#still chipping away at zine stuff

[sclappin]

New prints in my shop:

The homoerotic Dracula one

A weird little Shakespearean piece

Odysseus & Penelope

[solar-sunnyside-up]

hey! sorry to bother you, but is there anything a teen without transportation in a rural area can do on their own? im pretty isolated, and theres barely anything around me.

Hey ya sprout 🌱

**A disclaimer Punk comes with some risk socially. Particularly if your in a rural area this risk goes up bc people Know You and also typically these spaces have a different vibe to alt ppl in general. Some activities are more or less risky and I'll try and do my best to give you a range of stuff from the whole spectrum! Of course this is a generalization of rural areas. Some palaces will be more cool then others depending in so many factors I couldn't go into here**

Rural solarpunk

Your gunna been to pick a topic, sorry babe. In order to not burn yourself out and in order to feel like you have an impact your gunna have to pick a cause to chip away at but I'll give you ideas! And remember just bc your focusing on one thing doesn't mean your ignoring or not helping others. Everything is interconnected and any help, helps all!

So let's give you some ideas to focus on:

Libraries- as a teen in particular you'll have access to a library at school, but depending on how big your town is you might have a public one as well. Become their biggest supporter! They are a great safe space, even conservative ones are still a good place to go for archiving/loitering purposes. They give you spaces to print stuff, to build clubs and community.

Archiving- if you cannot leave your house due to access you can always do stuff online and hear me out, i know when we do stuff online it feels like half points. Like we arent doing anything. I feel that with this blog, it feels so passive no matter how hard you work youll feel lesser. But Archiving is vital to humans! Think of the anthropologists wholl thank you down the road! Plus it does actually give you a way to have a physical representative of work your doing. Dvds, pirating media and archiving them to drives, collecting vinyls/tapes/cds!

DIY- To fight against fast fashion (although that barely exists in the towns I've been in tbh) and to stick out** you could make your own patches, battlejackets, gloves, etc.. They are statement pieces you can wear whenever your in town/at school/social spaces that ppl know what you stand for and who you are. Depending on who/where you are this might be risky so take what you can bare ok? You don't have to wear these items too you can just make them for later on!

Little libraries/little pantries- in a rural space you have more Gruella tactics you can take if you do them in random abandoned spaces. You could build a waterproof little pantry and stock it and leave info somewhere about it for ppl to drop off/pick up items. Stock it with mittens! With canned goods! With books! You might be able to do a space like this at school/library depending in how cool your town is too!

Zines- You could look into making a zine and even if it's digital you could have the QR code for download in places (stickers on lamp posts, flyers in school bathrooms, hidden in a churches pamphlet stacks >.>) making a zine is a cool task that is time consuming and informative and fun!

Vandalism- like I said you can often print off stuff at Libraries, or usually you can find a place to print stuff off near or at post offices depending on how modern your rural space is. if you have your own printer this will reduce your risk by quite a bit though! Create/find stickers or posters you want to toss across town or even school. I'd recommend starting off with some stickers and see how their handled, dipping your toes is important with these kinda things. If your really feeling it, and you know some abandoned places Moss Graffiti is also a good option! I've know ppl who have converted old abandoned stored to skate parks (I honestly have no idea how they built the ramps out of concrete but damn!! Good job guys!)

Also I'll leave you with 2 book recommendations as well-

Moxie - a RIOT GRRRL story about a girl who gets so fed up with her conservative town she makes a feminist zine and distributes it via girl bathrooms (even having a basically me too stickers and encouraging ppl to put it on boys lockers who have assaulted them). I know there's a movie, didn't seem to capture the same vibe tho so book!

Braiding Sweetgrass - this focuses a lot on reconnecting and adding story to nature around us and having science along side spirituality

[mitamicah]

Gig repport: Restaurant Backas, Vantaa July 3 2024

Here follows my experiences with Käärijä (and HUGO) at Restaurant Backas, Vantaa on July 3 2024.

It was also the day of the (main part of) kääryle summer camp organized by @bisonaari - thank you so much for a great event <33

Given I couldn’t sleep and lived only 10 minutes on foot from the venue I went there early to hang out with the queue. The queueing was very laid back – gave me the biggest Joker Out in Malmö vibes (big compliment btw since that is my favourite Joker Out gig I’ve been to so far). @j-restlessgeek joined the queue at 9 and @jaarijani at 12; the three of us then headed to the Käärijä mural to meet up with the rest of the summer camp, take group pictures and go to the local library for a “picnic” (it was raining). The picnic was peak coziness with trying out snacks from everybody’s homecountries, writing in each other’s fanzines/books/clothes. It was amazing meeting old friends (like @carpblu and @formulalakana – the Berlin trio back together <3) and great folks I have not been able to meet irl yet like @tuherrus and @icbimakb.  

My low number in the queue gave me my first real barricade spot at a käärijä concert, although I felt a bit bad at times running away from the spot to talk with other fans and to chat with Häärijä, Tiia and Jesse asking them to write on my shirt (wore a big white tee asking people to write stupid stuff on it). The first thing I noticed when meeting häärijä was him having the @kaarijazineofficial in his hand, so I blurted out: “OMG YOU HAVE THE ZINE!!! I DREW YOU!” which earned me a smile from the boy.

Me and Häärijä:

After two hours of bonding the first of two artists went on stage; HUGO and his band. I didn’t know his music but I vibed.

Inbetween HUGO’s set and Käärijä we were given chips by the security (which I’ve never experienced before at a concert) and we were sharing snacks we’d been allowed inside even with the ‘no food’ rule set by the venue.

Jesse arrived and did his little show taping down the setlist, and Skull managed to glance Paidaton Riehuja on the set. Then we saw Mikke and his gf/wife and child arrive where I turned into the annoying fan looking at Mikke and then pointing at a sticker for him to come and get it.  At the end he shook his head, light heartedly called me crazy and grabbed the sticker.

In my opinion this set turned into the best Käärijä one I’ve witnessed yet: he played all the big hits (Huhhahhei, Rouska, Viulunkeili, Välikoulema, Kot Kot, Cha Cha Cha) but also some deeper cuts (Paidaton Riehuja, Klo 23) and doing it all being the biggest sunshine and yapping very humbly about his experiences growing up in Vantaa among other things thanking a PE teacher from 6th grade for believing in him and also later jokingly saying a nearby seagull flying close to the stage was lucky to get a free concert. Jere even shouted me out twice first noticing my Danish flag and that my hair was cut like “his old hair”, and the second time calling me “Denmark Guy” when pointing out my Bulbasaur cap. The second time I didn’t know what to even say so I started “Are You”ing him, which he responded to (!!!) before seemingly starting daydreaming for a second before asking the crowd who’d go to Ruisrock (subtle).

After the show I stayed around determined to get the setlist using my somewhat-tall privilege to get it. Me and Cass fanboyed over seeing a truck with the licence plate ‘TRAFFIC’ on it at the bottom of the page (this together with Häärijä writing ‘Häärijä Hojan Hoost’ on my shirt made us very sus). While walking around giving my last stickers away I met with my fellow dane @solsortemor that gave me a lovely custom bracelet and showed me the video she’d taken of one of the banters I’d gotten with Käärijä. She’d later drive me back to the Airbnb so I could get her the bracelet I’d made for her. Being curious however I went back to Backas afterwards to see if the crowd in front of the gate was still there (they weren’t so I figured neither was Jere). Then I took advantage of Alepa being open 24/7 (I already miss this!) and bought myself some breakfast till the next day before going home and being too hyped to sleep for hours.

Trinkets from the show v

Official tour shirt, Book with messages from @smimon @tuherrus @j-restlessgeek @follivora @wednesdayday @king-krisu and @bisonaari

Quebec mascot magnet, Canada postcard, KSC bracelet and bracelet clip from @bisonaari

Two stickers from @smimon

Cornpea John sticker from @omppupiiras

Personalized Häärijä bracelet + Morgan bracelet from @carpblu

Ihan Sama, Bojan Titanic and Paidaton Riehuja bracelet from @formulalakana

Honorary Pöyhönen and spiked bracelet from @j-restlessgeek

Green Lantern Guy bracelet from @solsortemor

KSC bracelet from @teal-skull

Strength tarot card from @tuherrus

Cat drawing w. message from @katinkulta

Pokemon card I'd found on the road (as you do)

Tequila bracelet (forgotten from whom)

The setlist (!!!)

Traffik bracelet, Kris and Eevee stickers from @jaarijani

Wisconsin postcard from @clovermoonspell

[mildlyannoyedscoundrel-blog]

Fan Fic Writer Interview

I’ve wanted to do this ever since I saw it on @hollow-lime-green’s blog but I have my phone set up so that I can only be on social media for 5 minutes at a time and it is hard to do something like this 5 minutes at a time so I’ll probably be chipping away at it for another couple of months lol

How many works do you have on AO3?

17! But I think there’s one that I orphaned when I myself was 17 so I guess technically 18.

Your top 5 stories by kudos:

1) Fuckery - JJK, Satosugu, 14.3K which is insane now that I look at it, Rated E

This fic is the bane of my existence istg (lh). I wrote it on a dare from my irl friends, slapped it out in like a month and a half and it became my most popular fic by far within less than a week. Sex sells ig.

