t want to be one of those people that is scared of everything, and never does anything because they just can’t even. I let things get on top of me so much that I can’t move, and I get nothing done… and I hate it. Giving my issue a name, and recognising what it is is the first step in trying to battle The Overwhelm. I know it will never really go away, but I just need to figure out my best fighting moves to achieve enough maximum damage points to make it bugger off for long enough for me to actually make art!! Saying all that, the art I did make this year, I am super proud of! I even managed to land a super fancy corporate commission for Leith Theatre, which was really great to work on. It’s hard to make it out there in the world as an artist, so little steps like this really are glorious achievements, and I need to make sure I don’t let the anxiety tell me otherwise. Here are some of my favourite illustrations from this year…

A new year. A new decade. What will 2020 bring?

The first move in my battle against The Overwhelm was to write out a list of Goals to achieve in my 2020…

Keep on top of my mental health enough to achieve my goals and make more art! Seems simple enough when you add it to a list! but I think this will be the most tricky goal to achieve on my list. I am starting off my January with a positive mental attitude, and it is helping me to be productive… I can only hope that will continue throughout the year, and I can figure out strategies to conquer the dark spaces in my mind. Good vibes are appreciated!!!

Learn to Drive You know that anxiety thing I mentioned earlier?! Umm… yeah… well driving gives me LOADS OF ANXIETY. I actually hate it so much. However, I realise the importance of it to achieving some of my other goals, and it is therefore high up on my list. I am learning to drive in an automatic vehicle, because I never want to own a car that is not electric.

Move into our own Home In 2019, I moved back from Birmingham into my parent’s house with Stuart. We are attempting to establish ourselves with jobs in Edinburgh, and save up our wages, with the hopes to move into our own place in the not too distant future. I love my parents, and I am so grateful that they are letting us live here… but the two of us being couped up in my bedroom with all of our stuff is not overly conducive to art!

Achieve my first goal on Patreon I am $83 (£63.39) away from hitting my first goal on Patreon, but more importantly than the money, I want to get my Patreon community move involved in my process and I want to try and achieve a greater sense of engagement with my audience. If you like this blog, and can spare a few pennies, become my Patron for even more art love from me, including behind the scenes, sneak peeks, early access, gifts, and more!

Participate in 3 Markets/Fairs/Cons/etc. Pesky social anxiety stops me from getting out into the real world as often as I want to, but I really love attending events with my work. If you know of any cool art events coming up in the Edinburgh area (or I will happily travel a little further afield), please get in touch!

Get my work into an Exhibition The struggle is real. It is hard to get lucky breaks in the art world if you are an unknown artist… but all I can do is keep applying! Every month in my Patreon updates I talk about what opportunities I have a applied to, as well as my progress with them, with you can check out for less than the price of a cuppa brew each month when you become a Patron!

Create 25 finished Illustrations Ideally, I would like to create a lot more than that! but I have gone for a goal of two finished illustrations every month to give myself a fighting chance against The Overwhelm, but hopefully you will see a lot more doodling from me this year!

Make art everyday #ArtADay I am starting 2020 by setting myself this creative challenge of making art everyday. From full-scale illustrations, to a sketchbook doodle, or a cut and paste collage, to a little poem, or an abstract painting, to a ring made from glitter… and everything in between!! I want to get into the good habit of daily art practice, even if it is just a tiny sketch. I often fall prey to the big bad feeling of The Overwhelm, and it stops me from making art completely… so, I hope this challenge will help me to beat The Overwhelm, and get back to my most creative self! It’s 2020!! I need to starting living my best art life!!! Instagram Stories are an ideal place for me to document this, so do pop over to Instagram and hit the follow button to keep up with my progress on this challenge!

Make 3 Zines As I mentioned above, I am super excited by the zine world! and I want immerse myself more into zine culture… and the best way to do this is to make more zines!

