#beyond the boundary zine

[beyondtheboundaryzine]

OUT NOW!!

It's here! Beyond the Boundary: a Speculative Fiction OFMD Zine.

The zine is available to download on Ao3

And on itch.io

So sit back, relax, and let our wonderful writers and artists take you somewhere… fantastic.

[vintagerpg]

This is the Vaults of Vaarn deluxe edition (2022), which collects material originally published in the first three Vaults of Vaarn zines by Leo Hunt. It is essentially a setting toolkit, but one that operates withing a set of clear aesthetic boundaries.

Vaarn is a post-human world — people are still around, but, they aren’t really recognizable as human anymore. The line between organics and machines is blurry. Ruined arcologies dot the desert. Petty gods and magic compete with science. It’s a very strange, very exciting world defined primarily through random tables that generate the things you find and the folks you encounter in the wasteland. The only conventionally firm details in the book accompany the character types (True-Kin, Synths, Newbeasts, Mycomorphs and Cacogen), some description of the city Gnomon and the handful of example adventure sites. Beyond those borders, Vaarn is infinitely mutable.

The game’s influences are quite focused, to the point that I feel like the era of the game is meant to be considered a late point on a timeline that includes the events of the Dune novels and Wolfe’s New Sun novels — there are archlictors and massive AI gods (all dead, thankfully) and other features that seem like direct references. There’s stuff firmly outside those novels too (what NPCs we encounter feel peculiarly Gormenghast-y; they are also accompanied by advice on how to run them as friends or villains, which is a nice feature).

Vaarn was conceived for Knave, but there is not a ton of system specific material here; you can honestly adapt it to just about any D&D-derived system, lite or otherwise. And you should! Vaarn is the most exciting world to come out of indie RPGs since the Ultraviolet Grasslands.

[uwmspeccoll]

It's Feral Friday!

If Special Collections were compared to a National Park- a thoughtfully curated, accessible experience of the wilderness of the natural world- where would its edges lie? What would be considered off the beaten path, how would its boundaries be defined, and in what ways would the landscape beyond those boundaries inspire our imagination and broaden our conceptions of the world and our communicative capacities?

That’s the realm of pluralistic inquiry explored by Feral Fridays, a new weekly post where we’ll feature items from our collection like zines, experimental book arts, independently produced poetry and other unruly materials that exist at the margins of publishing and literary traditions.

Let’s get Feral!   

--Ana, Special Collections Graduate Intern

Images:

That Way Issue 1, Spring 2021

That Way Issue 1, Spring 2021, pp. 23-24 (excerpt from interview w/Erma Fiend)

Thing Issue no. 3, Summer 1990

Re: Creation by Nikki Giovanni, Broadside Press, 1970

Aquarius Rising by Ben Fama, Ugly Duckling Presse, 2010

excerpt from Ugly Duckling Issue 6, October 2003

Lynch by Inch: an interview to Ali Khalid Abdullah 2003

Blue Horses for Navajo Women by Nia Francisco, Greenfield Review Press, 1988

Mildred Pierce Issue 3, April 2009

The Match! Number 97, Winter 2001-2002

[theresattrpgforthat]

THEME: System-Neutral Settings (Fantasy Edition)

Sometimes what you need, rather than a new ruleset, is a setting that makes your system sing. These are a series of system-neutral settings that you can pick up, borrow from, or use wholesale in a game of your choice! 

All of these settings would work very well in fantasy or fantasy-like games.

Into the Riverlands, by Ostrichmonkey Games.

The Riverlands rests at the heart of the world. A great current of life and movement that winds and weaves its way through the mountains and valleys of the central continent. The Riverlands stretch from the south to the far north, acting as the lifeblood of continental travel and trade.

The Riverlands are a region of vibrancy and mystery. A colorful mosaic of peoples that call it home, and the strange twilight forest that surrounds it. Explore the bustling and vibrant City of Bridges, the mysterious and primeval Forest, the distant and crumbling Empire, and even further afield.

The backgrounds of The Riverlands have interesting themes, from the mercurial Trickster-Poet to the strange Forest Dweller, to the patient Marsh Apiarist. Picking up a game that is very light on rules, such as Tunnel Goons or Into the Odd, would allow you to slot in a character that fits inside the Riverlands without having to carry as much of the dungeon-delving as traditional OSR games. 

Ultraviolet Grasslands and the Black City, by WTF Studio.

The Ultraviolet Grasslands and the Black City is a tabletop role-playing game book, half setting, half adventure, and half epic trip; inspired by psychedelic heavy metal, the Dying Earth genre, and classic Oregon Trail games. It leads a group of ‘heroes’ into the depths of a vast and mythic steppe filled with the detritus of time and space and fuzzy riffs.

This game is designed with a d20 game in mind but much of the setting feels very fitting for an OSR-style regardless of the dice you use. There are 200 pages of interesting locations with encounter tables and plot seeds. Some of the locations in this city include The Porcelain Citadel, The Steppe of the Lime Nomads, The Glass Bridge and The Forest of Meat. The world is weird and resists the tones of high fantasy by populating the world with insectoids, fungal colonies, strange drugs and ancient machines. If you want acid fantasy that mixes the in a bit of weird science or post-apocalypse, this is the setting for you. The designer of this setting also has a free player guide, as well as a creature generator supplement. 

Into the Wyrd and Wild, by Feral Indie Studio.

Beyond the reach of roads, past the scope of mortals there is a darkened place. A shadowed tree-line where no-one dares cross and whose boundaries go undisturbed.

This is not the woods of peaceful fey and beast, but the dark and twisted children’s tale that kept you full of terror. It is a world of fear, madness, and bloodshed; ruled over by the uncaring watch of ancient trees. There is no bargaining with the primal forces that rule the uncivilized world, as you have nothing they could ever want.

The woods do not care for you. Never forget that.

Another dark fantasy setting, Into the Wyrd and Wild includes more than a list of beasts and NPCs for the characters to encounter. It includes a way to think about money in the setting, how to emphasize exhaustion, and various other rules that demonstrate the danger and violence to be found inside the Wilds. One of my favourite sections of the book is about the Court of Broken Branches, a faction built out of abandoned children, stitched up with silver stitches and led by a magical Queen. An incredibly evocative setting and a top-tier piece of work in terms of design.

Guidebook to the Viridian Maw, by Orbis Tertius Press.

This 24-page PDF of the digest-sized zine contains fodder for a wilderness sandbox campaign in the Viridian Maw: an overgrown meteor crater, mutated and reshaped by fungal influence. To get a sense of it, check out the free download for the one-page version of the setting.

Everything is system neutral & stats agnostic, though the material is written with genre assumptions leaning toward D&D/OSR games (but usable for games like Apocalypse World or Dungeon World, too).

If you want a game that sinks your players deep into a thick, dangerous forest, this is a great option for you. There are tons of great descriptions of beasts and plants that your characters can encounter, including Driftnettle, a floating kelp-like creature that prey on the unaware and asleep, and the Sporehorn elk, a symbiotic partnership between an elk and a colony of fungi. Much of the encounters you’ll find in this zine will prompt changes to characters that make them weirder, so it might be a good idea to let your players know about that before playing in this setting.

This game works for dark fantasy, but I’ve also used it as inspiration for a Changeling: the Lost game as well!

Into the Sea Woods, by Diwata Ng Manila. 

The Sea-Woods is the way it has always been: just beyond the village, across a wall that bars the rest of the roots from coming forward. No one ever knew why that wall was built. Was it meant to keep the Woods out or keep the Village in? One thing's for sure, things changed when a tree stood up from its spot and punched a part of the wall until it collapsed. It then promptly walked deeper into the woods, clearing through a small path.

Never heard of a tree walking before? Ah, then you really must be new here, aren't you?

This is a small collection of micro-settings that are whimsical and evocative. This is more of a friendly forest than a scary one - great for setting a Studio-Ghibli kind of tone. There’s a bit of a formatting issue with the current version, but the ideas present in each setting give a great amount of inspiration for making locations that feel safe and yet unique for your play group. My favourite is the Cabin, a house that always has a warm cup of tea and a freshly made bed, despite having no visible caretaker. Rumour has it the Keeper only appears at night, and if she does, she’ll bet her heart on a game of poker. I've also used inspiration from this setting in a Changeling game before, to great success!

The Gardens of Ynn, by Dying Stylishly Games.