Seriously though, there are some parts of it that I am genuinely proud of and even if my repressed ass wants to die of embarrassment and Catholic guilt every time I think about it I do think it’s a good fic. There may or may not even be a sequel in the works who knows.

2) Glycerin - BNHA, Kiribaku, Rated M, 130K

My baby. My pride and joy. The fic I always keep coming back to. I’ve been writing this fic since I was 16 and genuinely it has been one of the most valuable experiences of my life. It’s still holding on by a thread as my most popular hits wise (damn you Fuckery), but it definitely has the most dedicated and supportive readership of anything I’ve written. Even if it’s not #1 in my kudos it will always be #1 in my heart.

3) hug me, love me, protect me - BNHA, Krbk, Rated T, ~8K

Kind of a sleeper agent tbh. I wrote it for a Christmas exchange and it was kinda out of my comfort zone cause I never write AU stuff but I think it turned out pretty cute! (Though very goofy)

4) Please Just Give Me One Last Kiss - BNHA, Krbk, Rated M, 5K

It’s angsty, it’s cheesy, what more could you want. I should reread it tbh

5) Something In Between - BNHA, Krbk, Rated G, 6.9K

Another fic that is super important to me. Straight up this fic and the zine it was a part of may very well have changed the course of my life (got me to break up with my girlfriend/childhood best friend of 11 years). I still get comments from aromantic people saying that it’s so nice to have a fic that makes them feel seen and even though my sexuality is once again massively up in the air it’s definitely one of the fics that I’ve poured the most of myself into.

Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I try to! Though admittedly I’ve been lacking recently 😬

Comments are always such a big motivator for me and I think that 1) it encourages people to keep commenting and 2) since they’ve taken the time to comment it’s nice to take the time to thank them. I should really get caught up on my comments lmao

What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

Uhhhhh probably either The Thing He Wants or What kind of gift? though tbh I don’t even know if I would count those as full on fics cause they’re both less than 1000 words and were more just ideas that I posted on Twitter and decided to cross post onto ao3 cause why not. I don’t really do full fics with angst endings. I’m a happy endings only kind of person

What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

It hasn’t happened yet but Glycerin is gonna have such a happy ending I promise. I actually wrote the epilogue several years ago and sometimes when my motivation is low I go back and read it cause I’m like after all the shit I’ve put him through I need Kat to get to that point.

Insofar as happy endings that have already been published, probably either Please Just Give Me One Last Kiss or Something In Between

Do you write crossovers?

Nope

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Nope again

Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Well as previously mentioned I tend to be a bit repressed so for a long time I didn’t, but I’ve started to a little bit within the past year thanks to the previously mentioned dare and Ykw it’s pretty fun I can’t lie. It’s nice to get out of my comfort zone a lot a little bit and according to my comments I’m pretty good at it so that’s always fun. So far my smut has been exclusive to Satosugu for the simple reason that it’s one of the few ships I have where I genuinely think the characters are attractive

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of

Have you ever had a fic translated?

Not yet, but oh man that would be the biggest compliment ever.

What’s your all-time favorite ship?

Oof this one is hard. The one I’ve loved for the longest is definitely Sokeefe, but that series is so genuinely bad idk if I can in good conscience call it my all time favorite. Maybe it would be if the characters didn’t still have the personalities of badly written 11 year olds.

Im gonna say my OTP is probably Kiribaku cause I just love how caring and supportive they are of each other while also being very goofy and fun but with plenty of angst potential too, but that being said Satosugu has absolutely consumed me for the past year and a half and I don’t see that disappearing any time soon

What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

Hands Like Mine, Heart Like His (BNHA, Krbk, Rated G, 8.8K)

It’s a really sweet story but it’s another one that I planned to be long and I’m such a slow writer that I had to choose one long fic to focus on and Glycerin is way too important to me to give up. I still day dream about Hand and Hearts though so maybe someday I’ll add another chapter or two

What are your writing weaknesses?

Speed for sure. I am so abysmally slow it’s awful. The absolute best I can do is maybe 500 words in an hour and that is super rare, like genuinely maybe once or twice a year rare, which especially sucks cause I like writing super long stuff that ends up taking me literal years. I have such an insane amount of respect for writers who can consistently get chapters out every couple of weeks or even days.

What are your writing strengths?

One common thing I get complimented on a lot is making my characters feel human/well rounded which makes me really happy.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

I think it’s super fun! Unfortunately I only speak English and a little bit of Spanish so I don’t do it often, but I do have a chapter of Two Weeks where a majority of the dialogue is in Spanish and it was a really fun challenge (though idk how accurate the translation is lol). If the POV character speaks the language then usually I’ll provide a translation, but if they don’t I think it’s fun to just have it as is and either have the reader experience the confusion along with the POV character or try to write it in a way where the reader and character can both kind of understand what’s going on even without knowing what’s being said.

What’s a fandom/ship you haven’t written for yet but want to?

Beiguang, CaitVi, GELPHIE. Basically any F/F ship because I am unfortunately cursed with being completely unable to write Sapphic ships despite the fact that I myself am a woman who has exclusively dated other women. I’m hoping Gelphie will save me though. Please.

What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

Glycerin and Something In Between are definitely the ones that are the most important to me, but I’ve already talked about those so honerable mention goes to In The Garden (JJK, Stsg, Rated G, 2.8K). It’s definitely short and sweet but idk I just think the writing is really good and I’m so proud of how the formatting in that one scene turned out. It genuinely was like a month of me brainstorming ways of visually portraying what I wanted to portray and I think it turned out really well!

Okay wow I actually managed to finish this within the day! (Though it did take me all day). I don’t really have anyone to @ since all in all I’m still relatively new to tumblr so I’ll just do what Hana did and say anyone who wants to go for it!

[secondsonaym]

Hi-hiiii! I'm happy to say I'm almost done with my zine work, just a final stretch that I can hopefully chip away at and finish tomorrow, SO, I've decided to open up the ask box again to questions n stuff!

Still no set ETA on getting back to the AU, but hopefully things will pick up at the start of the next week!

[excadrill]

tagged by @yj-98 ilyyy 🫶🫶🤍

RULES: Reveal the titles of the documents in your WIP folder and tag as many people as there are documents. Let others ask questions about the ones that interest them and post snippets or explain the contents as you see fit!

tag as many people as their are wips.. eep.. sorry i'd put this under a cut but it's not working on mobile 😭

ankhgiveaway.sai [i held an art giveaway in february and havent finished the prizes even tho i keep looking at them and going 'i need to and Want to finish this..']

yuukigiveaway.sai [same as above but the person who requested this one deactivated so i. don't know if i'm still gonna finish it]

sonomomo.sai [my current priority 'For Me' wip.. ive shared this wip w some people but ive never done a proper piece for the 'cycle of life and death' thing for them so that's what this one is..💙❤️]

exozinewip5.sai [pokemon zine oc piece, not supposed to share zine wips so idk if i should say more but it's of my beloved gymsona.. this zine will be free + digital and i'll ofc be promoting it more when it's done but it's soooo cute keep your eyes out for this one :3c '5' not bc im contributing multiple pieces but bc this piece is big and slightly intimidating for me so i keep saving different versions when i do major merges]

pocketzine-nymble.sai [another pokemon zine piece, so i can't really say more But it's not the only thing im contributing to this zine, ive just finished all my other stuff already]

oczine-thumbs.sai [thumbs for an oc zine i signed up for that i'll probably drop out of bc im not feeling like a vibe w everyone else there >w>;;; ]

philip.sai [philip piece ive had sitting around basically since i finished W.. about a year ago now i think ? but i transferred it to my '23 wips folder bc i still wanna finish it..it was supposed to be a 'this one will be quick and easy so i'll have smthn i Finished this month outside of zine stuff' but. zine stuff took up all my time and energy oops]

mrtourism.sai [this one's a silly post-canon kirihiko art i've Also had sitting around for like a year. i chip away at this one sometimes but then keep restarting bc im unsatisfied with the lines i wish i could just sit down and finish it bc i Love Him]

platform.sai [ummm silly ryotaro thing i drew after watching the den-o final stage ^__^ not a high priority one but it's cute so like. maybe one day]

punkjackhelmet.sai [file name was bc i was originally doing helmet studies before it turned into a full sketch. punkjack with the beat buckle bc i was doing this right after his special came out 🎃🫶]

colourwheel.sai [ummm well. yeah im not good at finishing art memes when theyre still on trend. i did all the sketches for these but i probably won't finish at this point..]

poppyangel.sai [poppy ex-aid i sketched as a break between big stuff the other day that i like a lot so. maybe will finish but might just post unfinished if i cant find the energy to get to this one sooner. feel bad that i like ex-aid so much but don't have any clean art done for it..]

millirider.sai [toku oc planning :3 i was saying last night i finally figured the helmet out which ive been struggling with for ages so hopefullyyyy i get around to doing a proper ref sheet]

im not at my laptop rn so im doing this off the top of my head but i THINK that's everything.. tagging umm @ankhisms @heartvisor @madaraki @circeancity @horrorcomedies @yu3s @pleuvoire @kosukeiichi @danothan @seashrine @asticassia @eclipse-song @kirider only if you guys wanna 🤍🤍