Make Chimera film No.002 The Chimera Artist is coming. That is all. Stay tuned…

Create 25 new Jewellery Pieces They may be Chimera pieces, they may be little pieces that I have had in my head for a while, they may be a collection, the may be one-offs… but I have not made nearly enough jewellery this past decade, and I am going to rectify that starting this year!! A year of making is very much on the agenda!!!

Achieve 5,000 Blog Views + 1,000 total followers on Instagram and Twitter + 50 total YouTube Subscribers I try not to get too bothered my the social media numbers, but there are a few milestones I have really wanted to hit for a while, so I am going to make the push to get my numbers up this year! Help me out by following me on Instagram and Twitter and subscribing to my videos on YouTube, and if you haven’t already, please hit the follow button on the side of this blog to up my viewership here! All my love to you for this!!!

Make 25 YouTube Videos If I manage to achieve my goal of 25 finished illustrations, then this goal should be easy! as all I have to do is film, edit, and post my doodles in timelapse form!!

Phew!!! That was a lot of reflecting, and a lot of looking into the future! Thank you if you read all of that, and got here! I reckon you deserve a cuppa… go and pop the kettle on! I have a lot to look forward to this coming year, and I am really excited to take this positive energy forward and getting making art! I hope you enjoying journeying on this art adventure with me, and I will leave you with a few of my festive photos from this Hollyday season as my final little reflection…

Much arty love, and a Happy New Year to you and yours 💙💙💙 Chloe out.

A new year. A new decade. What will 2020 bring? 2019 was a mixed year for me. Fantastic ups, and melancholic lows; it really was the year of ups and downs, dips and peaks.

#2019 #2020 #achievements #anxiety #art #artist #christmas #depression #failure #family #goals #inspiration #mental health #new year #reflections #success

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theseventhhex · 7 years

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Amy O Interview

Amy O

Photo by Anna Powell Teeter

On her latest album, ‘Elastic’, Amy O snaps and pops exuberantly, zigzagging constantly with a sense of joy that is undeniably infectious. With songwriting becoming a way of life for Amy very early on, her motivation for this music-making project is very much substantial, relatable, fresh, and meaningful. ‘Elastic’ ultimately is an album about learning to live in your own inescapable skin—a challenge that defines not just Amy O’s life, but everybody’s existence. Identifying that universal truth has shaped her into an exciting and insightful artist, one who is no longer making music for herself but is working to command whatever stage she steps onto… We talk to Amy O about layering harmonies, playing the ukulele and downtime…

TSH: How do you feel your songwriting has evolved in the lead-up to ‘Elastic’?

Amy O: When I first started writing songs I was often afraid to jinx it, so I was wary about editing myself too heavily. Now I take a lot longer to work on a song and push myself harder if there’s anything like a word, a structural issue, or a melodic line that feels off to me. I also write with a full band in mind, whereas previously I used to just think about just my vocals and guitar.

TSH: Did you feel compelled with ‘Elastic’ to delve into one’s ability to adapt and heal from difficult circumstances?

Amy O: I would say I felt compelled to dive into my own ability to adapt and heal from difficult circumstances. I hope by exploring that in my music, it can affect other people positively.

TSH: What other natural compulsions do you feel came into play with this body of work?

Amy O: In the studio, I left room for some unknowns and ended up adding a lot more vocal parts than I’d initially envisioned on some of the songs. Layering harmonies is generally a natural compulsion for me.

TSH: Can you tell us more about the studio dynamic this time around and what type of atmosphere you were surrounded by?

Amy O: The dynamic in the studio was both relaxed and focused. My band and I worked a lot in the weeks leading up to our session so we were really tight when the time came. For a lot of the songs we recorded bass, guitar, keys and drums at the same time to give it that live feel. The studio where we recorded (Russian Recording in Bloomington, Indiana) has a really homey atmosphere. During our downtime, we drank a lot of tea and coffee and pet the cats that live there.

TSH: Do you feel being in a more refined studio allowed your music to become more fuller and expansive?

Amy O: Definitely! Also, playing as a 5 piece contributed a lot to having a fuller sound.