The Gardens of Ynn is a point-crawl adventure set in an ever-shifting extradimensional garden. Each expodition generates its route as it explores, resulting in new vistas being unlocked with every visit. It's a big garden full of whimsy and delight and surreal perils. 

The Gardens of Ynn are a constantly re-arranging set of gardens that act as a magical maze. As a point-crawl adventure, this is a great option for a point-crawl game, but it might also be an interesting piece of inspiration for a horror game of some kind. This book begins with some basic lore about the Gardens themselves, followed by a d20 table that adds how deep you are in the Gardens to determine which area you happen upon next. Each area has a description, and many areas have additional roll tables to determine what can be found, or what kinds of encounters you might find within.

[duckprintspress]

November Created Works Round-Up

Duck Prints Press’s monthly “created works round-ups” are our opportunity to spotlight some of the amazing work that people working with us have done that ISN’T linked to their work with Duck Prints Press. We include fanworks, outside publications, and anything else that creators feel like sharing with y’all. Inclusion is voluntary and includes anything that they decided “hey, I want to put this on the created work’s round-up!”

Check out what they’ve shared with us this month…

Bring me to life by Era JM Couts / @erajmcouts

art || arcane || no ships || general audiences || no major warnings apply || complete

summary: Jinx falling. Or floating. Or diving. Or just being Jinx.

TUMBLR - AO3

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Orlesian Sex Magic by Andi Rigby / @andi-rigby

fiction || dragon age: the veilguard || m/m || rook/emmrich || teen & up || no major warnings apply || 1,998 || complete

summary: Rook is distracted while planning for a dragon hunt with Taash and Harding. Hilarity ensues as the entire team conspires to razz their leader about what’s in Orlais, and whether or not it’s safe to use magic during sex.

other tags: Canon compliant, no spoilers, party banter

AO3

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sometimes i need to hear your voice by dizzydragonfly

fiction || spider-man: spider-verse (sony animated movies) || f/f || margo kess/charlotte webber || general audiences || no major warnings apply || 1,500 || complete

summary: Charlie was in her French class when she heard it.

It wasn't anything close by; She snapped her head back to look around the room, but she was the only one who noticed it.

It was unmistakable, though, and after all these months she's been Sun Spider, Charlie knew how to recognize the sound of a gunshot. She tried to hold herself together long enough to raise her hand and wait for Mrs. Gibbons to call on her.

other tags: Triple Drabble Sequence, Slice of Life, Character Study, Spider-Man Interacting with New Yorkers, (but it's Sun Spider), Slight Violence, Canon Disabled Character, High School, Chronic Illness, Canon Queer Character, Mobility Aids, Physical Disability

AO3

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it's the only way i can escape by dizzydragonfly

fiction || spider-man: spider-verse (sony animated movies) || no ships || charlotte webber (marvel) || general audiences || no major warnings apply || 200 || complete

summary: You close your eyes, and you listen to the world around you. It comes in waves, in pulses. It's thousands of heartbeats pounding out of sync. It's overlapping conversations, footsteps, babies screaming. It's three different radio stations, and motorcycles passing each other on the street.

-

having super-senses isn't always a good time

other tags: Double Drabble, POV Second Person, Sensory Overload, Super Hearing, Superpowers, Character Study, No Dialogue, Podfic Available

AO3

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Prejudice and Prejudice by Mitchan / @mitchancita

fiction || one piece || m/m || roronoa zoro/sanji || teen & up || no major warnings apply || 21,616 || complete

summary: It is very convenient for Mr. Judge Vinsmoke to arrange a same-sex union for his son Sanji with the son of a wealthy merchant who can buy his ailing business in good terms. Plagued with quarrels and misunderstandings, the marriage seems doomed to remain cold forever... until a flood, a ball, and a few murder attempts bring them together.

other tags: Regency(ish) AU, Marriage before Love, CW Kidnapping and references to the slave trade

AO3

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Beyond the Boundary - an Our Flag Means Death zine by Swev

fiction || our flag means death || multiple || explicit || creator choses not to use warnings || 70 || complete

other tags: Listed per fic in the zine

AO3 - LINK

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Phase Shift by Terra P. Waters / @terrapwaters

fiction || original work || platonic or familial, f/m, f/nb || teen & up || creator choses not to use warnings || 102,000 || complete

summary: Sixteen-year-old Oliver Mitchell was always a loner, content to spend his time taking care of his younger sister and hard-working mother. When his sister is the first in a string of impossible disappearances, he reluctantly teams up with his secret crush, Lizzy—and her boyfriend—to solve this mystery and bring their loved ones home. As more people are taken from their small Minnesota town, they realize these kidnappings are the first wave of an invasion of telepathic alien creatures. As they keep investigating, Oliver comes to realize that the kidnappings aren't completely random—and he's the aliens' next target.

other tags: science fiction, scifi, horror, teenage characters, friendship, aliens, alien invasion

LINK

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Noodles by ShannonXL / @shamwowxl

video || original work || no ships || mature || no major warnings apply || 00:01:51 || complete

summary: A video excerpt from my digital social life (Discord). Discussion topics this week included: Nap pods, invasions of privacy, Slow Horses, and noodles.

other tags: discussions of sex

YOUTUBE

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Frames for the New Unicorn - a collaborative animation project by Swev / @unicornframes

video || our flag means death || no ships || general audiences || no major warnings apply || 00:02:23 || complete

summary: A collaborative recreation of a beloved scene. Each frame has been created by an artist.

TUMBLR - INSTAGRAM - TWITTER - YOUTUBE - LINK

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[crimeronan]

Hey! Once the writing commissions thingie is up, what sorts of *uses* would you be okay with people doing with the prose? I assume we can post it online with attribution, but could we e.g. include it in an anthology or zine--again, obviously with credit? (This would be one where contributors aren't otherwise paid.) Totally understand if you're not comfortable with that, just want to now where the boundaries are… And under what name would you want to be credited?

hello, this is a great question!!

i just looked up fiverr's policy to be sure, & my first instinct was correct -- fiverr operates the same way that other sites i've ghostwritten for do, in that the client has all rights to the finished product in perpetuity, unless the freelancer specifies otherwise. this means that you as the client have the right to publish and distribute the writing as you see fit, or even to sign your name to it if you want to.

i don't plan to over-complicate this. if you want to include the piece in an anthology or zine, you're welcome to! just make sure it's compliant with the rules for that anthology/zine. ie: if you're not allowed to have a ghostwriter or someone who didn't individually apply participate, don't send it

but it's up to you to follow the rules there. once the work is delivered, what you do with it isn't up to me!

if you DO want to credit me when you publish/distribute the work, my byline is either Kitkat MacEachern or Katherine MacEachern. both are names that i write under. you're also welcome to link out to my ao3 (elliptical) in lieu of a byline if that works better. but like i said, it's not legally necessary or even expected.

like, none of this is required. basically, once i've written the thing for you, you own the thing & i'm not going to infringe on your rights to own/distribute the thing. the MOST i might do is add a note in my gig description specifying that i may keep samples for my professional portfolio. beyond that, once the transaction is done, you don't need to worry about me in the future!

thank you for asking <3

[ratssmpzine]

Here are our General Guidelines for zine submissions, including general information on requirements and expected conduct, general guides for what content will be permitted in the zine, and an overview of the setting and how you can use it!

Plain text version under the cut!

General Guidelines

Participants can submit up to three works, whether that be visual art or writing. There are no limits on collaborations, however, which we will elaborate on in our Collaboration Guidelines.

The deadline for at least one of your works is December 1st. Extensions can be provided if needed, however, and second and third works can be submitted up to January 1st, which is the final possible day to submit anything to the zine. 

An email will be required so that the zine may send out acceptance and rejection emails once applications have been reviewed.

All Zine correspondence will be taking place through Discord, meaning a discord account will be required in order to participate. This also means that participants must be at least 13 years old.

Participants will be expected to behave respectfully and professionally with the other members of the zine. Misconduct or harassment will be grounds for removal.

Every two weeks the mods will run a check-in in a private thread of the discord where you will either be asked to send your potential ideas, final ideas, or a draft/wip. You won't be required to have made progress every single check-in, but we will still ask to see the draft for each so we can track how things are going.

If your work violates our content guidelines, you will be asked to alter it. However, there is ample time for brainstorming and the mods will always be available to workshop ideas with you, so we hope that everyone will be able to find something they are passionate about creating within the boundaries of the zine!