[slugtranslation-hypmic]

mr slug when will your about be up

I am sorry about the slow speed on this. T_T

The past couple of months have been suuuuuuper hectic for me in my IRL situation, what with leaving a very exploitative job, hunting for a new job, unexpectedly going homeless for a few weeks before eventually finding and moving into a new place, finishing and graduating university, starting freelancing work, and having a minor surgery. Things have only started to calm down and become manageable in the last few weeks, and I'm slowly starting to adjust to the new schedule. Yet I still don't have an endless supply of free time and energy. On top of work, I'm doing a large amount of self-studying and classes to fix the gaps in my Japanese knowledge, all the usual things required for adulthood (errands, cleaning, exercise, worrying endlessly about lack of money, etc.), a time- and energy-consuming project I can't talk about here, and then trying to keep up on Hypmic stuff. What I'm working on atm for Hypmic (in roughly the order I'm prioritizing it):

The monthly manga summaries as they come out

A series of short fics for a Twitter event next week. Done with 6/7

A drama track translation. I'm maybe about 1/10 of the way done... ah ha ha... It's been moved down in the priority queue because of those fics

A zine submission I'm about 1/4 of the way done with

Several doujinshi I offered to translate, since the subject matter interested me

Fixing this blog up finally

The good news is that I'm adapting and starting to chip away at this backlog of things to work on. If I can stop taking on new shit (<- this is me chastising myself), I think I can get to a point in a few months where I can start running this blog to be something like:

A monthly essay or longer blog post related to deep diving some aspect of Hypmic. Might be kind of cringy, but people seem to enjoy these posts, and they're fun for me to write too

Weekly or semi-weekly updates to fics on Ao3 or Twitter, with links to them here

Accepting periodic small translation requests, particularly for freely accessible content

Answering misc. asks here and there

Which I think would be great! It's just going to require me to finish my other shit first... but the issue is, of course, that I only have a couple hours' worth of free time and energy per week, and I do sometimes like to do other things besides work on making content.

This is a really long way to say I don't know, and I am so sorry for not being more active. T_T

[vannahfanfics]

Holiday Traditions

Category: General Fluff

Fandom: My Hero Academia

Characters: Eri, Shota Aizawa

Hey, everyone! This is the first of my two stories for @cuizineco​‘s Heroes in the Baking Zine, which is free to download!

Eri’s ruby-red eyes were glued to the flickering television screen, slowly chewing on the white chocolate-covered popcorn that Momo had given her as a Yuletide snack. The little girl hardly noticed the red and green crystalline sprinkles clinging to her lips; she was too absorbed in the claymation Christmas special. She liked the tale about the ostracized little reindeer and his little elf friend and had become rather invested in their grand adventure. She leaned forward as the drama began to ramp up, her heart pounding in her chest as the Abominable Snowman stalked the protagonists through the Arctic. 

Just then, the movie cut to a commercial break, tinny Christmas music filling the air as a department store advertised its newest line of winter coats. 

“Awww!” she complained and grumpily shoved another fistful of popcorn into her mouth. Why did commercials always interrupt the good parts? She glowered at the screen as she munched on the puffy chocolate-coated kernels, willing the adverts to end sooner. It was too bad her Quirk only allowed her to reverse time, not advance it, she thought as she scrunched up her face in frustration. 

“Enjoying yourself, kiddo?” Eraserhead asked as he sauntered in, holding a mug of steaming coffee. The cup was a gag gift from one of his students, featuring a crudely-painted rendition of the hero in a comical elf getup, but since receiving it, Eri hadn’t seen him use a different one. 

“Mhmm!” she nodded before looking back at the screen. She pouted when she realized that the commercials were still going. However, she found herself engrossed in the advert as the image of a caramel-coated apple flashed across the screen. It portrayed a happy family spending time in the kitchen, dipping apples in thick, creamy caramel and coating them in all sorts of goodies. Eri’s mouth watered as the decadent treats danced across the screen, her chocolate-covered popcorn already forgotten as a new sweet dominated her mind. 

“Buy our famous caramel apple kits today and partake in a classic Christmas tradition!” a woman’s jovial voice chirped before the commercial ended and it cut back to the movie. Eri grabbed the remote to pause it before jumping up, grabbing onto Eraserhead’s pants leg before he could saunter out the room. 

“Eraser! I wanna make caramel apples!” 

“Nnn? Caramel apples?” he grunted, rubbing at his stubble with a hand. Eri nodded fervently, tugging on the soft fabric of his sweatpants and giving him the best puppy dog eyes she could muster. 

“Yes! The commercial said it was a Christmas tradition, so we have to do it, right?” 

“Eri, that’s not really how that works,” Eraserhead laughed. Just as the girl’s eyes began to water with disappointment, he ruffled her silvery-white hair with his large hand and smiled warmly. “But, it’s not like I have anything else to do today since we’re still on break, and to be honest, that commercial did make me a little hungry…” As Eri’s eyes sparkled hopefully, he patted her on the back. “Go get your shoes on.” 

“Yay!” Eri squealed, peeling herself off of him to run into her bedroom. In her haste, she put her shoes on the wrong feet, which Eraserhead had to correct while trying not to laugh. 

After the adjustment, they made a quick trip to the supermarket to buy the advertised kit and six apples— three delicious, sweet red and three tart, tangy green. Eri carried the kit back into their home like it was the most precious treasure, while Eraserhead came behind her with the plastic bag of apples. She hurried to the kitchen, stretching to slide the box onto the counter before rushing to a drawer so she could pull out an apron. She nimbly tied the strings behind her and tucked the bottom of the apron into the pocket—she was practically drowning in it and she would end up tripping over it otherwise—and then looked expectantly at the scruffy teacher, eyes sparkling with anticipation. 

“All right. I have to melt the caramel first,” Eraserhead said as he put a pot on the stove and flipped on the burner, “so why don’t you go finish your movie and I’ll call you in when it’s ready?” 

“Aw, okay,” Eri pouted and headed back to the living room. Still, she really wasn’t that sad; she did want to find out what happened to Rudolph. Every time there was a commercial break, though, she dashed back to the kitchen to demand if the caramel was ready; every time, with a soft smile while he stirred the melting caramel, he’d tell her “not quite yet” and usher her back into the other room with a small wave. By the time he finally did call her in, the movie had ended and another one she had watched the night before had begun. 

When he called her name, Eri had no qualms about shutting off the television and racing into the kitchen. 

“Whoa, there,” Eraserhead laughed as she slid across the tile on her socks and bumped into his legs. While holding the handle of the hot pot with one hand, he used his other to steady her. “Let’s not have an accident before we’ve even started.” 

“I’m okay, I’m okay!” she insisted while rubbing her nose. Eraserhead set the pot on a potholder on the counter while she climbed onto a stepstool. She fidgeted impatiently as Eraserhead cut the stems away from the apples and jabbed wooden skewers down into their cores. Then, finally, he handed her the wooden stick so she could dunk the apple into the molten sugar. Sticking her tongue out in concentration, Eri swirled the apple around in the thick syrupy substance, ensuring that she coated every inch with a gooey layer of goodness before yanking it out. 

Eraserhead had also prepared several bowls of decorations— chocolate chips (milk, dark, white, and even peanut butter), crushed cookies and toffee bits, peanuts, sprinkles— as well as squirt bottles of melted chocolate. Eri dunked the apple into the peanuts with glee, then doused it in healthy streams of milk chocolate before setting it carefully on a baking sheet covered in parchment paper. The gooey globs of caramel pooled around the bottom of the apple before quickly solidifying. 

“Next time, we should do this with Deku and Lemillion!” Eri asserted as she pushed another apple-on-a-stick underneath the surface of the caramel. As she pulled it out, a long string of caramel clung to it, so she snapped it with her finger and popped it into her mouth. “Mmmmm! I bet they would enjoy it!” 

“I’m sure they would,” Eraserhead agreed as he coated his own apple in an almost criminal amount of mixed chocolate and peanut butter chips. “In fact, I’m sure the whole class would.” 

“Yeah! We can buy tons and tons of kits, and all make caramel apples together!” 

“For sure. This time, though, we’ll enjoy them all to ourselves, right?” Eraserhead chuckled. As she nodded, he squirted a bit of chocolate onto his finger and playfully dabbed it on the end of her nose, making her squeal and paw at him. To retaliate, she grabbed the bottle of white chocolate and squeezed it hard, spraying thick globs of half-melted chocolate all down his front. It was a good thing he was wearing an apron. “Hey!” he cried, scowling and hurriedly folding up the apron as the stuff threatened to drip down on his grey cat slippers (which had also been a gag gift from the class). 

Eri snickered deviously and used the squirt bottle to shower her caramel apple in it, painting the round, cookie-covered fruit in pretty white lines. Eraserhead scooped the chocolate off his apron with his finger and licked it off bit-by-bit, leaving Eri to finish the last few apples. “Little devil,” he snorted and pushed her lightly in the head before grabbing the tray and setting it into the refrigerator to cool. Eri only laughed at his venomless insult and carted her stool over to the sink so she could help him with the dishes. 

