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goodluckclove · 7 months ago

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Various "Failures" From My Google Docs

Good morning! I'm at my usual coffee shop and got inspired by the troubles of a few friends to embarrass myself.

Sit down with me. I'm enjoying my usual blended chai. There's room on the couch if you'd like to join me.

So I've written thirteen novels. I think thirteen, I've actually lost count. Let's say, like, five full-length plays and twelve to fourteen finished novels. Impressive, right? Maybe. I'm realizing that I consider that not much of a brag, if only because I know the amount of trips and stumbles it took to get to one completed project.

I've ditched a lot of ideas. A lot. If I need to I can dig into my old hard drives to find all the doc files from my youth, but I also have the same Google Docs I've had since middle school.

It's mostly plays and ghostwriting assignments, but if you did you'll find some snippets from my constant attempts at growth.

Some stuff like this is okay. The line "hair slicked back/suit black silk" is pretty good, but a little too the writer thinks they're clever for me now. I don't really remember where I planned to go with this. I think the narrator was somehow going to be given the identity of Roy Fontaine. I was really fixated on the surname Fontaine at the time. I don't know why.

But then there's also a lot of stuff like this:

Hey look it's Fontaine again! I guess he's a doctor, too! Also I am astounded by how casually the main character just pulls out the Necronomicon. He pulls it out? From where? His pocket? Is it a zine?

I don't know why, but something about how suddenly this jumps in terms of dropping specifics makes me think that Sonic the Hedgehog is about to show up. I can't explain it.

This is the only thing in a Doc titled "Psychosis". I have zero memory of what I was planning on doing with this. What's kind of crazy though is that I wrote this in 2014, and six years later I'll use essentially this exact bit in a finished novel without even realizing it.

Another bit from 2014. No clue what I planned to do with this. It's hilarious to me that something stopped me from finishing the sentence. What am I, Franz Kafka writing The Tower? I didn't die. I wasn't raptured. I just apparently tried to think of something a large oak door would do and immediately gave up. It was 2014 I had finished, like, four novels. And this idea was fully stalled by what had to be a fucking huge oak door.

My favorite part of this radio play I tried to write is that somehow, believe it or not - when I wrote this I did not fully understand the Quantum Suicide thought experiment. And for along time I still kind of thought that this could be salvaged into a good idea, until last night when I asked my wife to put on a video describing the experiment and I immediately found it so dumb. Just ridiculously stupid. The only good thing about Quantum Mickey is that the title kicks ass and I'm definitely keeping it for something.

I've written a lot. A lot. I've earned the severity of carpal tunnel I currently have. If I had to put it into a statistic, I'd say maybe seventy percent ends up finished. fifty percent ends up polished to be read or published. Thirty percent actually ends up being read or published. I'm okay with this, because I enjoy the work. But for me, part of enjoying the work is not panicking when a project doing work.

If I need to end a project in the middle of a sentence, I do. I've clearly proven that I do. Sometimes I write for thirty pages and lose interest, other times I get a paragraph in and get distracted forever. That's okay.

That's okay. As long as you're doing something.

I could've included segments of Carnation, my first novella that was supposed to be a novel but I never finished it. But I fucking guess that's getting it's own post when I hit 150 followers so I hope you're prepared for what the type of stuff I enjoyed in middle school.

There's an Irish child that speaks exclusively in slang. You aren't ready.

#writeblr #writing community #on writing #writers on tumblr #authors of tumblr #writing #writing advice #writing tips #writing inspo #writing inspiration

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dustedmagazine · 3 years ago

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Matrimony—Kitty Finger (Kill Rock Stars)

Photo by Kirstine Showell

Kitty Finger (2021 Remaster) by Matrimony

Matrimony only existed for about a year in the late 1980s, didn’t play much outside of its home base in Sydney and recorded just one album. Even so, the four-women-and-a-man quintet had an outsized influence. It’s wild, bass-thumping, primitively-drummed, guitar-skreeing tunes caught Kathleen Hanna’s ear soon after the record’s release in 1989. Bassist and band founder Zeb Olsen struck up a connection with K Records’ Calvin Johnson through her friend David Nichols of the Cannanes. Olsen made a trip to Olympia in 1989, where Hanna championed Matrimony’s Kitty Finger as she worked out the contours of her own Riot Grrrl aesthetic. Kill Rock Stars gave the disc a stateside release in 1997 and, late last year, issued a remastered version in vinyl.

Matrimony came together out of enthusiasm, not experience or musical training. Olsen was a Sydney scenester and zine writer; guitarists Polly Williams and Dani Marich, as well as drummer Michael O’Neill, were art students. The astonishing Sybilla Visalli, the singer whose nude, bejewelled torso decorates the album cover, was a neighbor. There weren’t a lot of women playing in underground bands in Sydney at the time. Matrimony brought an unhinged, volatile, estrogen-fueled energy to the stage, churning out elemental drum-and-bass riffs to pout, flirt and snarl over. It was a lark, a pose, a not-entirely-sincere inside joke, but the music was spare and sharp and powerful.

Often, the first thing you hear on a Matrimony track is Olsen’s bass, corroded and viscous and weighted with heaviness; there’s a tactile, room-shaking quality to the way she plays. O’Neill then joins in with galumphing, head-rupturing volume, in cadences that reinforce, rather than subvert, the block-simple four by four. The guitars sculpt weird vibrating shapes out of distortion and feedback; it’s like Sonic Youth playing over a Pere Ubu beat. And finally, Visalli, is electric in disaffection, her bored-with-it delivery like a bold unrelenting stare, her yelps and gulps and outcries bearing the shock of an unexpected wink.

There’s a lot of fun and unencumbered sexuality in these cuts. In “Motorbiker” several of the band’s women countercall “Ooh, biker baby” to one another. One of them throws out a guttural “Hu-uh” that is both uncouth and wildly erotic. The song “Prick” includes a line that none of Matrimony’s boy band contemporaries could have gotten away with—that, indeed, few female-centric outfits would even try—in “Can’t you see I’m the poison teaser / I need a prick that’s a real hard pleaser.” Even when Matrimony nodded to the patriarchy, as in their woozy cover of the Scientists’ “Frantic Romantic,” they stretched and skewed and reimagined the song. Where the original chimed with brash good feeling, Matrimony’s take festers with alienation and slow-burning discontent.

Matrimony ended almost as soon as it began when Visalli drifted into a dangerous, drug-heavy scene and took her own life in 1992. But the spirit of mostly female anarchy endured in the Riot Grrrl movement and beyond. Now, many many punk bands have at least one or two female members, and it’s no big deal. Often they’re not in front, but playing bass or drums or guitar. It wasn’t as easy or as common in 1989, but it could be done and done well, as Kitty Finger proves.

Jennifer Kelly

#dusted magazine #album review #jennifer kelly #matrimony #kitty finger #kill rock stars #punk #sydney #riot grrrl

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unioncolours · 3 years ago

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A 2nd Majsasaurus Year!

Today, 22nd of September 2021, it’s been two years since I officially joined the magical world of fandom. 22.9.2019 I uploaded the first chapter to my fic Shadows and Sand, and the rest is history.

I did a deep dive into my first year as a fic writer and active member of fandom last year, when it was my first anniversary. You can read it here!

In that meta discussion about my membership of fandom, I presented it as if walking on clouds. I was so, so happy and talked during all the discussion about my happiness in fandom.

Since that post was written, my life and also my perception of the fandom I am part of has changed. Change isn’t always bad, as I really had a honeymoon phase with fandom over a year ago, and the low after hit hard.

But let’s see what I’ve been up to and what I’ve been writing! The following year provided much change and fun things! Please keep reading 💜⬇

The first fic I wrote since 22.9.2020 was a Sakura x Ino fic. I had for a longer while been interested in writing a woman-loves-woman ship, which I had never done before, and as a wlw-person myself the urge to explore that part led to Promise me this is just a kiss. The pairing itself was chosen on rather random, it had to be two women and I like Ino, so I chose the most popular Ino-wlw ship for this for convenience.

I really liked writing the fic and it was well-received! It was the first time I had written a fic that was entirely centred around exploring feelings and having sex.

After this I jumped directly onto the next idea that had been boiling inside me for a longer while. Up to this point, all I had written, except the wlw-fic, had been set in the Naruto canonverse and I was itching to try to work with a multi-chaptered modern au! The pairing was of course my beloved Shikadai x Inojin.

It was during the creation of this fic I began to struggle. This was a new genre, as this was romance only and all my other works had been action and fantasy based, except the sex fic of course. I was maybe over critical and stressed, which resulted in me having a hard time writing it. But I made it. Was the sky always this beautiful? ended up being 35k long, and in hindsight, I freaking love, love, love how it turned out in the end and what it represented. I am very proud of this fic.

I “upgraded” as a fan by the end of October when I bought myself a digital drawing tablet. I began drawing fanart of Shikadai and Inojin and preferably them two together, haha! I still draw a few days a month and find it extremely fun as a side hobby beside the writing.

We are now in November 2020. By this time, I had completely finished my zine fic, Under the Scorching Sun, which I had written during September and October, for the Shikatema zine I was kindly accepted to. I was proud of what I had created and was eager for the rest of the contributors to wrap up theirs, so we’d have a wonderful zine for sale in 2021. It was lovely to write ShikaTema again. As the zine fic was about to be released in months from when I had at first finished it, I wanted of course to write something fans and friends could immediately take part of on the internet. I had hyped myself up to a state where I wanted to write a third and final story in my series To love and never let go, my epic series about Shikadai and Inojin.

Now, I should maybe have waited another month, but I was worried the readers would give up on me if I didn’t write it right away. In December, I began writing To find hope in the Universe, with my usual speed and love for the art.

What I by then didn’t realise or even recognise was that I was very slowly turning burned out. I ignored all the signs.

In December I wrote simultaneously as Hope in the Universe a fic that was part of the Shikatema server’s Secret Santa event. The fic’s name was The Ghost Stories of our Hearts, and it was ShikaTema, as the event’s name suggests. It was fun to write and despite the final big fic, Hope in the Universe, pressing down on me, I finished The Ghost Stories of our Hearts and was very happy with the result. Sadly, at this point the burnout began taking control over me, and I never managed to reply to the comments.

The 15th of January, I began uploading To find hope in the Universe. It was a lovely experience, even if it was tainted by negative feelings coming from my decreasing happiness and the fact that it didn’t do as well as To dance above the Stars, the second fic in the series. To deal with two very contradiction emotions, loving my work, the characters, how I have painted an entire world around the characters and how I knew some people honestly loved my hard work, and then the negative feelings coming from not feeling good enough and depressed, was a difficult thing to navigate and still is when I think back to that time. It didn’t help that during the process of uploading the fic I went through grief, and I chose distraction as my coping method. I kept writing and working, the only thing I ever knew.

Our pre-order of the Shikatema zine was in full motion by this time and it was a nerve-wracking time! Mostly because of excitement but also worry. I’m super happy for my friends who were part of the zine, with whom I could share all the excitement and nervousness with. The zine ended up making good sales, which made me happy among the uploading of the long fic.

To find hope in the Universe was completed 31st of March 2021. When I uploaded the final chapter, I felt nothing. It was so weird, so spooky, to have finished a long fic and a series on top of that and not feel anything. But deep down, beneath the layer of depression, I felt great pride.

That was the emotion that broke free once the burnout left me. Pride.

I had created this empire of Shikajin, a whole alternative timeline, an alternative canon from my own head and to this day, that is my internet legacy. I love Trial of the Heart, which I wrote in 2020, but if I have to choose between ToH and this series, I will choose To love and never let go in a heartbeat.

So, even if it felt depressing and hopeless in the moment, I look now back with pride and happiness. Never forget that. Never forget that I made that.

April was a curious time. I swore to not write anything, because I had by now recognised that I was burned out and needed to rest, yet managed to scrape together three smaller fics.

The first one was another wlw-smut fic, TemaSaku this time called Another Light. I wanted to explore that part once again. I wrote it in canonverse and honestly think the fic ended up extremely nice. Perfect amount of feels and sex. It didn’t feel hard to write at all, because the setting, characters and emotions were so different from the fics I had written the last five months.

Now more interesting things lay on the horizon! A new zine, the Ino-Shika-Cho zine called Beyond a Bond had an interest check during the spring, and later the contributor application. I urged in the interest check to please give us the next gen kids, Shikadai, Inojin and Chocho – my kids and babies, and when it turned out they were going to feature, I had to apply as a writer. For this application I wrote a one shot, called It’s just hair, and I loved this spunky little story featuring the best babies that I created.

I also edited one of my tumblr fics, And then I kissed him, into a longer, better version that I later in May uploaded onto AO3. It was once again a Shikajin, a sequel of Trial of the Heart, and it was a fun little project.

Now May came and I sent in the application for the zine early, which I now am relieved I did. I am happy that I did the work for the application in April instead of May, because in May I had a few breakdowns and another grieving period, which lead to complete creative paralysis. I didn’t write a single word during May, only uploaded the two one shots I had prepared in April.

What I did do in May was to read through the Shikatema zine I had contributed to! It arrived in the mail! I was so nervous; my whole body was shaking when I opened the package right outside the post office. The zine now resides on the parade place in my little zine shrine in the bookshelf. Thank you to the mods who made this a reality!