TSH: What does a track like ‘Soft Skin’ imply to you?

Amy O: ‘Soft Skin’ is an exploration of the reality of what we do with our bodies day to day after dealing with trauma, the conflict of how things should be versus how they actually are.

TSH: Also, what are the origins of ‘Spacey Feeling’?

Amy O: It’s about the mythical, almost magical memory that forms around a loved one when they die or leave your life. I had a lot of trouble writing ‘Spacey Feeling’, it took on many forms and didn’t make itself clear to me until I started working on it with the band.

TSH: How beneficial was the ukulele in helping you shape your overall playing?

Amy O: Ukulele was really helpful for me in my early songwriting career. It gave me the freedom to explore melodic ideas that I didn’t know how to make a reality with guitar. I don’t play it anymore, but I’m grateful to it for opening up my writing style.

TSH: How vital can it be when forming new music to step outside of your comfort zone to allow for new perspectives?

Amy O: I think it’s really important to listen to lots of different kinds of music and go to a variety of shows when you’re in the process of working on new songs. You can learn so much from observing other people - even if it’s just what isn’t working for you.

TSH: When you encounter the more difficult days, what helps you get through?

Amy O: Perspective, gratitude and self-care.

TSH: Is it a very tangible feeling that you get when you feel like you have the inspiration to write a new song?

Amy O: Yes! It’s one of my favourite feelings. I write a lot of songs without having that initial burst of inspiration, but when I do get it, I feel really lucky.

TSH: Does listening to Elliott Smith take you back to specific high school memories?

Amy O: Absolutely, Elliott Smith was one of my favourite musicians in middle and high school. His song ‘Say Yes’ was one of the first songs I ever attempted to learn on guitar.

TSH: Tell us more about your experiences at the Rhino’s Youth Center where you work and setup creative afterschool programs for teenagers…

Amy O: At my job at Rhino’s Youth Center, I make zines with teenagers and do screen-printing, mural-making and other creative projects with them. The last few zines we made were about neurodivergence, resources for LGBTQ+ folks, food and music. I’ve been there for about 4 years and feel lucky to be able to work with such amazing young people.

TSH: Outside of music, what makes you smile and feel content mostly?

Amy O: I love cooking, hiking and reading a really good book.

TSH: Finally, what is your ethos with future musical ventures?

Amy O: My ethos with music is to continue to grow my technical skills, to share my inner world creatively and genuinely, and to be part of an artistic community.

Amy O - “Lavender Night”

Elastic

#Interview #Amy O

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sliceannarbor · 8 years

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Manjula Martin

Author/Editor Managing Editor, Zoetrope: All Story San Francisco, California all-story.com manjulamartin.com

Photo by Ted Weinstein

Manjula is our 10th subject in a new SLICE Special Guest Series, which introduces our readers to extraordinary, creative people – wherever we may find them.

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Manjula Martin serves as managing editor of Zoetrope: All-Story, a quarterly art and literary publication published by Francis Ford Coppola. In this role, she manages production, circulation, and design as one of only two staff members. Manjula is the editor of the anthology Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living (Simon & Schuster, January 2017), and the founder of Who Pays Writers?, a crowdsourced list of freelance writing rates. She was previously the co-founder of Scratch magazine, an online journal about writers and money. Manjula’s writing has appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review, Pacific Standard, Aeon, Hazlitt, The Millions, and The Billfold, and she wrote The Dough, a series about creative professionals and money, for The Toast. Her experience as a writer and editor includes work in magazine and book publishing, copywriting, and communications work with nonprofit, educational, and activist organizations. Manjula earned a bachelor’s degree from Mills College as an adult re-entry student. When she’s not working, you can find her listening to records, writing letters, cooking, or being generally introverted. Manjula lives with her partner in the Mission District of San Francisco.

FAVORITES

Book: Ha, sorry, no way. It is physically and spiritually impossible for me to name one favorite book. However, I can tell you what I’m reading right now: Zadie Smith’s Swing Time and Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories.