Content Guidelines

The tone of this Zine aims to be similar to that of the SMP itself, so angst or dark themes should be limited to the sort of stuff that made it into players pov! Sad or melancholy stuff is totally fine, but gore, death, and nsfw content won’t be accepted!

Swearing is permitted and if a joke would have made it into the smp, it’s probably fair game for the zine. While certain POVs of Rats were strictly family friendly, the zine content doesn’t have to adhere to those standards exactly.

Shipping and romance are allowed in accordance with canon and creators' boundaries. This means, for example, that BekEl, SniffIver, Oliver/Glowsquid, or Oli/Butler content would be permitted because all those ships were canon to the smp and ships involving Martyn, Scott, Will, Oli, or Jimmy would be totally fine as those creators have been very welcoming towards shipping content despite not entering canonical relationships. However, romantic content involving creators who have a stated boundary against shipping would not be permitted and we will be erring on the side of caution for creators who don’t have an obvious stance. 

Content of the human characters and the cameos are allowed and in fact encouraged! However, characters should be canon to Rats and players from SMPs mentioned in Rats who do not physically appear shouldn’t be the focus. For example, a piece focusing on Sneeg could mention or depict the other members of the Origins SMP, but the piece should take place in the Rats universe and those characters shouldn’t physically appear, as they were never in the mansion. Characters like Owen’s mother or Apo’s grandmother or Acho’s prior owner can similarly be referenced and included in a flashback sort of way, but because they were never in the mansion, they shouldn’t be a main focus. OCs shouldn’t be included in any pieces, though there may be a place beyond your main submission to include them. The general rule of thumb is that this zine aims to focus on the attic rats’ time at the mansion, so if a character was never there or their time never overlapped with the main rats, they should only be relevant in the minds of the characters that were actually present.

Setting Guide

All content of this zine should take place within the mansion, however that content doesn’t necessarily need to be perfectly canon compliant. You are allowed (and are in fact encouraged!) to make up events or storylines that never happened within the SMP to base your content on. Anything that happened at the mansion is fair game to use in your fanworks— ghosts, magic, portals (within reason!), and potions are all free to go wild with! While the zine will be organized into chapters that divide things chronologically based on certain canon landmarks, you should more so be considering it as something like Phineas and Ferb, where everything technically occurs within a set period of time, but anything could theoretically occur in that time period and the specifics of it don’t really matter. We encourage you to be creative with what you do! Write that ballroom event that never happened! Tell a story about Jimmy learning safety magic from the older sister! Draw Martyn starting a minor fire trying to work the oven! So long as it takes place after the rats arrive and before they leave, anything goes.

[puckpocketed]

Apartment 1, End Times, and Haunted Focaccia <- if nothing else PLEASE ask me about this one

Well now i GOTTA know!!! Please tell me about this it sounds soooo interesting (Tapedsleeves on main)

@jules-in-deep @dwisp thank u for asking too !!! <3 OUGH. OH. OKAY. People who have followed the Deep Cuts of puckpocketed have seen me reference 'The Manifesto' in my drafts - it's unrelated to my hockey essay writing, in the sense that it doesn't mention hockey (yet); but totally related because ALL of my stuff veers sharply into the realm of the confessional/autotheory/memoir, and thus Themes begin to crop up no matter what genre I'm writing for.

Apartment 1 is some memoir stuff I started writing late last year. It's about... a lot of stuff. It's about learning to bake bread. It's about my dead neighbour. It's me grappling with the ethics of writing real people in my life. It's being 25 (now 26) and realising that everyone around you is waiting for the world to end even though YOU thought we were all joking. It's about direct action and coalition-building and communities of care. It's about practical optimism. It's about the one time I threw a dead pigeon into my neighbour Heather's balcony. It's everything. It's my Manifesto <3

(ALSO: There's a BIG chunk of cut content from my last hockey essay that was basically a very very very long tangent about Hauntology insofar as how it relates to ice hockey narratives and players... I cut it because it was gratuitous and indulgent and Not on-topic for the broader thesis of the essay - and because it was already something I was writing about in The Manifesto.)

Read some of it under the cut if you like!! <3 it is very very long and I'm not really looking to get it published, just hoping to get it all out before I am burned by academia!!!

If I was the kind of person capable of committing to journaling in private this is what I might have written that evening:

April 18th. Got first zine interview done. L’s cool. Think I changed his mind about trans stuff. Come home to find neighbour in apt 1 downstairs passed. Police had questions. Her gate’s still open, they left the lights on too.

I’d be someone who keeps a neat record of things, tucked away in routines and discipline. There’s a dream of this timeline where I figure out how to end sentences and truncate my runny egg thoughts (I play-act this fragment of me when writing emails). I am not that person. I journal in winding truths muddled by vision, by the aesthetic canons of the autobiographers I admire — Joan Didion, and, lately, Elvira: Mistress of The Dark — I journal because despite the nightmarescape of being known — published, seen — I want to be read.

The woman in apartment 1 reads like a bit part given to an ageing starlet who still loves acting (I only feel this way because we never spoke). I rarely saw her out of hot pink fast fashion t-shirts. Her lace curtains hung in defiance of the rest of the building's slate grey blinds, never dusted. Her garden was always well mulched and lush with something green, a pollen bomb waiting to go off in my nose and eyes every year come springtime. She watered it ritualistically. We’d catch each other as I left for uni, sometimes, and I’d think: fuck, this is such a waste of water, aren’t you old enough to have lived through the droughts? The holiday season saw a bedecking of her wattles and bottlebrushes and westringias with Christmas ornaments. Baubles, tinsel, lights, plastic cherries of holly. A ceramic nativity scene. Most memorably, something I can only describe as an effigy of Rudolph.

I know she is not a character, and that by writing this I risk crossing some threshold; that hazy shifting boundary between my ethics and whatever lies beyond. I’m not writing this to ask if it’s possible to be haunted by a woman you never met — I already am — I’m asking if it’s polite. 

Poetry, an old but welcome lover, demands of me:

I feel a truth that doesn’t ask the usual kind of knowing. She is a cracked open vein of ore. Her story a conflict mineral. I refuse to mine it.

The messages I sent to friends that day went something like this:

UM. One of my neighbours fucking died The police are here they took details and asked the last time I saw her

Don’t talk to cops is one of the first, most vital things you learn navigating marginalised spaces. An officer was stationed at the security gate, two more hung about in their patrol car. A fluorescent vest drifted in and out of view in the glass sliding door leading off into my neighbour’s house. The one that spoke to me had a notebook out and leaned against her fence. My experiences with the police up until then, summarised:

They showed up when President Obama visited my highschool.

I served them coffee intermittently during my years as a barista. Most recently, a regular group on my opening shifts at the café.

My neighbours across the hall had the police called on them many times. The one time they responded, an officer pushed past me and into my apartment to ask questions. After, the fights got quieter. The wife stayed.

I’d never been rich but I had lived up until then in relative privilege that rendered me invisible and safe from their violence; and I’d never approached homelessness, or looked like the kind of person who makes trouble (any genre of dark skinned); and I’m outwardly queer, but in a way that reads as eccentric rather than threatening and deviant (I want to be a threatening and deviant fag-dyke one day).

So, not talking to cops was a kind of radical praxis I didn’t get to have. I hadn’t earned it by getting arrested at a protest. It was an inheritance left to me by videos of police brutality, and the memorials to my queer elders who died, and scraps of essays written in blog posts and Twitter threads circulating endlessly on progressive clicktivist socials. At least, that was the post-hoc excuse I fabricated. Mostly, I was just reacting.

“Which apartment do you live in?” He was blank, serious. Too many police procedurals primed me for cops who asked permission before starting on the interrogation, the usual: we have some questions for you, if you’d just step aside?

Here was reality: I pointed, unprepared, and said, “That one.” 

And he said, “When was the last time you saw the woman living here?”

I answered, “I don’t remember. Maybe not long after the holidays?” Because who remembers exact dates, keeps track of the comings and goings of their neighbours, besides some shut-in creature LARPing Notes From Underground? 

“Does anyone else live with you?”

“My mother. She won’t be home for another half hour. Her English isn’t good, if you want to talk to her she can come get me.”

“Can we get your details?” And I was seized by the urge to blurt out: some of my friends don’t even know my birthday.

“What’s going on?” I asked instead, “Is that lady okay?”