“What are we going to do with all the leftover stuff? Eat it?” 

“No. You’ll get a stomachache,” he said as he took one of the bottles to pour dark chocolate straight into his mouth. 

“Hey!” Eri laughed and punched his leg, making him jerk and nearly spit out all the chocolate. She giggled and grabbed a fistful of the cookies, pushing them into her mouth and grinning at him with half-dissolved chunks of them clinging to her teeth and lips. As they put the leftovers in containers, they both snuck behind each other’s backs to snag bits of the little candy pieces, easily demolishing half of the remainders that way. They finished it off with big glasses of milk before returning to the living room to wait for the caramel apples to cool.

Eraserhead turned the Christmas specials back on with Eri cuddled up against his side. As he set down the remote, she tugged at his hoodie, making him glance down at her. 

“Thanks for spending the holiday with me, Eraserhead,” she said sheepishly. Though she was sure that the hero would rather spend time with his friends and family, he’d volunteered to stay with Eri while all of the students and other staff were away so she wouldn’t be alone. 

He shrugged and looked back at the television screen as if it were only natural for him to be there. 

“Don’t sweat it, kid. I don’t really have any holiday traditions, so it’s kinda nice to be a part of one,” he said casually, but the edges of his lips crept up into a smile. Eri really did like Eraserhead. It had been a long, long time since she’d had anyone like a father around, and though it may be a bit strange, she felt like the hero filled that void in her life. Humming contentedly, she laid her head on his lap, and his hand fell into her hair to caress her scalp almost without him realizing. 

“Yeah,” she murmured, and then her face split into a yawn. As her eyelids drooped and the image of the singing and dancing snowman began to grow fuzzy, she whispered, “It really is nice.”

Enjoy this oneshot? Feel free to peruse my Table of Contents!

[sunriseoverastorea]

Gw2 Zine Preview

@wintersdayzine @guildwars2

It’s time to post my Wintersday Zine preview, whoot whoot! \o/ Writing it has been quite a task, fully giving me a kick out of my comfort zone, but in the end, I’m pleased with how it turned out. Please enjoy this snippet of Scholar Ava’s melancholy musings, and then check out zine orders and goodies here, because you need more STUFF.

She gets to work right away, pulling out her tools and hunching down on her knees. Her nose is mere inches from the floor as she scrapes carefully along the faint outline of a flower shape, but her mind is somewhere else.

Hours pass, and she considers how strange it is, that a crop of mountains in the desert could so strongly resemble the neighboring countryside of her youth. Though she grew up in Ascalon Settlement, jagged iron mountains that pierced the azure sky were always in her mind's eye. Her father would take her on trips to the Shiverpeaks, every now and then, and although the wilderness was fearsome and untamed, she was unafraid—her father taught her that for everything there was a reason, and he built a foundation of rationality beneath her feet, and an insatiable curiosity in her head.

And still her thoughts wander, practiced hands moving of their own accord. She grabs a ladder to start on the walls, and perches upon it carefully as she chips away at the muck. At some point, Deb checks in, and she dimly hears herself say hello, though she can't remember it later. Instead, she ponders how strange it is, that this place, so much like the Shiverpeaks she knows, could be so peaceful, and so still.

Always there was the wind blowing, snow flurrying, the bare limbs of great trees thrashing in the air. Or, if it was a clear and sunny day, there were grawl marauding through the valleys, wreaking mischief and mayhem. And sometimes, there were worse things than blizzards and grawl—the indomitable minions of Jormag, towering over helpless adventurers like monuments of ice. Svanir, men that did not discriminate amongst their victims, and always chose actions over words. Men without reason, and without curiosity.

[pumpkins-s]

Waiting For You (To Become Something To Come Back To)

Read On AO3 Here

Pidge doesn’t consider communication about her feelings her strong suit, and Lance isn’t good at talking about his own problems to the people that matter, especially when he can solve someone else’s instead—but together, they might just have to learn to try.

(Or, five times Lance and Pidge try to voice the hard things that need to be said, with varying levels of success, and one time they don’t need to.)

Fandom: Voltron: Legendary Defender

Relationships: Lance/Pidge

Characters: Pidge, Lance

Written for the @plance-zine​

1.

Somewhere in the aftermath of Sendak’s attack on the castle—long after Lance has been seen out of his cryopod, and she has coughed up her secret from her chest—Pidge lies in bed, thinking. The unfamiliar hum of the castle grates on her ears, and she realizes, properly realizes, that she nearly died.

  Realizes that if she closes her eyes, she doesn’t fully trust that the castle won’t light up the purple of betrayal again in her absence. It sits heavy on her, and eventually, it drives her from her room altogether.

  She finds herself drawn to the flight deck, where the glow of the new crystal lights up the scorch marks and scars marking their earlier battle. She sits there, staring at it for what feels like an eternity, trying not to think of Shiro’s scream of pain over the monitor, Haxus’s cries as he fell into the abyss of the castle’s inner depths. Just trying , at least until there’s the shuffle of noise behind her, and a startled yelp from a familiar voice as he hurriedly scooches back around the doorway.

  Pidge rolls her eyes. “I don’t own the flight deck, Lance.”

  “…Right,” she hears him say, and slowly he inches into view, sitting down next to her gingerly, as if expecting her to explode at any moment. There’s a flash of momentary annoyance at his caution, but as she watches his fiddling thumbs in his lap, something inside her softens. She isn’t the only one who nearly died today.

  “Can’t sleep?” she tries. It’s not quite an are you okay? because she doesn’t know even remotely how to approach this, but God help her if she doesn’t at least try . Lance deserves that much, right now.

  He shrugs. “Tried, but—just couldn’t settle down, I guess.”

  She nods, keeping her eyes trained on the crystal rather than him. “…It was scary,” she admits quietly, reluctantly. “Finding you here. I thought you’d…”

  “Sorry,” Lance whispers, and she doesn’t quite know why—he saved Coran’s life, that’s not anything to be sorry for—but he plows on. “I wasn’t—I don’t remember much, afterwards. I was pretty out of it. But when I heard your voice over the monitor, cursing out Sendak like that, I knew we’d be okay.” He looks over at her, grin brilliant, and something in her throat hurts, wants to demand how he can be so damn trusting. Instead, the words coming unbidden, she chokes out—

  “I killed him. Haxus.” He probably already knows, but she still has to say it—has to confess .

  Lance’s smile drops. “…It wasn’t your fault.”

  She snorts. “Do you really believe that?”

  He shrugs, mouth a thin, grim line. “I have to. I doubt they were the only people on that ship. They—war has casualties, and it was us or them. You didn’t have a choice. None of us did.”

  Something about his words scare her, and she shakes her head, desperately changes the topic. “Did you really not know I was a girl?” Lance’s answering squawk of outrage comes as a relief, safe territory.

  She doesn’t want to have to dwell on the finality of the word war any more than she has to.

   2.

Really, Pidge can’t even find it in her to be surprised that Lance is the one who bursts into her room following their return to the castle, after the collapsed wormhole fiasco.

  Of course, he takes one look at the trash reconstructions of her friends she’d smuggled back, and announces, with no grace whatsoever: “What the fuck.”

 Flushing red, Pidge promptly drops trash Shiro, whom she’d been carefully trying to lean up against one of the piles of her collected tech repair parts, and snaps, “Get out.”

  “Oh my god,” Lance says, completely ignoring her and utterly delighted. “Are these supposed to be us? ”

  Dropping her face into her hands, Pidge sighs. “Lance. Please.”

  “These are adorable,” he coos, poking at trash Hunk speculatively, before casting an unsure look at his own replica. “…Does my hair actually look like that?” Pidge just glares at him, and he holds his hands up defensively. “I’m just saying, I’ve looked better.”

  “Your bangs look like you hacked them with a chainsaw,” she grumbles, and Lance shrugs.

  “I cut them myself, I’ll admit. There’re no good salons in space.”

  She wants to ask him what his excuse was at the Garrison, feeling acerbic and slightly mean in her embarrassment, but he’s already moved on. “That one’s Shiro, right? The broad, manly shoulders give him away.” He rests his elbow on her head, which she shoves off with distaste. “Aww…Pidge! You made these while we were gone? You missed us?” Lance flutters his eyelashes. “Were you lonely?”

  Pidge growls, and Lance blinks, seeming to rewind his words in his head. “Oh shi—you were lonely?”

  “Okay!” she announces loudly, trying to shove him towards the door. “ Thank you , Lance, I think it’s time for you to go—“

  He plants his feet into the ground, the picture of stubbornness.

  “…You were, weren’t you?”

  Ceding defeat, Pidge drops her arms, crossing them defensively. Lance fidgets awkwardly in front of her, before he says, “I don’t uh—I’ll be real I have no idea what to do here.”

  “You could leave.”

  “No, no, hold on. I’m going to come up with something really sensitive and tactful to say, just give me a minute.” He trails off, eyebrows furrowed and a hand pressed to his chin in what is obviously meant to be a thinking gesture. “…You knew we were coming back to get you, right? No matter how long it took, we were gonna find you?”

  Pidge huffs. “I know.”

  Lance frowns, casting a critical eye at his trash double. “…Do you?”