Destination: Where the redwoods meet the ocean.

Film: One of my many favorite films is Billy Wilder’s The Apartment (1960). Also, pretty much anything involving Bogart, Bacall, Astaire, Rogers, Hepburn, Grant, and Hitchcock.

Motto: Your heart is a muscle the size of your fist; keep loving, keep fighting.

THE QUERY

Where were you born?

I was born in a trailer in the Santa Cruz mountains, in California. My dad delivered me.

What were some of the passions and pastimes of your earlier years?

I read a lot, and re-read a lot. I was also very passionate about theater and dance, as well as costume design. And I watched a lot of classic films. When I think back now, I recall a lot of very pleasant moments spent in solitude as a child, spending time in these fictional worlds and feeling very enchanted by them.

How did you begin to realize your intrigue with the craft of writing?

All my parents are very avid readers and writers. My dad taught me to love poetry; my stepmom taught me to read novels voraciously. And for most of my childhood mom taught writing at the local university. From a young age I helped her correct grammatical errors on her students’ papers. And my childhood interest in theater manifested as an obsession with Shakespeare and Greek myths, which are pretty natural jumping-off points for an interest in literature.

Why does this form of artistic expression suit you?

It’s much easier than painting.

How did you get your start in the business of writing?

I’ve had a pretty varied career as a writer and editor. I always wrote – letters, zines, stories – but started working in publishing at the age of 20 when I dropped out of college and moved to New York. I worked at a magazine, as the receptionist, and then eventually became an assistant editor and wrote and reported stories. I’ve worked variously as a copywriter, an editor, and a journalist, on staff and freelance.

All of that led me to start Who Pays Writers in 2012. From there I started Scratch, an online journal, which closed after a couple years but inspired my new book, also called Scratch, which is an anthology of essays and interviews with writers about making a living. At the time I sold the book, I was working as a freelance copywriter.

During the process of bringing Scratch to publication, I took a full-time job as managing editor at Zoetrope: All-Story, where I now work. So I’ve had a lot of different sides of the “business” part of writing, including the parts where there’s no money or the parts where you’re trying to balance creative writing with “day job” writing.

What led to your coming on board with Zoetrope: All Story in 2016?

I had been an unpaid intern at the magazine many years ago, and the editor and I stayed in touch.

How would you describe the guiding philosophy/mission of the publication?

All-Story is a quarterly, print-only magazine of art and short fiction published by Francis Ford Coppola. Francis believes that short fiction and film are two art forms that are most akin, as both are consumed by the audience in a single sitting. We publish original short fiction and reprints of classic stories that were made into films. For each edition of the magazine we invite a prominent artist—visual artists, designers, filmmakers, musicians, architects— to serve as guest designer and contribute art to the edition and direct its overall aesthetic. We’ve won three National Magazine Awards for fiction, as well as numerous design accolades.

Do you have a process for selecting the authors you’ll feature?

Quality is our foremost standard. We accept unsolicited submissions (snail-mail only) as well as solicited submissions from literary agents and authors. The way we choose stories for each issue is an organic mix of quality, taste, fit within the particular issue, and je ne sais quoi.

How do you go about selecting the art/visuals for each issue?

My colleague, Michael Ray, and I think of the most exciting artists working in any genre, and then we ask them! Our long list of previous guest designers — including folks like Tom Waits, William Eggleston, John Baldessari, Agnes Varda, Michael Stipe, Kara Walker, Marjane Satrapi, Guillermo del Toro, Chip Kidd, Gus Van Sant, David Bowie, Lou Reed, PJ Harvey, Barry McGee, Mary Ellen Mark— serves as our calling card. I spend a lot of time emailing people’s assistants!

Which author/poet/other have you most enjoyed working with, and why?

Well, I’ve only been at the magazine for a year thus far, so I can’t really speak to “favorites.” But I am a huge fan of Elizabeth McCracken’s work, and we have a tremendous new story by her in the Winter 2016/17 issue.