He shifted, uncomfortable. “She’s passed.”

“Oh.”

The same way a painter may gather visual libraries of light and texture, a musician samplings of treasured beats, everything I witness is forfeit to becoming material; a potential symbol or phrase or reference point. It goes: that primordial instinct to make art, and then the sum of me, and then the world. That’s the two-way mirror lodged behind my eyes.

A guest lecturer, J, confirmed my long-held suspicions that artists are all the same (wretched) animals by relating her own experiences. She, too, felt the friction of being behind the glass, of seeing something upsetting unfold and watching closely from another room inside her. That observation always has to end, and then you are left with the sum, and you think: that would make an excellent… And then you think: how could I have been scraping that for material?

I walked J to her office, was enchanted by her sparkling grace, her warmth, her command of the language that feels ungainly in my mouth (still) 20 years fresh off the plane. My questions for her were short, shy, barely aperitifs, but underneath them was the plea: solidify these boundaries, I am lost. She answered, more or less: there is an ice shard in my heart, too. For her, it was a fact of the human condition that we would always be doing the wrong thing.

Her questions for me were a banquet: why do you want to do it, who does it hurt, and if it does hurt are those hurts large or small? And, as a garnish, she added that: if those hurts are so small then, well… And then she told me about finding a love letter in the leaves of a book and doing the diligence of tracking down names and histories and then, at the end of it all, communing with beloved friends and writing, writing, writing…

Our walk ended outside the building that housed faculty offices (walkable communities are conducive to this). I never answered her, but here’s the morsel I scrounged up after I collected myself at home: thank you, that was so unhelpful, that's what I needed to hear, I didn’t want to hear that, do you think art is bigger than us, I think I understand.

The woman in apartment 1; I never knew her name. The Canberra Times Obituaries are available online, and for this piece I’ve gone to look, in case some bolt of lightning strikes as I skim the names. I like the idea that she was a Val, or Rosie, or Alma (it’s not my place to think this, I think it anyway). Here, I leave my pickaxe at the mouth of the obituaries section — that’s enough digging.

She died, and no one noticed. I didn’t notice. I walked past her arum lilies every day, saw their faces wilt under our Australian sun, thought wouldn’t it be fucked if she was dead in there, and moved on with my life. The police never told me how long, but I can shoot the memory of those lilies back at least a month. Too long. She was off-putting, never friendly, and her garden — a colossal vanity project which guzzled water like the droughts never happened — assaulted me September through to December.

They left her fucking lights on.

The handful of hours before I came home to patrol cars and blue uniforms I was conducting an interview for the very first zine I ever produced. L and I settled at a table inside The Coffee Grounds somewhere between midday and evening. The floor plan was akin to a misshapen tangram, our table sat in an awkward bottleneck between covers and the end of the bar where drinks were dispensed for staff to deliver. I spent the interview conscious of the space we took up, the familiar hiss of the steam wand to my back a shallow comfort.

With his sandy hair buzzed short and wearing big dangly acrylic earrings — lightning bolts an homage to Bowie — L was painfully 19.

We exchanged small talk, pronouns, and areas of study. Then I started, “You’ve seen the news. Hate crimes, suicides, the culture wars online. Transphobia’s this inescapable black hole, right?”

I mistook his anger for righteousness, his energy as something that was directed at change. “Yeah, it’s fucking awful.”

“So I’ve seen all this, and I’ve seen how it’s been affecting my friends, and I have this assignment…”

The assignment: identify a cultural narrative, devise some social campaign to challenge the narrative, then execute and evaluate. And I explained that I was frustrated and hurt and I’d hung up my ambitions for politics when I realised I’d never have the showmanship for it, and so my only recourse was making art. 

“How much do you know about zines?” I asked. And then, explaining, “They’re, like, underground DIY print media.” My answer was a zine made in the traditions of our punk underground forebears, small press community propaganda to combat the grey tide of transphobia-driven pessimism that gripped so many genderqueer youth.

I asked, “What are the joyful aspects of a trans existence that we could point to?” And it was a mistake to assume he’d have something ready, some beautiful quote I could scribble down onto my notes app. People speak in half-sentences, stutters, ums and ahs. And L was a frustrating mix of leftist sentiments and slogans (trans rights are human rights, eat the rich, time’s up) and a fatalistic what-if-there-is-nothing-else doomerism. It was the same story I’d seen etched between the lines of lectures and conversations with friends, black-pilled and devastating: we are trapped in late stage capitalism, climate change is beyond critical mass, electoralism has failed us, we will eke out a life just short of awful and hold each other until the world ends. 

I was a poor interviewer (still am). We drifted off topic, I forgot to take notes intermittently, and — if you don’t know this about trans people yet, you’re in for a surprise — I challenged him on his notions of gender and presentation openly.

“I feel like a man because I can wear earrings, and despite their femininity I’m comfortable in my masculinity,” he said.

“I think my painted nails and earrings are masculine because I wore them,” I said. “Cis men define their own masculinity, cis women do it too; why can’t the rest of us?”

There are too many conceptions of gender and presentation to describe. The idea is that we come together under the trans and queer labels because our solidarity makes us strong, because you can’t build coalitions with sectarianism, and a transphobe doesn’t distinguish between stargender-queergender catgirls and transmedicalist FtMs. There are a few of us who haven’t gotten that message yet. I hope to welcome them back when their rights are under scrutiny, after the world is done with the rest of us.

“What could we be if we divested ourselves from a world that wanted us dead?” Was not a question he could answer, because he didn’t believe that we could. For him existing within the system was a given, and the system would never be for us. Abolition? Divestment? Decommodification? Pipedreams.

I was asking him and asking myself and asking the world; I was my Global Studies class assignment asking us to analyse vaccine distribution and suggest fixes to the worldwide vaccination equity crisis. 

“What makes our lives happy and meaningful not in spite of, but because of our trans identities?” A few answers. I became a better interviewer as the afternoon progressed (do journalists know all the tricks? Is that what they learn in their classes?).

As a barista, I found it easy — to borrow a phrase from Disco Elysium — to can-open people. If it was quiet enough a given customer could stay a while, and I’d chit chat as I cleaned. All you had to do was find a vulnerable notch and dig, and once you were in it was only a matter of twisting until they popped. With the torque of genuine interest and patience, I could get them to admit to almost anything over a coffee. People spill their secrets to me willingly, happily (maybe not their secrets, but definitely their stories). If you get someone alone and let them talk and let them feel that you’re listening, they become endless wells of experience. I’d heard about people’s messy divorces, their mental health struggles, and I’d seen at least two regulars through the entire lifecycle of several romantic entanglements. And I always thought: these are treasures, mine them.

For example: John (who gets a large cappuccino and two sugars, who went on a diet for eight months because his wife did too, who laughs and makes friends with all the new staff no matter how terrible they are), hunts ghosts. The conversation came up over a game I’d played with my friends called Phasmophobia, whose premise was hunting the supernatural in haunted houses. Once in a while, John takes a few days off of his day job at the ATO. He gathers his EMF readers, his lasers, his tripods, his smoke machines, his infrared cameras and night vision goggles; bundles everything into his car and drives to the most haunted locations in the Canberra region.

On the tip of my tongue: “You hunt them, okay, but how do you escape a ghost that won’t leave you alone?”

And I imagined him laughing, imagined him saying, “That’d make my job easier!”

Right now, I could walk into any given café and be somewhat at home. It’s the same anywhere you go: the rumble-purr of coffee grinders and scratchy sharpie orders running up the side of takeaway cups and exchanges of large mocha, have a good one, thank you.

I’d truly loved making coffee, would’ve contented myself serving regulars their sugared lattes and extra-hot flat whites until I dropped, if not for the pressing reality of wage stagnation. And Kate, a university lecturer, who stumbled into my English class in the last year of my pathways course, overqualified and too sincere, who tried earnestly to get 20 or so barely conscious young adults to analyse fairy tales. (“You don’t have to go right away,” she once said, “I could see you spending more time doing coffee, collecting all sorts of stories for your writing, and you’d do well.” Sometimes being told you have a choice is what gets you over the line.)

The day all these things turn strange will arrive soon, I fear (I hadn’t operated a machine in maybe a month by then; my last being a celebrity shift at the place I quit to go to uni). It’ll pass and I won’t know what the knobs and buttons do anymore, won’t be able to read the rhythm of loading shots and pouring and queueing up jugs of milk. My poor interview skills, I think, are because I’m slowly forgetting how to be a barista. One day I’ll look at an espresso machine, the grinder, the scales, the tampers, and the precise sequencing for a dial-in will have faded; the memory like looking through an oily, smudged lens.