 “I—“ She hesitates, and then scowls. “Oh, fuck you Lance! No, I didn’t know. Nobody came for me; I had to get myself out of there. I had to build my own satellite to contact Allura and Coran, and I had to get Shiro and Keith while you were off playing Atlantis with Hunk.” Lance winces, and Pidge cuts herself off, instantly feeling regret. She knows that’s not how it went for Lance and Hunk at all. “…Sorry. I didn’t—sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” Lance says. After a moment, he takes a deep breath, crouching down in a move that would normally get him kicked at, and knocks his forehead against hers gently. “Look, I’m not as smart as you, okay? I can’t build crazy stuff to fix everyone’s problems, but if there’s one thing I am, it’s stubborn, so believe me when I say that so long as I get any vote in the matter, we’re always going to come find you, alright? Always. We’re a team, we stick together.”

  When she says nothing, Lance straightens awkwardly. “Right. Well I’m just gonna…go.”

  He makes it to the door before she manages to force herself to speak.

  “Wait.” Lance freezes, and she scratches unsurely at her arm. “Do you…want to see trash Keith? You could take apart his mullet to fix your hair.”

  Lance turns around, eyes wide and smile somehow wider again. “I’d like that.”

   3.

The first time they play video games is only a few days after the Beta Traz breakout. Group exhaustion at Slav’s…Slav-ness, and Shiro’s perpetual frustration with him, gives them plenty of motivation to spend their limited free time out of the way and focused on puzzling out a power source for the game system they’d bought. Eventually, with Hunk’s help, the three of them cobble the necessary parts together.

  Lance, in a show of surprising charity, offers to let her be player one, though he all but begs for first selection from the character menu.

  “You should choose the archer,” Pidge tells him, scooching up from behind on her knees and putting aside her bowl of food-goo flavored chips to rest her chin on his shoulder. “Ranged support. You’re good at it in real life, figures you’d have it down in video games too.”

  Lance frowns. “I don’t know.”

  “What?” Pidge snorts. “You’re telling me you’ve never played a sniper in a game before? You? ”

  “Of course I have,” Lance grumbles. “I just meant—I thought I’d play one of the fighters.” He shifts his fingers on the controller, and hovers over one of the swordsmen.

  Pidge wrinkles her nose. “Why?”

  “…Aren’t they the ones everyone wants to play? They’re the heroes .”

  “And that guy—“ Pidge points at the archer’s icon, “isn’t? Please. I always had to play support for Matt. Without me his ass wouldn’t have made it past level two.”

  “Oh. I guess I just—never mind.”

  Lance looks away, and Pidge thinks, not for the first time, of Beta Traz, of things spoken into the comms she was never supposed to hear. The things Lance thinks of all of them, and the things he thinks about himself. Really thinks about himself.

  “Hey—“ She hesitates, tongue darting out to touch her bottom lip in a quick, nervous gesture she got from her Dad’s side of the family, and never could quite seem to lose. “Support characters—support fighters are important, okay? They protect their teammates, clear the way ahead when everyone’s too focused on what’s right in front of them. They’re not—“ Lance’s words echo in her head. “They’re not some…seventh wheel.”

  Pidge feels Lance freeze, eyes trained ahead on the screen as his body tenses, and she continues.“…I’m pretty sure they’re one of the most necessary cogs in the machine, if anything.”

  Lance says nothing, but after a long moment, fingers twitching over the controller in aborted movements, he selects the archer from the character menu, and Pidge breathes a sigh of relief.

  He leans in closer to her weight, the side of his head bumping up against hers, and Pidge chooses to take that as unspoken forgiveness for her accidental listening in. She selects her character in turn, and the silence, for once, doesn’t stifle her.

   4.

After their first battle with Lotor, Lance doesn’t talk.

  Well, no, he talks—and talks, and talks . About how out-of-control fast Red is, about how great Allura was, about how much of a jerk Lotor must be—but he doesn’t… talk . Not about Blue, not about the anxious twitch in his hand every time someone mentions him and Red in the same sentence, not about the flicker of despair that flits over his face when Coran pats Allura on the back and says something about blue paladins .

  He’s not jealous of Keith, or resentful of Allura, even. No, this is something else Pidge can’t quite puzzle out. An unspoken hurt.

  She considers talking to him about it for all of several minutes, but by the time she’s made up her mind to even try, she turns around and he’s gone. When he’s not in his room, Pidge selects the next most obvious option, and hacks the security cameras to the lion hangars.

  Allura was there, so it technically wasn’t a private moment, she tries to tell herself. She definitely feels guilty, but her—she can’t even call it curiosity, this is just plain old worry— overwhelms it.

  Both feelings vanish the minute she sees the footage, replaced with cold, steel fury . Pidge isn’t someone to let her emotions get the better of her if she can help it, but this time rage unsettles even her usually rational affect.

  Without thinking, she storms down to Blue’s hangar, near kicks open the door, and announces to the lion, without preamble. “You’re an asshole .”

  Avenging wrath beats in her chest, and Pidge trembles, trying to imagine what it would feel like if Green ever did that to her. Ever shut her out and wouldn’t even tell her why .

  Inconceivable. Her brain refuses to even compute the option, coming up all in error codes and pangs of foreboding and pain .

  “Why the fuck’d you have to do that to him?” she shouts, and she understands objectively she’s yelling at a giant metal lion, that this is possibly one of the most ridiculous things she’s ever done, but she finds it hard to care. “I get he needed to pilot Red, I get that was necessary, but you could have just told him. Shutting him out like that—you know what he’s like, you know what that’d do to him!”

  Blue doesn’t stir, not that Pidge expects her— it to, and she hisses. “That was cruel, and you know it. You’re cruel. A cruel, heartless—“ her first instinct is to say bitch, but she’s not sure Blue deserves even that acknowledgement of her sentience right now. God knows she hasn’t put it to good use. “… thing .”

  With one last spiteful glare at the lion, she turns to leave, and startles to a stop when she sees Lance behind her, wide-eyed and awkward. “Lance—“ she says, and she’s not sure if it’s to defend herself or apologize, but he suddenly surges forward, hugging her tightly even as his shoulders shake.

  “…Thank you,” he murmurs, and Pidge closes her eyes. She can feel Blue stir just slightly, through the bond between all of them, but Pidge ignores it. The lion has not earned her forgiveness, and it won’t for a long time.

  5.

Pidge understands, objectively, even before Allura puts out the call to the coalition, that Matt is going to have to leave the ship eventually. He’s a rebel officer. He has duties and obligations in this…war, just like her. He can’t spend forever joking around, playing video games, and working on mindless projects with her. It’s just not a part of their reality.

  Still, that doesn’t make it any easier when she has to watch him go. To know that if something, anything, goes wrong, she may never see him again. May lose him to a battle they were never supposed to belong to, when she only just got him back to begin with.

  She doesn’t hear Lance come up behind her, stuck in her own head amidst the noises of the departing ships, until he’s already there, tucked up by her side and peering up at Matt’s ship inscrutably. He looks to it, and back to her, and back to the ship again, before he speaks, with the kind of blunt, relentless optimism she’s slowly come to appreciate. “He’ll be alright.”

  “You don’t know that,” Pidge says with a sigh, and Lance shrugs.

  “Course I do.”

  “You can’t ,” she mumbles tiredly. “You said it yourself. War has casualties. Us or them, and it can’t always be us.”

  “Yeah, but—“ Lance makes a face, nose scrunched in thought. “I just know, okay?”

  “… How? ” Pidge says hoarsely, and for once, in the face of what she cannot understand about Lance, she is not frustrated so much as just…defeated. “How can you possibly know?”

  “Well,” Lance looks down at her, and his awkward, lopsided smile is like the sun. “He’s related to you, isn’t he? And you’re the toughest person I know.”

  Pidge blinks, surprise stealing her words, and Lance nods decisively, eyes on Matt’s ship. “…He’ll come back. And hey,” he looks back down to her, “if he doesn’t, we’ll just go get him, right? He’s part of the team now. I promised, didn’t I? No one gets left behind.” Lance points an awkward finger at himself. “Not even seventh wheels, apparently. Which means you’ve got to trust me on this one. If I can somehow keep my ass alive, anyone can.”

 “You’re not a seventh wheel,” Pidge says automatically, determined to repeat it until he gets it into his thick head, no matter how long it takes. Lance brightens visibly at her words, and Pidge swallows, a lump in her throat as she turns back to Matt’s departing ship. Wind blows fiercely as it takes off, throwing her hair in front of her eyes, and she is reminded almost inevitably of another landing platform a lifetime ago, promising her brother if he didn’t come back from Kerberos she’d damn well come and get him. She’d already done it once, and she wasn’t afraid to do it again, if it came down to it.

  “Let’s give him something to come back to, then,” she says, and Lance whoops, throwing an arm over her shoulders as the rebellion takes off.

 “Hell yeah.”

   +1

After Naxzela—after the panic of entrapment and waiting for the end and somehow, somehow still escaping to live another day—she finds him in the Balmera crystal’s glow.

  Lance looks to her as she enters the flight deck, his dark skin awash in the pale blue light, and she feels truly at ease for the first time since the fight.