As far as the design process goes, which is my domain as managing editor, I most enjoy the moment when the guest designer realizes we really mean it when we say they have complete creative freedom and control (within the realm of our budget and physics, of course). A lot of our contributors are very successful, but they are often limited by various constraints in their work, and the idea of complete creative freedom in a 2D visual medium can often re-ignite a certain type of enthusiasm in our artists.

How would you describe your creative process as you begin a project?

The creative process with Scratch was a bit unique, because it’s an anthology. I’m in it as a writer but I also edited it, which involved a lot of so-called “non-creative” work – assigning and editing essays, conducting interviews, curating the order and content of the book, and corresponding with thirty different contributors over the course of a couple years. But I think at its heart the creative process behind it is the same as when I’m working on my novel or writing a personal essay – there’s a delicate balance between form and function, between language and meaning, and it’s the job of the writer – and the editor – to find that balance and hone it until it’s uniquely sharp.

For me, beginnings come easy. It’s what comes after the beginning that’s most difficult, but also most rewarding.

Is there a project/period along the way that has presented an important learning curve?

Everything about Scratch has been a learning curve. It’s a lesson in saying “sure,” and seeing what evolves, but also in learning my own boundaries in terms of bandwidth and resources. I took this project from a flippant idea to a tumblr to a digital magazine to a book, and along the way I’ve learned not only the process of making all those things, but the importance of making what you want to and can make, not just what other people say you should be making or wish you would make.

How has your aesthetic/approach evolved over the years?

I’ve actually always had a pretty firm aesthetic. I’ve always known what I like, even if it didn’t follow any clear external logic. I’m a perfectionist, but I’m also a pragmatist. That comes through in my writing, my editing work, and in things like my style and my sense of décor. In terms of my writing work, my approach has always been dictated by time – work versus work, writing versus writing for work, etc.

What themes/topics interest you most?

I do a lot of different kinds of writing and editing but I would say a commonality in most of my work is that I’m deeply curious about the relationship between people, culture, and place. I also revel in work that complicates questions rather than simplifies them – I think the most interesting writing doesn’t have, or find, easy answers. Maybe that’s why I’m drawn to the topic of writers and money. It’s complicated!

Do you have an artistic resource that you turn to?

Poetry.

Is there an author living today that you admire most?

I have always admired Rebecca Solnit’s career. Rebecca writes about whatever she wants to write about—Eadweard Muybridge, or the art of walking, or activism in post-Katrina New Orleans, for example. The connective thread of her career is her curiosity, illuminated via a skillful blend of memoir and research. Rebecca’s career is, essentially, herself. And I think that is a career to aspire to.

In the realm of fiction, with the Neopolitan novels Elena Ferrante has written an epic masterpiece that’s also a master class in balancing the minute personal and the larger political lives of humans. She’s the real deal.

What is it about the craft of writing that keeps you interested and intrigued?

Writing is communication at its most beautiful.

Do you have a favorite fictional character?

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about Madame Defarge in Tale of Two Cities. I wouldn’t say she’s a favorite, but she’s fascinating and relevant right about now.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

No one will save you, and you’re going to be all right.

From where do you draw inspiration?

From life.

What three things can’t you live without?

As the Magnetic Fields once sang, “Love, music, wine, and revolution.” Oh wait, that’s four.

Is there a book or film that has changed you?

I actually don’t think books and films change people, per se. I think they make us more aware of our true selves, or give us a greater understanding of who we are and our places in the world. That understanding, in turn, can change lives. That said, I did get a pixie haircut and move to Paris at age 19 because I was really, really into Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless.

Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?

My advice is: Don’t pay too much attention to advice for aspiring authors. I mean, it can be great to hear what works and doesn’t work for other writers, and obviously I’m a big fan of sharing information, otherwise I wouldn’t have made Scratch and Who Pays Writers. But ultimately no one else will have the career you have, or do the work you do. So stop wasting time reading advice and just go to work.

#zoetrope: all story #journal #francis ford coppola #author #manjulamartin

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