I asked L, “What are your hopes for the future? What makes you hopeful? What’s worth fighting for?” The ambitions I had for the zine were furtively held secrets for a while, things I was too embarrassed to say out loud (you can’t just admit you sort of want to save the world). L’s answer made me embarrassed at my past self.

“That’s a really difficult question,” he said. “I guess your zine is aimed at people like me, because I can’t think of anything.”

The zine was aimed at people like him. Loosely. Theoretically. Execution pending. And confronted with the reality of just how deeply troubled my peers could be; it was crushing. And halfway through the interview I thought; what am I doing here? 

And then he said, “I’m not going to be out when I enter the industry. I don’t want anyone to know. I just want to make my art.” And shattering is something glass does, not people, but there I was. It’s a different kind of closet, to go stealth; to fully transition, to pass, and then to carefully erase all traces of who you were before you transitioned and to pretend you’re cis. Trans Joy Matters is the title of the zine, and it fucking does, because when you don’t spread the message that being trans can be an inherently happy and fullfilling experience, you get 19 year olds who break your heart because they’d rather go stealth than possibly have to deal with their identity being public knowledge.

What do you do when you find out your entire social circle and all your peers and even your mentors have given up the fight, have refused to try because the foe seems insurmountable? What do you do when the bastion of like-minded progressives you expected to meet at university are just as disaffected, just as sure that there is nothing after this?

You find yourself drifting, oscillating in and out of the something-more you’d been building since you pulled yourself free of your adolescent fugue and enrolled. You reflect with a growing apprehension that maybe you are the one who is painfully 25 and naive to the end of the world. You consider half-assing this stupid zine project because, even if you succeeded and produced something good, the impact would be so negligible to the grey tide’s advance that you might as well not try. You think, maybe I can crawl into some warm private place and find small joys with loved ones until it’s all over, maybe that’s the best we can do.

And then you come home and the woman in apartment 1 has died, and you blink awake and think, wow, fuck that.

The lights stayed on. Come evening, I’d step out and they’d greet me by giving her lace curtains new faces: eyes and noses and mouths gaping through the flyscreen. The police had used bolt cutters to break the padlock on her gate. It was set down on a fence column and forgotten. One day, I picked up the corpse and turned it over in my hands. There were bite marks where the teeth had sunk in and severed that arterial silver loop. Underneath was a patch of grey concrete where it blocked the bleaching sun, and around it spread a halo of grime.

Three months after the police came knocking, on the 12th of July, I wrote to a friend:

finally sent cleaners to my neighbours place jesus made very uncomfortable eye contact with one of them as i went in through the security door

I watched from my kitchen window while they packed her life away. I was certain these cleaners moonlighted for shadowy service that would, for a price, disappear undesirables. Or garbage collectors, given how they piled her possessions carelessly into the back of their truck. I imagined that somewhere in the detritus there was a box of tinsel and baubles and her Rudolph effigy, crushed under splintered furniture. Everything that wasn’t nailed down — everything but the kitchen sink, everything, and a thousand more clichés of everything — they took. Though they left her garden, her lilies were black bagged for the crime of being potted.

If you ask academics about hauntology you might get a garbled mess of references and a finger pointed at Jacques Derrida and Mark Fisher. The core of it is political according to Derrida, who conceived of a West that would, in the wake of liberal democracy’s triumph over communism, go on to be haunted by the spectre of Marx and the futures that could have been. For Fisher, contemporary music culture’s rolling pastiche of the decades reads as hauntological phenomena; nothing sounds new, all is made in service of referencing something already gone. Fisher diagnoses this as a longing for the future that was promised in these decades that remains unfulfilled (to him it is a false remembrance, one that smooths over the flaws for a mirage of better days). 

The haunting is the essence. We typically think of hauntings as the past coming back to the present, ghosts as temporally bound, but hauntology goes both ways. To say something is hauntological is to say that it is nostalgic for a dead future.

I am haunted by the woman in apartment 1 not because we knew each other, but rather because we didn’t. I am in mourning for the future we can’t have; one where we say hello, and how are you, and I notice she’s missing. Where I realise that industrial agriculture and garment factories take unfathomable amounts of freshwater and turn it undrinkable, and how futile, how unkind it is to condemn any single person for using water to make her garden beautiful. A future where we know each other. Where writing this makes any fucking sense. 

I carried on after she died, cleaving to something new, a hauntological mass, and though I didn’t know it, the force of my yearning for that lost future propelled me. I booked more interviews, more hours-long brunches and video calls and text exchanges. The zine got made. It was good, and the grey tide didn’t stop. But I was okay with that. I had to be.

[later excerpt]

Whoever said guilt is a bad motivator? Incorrect.

It was small as a football, appropriately pigeon-sized. You’ve probably had a close encounter with one before, waddling up to you like nothing would ever touch its pretty grey plumage. As a kid I used to run at them, try to put the fear of God in them. Well, it seemed that day it was my turn. 

The sliding door did nothing for me. Whether the pigeon was between layers of glass and wood and metal or two feet away and rotting made little difference to the lizard hindbrain processes that seized me upon catching sight of its body. I made a guess at the timing, it must’ve dropped onto my balcony and died at some point after I last looked out my bedroom window that morning. Its little feet and wings were tucked, aerodynamic even in death. 

I armed myself with a single thong and crept out onto my balcony like there’d be snipers posted on the roof of my Woollies, ready to gun me down for the thing I was planning to do. I certainly deserved it. With my thong clutched in hand (you know the grip, the one that’s meant for swatting flies), I stretched out and gave the pigeon a nudge. Then another. It rolled away, awkward and slow, over and over on itself. 

It was definitely dead, and there’s no way to say this where I look like the good guy but here goes: I was going to push it into apartment 4’s yard.

It gets worse.

See, it was an irregular shape and my balcony guardrail was not the kind that would permit a clean drop. It got stuck.

Not lodged, per se, just not quite flat enough to fit under the horizontal strip of metal that supported the vertical bars sticking up from it. I rolled it. It rolled back. I rolled it again. It rolled back again. And this time mockingly, like as punishment for the misdeed I was committing, I’d been condemned to a Sisyphean tragedy. Committed was the right word for it, because at this point, I’d sunk at least 3 minutes in and soiled a perfectly good shoe and was definitely going someplace bad when it comes to my turn in the great Beyond. This was the reasoning of a brain in lockdown, of course, and so was the next decision I made.

I wish I could say that what was going through my mind was the notion of fulcrums, leverage, something to do with physics. But no. The demon that gripped me was screaming for blood. PUNT THAT PIGEON. GET IT OFF OUR BALCONY. DO IT. DO IT NOW.

A series of complex scooping manoeuvres. A thump. It was through the bars and in her yard, (aerodynamic even in death!), and my thong would never be the same.

The guilt over this pigeon and for the old woman living downstairs has proven an excellent motivator. It took five years of avoidance before we really spoke. She let me in through her house a year ago when the security door was locked due to a power outage. A few months ago, I gave her something I baked. Last week, I asked her name.

(Heather, if you ever find out it was me, I’m sorry it took so long. I hope you liked the bread.)

[jade-everstone]

Art Goals for 2024

This post is a mirror of a post on my website (here)

It’s a few days into the new year. While the feelings of uncertainty from 2023 still lingers, I set myself a handful of goals going forward to give myself some sense of direction, 8 in fact, though I’ll mostly be focusing on my art-related goals here.

Technical improvement isn’t a major focus this year (I mean, I just did 4+ years of that lol). I think it’s time to focus on more external factors of art, like gaining some stability, pouring more focus into doing it part-time while maintaining the personal side. As well as strengthening skills not directly related to illustration. It’s something that’s fell to the wayside until senior year of college, and now that I’m out of school I think at least for this year I can let these factors overtake direct art improvement.

-

Finish PC-Mania!

My short webseries! This was launched as part of my senior thesis, but has had multiple hiccups in terms of production. This year I want to smooth out those bumps & be able to wrap it up by the end of this year. The reason I say by the end of this year? My drafts are roughly 40 pages, and even with my other plans for this year I’ll have more time on my hands to focus on comics. So I’m pretty confident I can wrap it up regardless of how it happens.