  There is still so much to do, so much to say. Discussions of where to go next, how to compensate for and honor their casualties, their dead, the question of just what to do with Lotor—God, Lotor , Zarkon’s heir and their questionably former enemy, asleep in the prison hold of their castle.

  But Pidge looks at Lance, and suddenly all that feels like it can wait, for now. The castle can guard its slumbering load without her, this more important.

  “Should I go?” she asks, already knowing what he’ll say in response, and Lance shakes his head.

  “Stay?”

  She does.

[lids-flutter-open]

goth trans boy YA set in undisclosed PNW college town, chapter 2:

(content warning for: LGBT youth group, discussion of predatory grooming and stalking)

Chapter two

Group night was Wednesday, and that meant at seven in the evening I had to park my car by the library (because of the free parking) and walk down to Eighth Ave where the building for Compton House was. It was on the single street in downtown that was the bad part of town, or at least the bad part of town according to the Hollister set. It was just a block and a half, and it was where the homeless people and oogles liked to sit, but it was bustling with active commercial real estate, too. The gay bar was two doors down, and the same street had a show space and two Thai restaurants and a thrift store and a hair salon and a corner store. Compton House was on the fourth floor of a mixed-use building. It was accessible by elevator for people in wheelchairs as long as the elevator worked, but the elevator was the slowest in the world so anyone who could took the stairs. You had to get buzzed in the front door, because of the hate crime fears et cetera, and not even youth workers like me were supposed to know what the door code was, but I’d been going there so long I knew the code and just showed up. 

Tonight the adult facilitator was Spruce, who was nice and like, an old punk, but who I hated because she gave bad advice to tweens. I got ready to mentor the shit out of the thirteen-to-fifteen-year-old set. Ostensibly I was a youth like everyone else and this was my group therapy session, but sometime last year the formula changed and I realized that the shit I was having problems with was no longer anything that anyone in the group could help me with, even the facilitator. My pen pal who I’d had since I was fourteen had disappeared off the face of the planet and deleted his blog and then he resurfaced and it turned out he was schizophrenic and had a heroin addiction, and then he went AWOL again somewhere in Kansas. I didn’t have a way to contact him and his mom, who he had told me beat him, was messaging me on social media and I didn’t know what to tell her. What do you tell a sixteen year old to do about that? Or when Opal lost housing. Nobody was ready to deal with all of that shit and it just scared the thirteen-year-olds when I talked about it, so I stopped sharing the heavy stuff at group and just tried to take care of them. It was exhausting, but also good in a way that I knew would never help me on a college application but was somehow good for the community. Not that I could tell if I was giving good advice or not, but at least I was there, or something.

There were six kids in there when I got in, sitting on the orange couch and three folding chairs and single pink beanbag. One was my age, this lesbian named Gabby that I knew was fucking some dumb college student, or had been, and had issues with compulsive shoplifting that she brought up every time she was in group. Then there was this baby looking trans girl and three baby looking lesbians and/or theythems and/or transmascs, and one scared looking little gay boy. All of the latter set were somewhere between thirteen and sixteen, and none of them had been at the group very long. I couldn’t remember their names or pronouns. 

I got out the snacks, which Spruce had forgotten to do, and checked the coffee pot. It was grimy and I couldn’t remember the last time anyone had cleaned it, so I just hid it behind the snack cart in the corner and brought out the water heater and the tea and plugged the water heater in. 

“Hey all, have some chips,” I said. “Or tea.”

“Ooh, the tea, miss vanjie,” said the shy gay boy, very quietly. I laughed, to show him that he could in fact say that. He smiled. 

“I’m James,” I said. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“I saw you before a few weeks ago at group,” the shy boy said. “I’m Don.”

“Sorry, Don, I’m like almost faceblind,” I said. “I can’t remember people very well. I’ll remember you now.”

We went over the rules of the group before people started sharing. Step up step back had been changed last year to move up, move up, because of the ableism inherent in talking about stepping like it was universal and also the need to emphasize that listening was an active skill and not equivalent to nonparticipation. The rule basically meant that if you were talking a lot, shut up and listen, and if you were listening a lot, you should talk. The other rules were, don’t yuck my yum, which meant don’t say you hated a neutral thing someone else liked, and confidentiality, which meant don’t gossip about this shit or name people by name if you were talking shit about them in your sharing, and “this is a racism/sexism/etc free space”, which was a rule that kept expanding forever and needed to be elaborated on but in general meant respect pronouns and don’t say anything racist or say anything shitty about fat people. There was oops ouch snap, which meant that you snapped your fingers to agree with something someone said and said “ouch” when you wanted to start calling someone out. You were supposed to say “oops” when called out and move on, though that never happened. Then there was the rule that was about mandatory reporting, which meant that if the people who worked at Compton knew your name, they had to tell someone if you were being abused. That meant that people could use aliases if they wanted. There were other rules, too, which got brought up as they came up but were too obscure for our rule poster in the corner. 

We always divided the time up based on how many people were in the room and then apportioned everyone blocks of time based on that. If there were a lot of people, time was always crunched. Some people shared for five minutes and got feedback for five minutes and were good, while others prattled for thirty minutes. One time when I was first coming to group a girl had read her diary for thirty minutes while a neutralized facilitator watched in paralyzed awe, unable to intervene. We were better at regulating tempo now, if only because people like me were there. Long timers. 

The first girl, who was like, thirteen, talked about how she had come out to her parents and they told her that she was imagining it, and then took her to a therapist that asked her to think very hard about whether she was actually gay. The parents didn’t know she was at the group. She had come with her friend, who was wearing a rainbow bracelet. Spruce knew what to do with that kind of share, and in general told the girl that people were here for her and we cared about her. I echoed Spruce, and the other kids in the circle said their bit about how there were other gay people in the world and things were real and we cared about her. The girl, whose name was Eve, cried. 

The other kids were pretty boring too, though the little shy gay boy was apparently having sex with his boyfriend, who was his age. Spruce forgot to do the safe sex talk in her feedback so I told Don about places he could find condoms and told him about the books and zines in Compton’s library that he should read about sex and STD prevention and consent. I also had him write down the times he could go get free STD testing. He was so young that there was no way he’d get on PrEP, and I couldn’t imagine he was actually able to get downtown to access testing, but at least he’d know it was a thing and think about correct condom use during sex and he’d think to get tested if he noticed anything off about his partner’s dick or got any cold sores. 

Gabby talked about shoplifting. She’d stolen six hundred dollars worth of stuff from Nordstrom Rack and was worried her mom would notice it in her closet, so she was giving it away to friends. She always talked about how she was guilty about it, but I knew really this was the only place she could come to brag. I didn’t really see a problem with shoplifting luxury items for yourself and your friends, though I wouldn’t have chosen Nordstrom Rack. Gabby didn’t mention the college student, which I hoped meant they had broken up. I’d met the girl one time and hated her. Probably because she seemed like she actually shopped and spent money at Nordstrom Rack.

The trans girl, whose name was Venus, was fifteen, and hers was the first situation where I had to actually get intense with feedback. She started out with talking about how her mom wouldn’t let her get a piercing, which seemed reasonable to me, but of course devastating to a girl who really needs snakebites right now. Venus was on puberty blockers, so she had a cooler mom than most kids who needed snakebites, but even trans kids whose parents try to be supportive in the hormone and medical treatment department miss some stuff. Venus’s mom, for example, was unaware of Venus’s romantic extracurricular activities.

“It sucks,” Venus said, “that I can’t talk about my shitty relationship with a boy with my mom because she’s so paranoid that I’m sneaking around doing drugs or getting piercings or whatever and would totally flip her lid if she knew I was dating this older dude. Like I want to ask her advice about it and because I can’t get it the whole thing just keeps getting pent up and I explode at her about stuff that doesn’t matter.” She twisted her head around the room and looked at all of us without making eye contact, gauging our reactions.

Don, the gay boy, snapped his fingers. I knew Spruce appreciated that he was respecting the rule about using finger-snapping to affirm someone’s statement.

There was a long silence while Venus rearranged herself on the orange couch. It went on for so long that Spruce finally said, in the littlest little annoying breathy soft lesbian not-taking-up-space voice, 

“You still have ten minutes in your share, if you want to say anything more, Venus.”

Venus nodded.

“This guy Alex is my boyfriend,” Venus said, ignoring the alias rule for talking about people, “and I love him, or I did, but I think I have to break up with him. Maybe not right away, but eventually. And it sucks because I’ve been hiding it from my mom because at first I thought it was going to last a really long time. But we’ve been dating two months and I feel like he’s only using me for sex.” 

Venus paused again. Some people did that, looking for affirmation like they would in a conversation with a friend. Compton’s group doesn’t work so great for that kind of affirmation because nobody is supposed to say anything during someone else’s share.

“Yuck,” one of the small lesbians said, nevertheless. She was quiet, so nobody called her out for talking.