To my great happiness my zine adventures continued as I was accepted to the Ino-Shika-Cho zine as a writer and was assigned to write my favourite characters. I felt so relieved and overjoyed, mind blown by the sheer talent among the contributors.

On the other fandom front, June didn’t continue any brighter, with stress and mental pain still having a strong grip around me, despite the very happy news that I am still so grateful for. I wrote a Yamanaka family fic which to this day hasn’t seen the light of AO3, because of negative emotions surrounding it. I turned into a complete wreck compared to me in June 2020. In June 2020 I was flourishing, I loved what I did, I loved fandom and I loved the friends I had made through Discord servers. Now I could find myself crying my eyes out over a wip not going the way I wished it would. What had happened to Bex 2021?

I was so incredibly frustrated with myself, groaning in defeat when my hands just couldn’t write. I managed to push through 6k of what I called my “emo au” – more of that later – and finish the Yamanaka fic which is still buried, and on top of that I had the zine and another fandom event, The Naruto Photo Album, to create content for. Why couldn’t I do it? Why couldn’t I find happiness in something that once was my reason for happiness?

In the end, I managed to write 15k in June. My former monthly word count used to be 30k. One could think this would turn into the end of my fic writing career, or the beginning of a longer hiatus, but I am stubborn and want to meet the expectations of the people who love my content, so I didn’t want to give up. I wanted to try. I wanted to be whoever I was before.

Funnily enough, the healing came in the shape of the most self-indulgent fic I have ever, ever written, a fic I like possessed began writing July the 1st 2021. It was nothing less than a freaking fairy tale AU, namely a Shikadai x Inojin Peter Pan AU. I can hear you laugh at the silliness of it, but this whimsical AU gave me back my love for writing. I hyper-fixated on this story quite a bit and stopped writing on everything else, something I almost never do.

Only happy boys fly ended up being 21 000 words long! I knew it was a niched story, and true to my guesses, the story has to this day very low stats. Today, two months after it was published, it has just above 100 hits and 10 kudos, so for all I know, only ten people read and liked it. I try to not care too much, since I love the story and in some way, that story saved me from going batshit insane over my emotions about writing.

At this point I had begun writing my fic from the Ino-Shika-Cho zine, finding joy in silly scenes with my favourite characters and trying to heal. The writing process was frustratingly slow, but one word at a time I got forward and as of today, the draft is done. The pre-orders are in December. At the side of the zine fic I wrote a short fluffy Shikajin story, CLEAR, a story with almost no plot, because I knew how much self-indulgence could help me.

And then, I finally began writing for real on my emo au, A gang of fallen stars, which has the first few chapters up right now! I have for the first time in six months a longer fic (if we don’t count the Peter Pan story) and it feels… good. This fic is once again a modern au, but in darker tones than my other modern au from November 2020. I honestly like what I have so far, even if I during June and July almost planned to never finish it. I am so relieved I managed to begin the upload. In September the Photo Album was released and I could show my two fics I wrote for it.

It sounds like this year has been nothing but misery, and at times it felt like it. However, there are a few fandom friends who brought light to my life when I couldn’t see it. The first ones to mention are of course my partners in crime, @notquitejiraiya and @thespookymoth. Together we created a server dedicated to Ino-Shika-Cho during the spring and it has been tons of fun with the members there! Thank you two for listening to me and for being my friends during 2021.

I also have to mention Soverel, who carefully begun taking contact through comments and likes on my twitter, and later through direct messages, and it has been a fun ride ever since. We’ve had lovely discussions which are very dear to me and your support means a lot to me. Thank you for being you and for drawing so many wonderful artworks you’ve shared with me. Haha, and for making me play Genshin Impact, even though I do it like twice a month!

Another person who has made my days so much brighter is @sugarriene. Thank you for sending me that one dm that made us chat regularly, thank you for popping up and sharing panels and your wonderful drawings with me, and for vibing head canons with me. You are a lovely person, and you make me happy.

Finally, I want to give a shout out to @yoboseyokyu for listening to me when I had to yell into the void and for making me happy with your cute posts on both twitter and tumblr.

Since September 2020, I’ve written around 195 000 words and drawn close to 35 illustrations, most of them of Shikadai and Inojin. Almost 200 000 words of Majsasaurus. I’ve created a Discord server and I’ve been part of two zines as a writer, plus a free PDF-project.

It has been a wild year. A year filled with passion for my favourite characters and ship, with the excitement that came with being part of projects and hyping them. It was a year where I learned to draw digitally, and heck what fun it was.

This also a year where I learned people can be mean to me because of what I ship and that fandom friends won’t necessarily always stay to be your friend anymore and how much it can hurt. I also learned what my limits are, and what punishment I get if I don’t listen to my own mind and rest when I have to.

It was a year, guys.

Now, onto the third Majsasaurus Year. Cheers!

And those of you, who supported me when I needed it – thank you and I love you.

#majsasaurus

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asterlizard · 4 years ago

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As a memorial for my first tablet, which died this year, I put together pieces from each year that I had it (it lasted for almost 12 years!) Also I’m curious to see how my art evolved over the years, and this was a good excuse.

Analysis of each year under the cut:

2008: -Got my first tablet in September (the top pic was my very first attempt with it aaa) -Was into fanimations and creating fanart of peoples' OCs, and Japanese stuff in general -Made several attempts at original stories, but they barely lasted after creating the characters --However, I did have two stories that I made fair progress on: one of my group of friends at the time, and a horror story with disabled protagonists

2009: -I was very into horror tropes at this time, so it was difficult to find early stuff that didn't have blood on it :'D -HETALIA -My art themes immediately moved into Cuteness Territory, which I've pretty much stuck with to now -Also pretty much adopted Himaruya's art style almost overnight -The prototype characters of Kaleidoscope Children began here, though I didn't start making proper art of them until next year

2010: -So much Hetalia and chibi content (I should put a cuteness warning next time) -Played around with different art techniques -Discovered SAI -Finally completed a group picture (with 50+ characters!), which is a big accomplishment considering how easily I get bored/burnt out --This was probably the first pic I did that got fairly popular

2011: -Moved over from Photoshop to SAI as my primary art program (PS was only used for extra effects) -Finally drew fanart that wasn't Hetalia, haha -My first commission -Out of my old artwork, this year was perhaps my favourite; there are a lot of works I'm still really pleased with

2012: -Half of my art this year was digital paint, and the other half was 'attempted digital watercolour', which I never really mastered... -First attempt applying for an art job (I didn't get it, but in retrospect I'm glad I didn't, I wasn't ready yet :'D ) -Joined an art contest (and only one) on deviantart

2013: -The number of original pics outnumbered fanart (especially Hetalia, I probably drew it once a year for the next few years) -In previous years I made a couple of attempts at a simplified/more cartoony art style, but didn't really settle on something until this year, though I still primarily stuck to my more anime-influenced style -Used the Fringe tool for shading for a few years

2014: -Too busy with school, probably only made like 5 proper pics this entire year -For the next few years, I drew eyes where the lineart has no gaps between the eyelids (so more Western-ish) -Started experimenting with darker shading -First attempt at detailed food

2015: -Also not very productive -Got a food art commission

2016: -Still not very productive -First 500+ note popular pic -Stopped adding highlights to hair

2017: -Started reviving KalChi and gave them new profile pics -Wasn't super proud of my art style at this point (particularly how I drew eyes)

2018: -BNHA -Finally I had a series to obsess over again and draw lots of fanart for again! -For some reason, something clicked toward the end of the year, and I started to really like drawing??? (not that I had low self-esteem about my art, but most of what I drew didn't feel grand or special or super memorable) -New tricks: Multiply for the lineart layer, also finally drawing a decent BG instead of mostly blank/basic BGs

2019: -New lineart technique, which for lack of a better term I call the 'traditional/marble-chiseling technique', which makes me feel like less of a perfectionist due to the rougher lineart 👍 (i.e.: the rough sketch becomes the final lineart, I don't make a separate layer for the final lineart anymore) -Drew eyes differently (lineart gaps again and smaller irises) inspired by BNHA's art style -Getting back into making comics frequently again -Also more proper BGs! -Perhaps the highest enjoyment I've had yet

2020: -Zines! -The most detail I've done yet -Tablet dies in the middle of my 3rd zine work in mid-late summer (R.I.P.), while I finished it with my backup tablet --This became my first 1000+ note popular pic!

#my posts

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gulgbtqplus · 4 years ago

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EGM candidates

Our EGM is on October 9th, 2020. If you would like to run for any position, please fill out this form https://forms.gle/EMdnNa7Nr7ybah7E6! We will be updating this list as responses come in.

VP Secretary

1) Robyn (they/them)

GULGBTQ+ has been a real lifeline for me (like many others) since I started university and especially now in my 3rd year in the middle of a pandemic. And so I would love to be VP Sec to give back, support and uplift the community that’s had my back and been my safe space for the last few years.

I previously spent some time as Non-Binary officer last year so I already have an insight into the on-goings of the society. And I also attended Trans and Non-Binary coffees nearly every week. As VP Sec I would want to give more attention and accessibility to POC, disabled, and trans students in particular, especially right now. I would love to continue to work with the SRC and GUSocNet in particular, and reach out to others also. As a home student, I know the importance of having a network and so I would love to keep strengthening the network we have built as a community and expanding it. But of course most importantly working alongside our already amazing exec and committee to put ideas into motion. (And maybe make a zine or two ya know).

I realise the massive responsibility that is being part of the exec but I’m more than willing to rise to that challenge this year. Overall I want everyone to feel like they have a safe space within the society and that this is their community too. It would be a joy to be your VP Sec this year and continue to help carry on the community we have here! :) (And stay safe!)

2) Liam (he/him)

I’d be the right candidate as since I’ve joined I’ve been active in the society whether it be events or discussions going on in the server. This is important as there always has to be an open channel for discussion and chat no matter the topic. Being the VP Secretary is a big undertaking and in that i'd love to be able to chat to you all whether it be in coffees, direct messages, or an anonymous poll every now and again to find out what direction you want the society to move in. The priorities of a society are fluid in a changing world and I believe i'd be the one to step up and give people the voice to help us steer in the right direction

Events Officer

1) Robyn (they/them)

As Events Officer, I would love to continue the work previous folk have done over the last few years in running more accessible and ever creative events. Moreover this would be incredibly important with the on-going Covid situation and I would love to have the challenge of creating new events with the committee and in the society to adapt to the new online environment. To find new ways of fundraising for the society and also making online events just as exciting as in-person events were. I’m a very creative, inventive and adaptable person thanks to my degree, the projects I do outside of university and work I did with charity events back at school. Last year, I spent some time as Non-Binary officer, attending trans & non-binary coffees throughout the year and so I have a decent idea of running events already in the society. I would strive to continue to make events more accessible and welcoming to POC, international and disabled students etc., and also manage the issues that previous years may have had by taking on constructive feedback consistently. In all, I want to create a space and event for everyone by solidifying communication inside the society and outside the society.

Communications and Technology Officer

1) Evelyn (they/them)

I’m a social and economic history student. I have found it really valuable to meet people through GULGBTQ especially the craft group. I really don't know what I'd have been able to do otherwise as I found it quite difficult making friends etc when I first came to Glasgow last year. On that note I would like to contribute to the society... Mostly I'd really like to improve the website e.g. the calendar is in need of a bit of TLC!

2) Liam (he/him)

As a technologically oriented person, I believe I would be able to do the Communications and Technology role justice by setting up regular channels for communication. The website as cute as it may be is dated and could do with a freshen up. This is however easier said than done, after evaluating with everyone what priorities for it we should have the slow process of neatening it can begin. To bring people to any events, the weekly announcements message could be posted on the page along with a link to the Discord server. The page is a representation of what we do as a society yet it lays bare with nought but who is on the committee and manifestos of who would like to be. Be gay do crime, thanks for listening.

Men’s Officer

1) Ethan (he/him)

Hi, I’m Ethan - a graduate and now first year medical student, who has been involved in student representation as some kind of liberation officer for the past 4 or 5 years. I came out as transgender in 2016, and since then have openly shared my transition and experiences on a small YouTube channel. I’m tired of the narrative that as a trans man I am not a “real” man, and the barriers faced by transmasculine individuals in accessing things that are typically put down as 'feminine' needs (sanitary bins - I’m looking at you!). I am incredibly keen to push for change in the teaching of healthcare subjects, so that it is less awkward accessing things such as cervical smears and menstrual care, and that healthcare teaching in general stops being focused from a cis-het viewpoint. Whilst that may be one of my personal main focuses, wider campaigns and work around challenging stigmas particularly associated with men’s mental health and sexual health is really important. So I’d want to make sure there is involvement in these too.

2) Liam (he/him)

GULGBT+ has so far done a great job of having everyone feel accepted and have a space to chat but at the moment there isn't a Mens Officer and from anecdotal experience there is a significant lean in the societies demographic to female students at least in terms of activity in the society. My aim as this years Mens Officer would be to make the society a welcoming place for all, whether this is through running events directed towards those who aren't aware of the society or aren't aware of its purpose.