-

Launch Support Streams related to my art

This one was inevitable. Even if it’s a goal of part time vs. full time, I want to be able to do art as a career. Meaning I have to have some form of income to be able to continue doing it comfortably. This one will need time to sort-out though since there are hurtles; Notably my overall lack of reach, as well as inflation times.

Lack of reach is likely due to struggling with consistent posting (even reposts & WIPs slip by me), not wanting to completely bend my practices to algorithms, and migrating between platforms. So that one may be harder to sort-out while keeping it fair to my self & my limits. Inflation is tricky. Art is a luxury afterall, and when the cost of living has skyrocketed across the board I don’t blame people for choosing food and rent over art. I’m likely going to keep it to one-time payments & tip jars indefinitely since I don’t want to launch subscriptions in a time where people looking to cancel them to make ends meet. Plus, with my issues with consistent posting, I’m not in a position to be doing subscription-based works & would also like to better sort out my boundaries before even considering (ie: I don’t want anything that could potentially lead to people feeling entitled to my attention).

I still want to try pushing for commissions & freelance, even with a lack of success over the past few years. Though I also want to look more into online shops & tabling since last year, all of the money I made from art was from IRL sales. So it’s a matter finding those events that are original-art & zine friendly (I’m uninterested in monetizing fanart beyond commissions. Fanart to me = Personal art & I’d like to keep it that way). As well as researching more into online shops as a means to get things out there outside of the convention space.

-

Better-establish OC Lore & Worlds

This one is likely gonna be harder than it sounds. Because on one hand I am excited about these project, but I’ve always struggled with getting ideas-to-paper. While I don’t want to claim much since I don’t have an official diagnosis as of writing, I’m very sure I have ADHD meaning getting down schedules, and getting projects done before I jump to another interest has been a long-term struggle. It’s part of what hampered PC-Mania & reach, and hampers my ability to put more info about the projects I’m working on & are excited about (hell last year, I think I ended up drawing Io way more than art for said projects…).

I don’t know if there’s any “ADHD-friendly guides to maintaining projects before you forget them” out there (I’d argue most project guides & tips I’ve seen don’t consider it), so I’m pretty sure I’m on my own in this department. Currently I’m thinking about leveraging my website for this since it’s meant to be a work archive as is, and even if progress is inconsistent it’ll at least give me a central hub to link back to.

If you are curious, the main one I want to establish is Doverhill! It’s where a PC-Mania takes place for reference, and it’s set in modern times in the fictional town of Doverhill MA. Perfectly normal, except for the occasional paranormal encounter. The main cast that has to deal with them are a group of friends & neighbors who live in an apartment complex together. Story-wise it’s an episodic comedy about the sheer absurdity that is life. Even if it’s not a hard world-building project, it deserves a central hub to link back to.

The other one I’m debating on is Fang and Iron, a dark-sci-fantasy world building project about demon-hunting androids. But I think it needs more time in the oven, and I don’t plan on making it a main focus for a long time.

-

Learn Blender for making assets & Blocking

I’ve thought about the other skills I’d like to strengthen & learn for future projects, notably writing skills, drawing mecha, desktop publishing software, and 3D. But I picked learning 3D, since I feel like this one will have a ton of versatility in terms of making references for myself. If you’re wondering using 3D assets for references is extremely common, especially within the world of comics where you need to re-draw backgrounds and props. So having knowledge on how to block out scenes in blender will help massively in the long run, especially when my schedule starts filling up again.

(now I just need to finish that donut)

-

Shorter Comic Project?

I’m considering this one optional, but if I can squeeze in another smaller 8-16pg comic or zine along the lines of 9:15 Slushie I’d like to. I have an Idea I want to do for it (an idea that existed before 9:15 slushie did!) so the next step is carving out time to make it happen

Those are my main art goals of 2024. For the other 3 main resolutions of mine, I’ll list a short summary of those instead:

Get a job alongside art (I’ll need it. Bills be upon me + even with help from family members, I’d like to transition into being self-sustaining & be able to front the costs for my supplies & projects going forward)

Get my Drivers License (Also needed, especially if I want to continue tabling & other hobbies, and for getting to whatever job I end up at)

Get better at IIDX (and by extension BMS) so I can say I suck at normal 7’s vs normal 4’s lol (my only “hobby” goal of this year. I’ve wanted to get into IIDX for a long time too, so since I’m planning on getting my license & income anyways, I’ll see if I can squeeze this one in)

[konayeon-lasalle]

CTS B Compulsory Question 1

Most people wish to share a part of their life with others. This is not something that can be explained simply; they hope to express it in a 'language of their own'—one that captures the insights and experiences uniquely shaped by their personal journey.

This longing is closely linked to the essence of a manifesto. While a manifesto is an act of documenting one’s goals or thoughts, it goes beyond merely listing ideas, as it is a way for an individual to boldly declare their beliefs, values, and goals to the world.

The reason for having a manifesto is clear: when a vision for change and growth is shared and agreed upon, people feel a stronger sense of unity and purpose. A manifesto provides direction and clarifies the values people should pursue within this journey.

Among them, artists' manifestos are deeply connected with various art movements. Movements like Futurism or Surrealism used manifestos to express their determination to break from the boundaries of traditional art. For example, André Breton’s Surrealist Art Movement is one such case.

This week, our group had a valuable opportunity to create a manifesto as designers. Our manifesto reflects our passion for design and declares our goal of bringing positive changes to the environment through our work.

I believe this act is born from the combination of 'creative practice' and 'critical thinking' that we learned in CTS B, Week 1. Creative practice drives an artist to break beyond existing forms to try new expressions, and critical thinking makes this creative direction clearer.

One of the manifestos I found interesting through this experience is Dieter Rams' Ten Principles of Good Design. His manifesto provides concrete guidelines on what ‘good design’ should be, emphasizing both functionality and aesthetic balance. Compared to our group's manifesto, his is clear and actionable, inspiring us to incorporate more specific and achievable goals into our own.

Taking this as a reference, I was able to create a new manifesto focused on clear, practical actions that reflect a designer's mindset and are embedded within design work.

This manifesto activity has positively influenced other modules of my work as well. For example, in Materiality & Techniques module, I created a zine on the theme of 'Memory,' reflecting these design values. I minimized the text and added graphic elements to convey the meaning more clearly.

Additionally, following the principles outlined in my manifesto, I began learning Blender to take on new challenges of my own. This has allowed me to create 3D characters, animate them, and apply them to additional programs like the AR feature of Studio B modules.

This experience reminds me that design should pursue meaning beyond mere beauty or function. Moving forward, this manifesto will deeply anchor my design philosophy and my work overall. I aim not only to create works but to design with a purpose of making a better world, and I will continue to work towards that vision.

(~488 words)

References:

Mineo, Liz. “Relationships make us happy — and healthy.” Harvard Gazette, 10 February 2023, https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/02/work-out-daily-ok-but-how-socially-fit-are-you/. Accessed 6 November 2024.

Yanoshevsky, Galia. “(PDF) Three Decades of Writing on Manifesto: The Making of a Genre.” ResearchGate, 22 October 2024, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249880020_Three_Decades_of_Writing_on_Manifesto_The_Making_of_a_Genre. Accessed 31 Oct 2024.

Liebergall, Molly. “Author Talks: Robert Waldinger on "The Good Life."” McKinsey & Company, 16 February 2023, https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/mckinsey-on-books/author-talks-the-worlds-longest-study-of-adult-development-finds-the-key-to-happy-living. Accessed 2 November 2024.

The Art Story Contributors, "André Breton Artist Overview and Analysis". [Internet]. 2024. TheArtStory.org, edited and published by The Art Story Contributors, https://www.theartstory.org/artist/breton-andre/ First published on 01 Jul 2009. Updated and modified regularly Accessed 5 Nov 2024

Impressionist & Modern Art, “100 years of Surrealism 1924-2024.” Christie's, 13 September 2024, https://www.christies.com/en/stories/centenary-of-surrealism-1924-2024-833c59c4ab544664a2c08a85759c6ff2. Accessed 6 November 2024.

[ricardotomasz]

Such is life! Behold, a new Post published on Greater And Grander about Tomasz’s WOMEN'S MARCH on Art Block Zine’s Next Issue!