“And he never listens to me when I talk about what’s going on in my school, or how I feel about my bisexuality or my podcast. He’s in community college, and he’s twenty-one, so he isn’t that much older, but my Tumblr friend Koko said it’s creepy we’re dating. I think partly as a joke and partly not. But like, he sees me as a girl. He says he really likes me. So there’s that. I guess that’s why I don’t want to end it, because I like that.” She paused, and twirled her dyed bright red hair around her finger. “He bought me a choker necklace, which is like, a horrible stereotype about trans girls is that we’re all goth and otakus, but I am, so like, I appreciated it. And I can talk to him about kink, which I couldn’t do if I was dating like a high schooler. We’re trying daddy/little girl stuff, and I kind of like it. Because I never got to be a little girl and talk to my dad. But also sometimes I feel really pressured into stuff, in a bad way, so it’s like, so fucking conflicted. And he showed me this blog that’s like, trans girls getting dommed, like, porn, and it made me feel weird. I don’t know if he sees me like that, like I’m a porn star? I’m more than that. Like, I don’t know. I play video games. I want to be a video game designer. I like sports cars. I really like comics, I like She-Hulk and Ms. Marvel. I’m a teen slut, haha, but there’s more to me than being someone’s little girl and doing roleplay. And he doesn’t seem to see that a lot. He says he values me but I don’t see it. Like. I don’t know what I want to ask. How do I talk to him about that?” She sighed and ate a corn chip from the bowl in the middle of the table.

I couldn’t wait for the designated share back time, even though that was the rule of support group you were never supposed to break. 

“Sorry, but is this Alex who does civil war reenactments? His blog is unholyspacemachina?”

“Hey, hey, confidentiality,” Spruce said, snapping out of whatever trance she’d been in for the last dozen minutes. I had to hold myself back from glaring at her. Spruce and her fucking knuckle tattoos reading TEND and HEAL. 

“Yeah,” Venus said, looking uncertainly at Spruce and then at me.

“I gotta say this, Venus. Break up with him ASAP. Dude is bad news.”

“James, I need you to respect confidentiality,” Spruce said. “We don’t use this space for gossip. If you have something to say about Venus’s boyfriend, you need to take it out of this room.”

“Wait, I want to hear this,” Venus said. “If that’s chill. I kind of hate Alex right now. I wanna hear the dirt. I can’t believe you know him. Like, what?”

“Alex hit on me a ton when I was fifteen,” I told Venus, knowing Spruce wouldn’t have the chutzpah to kick me out of group or interrupt me if I talked loud and fast enough. “He was in this group. He was three years older than me. He would like touch my knee in group here and try to get me in the corner in the hall and touch me. One time he cornered me in the bathroom and stuck his hand in my pants. He asked me out a ton and I told him no. He’s really into sexually dominating young trans people. All kinds, but the people that look fem are his main thing. Before I went on hormones he stalked me for three months. Online and real life. He got banned from Compton for it. He kept sending me emails with weird poems about how I was a hermaphroditic goddess. He sent me a link to a password locked blog that was like six months of him journaling about how he wanted to fuck me. Before me it was this girl Katie who I was friends with, who was a trans girl who was also younger than him and who was really in a bad foster care situation. He told her he’d save her. I think some of it is like genuinely coming from a place of admiration and like, white knight sympathy, but it’s really weird and creepy and he acts like a Hannibal Lecter type stalker creep when you tell him no. Super rapey vibes. I can’t believe he’s still pulling that shit.”

Spruce didn’t seem to know how to respond to this information. “Oh shit,” she said. “That’s bad.”

“I didn’t know that,” Venus said. “Shit. Any of that. I didn’t know he went to this group. He told me that I was the first girl he’d ever fallen in love with. What a line, right?” She paused. “I guess I’ve been ignoring a lot of stuff he does.”

“It’s easy to ignore shit and pretend it’s not bad when it’s bad.”

“Shit. I’m stupid.”

“No,” I said. “Not stupid. Just, you know, it’s like the Taylor Swift song. You’re fifteen. By definition you don’t have a lot to compare this to and don’t have a ton of framework for this shit. I didn’t either. I considered going out with him a lot just because he clearly wanted me to so much.”

“I guess that was sort of what I did too,” Venus said. “He found my blog after we met in person and started sending me a lot of messages, and I was like, oh, I guess this is what feeling wanted is like.”

“Yeah. No. It’s him being a stalker freak. Which isn’t to say you’re not cool. I’m not saying you won’t ever have sex appeal or anything. But this isn’t about him being into you as a person, I can one hundred percent guarantee it’s about his weird fetish stuff. He’s not a good dude.”

Spruce was leaning forward with this dumbass concerned expression. 

“What should I do?” Venus asked me. “He seemed so nice. God. I can’t believe this. We met at the bookstore, near the manga. Like in June.”

“Yeah you did,” I said. This group needs a fucking new rule: warn every trans kid in town about Alex. Especially the under-sixteen, is-a-girl set. “Look, I can’t tell you what to do, but I would consider telling your mom about this. She seems relatively cool, even if she won’t let you get a piercing. She might be freaked out, or mad, or be like, you betrayed my trust, but just know that it really isn’t your fault, okay, this dude is like a serial predator and knows how young trans people’s minds work now enough that he’s reasonably good at manipulating people enough to get laid. If you tell your mom, she’ll probably have a handle on how to get this dude away from you.”

“Oh jeez. I don’t know. She’d totally ground my ass. This isn’t something I want to talk about to her.”

“I can’t promise she won’t ground you, but like, she clearly cares about your wellbeing, since she brings you to this group and is trying to get you care and medical transition stuff. And like, you said you wished you could talk to her. That tells me she’s cooler than my parents. You can think about how you want to proceed on this stuff, but my advice is to drop Alex like a hot potato and block him on everything and have your mom tell him you’re going to call the police on him over statutory rape. Which you literally could, he’s like six years older than you and you’re under sixteen.”

“I don’t want to call the cops,” Venus said. “I think I’m kind of anti-cop.”

“You don’t have to actually call them,” I said. “Just say you will. I said that. He backed off. Or if you don’t wanna use the threat of state violence say James Goldman still knows where he fucking lives and I’ll beat him up with a baseball bat if he pulls any shit.”

“What if he hurts me?” Venus asked. “He knows where my house is. He’s been driving to my house at night so we can make out. He shows up just randomly.”

I could see that Spruce was gradually registering that this might be a mandated reporter situation. Her gears were spinning. 

“Look,” Spruce said, and I took a deep breath and leaned back in the chair as her automated response started rolling. “Let’s talk more about this after group, okay? We can connect you with some resources. The main thing is that you’re feeling unsafe, and that’s not an okay thing to feel in a relationship with someone. That isn’t how you’re supposed to feel. You can absolutely find people who won’t make you feel scared that someone is going to hurt you. But look, come to the office after we’re done with group and we’ll go over your options for what to do. We want you to feel safe.” The options are a lot of pamphlets about the sexual violence shelter and recovery network in town, plus a referral to a therapist, plus the information that, since we probably have Venus’s last name and mother’s phone number, we have to tell her mom that she’s being groomed by a repeat sexual predator who’s been banned from Compton House and whose full legal name we also know. I knew that Spruce was probably not going to be the one to actually go over the options with Venus. That would probably be Natalie, who has been here longest and, whatever other issues she has as a person, is at least relatively good at having that conversation with kids in bad situations. 

I was kind of shaking. That happened sometimes. I couldn’t sit there for the rest of group without a break to pause and drink some water, so I went to the bathroom for a minute. Sitting on the toilet, I remembered when Alex had pushed me into a stall in the same bathroom and tried to kiss me and shoved his hand down my pants. I hadn’t had my bottle opener knife back then, and he got his lips on my face before I screamed at him and he jumped back. I was a acne-covered kid who wasn’t on hormones and had a bowl cut and bad glasses, and nobody had hit on me before. Before that moment, even with Alex’s rapey vibes and my utter lack of sexual attraction to him, I remembered seriously considering fucking him, just because I thought I wouldn’t ever have sex with anyone and because it would have been easy. I had realized that was bad after talking to Katie and hearing about her time with Alex and realizing that coerced, bad sex is in fact worse than no sex.

Shit like this is why I’m going to be a social worker. Compton House has historically also been pretty bad at dealing with abusers. They don’t train staff well on this stuff. Alex wasn’t the first and probably won’t be the last. One time a boy’s abusive dad showed up and tried to break down the front door and then tried to grab the boy by his hair and slam his head against the door frame when the kid went downstairs to try to talk to him down. Staff didn’t stop him or try to mediate until it was too late. We had to call the cops that time. It takes something like that or a sexual assault on the property to get someone formally permanently banned from Compton. The whole formula is pretty much, wait until shit already has gone down, then process it. But at least there’s a formula. It also isn’t like the nonprofit itself attracts specifically predators, or at least not more than any other gay youth nonprofit would. It’s just that wherever there’s LGBT teenagers, there’s gonna be someone around who really wants to rape us or hurt us or whatever, and that person is sometimes also an LGBT teenager, and whoever they are they usually get as close to raping us or hurting us as they can until someone stops them. Safety policies like doors with buzzers don’t get you absolute protection. You need people who are on top of keeping kids safe and actually care about them and get the training they need to know what to do.