International Officer

1) Alexandra (she/her)

After moving to the UK last year, there were so many new things that I had to learn and there was plenty of confusion and mistakes along the way. Now that I've settled in and I feel comfortable as a resident of Scotland, I would love to have the opportunity to give advice and guidance to those who are still figuring things out, or are just looking for solidarity during a difficult adjustment period. It can be so disorienting and isolating to leave behind your family and friends to move to a new country, and I hope to let some folks know that they're not alone and they can talk to me and all the other wonderful people in GULGBT. This club made a huge difference for me in this regard, and I want to make sure others get that opportunity as well!

2) Pat (they/them)

I've been an international student in different countries over the years and it's had a profound impact on how I can conceptualize and relate my own queer identity. Listening to and supporting each other as international students who are far from home and potentially in a very different situation culturally and linguistically is so important, when it comes to LGBTQIA+ issues as well as the bureaucratic and everyday. I want to make sure that the society is providing a space for international students and potentially make connections with other societies for international students to reach new members and share resources.

First Year Ordinary Member

1) Ethan (he/him)

Hi, I’m Ethan - a graduate and now first year medical student, who has been involved in student representation as some kind of liberation officer for the past 4-5years. Having already spent a fair bit of time getting to know many of the LGBT+ freshers’ community at UofG this year, I’d love to be able to act as a linked voice for them to help make sure they still manage to have a great first year’s experience. This certainly wasn’t the year anyone expected, and I’m really keen to try and help make the best of what we can so everyone has a positive start to their course.

Postgraduate and Mature Students’ Officer

1) Ethan (he/him)

Hi, I’m Ethan - a graduate and now first year medical student, who has been involved in student representation as some kind of liberation officer for the past 4-5years. From completely relaunching my previous university’s LGBT+ society, to starting its first separate dedicated group for trans students, and being elected as the first trans rep for students across Scotland… my undergrad was busy! I’m really keen to bring the experiences I’ve had, and lessons I’ve learned, with me to GULGBT+ and get involved through my next 5years studying at UofG. Being a postgrad and/or mature student comes with its own unique challenges and I want to work with the committee, SRC, and wider university to make sure you are well supported in achieving all the things you want to whilst still being able to balance everything you have going on outside of university. Aside from that, something I am keen to work on during my time studying medicine, is making the curricula of healthcare subjects more inclusive of LGBT+ patient scenarios and education.

2) Pat (they/them)

Community is really important to me and has become even more so since the suspension of in-person meetings. When I came to Glasgow last year, I found that the vast majority of people I met through freshers events and societies were a good few years younger than me and it seemed like I was the only postgraduate/mature student around. I would like to continue facilitating a space for postmat students in the society and ensure that people older than the average student will feel welcome and at home in the society.

---

Preferences of those running for multiple positions:

Robyn

1. VP Secretary

2. Events Officer

Ethan

1. Men’s Officer

2. Postgraduate and Mature Students’ Officer

3. First Year Ordinary Member

Pat

1. Postgraduate and Mature Students’ Officer

2. International Officer

Liam

1. VP Secretary

2. Men’s Officer

3. Communications and Technology Officer

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lit--bitch · 5 years ago

Text

Current-Reads (20/04/2020 - 26/04/2020) 🍓🐢

(Disclosure: I don’t know anybody I’ve been currently reading this week. 😊)

Adding the preface again here: every Sunday without fail I throw up the freshest literature and photography I’ve read over the week, sometimes it’s a book, sometimes it’s a piece I saw in a magazine or an online zine, sometimes it’s something I saw on social media, etc. Sometimes I add ‘RECOMMEND’ next to a few of the titles, but that’s not to say I don’t recommend all of them, I just love some pieces more than others. Not everything will be everybody’s cup of tea, yanno, c’est la vie. And any titles that you see in bold are hyperlinked so if you click or tap them they’ll direct you straight to the source… or shopping basket.

This week I’m gonna throw in a red herring and tell you about something I’ve been watching as well as what I’ve been reading, because I think it’s really cool and definitely appropriate for the age we’re living in at the moment.

So I’ve been reading: Susan Sontag’s As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh (Diaries 1964—1980) which was edited by her son, David. I also read an interview on Granta from March between Rachel Long and Morgan Parker. I’ve also tucked into a couple pieces on Fence, Lexi Welch’s ‘Astroturf’ and Anthony Michael Morena’s ‘The Whale’. I also saw Cecelia Knapp’s poem in Bath Magg Issue Three (but the whole issue is an absolute smacker, it’s great). Last but not least, I’m up to episode 5 of a brand new thing called The Midnight Gospel. It is crazy good. And it’s on Netflix right now.

***

Cecilia Knapp, ‘I Used To Eat KFC Zingers Without Hating Myself’, Bath Magg Issue #3: I really loved the whole of Issue Three, I guess I was quite struck by this particular poem for its “staccato-ness”. This poem is buttered with present-day references. But they’re not necessarily about creating a familiar environment. Rather the object of familiarity is found within the assemblage of places, snacks and thoughts, all of which compound the grief ‘I’ is experiencing. The ‘I’ ruminates on life’s banality and their personal insecurities in living banality: ‘I need a thigh gap. I use emojis / to avoid conflict. Worry I’m a gentrifier. Watch docs about murdered women’. The vapidity is funny. The pain is not. The insecurities deepen. Your body, your life, continues the ache of day-to-day routine, and finds no resolution in the things which may or may not stand to comfort oneself when ravaged by loss. The poem feels quite loose, and disinterested. It’s a sore poem, but its array of references make it colourful. It sort of reminded me of Édouard Levé’s work a little bit? But if Édouard Levé had been a pop culture fanatic chewing HubbaBubba bubblegum on the London Overground. Bath Magg is a pretty exciting new magazine, (been around just under a year I think?) and they’ve published a lot of great writers, many of whom are emerging and I’ve spotted some quite established peple in there too. Kudos to their rubber ducky logo. It’s run by Mariah Whelan and Joe Carrick-Varty.

In Conversation with Morgan Parker and Rachel Long, Granta Magazine: I deeply love Morgan Parker’s work, she’s, in my opinion, the master of titles. I can’t think of anybody who titles their work as well as Morgan Parker does. And I love the depth of honesty and charisma in this interview. Like yeah, it appears to be a generic Q/A but, it genuinely feels like a conversation, and it’s welcoming and unpretentious. Rachel Long asks some penetrating questions, and Morgan’s answers are so detailed and self-aware. Most of the discussion revolves around the action of writing poetry in general and where does that impulse arise from, but they do discuss Morgan’s latest collection Magical Negro which came out February last year. It’s a narrative on black womanhood, on micro-aggressions and reoccuring violence, it’s about breaking down white perceptions of blackness, and dissolving those projections. What I love about Morgan Parker is she’s tackling this fucking idiot thing where (mostly) white people think she’s attempting to represent all black women in her writing, which is, by Morgan’s own admission, impossible. Her work is a duty to herself, to the background she’s lived and lives, and to unpack that discourse in her own way. And if it resonates, then great! I felt all this was inherent in the interview and only adds to my respect for her, and to Rachel for being such an attentive interviewer. BTW Rachel Long has a debut collection coming out this July, My Darling from the Lions.

Anthony Michael Morena, ‘The Whale’, Fence Portal (Streaming) (RECOMMEND): I can’t tell you how much I adored this beautiful mass of whale and word. It’s an essay which references the American Natural History Museum’s Blue Whale model. The writing is thick with feeling and fat with concern. It blends monologue, memoir. It’s non-fiction and documentary. It’s elusive, enigmatic, fragmented. It’s like broken biscuits and blubber. To me it felt like a note on the offences of climate change, the emotional response and grief as we bystand erosion and corrosion, the loss of life, and the urge to merge something back together as it dissolves and fragments before our eyes. It’s as personal as it is public. A gorgeous and complex piece.

Susan Sontag’s As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh (Diaries 1964—1980) (RECOMMEND): I felt so afflicted reading Susan Sontag’s diaries, because y’know, it’s the equivalent of invading an Ancient Egyptian pharaoh’s tomb. Like, leave people alone. At the same like, this woman. These diaries are still shaping me, and each section leaves you with the weirdest aftertaste. Her personality permeates through every detail, every line-break, every reference and articulation of feeling. You learn so much, you gain so much from her perceptions and observations. How do I contain Susan Sontag? How do I describe these diaries? Not at all. Just buy it.

Lexi Welch’s ‘Astroturf’, Fence Portal (Streaming) (RECOMMEND): My eyes locked onto this piece and just didn’t really stop reading. Lexi’s voice is enamouring and hypnotic. It’s so violent too. You’re lunged into friction burns and sports injuries, time and progression, the tensions between collectivity and individuality, family and sexuality, or as Fence put it, ‘lesbian eros’. This piece felt acidic. At times you can’t tell if the ‘I’ is indifferent or hurting to the point of numbness. It straddles so many different thematics, and breaks down a lot of conventions pertaining to the “ideal experience” of family relationships and team work. The resolution seems to be that in spite of people, our collectivity is defined by our collective solitude. This essay kicked me around a football field. It takes a good few repeated reads to appreciate its kaleidoscopic shifting, but it’s definitely one of my favourites.

The Midnight Gospel, from Pendleton Ward and Duncan Trussell, Netflix: (RECOMMEND) So the other day my friend Ben linked this to me and I had seen the trailer ages back and thought “Oh yeah I really wanna watch that”, but just forgot. After his reminder, I started watching it and ever since I’ve been saying to loads of other friends “Have you watched ‘The Midnight Gospel’ on Netflix?” because I’m d y i n g to talk about it with everybody.

I literally can’t categorise this “TV show” to you. It’s like if animation had a baby with a philosophy podcast and then put that baby onto an IV drip of psychedelics. It’s this swarm of different stimuli which you kind have to zone in on and absorb individually and yet somehow collectively.

So like, “Clancy” is a spacecaster who sets up “spacecasts” (podcasts) with creatures from other simulated worlds and he interviews them. But when Clancy transports himself into these worlds, it’s not like they’re sat down on some cream sofa with two glasses of water like it’s animated Oprah. No, his interviewees are like in the middle of fighting off a zombie apocalypse or meditating on a mountain or trying to find and save their lost lover. And Clancy just joins them on the journey and interviews them about their “specialism”. These are real people that are being interviewed like, the first episode is with Dr. Drew Pinker. And when you’re watching it, you think that the animation is totally separate to the conversation exchange the characters are having, but that’s not true. They have intersections, they have meaning. It only becomes obvious that it has meaning right at the end of each episode, but if you lock on you’ll see it’s all relevant throughout.

One of my friends was like “Oh I might stick that on tonight and have a joint” and I was like, don’t fucking get high when you’re watching this because it’s already intense enough as it is, like you know that Pendleton Ward and Duncan Trussell have felt some real shit to create this absolute rare jewel. In my opinion, you don’t need cannabis to appreciate these discussions. But if you wanna do it, then hey it’s a “free country”. And it’s not as though there’s a serious, central core plot like there is with Rick & Morty, I mean there is a kind of overarching plot but it’s not always integral. Like ultimately we’re invested in Clancy’s story but also all the stories of all the other people that come his way. There’s multiple plots, there’s multiple dimensions and ways of seeing. It’s a programme which delivers on multiplicity, which manifests itself in everything and everyone we see and know and touch and hear, etc, etc.

This production articulates some of the revelations that psychedelics can give you. Psychedelics don’t make you see the world literally like these animations do, but the sensations of the animation are reminiscent of an acid trip’s oscillating moods and sensitivities. It’s really cool, and it’s very poignant, and it’s my new favourite show to watch. And what’s so great about it is that, it requires multiple watches in order to really absorb everything in its entirety, so it’s a series you can just keep going back to even after you’ve seen them all. It’s re-watchable. Just fundamental goodness all round. Best way to indulge in it is with ice cream. ��

***

So that’s it for this week, next Friday’s review is Annie Ernaux’s A Girl’s Story translated by Alison L. Strayer, published with Fitzcarraldo Editions.

Stay safe and well as always, my little caramels. 💁🏽

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all-things-are-nothing-to-me · 5 years ago

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Decomposing the Masses: Towards Armed Individuality

“Anarchists are opposed to authority both from below and from above. They do not demand power for the masses, but seek to destroy all power and to decompose these masses into individuals who are masters of their own lives. Therefore anarchists are the most decisive enemies of all types of communism and those who profess to be communists or socialist cannot possibly be anarchists.” -Enzo Martucci

For me, individuality is a weapon. It is the weaponized praxis of nihilist anarchy and personal ungovernability. An individual becomes ungovernable by becoming and asserting their negation to socially constructed identities, formally organized groups, or the monolith of mass society. From this perspective, negation embodies a refusal to surrender one’s uniqueness to the confines of formal membership. This is where I draw a line between anarchy and leftism. Leftism encourages the rearrangement of constructed identities, rigid formations, and roles within a formalized social group to which individuals surrender for a “greater good” or purpose. On the other hand, anarchy as life is the decomposition of formal social groups allowing for the existential informality of individual emancipation, development, and limitless exploration. Therefore, for me, anarchy is an individualistic refusal to surrender one’s self to an over-arching power which positions itself above all.