See into my soul, as a new Post has been published on https://greaterandgrander.com/tomaszs-womens-march-on-art-block-zines-next-issue/

Tomasz’s WOMEN'S MARCH on Art Block Zine’s Next Issue!

We’re thrilled to announce that TOMASZ WOMEN'S MARCH, a powerful piece by multidisciplinary artist Ricardo Tomasz, has been accepted by DSTL Arts and the Art Block Zine–Editorial Board for publication in the upcoming issue of Art Block Zine!

In TOMASZ WOMEN'S MARCH, Ricardo Tomasz captures the spirit of resilience, unity, and empowerment that women have exhibited throughout history. Through his unique fusion of surreal, mythological, and postmodern styles, Tomasz creates a narrative that challenges perceptions and invites viewers to see beyond traditional boundaries. The piece uses vibrant colors and autobiographical elements, inviting viewers into a journey of identity and resilience, crafted from Tomasz’s perspective as a multiracial artist living with a disability.

Art Block Zine is known for showcasing thought-provoking work by artists with diverse experiences, and we’re honored that TOMASZ WOMEN'S MARCH has been selected for its pages. Thank you to DSTL Arts and the Art Block Zine–Editorial Board for this incredible opportunity.

Just follow @DSTLArts on Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook to stay up-to-date with all things related to our workshops and zines!

Do you have your own thoughts? Let us know in the comments! Or join our community of successful creators on Patreon!

#Art, #ArtBlockZine, #ArtPhotography, #Documentary, #DSTLArts, #EditorialPhotography, #Outdoor, #Photography, #Politics, #RicardoTomasz, #StreetStyle, #Women, #WomenEmpowerment

[beyondtheboundaryzine]

We'll be using this data for the zine, and may include a screenshot of a comment or two!

[pazodetrasalba]

Transitions

Dear Caroline:

Our lives being continuous functions, changes are only to be expected. Still, there are U-turns, maxima and minima, inflection points, shoals and bends in the Heracleitian river. I feel 2018 was (until now) your greatest inflection point, whose exact x and y coordinates are your quitting Jane Street (and NYC) and your joining Alameda (and the Bay).

I can't quite pinpoint, though, what might have happened specifically in the summer months of the year, and that will probably remain forever a secret, some hidden treasure squirreled within your bosom. Your job change started in March. In April took place the now famous Schism within Alameda, when almost all of its Effective Altruists, the whole management and half of the employees walked out on Sam. Those must have been trying times, and if Lewis is to be believed, your first reaction was fear at having made a major mistake in your life, which in perspective, it seems you did. But in the short term, Sam ended up victorious, Alameda started making a lot of money, and you sunk into becoming not only a true SBF believer, but also into falling in love with him. From other posts in your blog, it seems you also decided to shed your Traditionalist persona and go full-steam into Rationalism and its weirdest beliefs and practices, now that you were at the epicenter of the movement.

These are the fragmentary pieces with which I try to fill the puzzle of your lines, and my best guess at your new 'masculine and masochist' aesthetics were a result of you shoehorning to the SBF work culture, where the expression 'life and work balance' is just an unknown hieroglyph devoid of meaning. You are smart, capable and determined, better than anyone at trading than anyone else who had remained in Alameda bar Sam, and you would have decided, perhaps, that beyond your personal work satisfaction, you'd want to 'toughen up', and along the way, impress him as His Best Student.

As for your choices for audiovisual entertaining, they do feel weird, but fit in with this 'disciplined and anhedonic' vibe of yours. I actually had to look up the filk - it could perhaps be gleaned from the context of your other blog posts, but only if you know what it is to begin with.

Quote:

Filk is a musical culture, genre, and community tied to science fiction/fantasy fandom. The genre has been active since the early 1950s, and played primarily since the mid-1970s. An early mention of filk songs can be seen in the zine Day Star.

It's commonly described casually as "science-fiction folk music" -- and in fact, the word "filk" comes from a typo for "folk" in a 1950s essay -- but that falls short of the full range of music that's considered filk. The exact definition is controversial; like the definition of "fanfiction," fans do not agree on the boundaries of the genre.

It has been defined as the folk music of the science fiction community, and to a lesser extent, of fans in general. The Interfilk website has a good set of links to a variety of definitions.

[gender0bender]

Monster Trans

by Boots Potential, taken from Inside Out: Radical Gender Transformation FTM and Beyond, published 2004 (you can read the full book online here)

As a kid, I had a fascination with monsters. I'd check books out of the library full of movie stills from Dracula, The Werewolf, Frankenstein, King Kong, and The Swamp Monster. The monsters and mutants always scared me shitless and inspired nightmares of all flavors. But I kept going back for more of the same. As any adrenaline junkie kid will tell you, the sheer heart-pumping, palm-sweating terror is the best part. The intrigue with monsters gradually waned as I entered late grade school, preferring to acculturate myself to the Pretty in Pinks and Breakfast Clubs of the time. However, like any healthy obsession, it gradually worked its way back into action. I began to appreciate the Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street slasher flicks (taking a short break for a terribly sincere and plaintive boycott since my feminist consciousness dictated I avoid such maliciously misogynistic garbage). And along with my burgeoning affection for punk rock, zines, and other pleasantries, I developed an infatuation with B-movie classics. By way of the Misfits, I learned titles to various Ed Wood, Jr. greats: Astro-Zombies, Plan 9 From Outer Space, and Night of the Ghouls. In my junior high-age, nerdy juvenile delinquency (and only half in jest), I identified with these mutant, misunderstood outcasts. I will never make claim to a coherent gender narrative.

I could tell you a story about my childhood that would surely predict a queer adulthood: crushes on teenage girl camp counselors, tomboy androgyny and jock identity, Transformers and Tonka trucks, and stealing boys' Underoos from friends' dresser drawers. Similarly, and just as truthfully, I could order my childhood into a perfect predictor of heterosexual and gender-normative fulfillment: cute boyfriends who I thought were hot, a darling collection of stuffed animals and Pretty Ponies, and a subscription to Seventeen magazine. To this end, I will never say that my early fascination with monsters was all about my being a queer genderfreak transboygirl fagdyke. I will say, though, that there has always been something compelling to me about a living (or undead) thing that can freak the shit out of someone just by merit of their very existence in the world. Especially when, in doing so, it forces us to question the boundaries of the things we once thought were neat, welldefined, and impermeable (human, animal, inanimate object, living, dead, etc).

My preoccupation with monsters has mutated into something that provides me with an index with which to enact my gender and transness. Cultivating my monster identity preceded my identifying as trans. Part of the reason for this is the rule-breaking nature of monstrosity. For awhile, I was swindled into thinking, as many of us are, that there is a “correct" way to be trans: we have to take hormones, get surgeries, get a GID diagnosis, change pronouns, pass, feel like a boy in a girl's body, and get a preppy haircut. My inclination is to break rules or flee from them, and if this long list of rigorous requirements was what it took to be trans, I didn't want that.

It was clear to me that I was involved in some sort of gender subversion project. For a long time, my queerness has been in large part about widening possibilities of gender expression. I didn't (and still don't) buy the story that there is something fundamentally dichotomous about gender, and that there are inherent or genetic characteristics that lead to expressions of femininity or masculinity (whatever those terms mean). Unfortunately, being in queer communities didn't necessarily mean that people agreed with me on that point. In fact, many homos that I know are quite wedded to conventional understandings of gender and its rules of conduct. When I became frustrated with all of these “play-by-the-rules” queers, I sought out freakier communities. Some did drag and some put on rock operas about animal-human creatures that subvert the futuristic corporate stranglehold on the world. With these people, I found a number of things I was looking for: political engagement, creativity, an unquenchable urge to fuck shit up, and most importantly, a passion for boundary transgression and rulebreaking. In and through my work and play with these communities (conversations, drag acts, writings, and so on), my fascination with monsters moved from spectatorship to embodiment. I became the monsters I used to watch.

The monster identity, however, is an imperfect model. I do not necessarily want to associate myself with viciousness, irrational violence, and pathological insanity (although mainstream culture has already associated these with queers and trannies, so perhaps it's not so far a stretch). Nevertheless, there is something very promising about a monster culture that might revel in itself, that might deliberately position itself as monstrous in the sense that it deviates, threatens, and challenges. As in the case of gender freaks (i.e., trans, genderqueer, FTM, MTF, multigendered, and so on), it is only the common experience of transgression that defines monsters and arranges them together as a group. Frankenstein, Vampira, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon have nothing in common but their “abnormalities”, yet they are bound by their monstrosity. This is how I make sense of my gender. It is defined largely by what it isn't (normative). However, it is also defined by what this disruption of “normal” opens up.