Power structures, socially or institutionally, require the surrendering of individuality to massify their domination. The State can not exist without the individuals who choose to put on the badge and uniform. Capitalism can not exist without the subservience of individuals who make up the mass social body that reinforce its psychological and social validity and domination. Capitalism and the State require individual participation, multiplied to construct mass industrial society. I will give the leftists credit in pointing out that a massive enough worker strike could stunt industrial progress, since it is the worker - the individual wage-slave - that contributes to the life of the mega-machine. But as history has shown, a mass worker strike is not only exhausting to coordinate, but impossible to sustain long enough to collapse capitalism. While many leftists, including myself at one point, will point out that many workers simply do not have access to inspirational radical information, I have also come to learn that many workers simply do not want to strike. For too many reasons to list here, many workers go into work whether rebellions or strikes are happening or not. A fact that is often overlooked is that people are individuals. And as individuals, some choose to rebel against their work place, and some do not.

Collectives, Community Empowerment, and Organizing

Around 2013, I set off with the aim of building community power through collectivist projects that were intended to benefit people in my hood. Everything from a radical book lending library, a zine distro, really really free markets, food not bombs, and community film screenings. The collective I was part of was vibrant and full of energy. One year, we hosted a July 31 st Day of Action Against Racism and Fascism event which included film screening riot videos and clips of nazis gettin’ beat down. We left our door open for people in the hallway to come join, and our tiny apartment was packed with folks who lived above and below us, cheering in excitement while watching the videos. At the end we handed out zines and flyers, and promoted a really really free market we were doin’ the following two days. The next day, only three neighbors from the event showed up and chatted with us.

The day after that, they didn't come back. At the time, I tried understanding why - despite the videos, the flyers and zines, and the conversations - our neighbors, who had talked about experiencing racism in their lives, were not interested in workin’ on projects with us. A one-on-one conversation with two of them a few weeks later reality-checked me: “That’s cool what y’all doin', but, you know, we just tryin' to do that money thing. We just tryin’ to get paid.” After a short debate about “gettin’ rich”, we departed with fist bumps and me feeling confused and defeated. “My” people in my own hood, in my own building, ain't down with that revolutionary shit.

After a couple more years of hood-based banner drops, graffiti messages, wheat-pasting, a zine written to document and glorify the history of anti-racist rebellion where I grew up, and more community events I realized a truth that no leftist wants to hear: there is no such thing as a homogenized community to radicalize. What is a “community” when your hood is composed of individuals who each have different and often opposing objectives in life? I soon realized that the word “community” was merely a political word that often flattens important differences between individuals and propagates false unity. It is a social construct merely representing a population of people who live in a single area. Sure, we had a couple individuals here and there who were down with what we were doin’, got involved and stuck around for a little bit. But the hood was diverse. And it would be dishonest to say that they or we represented the interests of that hood. Everyone had their own individual opinions and life expectations.

I have seen some hood revolutionary projects that involved a large portion of a community materialize and flourish. Sometimes they last awhile and sometimes they lose membership and fizzle out. This is where my life experience started to define a difference between affinity groups and mass organizing. The individuals who were down with our shit came to us, with or without us having to propagate a program. They showed up because they saw other individuals that they could relate to. Other people just weren’t interested, despite us all living in the hood together, facing gentrification and being mostly POC.

I see something similar happening with anarchism. The same methods and appeals to the community, to the masses, to “the people”, are energetic and heartfelt, but yielding very little results. Potluck after potluck, radical social center or radical library, all end up bein’ filled with pre-existing radicals and end up becoming social clubs rather than places filled with non-radical people living in the immediate community. Attempts to mobilize the masses through street demonstrations end up with spectators on the sidewalk and the same radicals chanting, singing or marching in the street. I watched this spike during different times. When Trump was running for election, everyone and their momma was in the streets. Radicals were out, armed with flyers and zines and radical chants over megaphones. Shortly after the election, things normalized and soon just the radicals were back in the streets doing their thing. I admit, I was there too. Marching, chanting, handing out zines and flyers to sidewalk spectators. I remember, years ago, there was an Occupy march where we took Michigan Street in Chicago. A mass of students saw us, joined in for 3 minutes, then ran back to the sidewalk with high fives and went about their day. We were still in the streets tryin’ to invite them back with popular music. With the sudden drop in numbers, the police surrounded us and escorted us to the sidewalk. What is so wack about this is that this tactic is still being attempted today by radicals. As if the first dozen times it happened weren’t embarrassing enough.

Capitalist Individuality vs Individualist Anarchy

Individuality can be conditioned and subjugated by a socio-political environment that monopolizes a narrative of life. In the case of capitalism, we’re all born into a pre-configured society that reinforces its values, roles, and ideology with the psychological force of formalized institutions. When we walk outside, we see a reality that has been quantified and institutionally constructed to propagate itself. Cars, airplanes, highways, skyscrapers, fast food, etc - all normalized to generate the comfort of order. Without order, without normalization, there is a chaos that breaks the silence of personal subjugation. Organization and order go hand in hand. Values, roles, and ideology are better reinforced when massified to create the illusion of normalcy. This process discourages individuality, uniqueness, and chaos, since all three pose a threat to monolithic formations. While capitalism claims to encourage genuine individualism, it is an individualism that is pre-configured to reproduce capitalism on an individual level. In other words, individuals who surrender themselves to the system of capitalism become members limited to making capitalism functional. Any individual who refuses capitalism, or systems all together, will seek an existence that contradicts the interests of capitalism. From this perspective, individualist anarchy is a refusal to surrendering one’s self to the confines of a formalized system.

Chaos is the personalized strategy of negation to pre-configured order- an order that is pre-decided by those merely interested in gaining further membership. The strategy of creating a mass society or system of order is a strategy of discouraging individuality, chaos, and uniqueness. This strategy includes presenting a one-dimensional view of individualism that is defined by capitalism. But for individualism to be unique and chaotic, it can not be limited by the confines of formal organizations or socialized constructs.

Capitalism is a social construct that requires mass participation to create the illusion of normality to maintain social order. The mass participation composed of subservient individuals allows for capitalism to represent itself by materialized institutions- all physically built by the hands of individual workers. It is true, that the working class built this world, and therefore can unbuild it as well. But this assumes there are no subtle, peer pressuring forces at work that subdue the individual. This is why social war is not only necessary against massified existence, but also necessary with internally breaking the shackles of socially constructed identity and crushing the logic of submission.

The Right and the Left: Two Sides of a Coin Called “Identity”

Identity politics illustrates how different identities are stratified to create hierarchical power dynamics between groups of people. Identity politics also illustrates how individuality and uniqueness are discouraged to the point of social isolation. When people act out of bounds with the socially assigned identity, they are treated as “Others”, not validated to represent an experience. Depending on the system, certain experiences are preferred and validated. For example, to right-winger A, a successful “black” businessman is celebrated and seen as the promotion of capitalism as equal and non-discriminatory. But to right-winger B, that same man is seen as a threat to the white supremacist order and therefore not celebrated. Under leftist A, that same individual will be mocked as an “uncle Tom” or a “sellout”. But to leftist B, the “black” businessman represents successful assimilation, progress and hope for other black people. Both leftism and capitalism each have divided sides. But they all, in one way or another, share the commonality of order, homogenized identities, and membership. Therefore, in one way or another, this individual can be used as propaganda to promote a system. So now lets take for example, a “black” “man” who refuses the identity and roles of “blackness”, patriarchy, and the membership as a worker. Instead, this individual refuses leftism and capitalism. What systems can use this individual as propaganda now? From a leftist or capitalist perspective, what positive aspects of this individual can be used for promotion? As far as promoting a system, there is none. The confinements of a system on a social level have been suspended. All that remains is the anarchy in becoming ungovernable through individual uniqueness.

Individuals who deviate from the normalized social order are not only bad for propaganda, but maintain the threat of inspiring other emancipations. Individuals who desire freedom beyond the limitations of political programs don’t require a package-deal of future utopia. Rather than workin’ now to play later, play and adventure accompany a present determination for wild exploration. Armed with a sense of urgency, life becomes a playground of individual flowering and negation to social constraint- a playground that allows free, open-ended social associations and interactions not coerced by a structural permanence.

Individuality armed with chaos finds itself as an insurgent against the social forces that attempt to subjugate it. As individuality becomes wild, it becomes immune and ungovernable to the carefully constructed programs advertised by the politicians of identity and revolution. Those self-proclaimed revolutionaries can only conceive of revolution as merely reforming the social conditions that constitute order. But some of us prefer insurrection over revolution; an insurrection that doesn’t end with a new system but a life without measure. I want to weaponize chaos as an individualized attack on all governance and social order. I envision anarchy as a wildfire that blackens the civilized, domesticated kingdom of institutional and social domination. Getting free is more than just attacking capital and the state. At least for me, it also means creating your self every single day beyond society’s attempts to define you as a static being.

My war is an individualist war against the right-wing and all its variations. I am at war with the materialized construction of patriarchal “whiteness”, its institutions, and its politically assumed supremacy that materializes the colonial domination of industrial capitalism. My war is also against the left, and all its attempts to manufacture a future world of systematized “freedom” through formal organization, the preservation of socially constructed identity and the subservience of individuality to social groupings. My liberation won’t be found in the holy book of “The Communist Manifesto”, “Forbes Magazine”, nor “The Coming Insurrection”. Freedom isn’t a pre-configured future utopia; it is a lived experience by those who have the courage to reclaim their lives as their own here and now. In the face of those revolutionary elites who attempt to lay claim to the future with their poetic social seduction and academic expertise, I remain insubordinate.

#green anarchy #individualism #post left anarchy #anarchy #communism

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destructiveurges · 6 years ago

Text

‘Decomposing the Masses: Towards Armed Individuality’ by Flower Bomb (USA)

Power structures, socially or institutionally, require the surrendering of individuality to massify their domination. The State can not exist without the individuals who choose to put on the badge and uniform. Capitalism can not exist without the subservience of individuals who make up the mass social body that reinforce its psychological and social validity and domination. Capitalism and the State require individual participation, multiplied to construct mass industrial society. I will give the leftists credit in pointing out that a massive enough worker strike could stunt industrial progress, since it is the worker — the individual wage-slave — that contributes to the life of the mega-machine. But as history has shown, a mass worker strike is not only exhausting to coordinate, but impossible to sustain long enough to collapse capitalism. While many leftists, including myself at one point, will point out that many workers simply do not have access to inspirational radical information, I have also come to learn that many workers simply do not want to strike. For too many reasons to list here, many workers go into work whether rebellions or strikes are happening or not. A fact that is often overlooked is that people are individuals. And as individuals, some choose to rebel against their work place, and some do not.

Collectives, Community Empowerment, and Organizing

The day after that, they didn’t come back. At the time, I tried understanding why — despite the videos, the flyers and zines, and the conversations — our neighbors, who had talked about experiencing racism in their lives, were not interested in workin’ on projects with us. A one-on-one conversation with two of them a few weeks later reality-checked me: “That’s cool what y’all doin’, but, you know, we just tryin’ to do that money thing. We just tryin’ to get paid.” After a short debate about “gettin’ rich”, we departed with fist bumps and me feeling confused and defeated. “My” people in my own hood, in my own building, ain’t down with that revolutionary shit.

Capitalist Individuality vs Individualist Anarchy

Individuality can be conditioned and subjugated by a socio-political environment that monopolizes a narrative of life. In the case of capitalism, we’re all born into a pre-configured society that reinforces its values, roles, and ideology with the psychological force of formalized institutions. When we walk outside, we see a reality that has been quantified and institutionally constructed to propagate itself. Cars, airplanes, highways, skyscrapers, fast food, etc — all normalized to generate the comfort of order. Without order, without normalization, there is a chaos that breaks the silence of personal subjugation. Organization and order go hand in hand. Values, roles, and ideology are better reinforced when massified to create the illusion of normalcy. This process discourages individuality, uniqueness, and chaos, since all three pose a threat to monolithic formations. While capitalism claims to encourage genuine individualism, it is an individualism that is pre-configured to reproduce capitalism on an individual level. In other words, individuals who surrender themselves to the system of capitalism become members limited to making capitalism functional. Any individual who refuses capitalism, or systems all together, will seek an existence that contradicts the interests of capitalism. From this perspective, individualist anarchy is a refusal to surrendering one’s self to the confines of a formalized system.

The Right and the Left: Two Sides of a Coin Called “Identity”

#USA #Flower Bomb #Anarchist Theory #Insurrection #Individualist Anarchism

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daggerzine · 5 years ago

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Tony Potts of The Monochrome Set gives us the details! (interview by Steve Michener)

I started writing a weekly post on Facebook about two years ago, wherein I would pick a song from the extensive catalog of The Monochrome Set and write a few words, trying to hep people to their fantastic music. It became a fun, online conversation with friends and fans and the band would sometimes join in, adding to the story or correcting my (frequent) historical errors. I was presenting myself as a TMS scholar when I was really just a doofus with a love for the music. The FB feature eventually led to my volunteering to drive the band on the West Coast swing of their recent US tour, which was a total blast.

Recently, I came up with the idea of interviewing various members of the band and when I initially hit upon this plan, the first person I thought of was Tony Potts, their early ‘5th member.' Tony added another dimension to the band’s early shows by projecting films onto screens (and sometimes the band), helping to differentiate the band in the crowded post-punk music scene of the late 70s/early 80s England. I never personally saw any early TMS shows so I missed out on his contributions until last year when I attended the TMS 40th anniversary shows in London and got to experience his visuals along with the music (albeit from a laptop now instead of a Super 8 film). I’ve always been intrigued by his role with the group and he was nice enough to answer some of my email questions about the early days of the band, his art, and, of course, his favorite TMS song. Tony’s Facebook page is one of the most entertaining around; he doesn’t hold back much, whether it’s about his cancer diagnosis, politics, or the state of the Great Western Railroad. TMSF and now Dagger Zine present the Weird, Wild and Wonderful World of Tony Potts!

That’s Tony far right

Q: How did you come to be involved with the Monochrome Set? What drew you to them and them to you?

Ah, now there are two answers to this question. The first is terse and accurate, although less interesting than the second. Well, I knew John, J.D. Haney. That's the terse answer. However, in the interests of interest, and name-dropping, we have to travel back to about 1974. The story illustrates I think, how our lives are built upon great swaths of happenstance.

While studying on my pre-degree arts foundation I became close friends with Edwin, later Savage Pencil, who later still formed The Art Attacks. After some itinerant drummers, including Ricky Slaughter of The Motors, and Robert Gotobed of Wire, JD became the Art Attacks drummer. Now, Edwin didn't know him, so I can only guess, at this great distance, that I put his name forward. But again, we must spool back in time. How did I know John? After Edwin left for London, and still at my provincial art school, I became good friends with two fellow student artists like myself, Andy Palmer and Joy Haney. They both became founder members of Crass, under the names N A Palmer and Joy De Vivre, and are now exceptionally good fine artists.

It was through my friendship with Joy that I meet her brother, the aforementioned JD, when he came down from university in the summer of '76. We hung out with his college chum, Jean-Marie Carroll, later to join The Members, and discussed narrow neckties and casual trousers. Then Joy, Andy, and I went off to the Greek islands for the summer, before returning to London to take up our degree course at Chelsea School of Art.

Thus it was, with us all now in London, that I believe I introduced JD to The Art Attacks, with whom I worked until their demise, at which point JD took up with TMS. Due to mutual creative interests in art, I was invited to display my films at their gigs. That was late '78, with my first gig with the band being at Acklam Hall, Notting Hill, on 22nd February 1979. Thereafter we fell together and I started to make films specifically for the live shows. It’s worth pointing out that the TMS was not formed in an art school, or by art students. It is lazy journalism that perpetuates the Art School band epithet. Both Bid, the main song writing power behind the longevity of the band, and the other key lyricist, JD Haney, have never been anywhere near an art school.

Q: What were your films like? Who were your art-school influences at the time? What were you doing with the Art Attacks?

I was studying fine art painting, and painting was my main interest. Although I loved films, I never expected to move in that direction. As a painter, I was a devotee of the Russian Constructivists like Tatlin, but mostly the geometric forms of El Lissitzky, and the Suprematist Kazimir Malevich - best known for Black Square and White On White. My paintings were an amalgam of geometric forms in the vein of Lissitzky on grounds inspired by Malevich's painterly surfaces. With the rise of the Punk movement in London, I somewhat changed direction, moving into filmmaking that had a quasi-narrative style, intended to be more emotional and poetic. Although driven by what was happening in music during ‘76/'77/'78, ironically, my films couldn't be any less punk if I tried. Well, not to punks anyway. These days I regret that I never resuscitated my painting practice.

At the time of the Acklam Hall gig, I had made one large scale Super8, and two 16mm works. I think it must have been 'Strange Meeting', which in part was about aliens and The Red Army Faction murders, which we showed at that gig, but as a support. I had previously made some other 8mm films, and I might have used them during the band, but I can't recall. However, I now have vague memories of projecting B & W film over the whole stage and band. With The Art Attacks, I didn't have a creative role, I just supported the band in rehearsal and at gigs with Paul Humphries their manager, and the initial manager of TMS. Paul, JD and I all shared the same squat in Brailsford Road, Brixton. So, with TMS I had something more creative to do.

Q: For those of us who weren't able to see those shows, describe for us what you were doing with the films during the shows. How were the films received by the audience?

As I said, initially I used the films that I had made in another context, and they were added to the performance to create an overall ambiance, a statement of presentation that was not about a band energetically leaping about on stage, as was the order of the day. Soon I started to make Super8 material specifically for TMS performances. This included the scratched and bleached footage for 'Lester Leaps In', or images filmed on the road, like the Berlin footage used for ‘Viva Death Row’, or staged material of the band getting up to also sorts of antics, like the beach ball larks and bits of animations I would make with no specific aim. In the early days, I made two roller blind screens in long boxes, [we took them on the first two US tours] with one on either side of the stage as space allowed, with film projected onto them so the band members were often in silhouette, although it bled onto them also. The stage was very dark, lit by blue footlights, which I made. I think Mark Perry of Sniffing Glue/Alternative TV said something like it was the most brilliantly depressing thing he had seen. That was always the irony at that time, the music was pert and poppy and uplifting, but the show wasn't. What a laugh, we all thought.

The shows became increasingly more elaborate with more screens, more projectors and a theatrical lighting rig. At this time we were using Ground Control, Bowie's original PA, run by a lovely guy called Robin Mayhew. Using the theatre lights allowed me to focus and shape controlled beams of light exactly where I wanted them. For example, I could just illuminate Bid's face or other small areas with geometric shapes, while leaving the stage largely unlit. Then the film screens could glow and flicker in the dark. The lads tended not to move a great deal. A tradition assiduously upheld by Mr. Warren.

As to reception, well some people liked it, and others couldn't see the point. I think it mostly worked as a spectacle, an integrated whole, a total experience, but for those just into the music, it was probably irrelevant. I mean, they are a great band, so nobody missed me when I didn't set up, like at the M80. That stage was toooo big, man.

Bid and Tony

Q; As the 'Fifth Member' whose focus seemed to have been on the live performances, how did you fit in with the band in the recording studio?

Yes, my key role was the live performance; anything else was a bonus for me. I was at all recordings from the second Rough Trade single to the end of the second album, as an enthusiastic supporter and admirer. Of course, I chipped in with the odd suggestion or noise and was probably ignored where and when necessary. Being musically incompetent, my timing is off by a good margin so I'm not sure my handclaps ever made a final mix. You can hear me on TWWWWofTP. I've got quite a pleasant singing voice, also, just not in public. Bid once marked out the chord changes for Ici Les Enfants on a plastic organ I had, to fill out the live sound, but after the first chord change, I was lost and bewildered.

Q: You've done promotional videos for the band. Can you talk about a few of those projects? Do you have a favorite video?

The first promotional film I made was the one for Dindisc, and called Strange Boutique, not after the title of the first album as many think, but coincidentally, after the name of a pair of corduroy trousers! Actually, that may not be true. So, this was conceived as a short film, with two songs and a Rod Serling type piece to camera as a linking devise. Done on the very cheap. Unfortunately, there were syncing issues with some of the dialogue and the master got damaged, scratched, and I'm not sure if I still have the original film, or not. It's on our DVD as a complete piece as far as I remember, but it turns up on YouTube, usually cut down to either of the two songs LSD and Strange Boutique, without all the linking material.

We then waited a long time until I was commissioned by WEA to make the promo for 'Jacob's Ladder' with the release of 'The Lost Weekend' album. The deal was negotiated from a public phone box on Clapham Common tube station. It was somewhat compromised by cock-ups at WEA which meant I was forced to hand it over before it was fully edited to my satisfaction. I seem to have made a style out of technical imperfections; at least that's what I'm saying. At the time Top of the Pops had a video preview section, and a short clip of Jacob's Ladder was shown. That’s primetime TV, folks!

And then, of course, I was delighted when Bid asked me to make the official MaisieWorld video for ‘I Feel Fine’, which I was very pleased with. All these projects were very personal to me, not just the execution of a job, and the first two were part of my life at the time of making.

Q. The only footage I've seen of you actually playing with the band is the Old Grey Whistle Test TV spot. Was it common for you to join the band onstage?

Well, I was usually visible on stage, controlling the projectors, which needed constant manipulation, like a DJ scratching, changing speed and switching images, fading and mixing. Also, there might be some little set piece we had devised, which required me to do something. At one point, during the Ground Control days, I remember I had my own mic so I could interact with the stage, which didn't last that long. So, to some extent, I always had a relationship with the stage as both performer and technician. Once, when Lester Square had had enough, I did perform the encore, He's Frank, by incessantly plucking one string of his guitar. Pretty good, actually! Music and Maths very similar to my mind, no sooner do I believe that I have mastered the execution of some small calculation, but I soon discover that I haven't.

Don’t shake the ladder, Tony gettin’ down to work.

Q: Tell us about your film education and your career in film and video outside the band.

I made a living of sorts working commercially in film and video production, and teaching, but as I mentioned before, I actually trained in fine art. My art foundation took a very academic approach and involved copious hours of life drawing and other drawing classes, while being given time to develop one's own particular discipline and style.

I made one Super8 film based on geometric elements in my painting. I had made three other 8mm film before this. It wasn't until I was on my degree course that I started making more moving image work, but this stemmed from a fine art perspective, so I didn't ever have any film school type training. My own work I would categorise as poetic experimentalism, that is under the general umbrella of artist film and video. Just a reminder that you can catch up with lots more detail of everything I've said at my website, http://tonypottsloopform.altervista.org. Although it has all the history of the films and staging, as well as the making of Jacob's Ladder, it's rather old and not up-to-date. That site includes all the art projects I've worked on, the history of TMS film, and my own films. My creative life can be divided into three separate but overlapping strands. The first being, my personal practice as an artist/film maker, the second, my skills and knowledge deployed in the service of collective artworks and community arts projects, and those same skills employed commercially in film and video production and teaching.

Q: It's obvious from FB that you are a big film fan. Who are some of your favorite directors/favorite movies?

With a few exceptions, I'm not much interested in modern Hollywood, old Hollywood is better, and pre-Hays better still. My film tastes are somewhat esoteric for most folks. I prefer silent film, particularly that of the classic German period of the twenties, Lang, Murnau, Pabst, Dreyer. Then in the sixties, PP Pasolini, Robert Bresson, Akira Kurosawa, soviet era Tarkosky and Parajhanov, plus a host of even less well know eastern European directors like Miklos Jancso, Jan Nemec, or Frantisek Vlacil. Don't you wish you'd never asked?

Q. You live in Wales, pretty far away from the London of your youth. How did you end up there and what appeals to you living there?

Well, we split our time between London and Pembrokeshire at present, while my wife Rachael is still working. In a few years, we'll move out completely, I think. I can't relax in the city anymore. I need some more space to feel comfortable. I've had as much London as I can handle. Rachael is Welsh, although Pembrokeshire is known as little England beyond Wales, and we are fortunate to own her childhood home there.

Q. You were recently diagnosed with cancer and posted your experience on Facebook. How did you discover that you had cancer and how are you doing now?

Yes, that was unfortunate. The prostate gets larger as us men grow older and so puts a bit of pressure on the bladder, changing the way you take a pee, like urgency and frequency. So any chap of a certain age should cut along to a doctor if they have persistent symptoms of this type. Our neighbour in Wales insists on calling it prostrate cancer, but I refuse to take that lying down, and firmly pronounce it prostate, but to no avail. But seriously, although it's a slow-growing cancer, the sooner you act, the sooner you can get the appropriate treatment. I had to have surgery, but it's not necessary for everyone. As my cousin, who luck would have it is a cancer specialist said, do you want to be erect or dead? Haha, what a great choice!

Q: Since this is a TMSF, after all, can you pick a favorite song and say a few words about it?

My choice of song to end this pleasant excursion is 'The Devil Rides Out', from the 'Eligible Bachelors' album. By the time of recording this record JD had left the band and was living in NY, and I was also spending a great deal of time in that city also. I was still contributing to the occasional gig or short tour, but I certainly wasn't around when this album was recorded. Christ, what do you expect for a record made in Luton?

So it is the live performances of this song that I recall, since it was in the repertoire well ahead of it being recorded. Although I could say it of many other songs, the open chords of 'The Devil Rides Out' always gave me a buzz as I waited to play in whatever the film images were [I can't remember]. Even if the audience or critics found the films superfluous or unimportant, I usually enjoyed watching the way that a set of otherwise unrelated images somehow meshed and synchronised with the music and gave the illusion of a premeditated vision. Of course, it was premeditated in as much as I knew what pieces of film would be used for a particular song, but beyond that, there was a lot of slack in the system. With the various parameters of the live installation, having to follow the cue of the band and the hand manipulating the projectors [no computers], there were great possibilities that the extemporisation would result in entirely unique sets of images and sound on each occasion.

Well, I should say something about why I like the song. It's one of a number of Bid's more esoteric lyrical compositions. He had previously pushed the Latin boat out with Adeste Fideles [not everyone's favourite song title to pronounce], and my spell checker isn't too keen on the words, either. In this case, the bridging line is rendered in Latin, but with the exception of the 'Hails', this is written in the ancient language of Sanskrit. Or at least that is my understanding and belief. Whatever the lyrical origins are, this is a classic TMS arrangement, altogether thrilling, incomprehensible and mysterious, yet totally pop, totally accessible and it dumps from a very great height those chart-topping household names who have followed in their wake.

And of course, I can never resist a song that features a sleigh bell, The Devil Rides Out and The Stooges 'I Wanna Be Your Dog' being the two finest examples.

http://tonypottsloopform.altervista.org

www.themonochromeset.co.uk

www.tapeterecords.de

www.facebook.com/themonochromeset

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themarginalthinker · 7 years ago

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Whats your favorite fandom you’ve ever been in?