Monsters are often referred to as “it.” Though “it” is not my pronoun of choice, I am heartened by the thought that a living thing (at least within the collective imagination of a filmic audience) can escape immediate relegation to one category of the sexual dichotomy or the other. Like many genderqueers and freaky trannies, I perceive a profound lack of options when it comes to pronouns. “She” fits no better than “he.” For a time, I continued to use “she” in part to disrupt the notion of what a trans person is allowed to be and partly in resistance to adopting the other end of an “either/or” choice. At this point, more to articulate my gender incoherence than to find a pronoun that "fits" or "feels right”, I usually use male pronouns or the pronoun “monster.” Many medical, GLBTQ, and trans communities would often have us think there is no other way than to choose consistent male or female pronouns, or there is something wrong with us, with our transness, or both. Monsters, on the other hand, open up a wealth of possibilities: what do you call someone or something that eludes you to the point that you can't determine its species or origin, let alone gender?

Monsters demand this of people in their very existence. Their rule-breaking bodies and actions necessitate a navigation of language that is unfamiliar and uncomfortable to a normative audience. This is what I would like both my gender and my pronoun to do: create the necessity to navigate language and the concept of gender in a way that is unfamiliar and demands thought and critical engagement. Similarly, monsters open up new and unfamiliar categories with regard to their bodies. They often fall outside of the set of prescriptions that define female or male-bodied people. It is often useless to attempt to determine their “kind” (whether animal, plant, person, or thing) because they are rarely a member of an easily defined “kind.” They may be a hybrid (werewolf, swamp monster), an undead human (vampire, zombie), a semi-human/machine (Frankenstein, Astro-Zombie), and so on. All of these are frightening partly because they defy their kind. They are never entirely what they are supposed to be, and we are able to read this transgression on their bodies. I plan to seek surgical alteration of my gendered chest. I am not intending to “pass," my goal is rather to be able to be read as trans, to create a lack of gender-cohesiveness on my body. In other words, I aim to defy the “kind” that I am supposed to be, true to my monstrous affiliations.

We queers often make the mistake of replicating the conventions we initially intend to defy. How often have we heard proponents of gay marriage or gays in the military talk about liberation? How often have our sexual practices and identities been policed by other queers (e.g., dykes and fags can't sleep together; femmes can't be FTMs; butches can't fuck butches; trannies should always try to pass; MTFs have to hate penetrating during sex; etc.)? It seems that we queers in particular have a lot to learn about the monstrous habit of staking out new ground and in doing away with, rather than duplicating, the rules.

The drawbacks of associating with monstrosity are rather clear. Monsters are associated with evil, bloodthirsty violence, and aggression. Monsters populate nightmares and haunted houses. They are beings, real or imaginary, to avoid at all costs (except when we watch them in movies or read about them in comics and books). Less obviously, but equally importantly, the concept of monsters has racial implications. Monsters are oftentimes associated in negative and damaging ways with “darkness” and “blackness”. They are “foreign” in many different senses, lending to a sense of xenophobia. There is a none-toosubtle connection made between the “monster” and the “savage”, a well-worn racist term historically used by colonizers and anthropologists to indict populations of people with cultural habits different from their own, and to justify attempts to colonize, enslave, or persecute them. These are the connotations of monstrosity that I wish to avoid, disrupt, and question.

Film and fiction cultures have a history of subtle and overt racism that often plays out in “monster” stories, and this is unacceptable. At the root of these problems is a deathly fear of difference. It is in and through this terror of those that appear foreign to us that we superimpose upon them a sense of danger. We make the monster by seeing it as scary. I think it is entirely possible to divorce the concept of “monster” from an inherent evil. Queers inspire fear in people because they fail to fit a prescribed social and societal norm of heterosexuality. So, too, in the case of monsters: they inspire fear not due to an inherent evil, but rather as a direct result of failing to conform to an expected set of standards as to what a living thing should be and look like. Furthermore, just as there are many varieties and embodiments of queerness, so too are there of monstrosity. However, it should be said that this strategic employment of monstrosity is at least partially enabled or at least made more accessible to me as a white person. It might look very different for a trans person of color to claim monstrosity as a gender identity. It should also be said that the multiple ways in which our bodies are classed, raced, gendered, abled, altered, made, and understood are in a constant and changing relationship with the ways in which these bodies are understood, policed, and interacted with daily. This means that the ways in which we claim any gender identity are culturally and socio-politically loaded along those matrices. This should not point to preclusion from forging or claiming various identities, but should encourage us to do so with a high degree of articulation and specificity.

My favorite monsters are the B-movie variety. This is the source from where my gender enactments are inspired. They manage to be at once deliberate in their freakishness, fictional, contrived, shocking, fascinating, never "correctly” human, always tenacious, and often campy. I take from this my pleasurable enactment and embodiment of transness. I revel in being freaky and campy, attempt to use the nervousness I inspire in people to challenge, and never settle into categories I don't feel accommodate me. And every once in awhile, just to punctuate my point, I wear an old-fashioned Martian mask for fun and for effect.

It is interesting that I came to identify as trans in and through my gender-as-monster ideas. There is more than just monster culture that preceded and inspired my identification as trans, and there is more to my transness than monstrosity. However, it is interesting how much easier it was to say, “I'm trans," when I had a tangible example and concept of how I could explain my transness outside of the medical model (of Gender Identity Disorder). For me, thinking about rule-breakers like B-movie monsters laid out a neat framework of what I want and expect out of transness. It makes anti-gender-cohesion as fun a game as it is a serious project. And of course, monstrosity and transness are both of those things.

The most hopeful and beautiful thing about monstrosity-as-gender is the fact that once you become a monster, nothing looks “normal.” Everyone is a monster waiting to happen, they are just choosing, at the moment, to cohere to an arbitrary and fictional set of rules and regulations as to what they are supposed to be. You start inhabiting an entire world of monsters. And nothing looks better.

 For a number of years, I have been aware that rule transgression and other forms of productive and challenging delinquency are important projects to me in terms of gender and other personal and political questions. However, in the last few years of thinking about monstrosity and trans in relation to myself, the concrete ways in which I hope to enact those transgressions has become much less of a mystery. It is an answer that makes sense in reply to the question, “How can I approach gender in a way that is equal parts radical, fun, politically challenging, personally comfortable, and a serious and sustainable project?"

It suddenly feels like my project goals are dovetailing with the concrete ways I want to achieve those goals. I am thrilled to have a vehicle which allows me to be simultaneously politically engaged, campy as hell, tough-as-nails, sissy faggy, butch newwave dykey, dead serious, boy-girl-whatever, pansy, and terrifying all in one fell swoop. Male/female dichotomies do not allow for this mobility and simultaneity, but monstrosity does. I find it extremely pleasurable that it is B-movie monsters that made it possible for me to pinpoint the way I want to do gender and the way I can make sense of my queerness and transness. For once, the story ends happily, and the monsters are the heroes.

[tddkfantasyzine]

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[vintage-bentley]

No, it wasn't ineffable wives. It was a multifandom thing and it was DT's Crowley that was allowed to be included despite a rule being no 'male aligned' characters. Which means Crowley should've been excluded under their rules.

What

So they made an F/F zine thing, and had a loophole about no “male aligned” characters that allows literal males in as long as people think they’re Non Men (which would’ve been how he was allowed in since people think he’s “nonbinary” or “genderfluid” or whatever)?? That’s beyond disgusting tbh. I’m so tired of SSA women content and spaces having to include men. I’m so tired of not being able to have anything to ourselves; not our words, not our boundaries, not even some stupid femslash zine.

Hearing this genuinely makes me so upset which feels stupid because it’s a fanzine… but it’s not just about that. It’s knowing that lesbians in particular are being pressured to accept men into our dating and sex lives as long as they “don’t feel like men”, and it’s painful. Fiction and fandom should be the place where we get to escape from real-world homophobia, but the homophobes run the show here too and bring all their shit with them. There’s no place for us to turn where we aren’t going to be confronted with some disgusting display of homophobia. It feels like everywhere I look, I’m reminded that people are allowing men to weasel their way into female SSA and it’s beyond frustrating.

(Original ask for those who want context)