Aaaah, how to answer,,,

I feel like this question is...not necessarily a trick question so to speak, but more like...a question who’s answer has a lot of parts. So I’ll try to keep it short heheh..

So, the first thing is- no fandom. No fandom is my favorite. I like and participate in them all for different reasons. Lets start with the first one I was ever heavily involved enough in to really call myself a ‘part of the fandom’: Danny Phantom

Now, it’s kinda grown a bit of a cult following as the cartoon itself was canceled in 2007, but it was a very unique experience. Being as small as it was, the Danny Phantom fandom, or, ‘Phandom’ as we liked to call ourselves, was kinda more like an extended family. There was a sense of welcome, for the most part, and let me tell you - aside from a few, I’ve yet to see another fandom so viscerally obsessed with playing and making even more gruesome and unsettling horror tropes then this phandom. Which is fair, as it’s literally a show about how a fourteen year old kid may-or-may-not have literally died to get his superpowers. In any case, this three-season undead wonder of a show was my first fandom calling, and was so for a good four or five years. It was the first time I’d ever written fanfic, and produced art for a fandom, and it was a pretty good first experience with the fun that can come from interacting with people who liked the same things as you. 9.5/10, would join again.

The next fandom I was involved in was, comparable to the last, a much larger and definitely much more...divided one. Well. Perhaps ‘divided’ isn’t the word I’m looking for, but there were definitely...boundaries. Mostly to do with shipping, but for other aspects as well, which sorta introduced me to the idea of ‘your kink is not my kink’ and ‘don’t like don’t read’ and ‘we are always THIS close from devolving into a steaming shitstorm of ship wars holy shit’.

This fandom would be the Attack on Titan fandom.

Now...let me preface this by saying I did not like this fandom when I first encountered it. My first experience with it was when it started invading my other fandoms, as crossovers, references, gifs, whatever. I was sick to death of seeing it before I even actually knew what it was. Then...I kinda...thought the memes used with it was funny. There was some....interesting character designs at least....huh. Ok so wait...giant monsters...swords...a kick-ass theme - ok, what is this. So seeing it pop up on Netflix in the anime section one day, I figured...why not. I was less involved with Danny Phantom at this point, and kinda looking for something else to entertain myself, so, off to the AoT fruity rumpus asshole factory I went.

And didn’t once look back for four more years. The duration of my highschool fandom scene was utterly dominated by this fandom. I wrote fic, I drew fanart, I formed bonds with other people in the fandom; hell, I almost got into several arguments with people about ships once or twice. To this day, though I can’t honestly call myself really involved anymore, I still read fics from it, and will sometimes peruse some of my ship tags. To this day, Attack on Titan will have been one of the biggest influences in my life in terms of creativity and productivity. I loved it, I still love it, and I hope other people continue loving it in the future. 11/10, would recommend always.

The third and latest major fandom I’m involved in...well. I think it needs very little introduction. Just one sentence, in fact.

Let me tell you about Homestuck.

Now...if you’ve been anywhere on the internet, chances are you’ve at the very least HEARD the Name ‘Homestuck’ and for good reason. While I (very nearly, a that) avoided being sucked into Homestuck proper during it’s heyday - around 2012-13 - it DID stick in my mind for a while. The reason? It. IS. EVERYWHERE. THERE ARE LITERALLY SONG LYRICS STATING ‘YOU CAN’T FIGHT THE HOMESTUCK’ AND THEY AREN’T HYPERBOLE, GUYS. That in itself should explain this fandom pretty well, if nothing else.

When I was young an naive, I’d asked a friend who was something of a closeted Homestuckian veteran about whether or not I should read it, as all I knew about it was that it was a webcomic and that it was supposedly a really long, weird, batshit one. They told me to run. Run away, and don’t look back. I didn’t listen, and here we are with me ass-first in the middle of act 6 - the longest act - of Homestuck and completely gone on it. There’s a video describing another poor soul’s decent into madness with this comic, with the lines ‘it’s like if Satan had written a webcomic’ and again, not hyperbole...

I can confidently state that Homestuck is the most varied and wide-spread out of any of the fandom/canon experiences I’ve had so far. Despite it being literally just one storyline, one comic, one(?) metaverse, it still manages to feel like a whole industry of itself, similar to the feeling of the Marvel or DC extended universes. Makes sense, as the comic proper has literally over 8,000 pages claiming and holding a title as one of the longest pieces of english literature written to date. Let me make this as perfectly clear to you as I can - One you’re in, you don’t get out. There are people in this fandom who’ve been in it since the damn thing fucking started in 2009, and haven’t waned in their fandom activity, producing fic, music, art, games, zines, whatever else have you.

Homestuck is...kinda impossible to describe, really. I think that the author him self honestly said it best when summarizing: “It’s about some kids who play a game.” And honestly? That’s good enough for me.

Homestuck: 413/10. Good fandom. Best read.

Well. I think I’ve said plenty. Sorry about the length anon... ._.”

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aroomoftheirown · 7 years ago

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Thoughts From a Tumblr Mom

By Tumblr user slowdissolve

My name’s Ann, I’m almost 48, and I live in a small town in the Midwest USA. I’ve been married 18 years, have two teenage children, and I’m bisexual.

I grew up in a small, religious, traditional area. I don’t say conservative, because it was the 1970’s, and I went to a tiny Catholic school run by the Sisters of St. Francis, which was and is a pretty progressive group of women. I seriously considered the convent for myself for many years.

The 1980’s arrived when I was in junior high, and the AIDS crisis was beginning as I entered high school. People did not come out. It was simply a thing one did not do. Gay people were the butt of jokes and lived in cities. I knew that I was different: I dressed in a butchy way, cut my hair short, didn’t wear makeup. I didn’t date, mostly because the small dating pool of boys was put off by my physical appearance (though fat wasn’t necessarily a deal breaker) and my intellect (which was). I had no clue if any of the other girls I knew at the time were attracted to other girls. They showed no sign of interest in me.

I had the good fortune to go to an Ivy League school. Yale was known in the League as the “gay Ivy”, and it was a transformative and positive experience. I met openly gay men for the first time. I don’t quite know why I didn’t meet any lesbians, but that may be because they were already paired off before I got a chance to meet them. I came out to my friends there as queer in my senior year, and it was very positive. By that time I’d realized that I’d been having crushes on other women. But at that point it might have been just a bit too late.

The most prominently out group on campus was gay men, and most gay content came from them. The AIDS crisis was an enormous factor in this visibility, and their writing and artwork was often sad, frightened, or militant because of this. The social climate of the outside world had not yet changed to be accepting.

What lesbian content I’d been exposed to was pornography created for a male gaze. It did not appeal to me. I was put off by it; I was out, but not comfortable being out anywhere but at school, and when I graduated, I went back in the closet. I knew that it was not a choice to be gay, but since I was bisexual I could still pass for straight and attempt a relationship with men after I graduated. I believed I could suppress my attractions.

In the few years between college and meeting my husband, the Internet did not have the reach it has today, and I simply didn’t know where to find other women like me. Finally I got internet access, and that’s where I met my husband. We are still happily married.

Being attracted to and married to a person of another gender didn’t end my attraction to my own gender. I hid those feelings and that part of my identity. I did tell my husband I was bi, but I’ve kept my marriage promise.

Seventeen years later, in 2016, I was sick of Facebook, and I decided to open a tumblr account because a college friend had been part of its creation. I had no idea what I’d find there.

Suddenly I was exposed to a deluge of artwork and fiction and meta discussion about all the things that interested me. My kids and I had very much enjoyed the Avatar: The Last Airbender and Avatar: Legend of Korra series, and I was surprised and pleased when I heard in the news that the lead character, Korra, was canon bisexual. So when I joined tumblr and found an entire community of people who enjoyed it so much they created new fan-driven content for it, I was at once delighted, enthralled, and at home.

I realized very quickly that much of the content was adult-themed; but though technically pornographic, it bore little resemblance to the videos I’d seen throughout my life. It had a completely different quality, because it had been created for and by women attracted to other women. It was gentler, sweeter, more affectionate. It was still very much sexual content, but it did not objectify women in the way that I had always seen before. It was incredibly easy to identify with the characters, and positively, and the fan works explored literature and artistic themes with queer characters where one would typically find straight characters.

My eyes were opened. Having married a man, I knew little about what my life might have been like if I’d been born 20 years later. Now I understood what I’d missed. It’s a great regret; a deep sadness that I can’t change, through no one’s fault.

At the same time, now I could enjoy things with a much more genuine feeling of fulfillment and identify much more closely with characters. I made friends in the fandom. They’re all younger than me, but sometimes I’m a mother they never had. I found nonbinary and trans kids and learned about their issues in a way I’d never known. I learned and learned and learned.

I found other fandoms, as well, and heard about movies and shows that I would never thought to watch before. All touched me in a way I never felt before.

I started creating art of my own. I’d received a degree in art 25 years before; now I was finally using it and making things I enjoyed and was deeply proud of. I had FUN making this art, which had been too rare an experience otherwise. My skills as an artist continue to improve as a result.

Recently, I started writing fan fiction. Taking two older characters from The Legend of Korra, I believe I have found a niche. I am able to write and draw women much like myself in age and temperament, with a perspective unlike that of younger writers. I’ve allowed myself to feel emotions in those characters that I have been unable to feel in my own life because of my circumstances. And I’ve received some wonderful praise for what I’ve written, and that is the most amazing feeling. To make believable something that I’ve never experienced personally is astonishing.

I can’t understate the importance of fan works to my acceptance of myself as a bisexual woman, even though I have come to that acceptance later in my life. I hope the content that I’ve created will be found by women like me, a little older, a little late to the game. And I hope it makes them feel as much better about themselves as it has made me.

This essay was submitted to the @aroomoftheirown project, a blog and zine that seeks document the myriad of ways in which LGBT content creators and fandom participants use fanworks as a celebration of their identities and to force popular mainstream media to reflect their lived experiences by collecting essays, comics, and interviews documenting how LGBT members of fandom use their various talents to carve out a space for themselves in mainstream fiction and to explore their identities in a relatively safe space.

The blog that will accept submissions on a consistent basis and the eventual goal is to compile a selection of the pieces into a zine or a series of zines, the proceeds of which will go to the Trevor Project and Trans Lifeline

To learn more or submit to the project, click here.

#slowdissolve #A Room of Their Own #a room of their own project #lgbtq #fanworks #fanfiction #representation matters #submission #essay #thoughts from a tumblr mom #the legend of korra #self-acceptance #biseuxal #wlw

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meganpratchett · 6 years ago

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Zine summary

I made the zine starting with two of the cubes from my Extra Large final exhibit as my front and back covers, I made some white cubes for the pages. I decided I didn’t want a traditional zine fold but instead, I wanted the whole thing to fold out and I did this so the back of the zine would look like a doodle going from one cube to another like my work. I wasn't sure how to join the pages without disrupting the lines too much so I used pieces of card to connect them like joins. I have left the covers blank because I just wanted the simplicity of the cube to be prominent and not distracted by the text.

The first page is about my small exhibit, I have drawn three shoes and each is one from my favourite pairs, the main pair is the one I used for my small exhibit which I positioned at the top of the page. I wanted something to fill the page and was originally going to fill the whole page with tiny shoe drawings but to save time I did stripes with tiny shoe drawings to signify small. At the time my rework project was not very developed and so I didn’t have anything that would work for small and that is why I made one of my shoes. To incorporate my starting inspiration for this project which was rolls of fabric I dew lines around the shoes similar to the style of my developing work.

The second Page is about my Medium exhibit, which I made a collage and repeated it six times to create different mirrored perspectives. To reflect this I have used the small cubes to create a mirrored illusion also repeating it six times. To add another dimension I have used lines to suggest that a bigger cube is also on the page, this reflects my used of cubes within my work and tied in well with the previous page.

The third page is my large exhibit, I created an animation to make my Collage look like it was growing. I wanted to show movement in my zine without using words or arrows so I created fold out roots to suggest movement and growth, this also makes it much more interactive for the user because it allows them to move the pieces.

The last page was for my extra large piece and for that I made a large scale version of my Collage on a wall. The hardest part of that piece was having the patience and time to ink all the doodles, out of everything that was the biggest job and so I decided to cover the page in the lines to suggest the scale. I included a cube so that it would be more coherent but I think it suggests that the doodles have taken over just like this piece has done with my life the past few weeks.

Context

Small - My small piece was mostly personal but also a play on size. The boot is from my favourite pair of shoes and was my 18th birthday present from my parents so they are very special. They were also my first pair of goth boots that I owned, they hold a lot of meaning for my fashion journey. Whenever I wear these boots I get looks and mostly compliments about how impressive and interesting they are. They are a really big bulky pair of shoes that you just can’t miss and so making them small to me is ironic in the sense that they just really aren't small. What is funny to me is how they made so much of an impact being as small as it was, they still caught people's eye despite their size.

Medium - Medium was about playing with perspective and was very abstract compared to the usual art that I make. The art piece itself doesn’t really have a meaning I mainly just wanted to explore something different with my work. As I had repeated the Collage it did make me think how the piece could be turned into a fabric or wallpaper and used commercially, I think it would look really interesting on a coat or shirt and having the doodles creep down the arms of the jacket.

Large- Large was about movement and trying something completely out of my comfort zone that I had never tried before. Not only moving forward personally but my work as well. Doing so I realised that animation is not as scary as I thought it was and is something I would consider learning in the future. Large was also making my work digital which is not new to me but something I don’t do often, it being an animation means this piece would need to interact with the internet making it possibly worldwide if I were to post it online.

Extra Large- Extra Large was purely visual, I wanted to make a big impact on my work and again try something I hadn’t done before. I am used to working to about A2 size but this pushed me way out of that zone. I wanted viewers to feel slightly intimidated by the size but intrigued by the contrasting elements of the piece. I loved making this piece and I am so proud that I pushed myself to complete it because it came out better than expected.

Overall my work doesn’t have a context or meaning and I don’t want it to have one. If you want to add one you can but for me, this project has just been experimenting and exploring something new. At the end of college, my confidence in my art and drive to make art was very low, I was way too obsessed with making it look good and I still am. After college I took a gap year and mostly focused on working and earning money, I barely did any art because I felt that if it didn’t look like a masterpiece then what was the point. So going into this course I just wanted to let go, explore and experiment as much as I could, trying to take the stress away from making everything perfect and just make art because I can.

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madcapmoon · 7 years ago

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Interview with Guy Picciotto

After beating the shit out of your guitars for over 15 years (or more?), do you still get that same kick each time you go on stage and plug it in?

I've been playing shows for about 17 years I guess and performing still has the power to completely re-order my mind. It is a little different now because I have a lot more experience so i have a sense of the possibilities (both positive and negative) of what could go down. When i first started playing it was almost impossible to contain all the adrenaline and i just felt almost too jacked up all the time - it was literally really hard for me to even execute the songs. Now, I still get really heavy doses of energy but i feel more in control, that's the main difference.

How did the lawsuit with that truckowner turn out? He sued you even though it wasn't your fault, right?

The lawsuit was for $300,000 which the van owner didn't get - he had to settle for $3,000 and my insurance was able to cover that. I still have no idea what happened with my car that day - one minute I was parked at the side of the road - the next the car was speeding down the street at full throttle and I smashed into a van, completely crippling it. It was definitely not the fault of the van guy - either I went temporarily insane or else the car had a cruise control malfunction. My car was so totally destroyed there was no way to do any kind of analysis on it. It was an awful moment in my life - completely fucking terrifying.

Please, tell us more about each member!

Alright:

Joe runs a record label called Tolotta Records which releases incredible records by the band Spirit Caravan.

Brendan is recording an album with Lois for the Kill Rock Stars label as well as composing music for television documentaries.

Ian works full time managing the band and booking its tours as well as running the Dischord label - he recently did some production work with a new band called "Q and not U".

I have a side label called Peterbilt which just released a split-CD with Dischord of one of mine and Brendan's old bands called One Last Wish...I also just produced records by Quix-o-tic and DeepLust.

How are you gonna break down the barriers between band and audience?

I actually think there is a natural line between the band and its audience- i mean you literally have someone dispensing the music and others receiving it and i'm into that. Things get weird when that line gets exaggerated and becomes a barrier in the sense that one side is privileged against the other. For us a good show depends on fluid interaction/communication between the two. I think there are a lot of ways to foster that vibe from low door prices (so there is no sense of the evening being solely a dispensing of "entertainment" and spectacle) - minimizing the presence of security -etc.

Why are you so much against merchandise? (Don´t tell me about the baker...)

Basically, we feel we exist to make music not to generate logos, t-shirt designs, coffee mugs etc. As a matter of convenience we haven't had to deal with carrying that shit around both literally and mentally - its like a weight off our backs. What other bands do is their own business but for us avoiding merchandise has greatly increased our sense of freedom.

Why don´t you play festivals? Is it the festivals you´re against or just against to play them?

Mainly because we are control freaks - we like to monitor all aspects of our shows from the entry price to the security and the sheer size of festivals just makes that much more difficult. Plus - there is a lack of focus at festivals - there is just such an overload of music that it everything just ends up feeling a bit diluted after awhile. Its like an all-you-can-eat cafeteria - after a while all you can taste is the salt.

How do you think your records have developed/changed through the years?

That is more a question for the people who listen to the records to decide. We rarely ever listen to our albums so it would be hard for us to judge the development. From the perspective of working on them I would say that they have become more and more fun to do as we got more comfortable with the tools of recording. The studio is a lot less alienating for us than it once was.

Who does all the artwork for Fugazi?

All four of us get involved with the artwork and along the way we usually collaborate with one or two other graphics designers to help us flesh out the ideas. On the first records up through "Steady Diet" we collaborated with a guy named Kurt Sayenga. For the last 4 we've collaborated with Jem Cohen, the same guy who directed our film "Instrument". On the technical end we've gotten a lot of help from Jason Farrell (who also plays in the band Bluetip).

How much money do you earn? (As a member of Fugazi)Can you live on the music though you´re underground in USA?

The amount of money we make fluctuates every year depending on how much we tour and how many records we sell. For the first 5 years of the band most of us had to work part time jobs on the side. Now, we can mostly make a living from the band though since Brendan has a family with 2 children I think it is a lot more difficult for him and he has had to do a lot more work on the side like soundtrack and production jobs.

I read somewhere that you thought it was a failing if people didn´t understand what you had meant with the lyrics to your songs. Please explain

My hope is not that everyone will understand 100% exactly what i meant when I wrote each lyric but that they will at least provoke some interest, that they will engage the listener on some level - even if it just sounds good to their ear. That is my hope but i don't consider it a failure if not everyone gets something from the lyrics - that's kind of an ambitious hope so i just do my best.

The Fugazi documentary is now complete. Are you happy with how it turned out? Can you tell us anything about it that you can´t see on the screen?

We worked on it for so long that once it was done it was initially a bit hard for me to watch but now i can be more objective about it. I do think the film offers a lot of different angles on the band - it’s not the complete story but it is a lot of good chapters. The only insider information i can think of off the top of my head is that we used one fake sound effect in the film - it’s the sound of a submarine diving ( that eerie drowned beeping) that we put under one of the studio shots.

Which movies and filmmakers do you admire?

Here's a few:

John Cassavetes - "Faces", "Husbands"

Robert Bresson - "L'Argent", "Au Hasard, Balthazar"

Jean Luc Godard - "Weekend",

Pontecorvo - "the Battle of Algiers"

Todd Haynes - "Safe"

Lars Von Trier - "the Idiots"

You used to tour 6 months a year... Have you missed being on the road, or are you happy to take a break from the touring?

Part of me misses it quite a bit because it was so relentless and demanding that really appealed to the part of me that likes that kind of challenge... getting to travel to so many places was always awesome plus playing live itself is just such a blast. But we did that kind of 6 month pace for a lot of years so its is kind of nice to try and find a different kind of rhythm now. we are still fine tuning what our approach will be with touring now that Brendan has a family. We'll see how it pans out.

Are there many people still involved in the DC-scene there were involved in the eighties? I mean if there are many people still around or if they had disappeared?

DC does have a strong gravitational pull but there's no hard rule about it some people are still about, others have disappeared, some disappeared and then came back, some disappeared, then reappeared then disappeared again - its like anywhere else i guess.

How long do you think Fugazi will be around?

I have no idea - as long as the four of us are into it we will continue to play - as soon as it starts to feel like a dead end, we will hang it up with no regrets.

As the question above says, Fugazi´s first show was in september ´87. But you got involved in ´88. Right? How was it? Can you describe it? How to turn from the roadie to a member in the band you loved? How was your feelings back then?

Fugazi only played one show in which i wasn't involved at least in some minor capacity and that was the first one. By the second show i was already kind of worming my way in on back up vocals and the position just grew from there. In one sense it kind of felt inevitable that i would join the band because brendan and i had been playing together for so long (before Fugazi, we had been in Insurrection, Rites of Spring, One Last Wish and Happy go Licky so we had a really strong bond). At the time though I wasn't really sure what i wanted to do and it took me a while to really commit myself to the group. The early Fugazi thing was very loose – a lot of people came on stage and played with the band- people would play trumpet or percussion or dance on stage or play organ or whatever so my being on stage felt like part of that openness. it wasn't until the band started to tour that we kind of formalized my position and I started to feel like an actual member. In retrospect, I'm really incredibly glad things worked out the way they did.

Rites of Spring has often been described as emocore-starters and so on...How do you look at that time now? What is emo?

I have nothing but incredible memories of that band - my only regret is that we were way too volatile to ever get any touring done. we really only played like 14 shows and all but 2 were in DC. Still, the kind of intuitive communication we had as a band was really intense and the shows were always killer. A definite high point in my life. As far as "emo" goes - I have no real comment because I have no fucking idea what it is supposed to refer to. Rites of Spring had nothing whatsoever to do with any genre designation particularly one as amorphous, bogus and tacked on as "emocore".

What is "the Positive Force"?

Positive Force is a organization of young people in DC involved in radical protest and political organizing. They have collaborated with us a lot over the years, particularly in setting up benefit concerts and protest rallies.

Which Fugazi-album is your favourite? And why?

Like i said earlier i never really listen to our albums. That said i have a soft spot for "Red Medicine" - it felt like we had found a new way to attack the studio. but actually sonically speaking, the one i enjoy most hearing is the "Instrument” soundtrack because it is the most spontaneous and loose of them all.

What is "The Black Light Panthers"?

The first time Brendan and i hung out in 1982 we formed BLP. Over the years the 2 of us have performed under that name at parties or small concerts. Last year we put out a 12" with the first boombox tape we ever made in his bedroom on one side and a more modern piece from 1997 on the other.

I´ve heard you did a recording with Steve Albini or Bob Weston but were disappointed and re-recorded it... It is true? And when was that? Can you tell us about it?

Right before we recorded what became "In On the Killtaker" we did take a trip to Chicago and recorded with Steve Albini at his old house. It was not intended to be an album - we just wanted to demo our songs and we also really wanted to get a chance to work with Steve. He was awesome - he is an incredible engineer and a fucking amazing guy. Our only disappointment with the tape had more to do with our performance on it than on the sound quality of the tape. More than anything the session was the beginning of a long, sustained friendship between us and Steve and by extension his band Shellac who we have often had the pleasure of sharing the stage with. Plus we got to school him in dice.

#guy picciotto #fugazi

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robpoolephotos · 7 years ago

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RP: Hi Jason, thanks for agreeing to talk to us to start please tell us a bit about yourself.

Hi Robert! Thank you for choosing to interview me! It is an honor to be among those that came before me, especially Jacob Murphy, Nick Mayo, and Wes Boker who over the last year have looked to for inspiration with my own Photographic Art.

Now about me, my name is Jason Brewer, and I am Full-Time IT Professional and Father of two (very soon to be three!) and a Photographer from Wisconsin where I focus on capturing Street, Fine Art, and Documentary Photography. I shoot mostly 35mm and 120mm Film but also shoot digitally on the rare occasions I am asked to capture for Volunteer events (which is something I recently stopped doing).

RP: what inspired you to become a photographer?

I have always been a bit of a shutterbug as a kid. I was regularly taking pictures with my parent’s polaroids, Kodak 110 and Disc Cameras. I didn’t have any close family members that were photographers so because of that; I had joined my High School photo club my senior year to learn more about Photography to take better pictures. However, it didn’t work out well as I quit after a week or two as I was more interested in skateboarding instead and I didn’t feel the drive to pursue it further.

I did keep taking pictures, and I was always interested in capture the mundane and banal things more than anything else especially after seeing the movie “One Hour Photo” with Robin Williams.

It wasn’t until about 20 years later at the end of 2012 and beginning of 2013 that I got serious and took the “Complete Course in Professional Photography” at the New Your Institute of Photography (NYIP) to improve my Photographic skills, and it boosted a love of the Art.

RP: You seem to have a good selection of prints and zines on your site, how important is printing your work to you?

I think it is vital to print your work. I believe we have gotten too far away from the tangible, tactile feel of holding something you created in your hands and being proud of it yourself first before you present it to the world. It feels like we all get caught up looking for instant feedback from others on social media like we are fishing for compliments and approval from others before we feel proud of it ourselves.

Additionally, printing has so many benefits. Two that stand out for me are: 1) Holding the print allows one to focus in on the good, bad, and the ugly of the image to better improve your skills and composition. 2) It helps you sort through a series of pictures by laying them out on the floor or table then physically arranging them together forming a sequence for a Print Project or Zine.

RP: Can you share with us what you’re working on at the moment?

To be honest, too many projects! As a full-time Father and IT Professional, I often have to sacrifice my photography time for work or time with my family. However, I do try to shoot during free time when on work trips or when my family is with me and make it an outing for all of us by combining Family Adventure time with my Photography Project time.

To answer your question though. The current ongoing long-term projects are focused on capturing the small Midwestern Life around where I have lived in a project called “Home Towns.”

I also drive around on weekends to surrounding small farming/pre-WWII industrial towns by documenting their forgotten history left behind by people migrating away from them to larger towns/cities for work in my “Small Town WI” project.

I new project called “Fair View” is one where during the late summers, I try to visit county fairs in the region and capture the people and activities on a Holga 120N.

In all my travels I also try to document smaller things we as humans have left behind but not torn down in a project called “Where We Were.”

Another project I have recently started though challenging my self to do more portrait work of friends and strangers is a project called “People are Strangers.”

Because these projects will go on for a long time and my limited time to shoot is why I created my “Oddments” Zine. This way I can share my projects as I work on them instead of waiting years to create a single complete body of work for each project.

RP: What/who inspires your photography?

Most of my inspiration comes from just wanting to capture what I find interesting around me. I do not have an Art background, and it wasn’t until about two or three years ago that I even heard of photographers like William Eggleston, William Christenberry, Lewis Baltz, Steven Shore, Walker Evens, and Henry Wessel. These photographers (especially Eggleston and Baltz) validated and confirmed that it was OK to shoot the subjects that I typically preferred to shoot growing up!

As far as more contemporary Photographers/Artist that inspire me, there is an even longer list. There are so many great people I have seen in the last couple of years out there that are producing great work both in film and digitally.

If I had to give a top 10 list of people I actively follow, it would be these people:

For color work: Jason Lee (@jasonlee) and Caleb Jenkins (@calebjenkins)

For Black and White: Nick Mayo (@nickexposed), Jacob Murphy (@jacobmurphyphoto), and Simeon Smith (@_simeonsmith)

For proving that I can be a Dadtographer: Matt Day (@mattdayphoto), Wes Bowker (@wesbowker), and Charlie Boucher (@charliewboucher)

For simple amazing cinematic aesthetic: Ken Kornacki (@kenkophoto)

Lastly for inspiring me to no having to choose between shooting only Black and White or Color Films: Sam Cashmore (@samcashmorephoto)

RP: What does photography mean to you?

As a Disabled Veteran, photography has been very therapeutic by allowing me to focus on something in a meditative way that engages my mind to reduce day to day stress when out on photo walks alone or with others.

I am glad I rediscovered my love for the Art and was able to learn not just from attending photography school but also from working with people that have mentored me and helped refine my Art and Vision more. The relationships I have built add to the fulfillment I get from photography and hope they grow along with my skills as a photographer.

RP: What cameras/films do you shoot with and why?

Digitally I shoot Fuji. I have an XT-1 and a few lenses and an X100T with the two adaptor lenses. I love the X100T as it is an unobtrusive street camera for digital shooters. My poor XT-1 has only been used once in the last year and a half; I should sell it in all honesty!

For 35mm film, I currently rotate between a Canon AE-1 and Elan 7e as main cameras. I recently picked up a $3 Yashica Microtec Zoom 70 P&S for a quick walk around camera when at work.

I also have a Holga 120N, FPP Debonaire, and Lubitel 166B for shooting 120mm film. I do love the unpredictability of those cameras when shooting as they produce exciting results!

For future wishlist items, I do hope that someday I can afford to get a better Medium format camera like a Mamiya 7 or 645 for more consistently in everyday work. I also would like to pick up an Olympus XA3 or Rollei 35SE for good pocket shooter to replace the Cheap Yashica.

RP: what’s your main reason for shooting film?

I use to say that fill was better because it slows you down and makes you think about your shots more due to the limited number of frames per roll or for some other reason along those lines that I feel is utter B.S. and a shallow excuse I used to be different than most everyday digital shooters.

In the last couple years I have come to realize, that for me, shooting film has become more about the process of using a type of physical media to capture my subjects versus using a digital sensor. The organic nature of the chemical reaction with the light inside a camera that physically changes the film to create the image has brought about a more profound connection with my Art. The addition of being able to hold the negative before moving on to work on the final image or print adds to the emotional satisfaction of physically holding something you created.

Lastly, and many others have said this too, but the community of film shooters is more welcoming and supportive than most others online!

RP: Any anecdotes you can share from your time as a photographer?

I don’t have any anecdotes or stories that I can tell. I have had it pretty easy for taking pictures of strangers. I have no problem just going up and asking, or if I can’t ask first, I say thank you or smile at them and wave in a friendly manner afterward. I try to be as non-confrontational as possible and talk to people I shoot when I can.

A tip I learned from Scott Kelby to make it easier when people seem like they are about to confront you is to keep a 10 to 15 Page Photo book on you that you created. Pick 10-15 images, upload them to Blurb and order a cheap book with a title and your name on it. When someone wants to know why you took a picture, you show them the book and tell them about the photo projects you are working on while letting them look through the book. Doing this often disarms the person and starts a conversation with them.

Additionally, take time get the person’s name and address or social media info and then send them a 5×7 print or tag them in your feed as a thank you for letting you take the picture! People will appreciate it.

I carry a proof copy of my first Zine in my bag just for this reason, and it has helped me get shots or keep shots more often than not when people have looked through it and talked with me about it.

RP: What are you looking for in a photo?

With most of the subjects I capture, I want to evoke an emotional response and curiosity in the viewer, but it doesn’t have to be the same emotion that drove me to capture the image. I like giving the viewer room for their interpretations and meanings to be assigned to the pieces I present. We come from such varied backgrounds and experiences, so by allowing them to attach their context, I as the artist get to collaborate with my viewers.

RP: Biggest regret relating to photography?

Getting caught up in G.A.S. (Gear Aquisition Syndrom) and buying too much digital equipment before I thoroughly knew what I wanted or genuinely liked to photograph. I wanted to try it all and be ready for anything, but in the end, it was just a waste of money that I will never get back.

RP: Any closing comments?

Just go out and shoot, make Art for yourself of the things that capture your attention and peek your curiosity.

If you are starting out in photography, fight getting G.A.S. Start with only one body and one or two lenses only. You will be amazed what you can create with a simple set-up!

Go out and meet people to ask your questions, stop using Google and YouTube (Sorry Matt & Nick!). Reach out to people via DM on Instagram or Twitter in your local area and go meet people at a Meetup!

Thank you again, Robert, for this opportunity to share my thoughts through this interview! I appreciate the work you put into these and have enjoyed reading about others that you interviewed!

Lastly, want to give a big Thank You to everyone that bought a Zine or Print since my shop went up last November! I still have a few Zines and Prints left for sale if anyone is interested at reduced prices.

Social Media Links:

Website: https://www.jasonbrewerphotography.com/

IG: https://www.instagram.com/jasonebrewer/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/jasonebrewer

FaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/jasonbrewerphoto/

In Conversation with Jason Brewer RP: Hi Jason, thanks for agreeing to talk to us to start please tell us a bit about yourself.

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kayawagner · 7 years ago

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Gnome Stew Notables – Tanya DePass

Welcome to the first installment of our Gnome Spotlight: Notables series. The notables series is a look at game developers in the gaming industry doing good work. The series will focus on female game creators and game creators of color primarily, and each entry will be a short bio and interview. We’ve currently got a group of authors and guest authors interviewing game creators and hope to bring you many more entries in the series as it continues on. If you’ve got a suggestion for someone we should be doing a notables article on, send us a note at [email protected]. – Head Gnome John

Meet Tanya

Tanya DePass is the founder and Director of I Need Diverse Games, a non-profit organization based in Chicago, which is dedicated to better diversification of all aspects of gaming. I Need Diverse Games serves the community by supporting marginalized developers attend the Game Developer Conference by participating in the GDC Scholarship program, helps assist attendance at other industry events, and is seeking partnership with organizations and initiatives.

Tanya is a lifelong Chicagoan who loves everything about gaming, #INeedDiverseGames spawn point, and wants to make it better and more inclusive for everyone. She founded and was the EIC of Fresh Out of Tokens podcast where games culture was discussed and viewed through a lense of feminism, intersectionality and diversity. Now she’s a co-host on Spawn on Me Podcast. Along with all of that, she’s the Programming Coordinator for OrcaCon, the Diversity Liaison for GaymerX and often speaks on issues of diversity, feminism, race, intersectionality & other topics at multiple conventions throughout the year. Her writing about games and games critique appears in Uncanny Magazine, Polygon, Wiscon Chronicles, Vice Gaming, Paste Games, Mic, and other publications.

Talking With Tanya

1.) Tell me a little about yourself, your work, and about I Need Diverse Games. What mediums do you work in? What’s one project or credit that you’re particularly proud of?

I’m a born and raised Chicagoan, grew up on the South Side of the city, lifelong White Sox fan, and now I live on the North Side, near the Swedish part of town. As for I Need Diverse Games, it started out of frustration with the “it’s too-hard-to-animate women” that had been making the rounds in mid-2014. I tweeted out the hashtag on a few tweets before work in early October ‘14 and by the time I got to work it was trending a bit. After it stayed in the public sphere, I was getting tapped to talk about it on podcasts and for some articles. I was interviewed by Arthur Chu for Salon in December and from there things just kept growing.

I work in both videogames and tabletop, with a lot of work in tabletop in the later part of 2017 joining the staff of OrcaCon as their programming coordinator; after being a Guest of Honor in January 2017. I was also a Industry Insider at GenCon in the last year, and I’m already looking into panels for 2018. Most people do refer to me for video games but tabletop needs way more help in terms of diversity.

As for what I’m most proud of, I’d say joining the Game Developers Conference Scholarship program. We get a chance to send 25 folks to GDC that may not otherwise have access to a week of professional development. It’s part of our mission and work to get more people into the industry, as well as help them stay.

2.) What genres and themes do you lean toward? Have your tastes in writing and development changed over the years, or are there things you are consistently drawn back to?

I am a big RPG nerd, and have always been more into games like Dragon Age, The Witcher, and Dungeons & Dragons. I lean HARD into those because I have always been drawn to a narrative-driven game versus strictly action.

My tastes have shifted to be more open to games like FPS, and games that are narrative-driven but have more action in them. I’ve fallen in love with Tom Clancy’s The Division, especially after the latest update. My first love will always be RPGs though, both western and Japanese titles. I’ll always go to bat for Final Fantasy VII and Dragon Age II. Those are comfort games for me, that I can pop in and enjoy no matter what.

3.) How did you get into games? Who did you look up to? Who do you look up to now?

I got into games as someone who snuck and played D&D because my mother thought it was Satanic, and by spending a lot of time in arcades when I had the quarters to spare. Thankfully not a lot of people have made me disappointed and not look up to them, but as for current folks who inspire me, the list is long; too long to fully go into here but here are some folks. Ann Lemay, Ceri Young, Andrien Gbinigie, Manveer Heir, Rebecca Cohen-Palacios, Donna Prior, Charles Babb, Karen Lewis, Gordon Bellamy, Richard LeMarchand to name a few.

4.) You started INDG to create dialogue and action addressing the default of whiteness in games heroes and themes. What has that experience been like? Where are you hoping to go in the next few years with the project?

It’s all been a happy accident that worked out well! The experience has been both great and terrible, with a lot of awesome opportunities including writing for games, doing an anthology that will be out this year. I was able to do a podcast, Fresh Out of Tokens for two years and join Spawn on Me earlier in 2017 due to the work I’ve been doing and the perspectives I’ve shared and learned doing this work. In the coming years, I’d love to have a physical location for I Need Diverse Games, and be bringing in enough to fund others’ work, or trips to conferences. I’d love to have others step up and do some of the things I’ve been doing like going to conventions, conferences, running and being on panels about these topics.

5.) You’re a pretty powerful voice in the industry. Do you have any advice for women of color, particularly young women of color, on how to deal with an industry awash with racism and sexism without losing their creativity and self-worth?

Find your circle, find other Women of Color in gaming. Join groups like the Blacks in Gaming SIG from the IGDA (International Game Developers Association). Network with others on twitter, and in game dev groups. Sign up on blackgamedevs.com and find others.

Remember you are not alone in the industry. Know that the micro-aggressions you experience are real, they aren’t over-exaggerated. Also self care is utmost. Know when to take a break, disengage and when to dig in. You don’t have to fight every battle, and don’t let people drag you into everything they want to make into a fight that you need to engage in. Remember you engage on your terms, for your health and well-being. Its ok to be angry, it’s fuel at times. Don’t let others burn your wick down, especially when they won’t even thank you for it in the end.

6.) Indie games are often on the frontlines of developing new, exciting things. What are some of the indie games that have come out recently that you feel are important not only as fun, but as contributions to a diverse genre?

There’s Moon Hunters by Kit Fox studios, Read Only Memories from Midboss, the upcoming Speed Dating for Ghosts by Copy Chaser. A lot of Alexandra Van Chestiens’ work is awesome, though it’s mostly zine’s and small games. Robert Yang’s games are excellent and great commentary on sex, consent and queer culture.

7.) You do diversity consultation, as well as other freelance work. What are some of the services you offer, and where can people go to find information on how to hire you?

I can review your script, character description, world building etc. I gave talks at Ubisoft Montreal and Arena Net on diversity in general as well as their games. If anyone is interested in my services, I have a handy contact form on my site! ( )

8.) Anything else you want to add? Open forum!

I’ve got an anthology coming out this year, Game Devs and Others: Tales from the Margins published by CRC Press. It’s a follow up to Women in Game Development: Breaking the Glass Level Cap, which was edited by Jennifer Brandes Hepler. Its personal essays from marginalized folks in the industry and also adjacent to it. I’m also getting in some writing for a couple unannounced projects which I am excited to share soon!

Thanks for joining us for this entry in the notables series. You can find more in the series here: and please feel free to drop us any suggestions for people we should interview at [email protected].

Gnome Stew Notables – Tanya DePass published first on https://supergalaxyrom.tumblr.com

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