I really hoped Venus would be okay. I knew I would end up giving her my number, even though I knew that meant learning about the new Homestuck or whatever slightly younger weird nerdy trans kids were into these days. I had to be her friend here, or she might get stuck with someone like Alex over and over again. Or like, maybe not, after this. She seemed smart and like she was on her way to figuring things out without me. But she still needed friends. And even though I didn’t really feel like starting yet another friendship with a potentially volatile trans kid who I knew was just getting started on probably the worst time of her life, who might potentially get raped or get addicted to drugs or die at any time, I also knew I didn’t really have a choice. We had both gotten fucked with the same way. 

I didn’t share anything important about my life when I got back to group and it was my turn. I talked about wanting to go to college, and I mentioned seeing a cute boy I was into. The shy gay boy, who had been absorbing lesbian and bi trans girl trauma narratives and shoplifting stories the whole night, looked heartened by this anecdote confirming that there were other gay men in the world who had sexual desire. I didn’t mention my friend Aaron, who was on heroin somewhere in the midwest, or dead, and I didn’t mention the fact that I knew some of my friends (Opal, but I wouldn’t have said their name) still cut themselves sometimes. Don’t lay that shit on people when they don’t have a way to deal with it. 

When group was over, I gave Venus my email and phone number, and told her to text or call me, and that if she had her phone taken away, she could email me on a library computer. She thanked me, and typed the number into her phone. 

“Thanks for telling me about Alex,” she said. “I think this is probably gonna be a shit hitting the fan situation with my mom, but whatever, I needed to hear that and know that. That’s the most useful information I’ve gotten on what to do about all this. I was just googling ‘wikihow fix a shitty boyfriend’ all the time.”

“It’ll blow over,” I said. “With your mom, I mean. Your safety is the main shit. I’m not a great influence personally and don’t tend to impress parents, but if you want me to talk to your mom about Alex I can do that too to try and speak on your behalf and explain what kind of person he is.”

“I’ll give my mom your number too,” Venus said. Then she went into the office to have the resources conversation with Natalie and Spruce.

I didn’t actually know if Venus’s mom would be cool, but I hoped she would.

When I got out of the building after group I smoked a stress cigarette and walked over to King David’s Diner to see if Goober was there. Her shift ends at nine thirty on Wednesdays. Sometimes I just wait by the bus stop for her to avoid stressing her out during closing, but I wanted to see her as quick as I could, to regain some kind of balance and remember that I was just a dumb teenager. Also to shit talk Compton. The twilight was setting in on Eighth Avenue, and the thrift store was closed, meaning the people who slept in the doorway there were already tucked into the tiny backpacking tent they put up every night. Overhead, the sky was plastered with peach-colored fluffy clouds. Goober was still working, thank fuck. She was just getting ready to go, wiping down counters and cleaning under the mats before the night shift people got there. 

“Hey James,” she said. She looked tired. “What’s kicking?”

“Not much,” I said. “Just talked to some teens at Compton for a while. Spruce is no fucking good at facilitating, as usual. Can I help with anything?”

“You don’t work here, buddy. Just stand there.” She used a paper towel to get the coffee grounds from under the machine. “And tell me about it. I was so happy when I realized my social circle wasn’t all Compton people anymore. It’s suffocating.”

“It’s all I’ve got until I’m twenty-one,” I shrugged. “And good practice if I ever become like someone’s case manager.”

“I could spill some shit on Spruce,” Goober offered, pushing some flyaway hair out of her eyes with the wrist of one hand. “Just petty dyke drama, but I don’t love the girl.”

Goober’s coworker Morwen emerged from the back freezer, taking off her apron. She’s a thirtysomething butch with prematurely grey hair. She’s the day shift lead at King David’s. “Dyke drama? In my establishment?” She asked. “Say it isn’t so. I’m gonna count tips, Goober, okay? It’s nine twenty and I am out. Rafi and Miguel are already here in the back anyway.”

“Morwen, can we give James some like, pie?” Goober asked, digging in the back of the display case. “This isn’t gonna look good tomorrow and I’m pretty sure we’re not gonna sell it all tonight.”

“I didn’t see anything,” Morwen shrugged, giving me a fist bump as she walked over to the cash register and started counting her tips. Morwen isn’t the real boss—he leaves at seven, or earlier if he feels like it—so she doesn’t care that a lot of the kids who come to eat at the diner don’t pay. Goober gave me a plastic container with some kind of key lime goop in it. I put it in my canvas tote bag without saying anything. Don’t ask too many questions when you get free food. I didn’t have any more cash to put in the tip jar, either.

“Her hand tattoos always make me fucking hurl,” I said to Goober. I wanted to get back to shit talking Spruce. “I guess you only get knuckle tats that say TEND and HEAL if you’re bad at doing both.”

“What does that say about people with KILL COPS knuckle tats?” Morwen asked. She handed Goober one of the two stacks of one dollar bills she had made. 

“God, are you talking about that guy Chris?” Goober asked Morwen, taking the cash. 

“He doesn’t fucking tip. He was in earlier and had a twenty dollar tab and gave me two bucks. I was like thanks, bro. You remember when he peed on the empty cop car at the station at two in the morning when nobody was around and took an Instagram video and was like ohhhh I’m such a sick anarchist. I was like man, you’re twenty-nine and a white kid with a trust fund back East. His fucking friends are always partying at the goat skull place down behind me and Betty’s house. Keep me up all night. I fucking hate punks sometimes.” 

Morwen’s house is really close to Goat Mansion. I’m definitely one of the punks she hates sometimes.  I grinned sheepishly at Goober. 

“Chris like, pushed a dumpster into the road one time on the Fourth of July and set it on fire and said it was anarchist praxis protest against the state,” Goober offered. “Which like, it might have been if he had coordinated with anyone and anyone knew what the fuck he was doing or why. But people thought it was just like, fourth of July frat boy whatever.”

“I kind of want to learn more about what effective anarchism looks like,” I said. “I feel like I’ve never seen it here. I don’t think I’ve ever known what’s actually going on. Besides the organization that runs the needle exchange and the food not bombs people.” I also didn’t know very much about those, but I knew they existed. I’d volunteered at the food bank last year every week and we’d save stuff like produce for the food not bombs people to take and make free hot meals with. They’d give them to people out of a food truck by the bus station. It’s a pretty good thing. I knew that some of those punks volunteered at the winter shelter down at the church by the library, too.

“Dude, real anarchism is just like, helping people,” Goober said. “I mean, and fighting Nazis and cops.”

“I guess I know that,” I said. “Which also, like, speaking of helping, thanks for pie.”

“Yeah, no problem,” Goober said. “Let’s split, I wanna leave this restaurant now.”

We walked to the bus stop together. There’s no predictable bus schedule or transit app, so you just have to stand there and have faith. The sun had set a while ago, and the streetlamp in front of the bus stop was broken. The world was totally dark. Me and Goober stood there a while and talked about how cool Morwen looked and what we wanted our ideal looks to be when we were Morwen’s age, or older. Goober said that when she turned thirty-five she was going to change her name to Rebecca and open a bed and breakfast in Connecticut and figure out how to get Michelle Tea and her wife to come stay there so she could break up their marriage and then marry Michelle Tea and then write a memoir about it. I couldn’t think of what I would be like when I was thirty-five. I tried to picture myself as a social worker with an actual facial hair beard. A purple beard? No, ick. A mustache? Would I dye it black?

“You’re gonna totally have like a cool co-op and a garden,” Goober said. “If the bees don’t die and we still have agriculture. But like a put-together co-op where everyone’s past their Saturn return. You’ll have like Le Creuset dishware and a well-maintained compost pile with the correct mishmash of alkaline whatever. And a bunch of very clean band t-shirts in one drawer and all your like, jam jars downstairs and a neurotic dog. I can envision exactly how you’ll be when you’re thirty-five.”

“Or I’ll be like, an emotional wreck who wears leopard print to work and tries to take care of druggy thirteen year olds and only gives them terrible patronizing advice because I’m so over it,” I said.

“Just don’t manifest that.” Goober shrugged. “Anyway, that’s not you. You’re way more likely to keep being super invested to an unhealthy extent in everyone else’s crises and give yourself cluster headaches from thinking too hard about other people’s problems.”

“Thanks.”

We watched a large black cat cross the empty street and disappear into the bushes.

“Did you hear that someone’s been killing and mutilating housecats on the West Side?” Goober asked. 

“What?” I asked. “What?”

“Like, there’s been five people within six blocks that have had their cats killed in five months. It’s a serial cat killer. The cats turn up near the owners’ houses with their hair singed off their heads on one side and like, these weird marks like they’ve been stuck with some kind of needle. And their spines removed. All the same. My friends are talking about organizing a community cat protection thing where we walk around at night and try to catch whoever it is. And also protect stray cats. I’m worried about Ozma getting out and someone killing her.” Ozma was Goober’s white cat.

“That’s so crazy,” I said. “That’s scary.”

“I bet it’s some druggy sociopath college kid from the state uni. Next it’ll be people.”

“Yuck,” I said. “Don’t say that. We had the Oyster House Arsonist just like, two years ago. I don’t want any more shit to go down here.”

“It’s a small town,” Goober said. “We have a lot of secrets and dark shit. Just natural.”

When Goober caught her bus, I walked back to the library and got my car to head home. The roads that late were pretty empty. Going anywhere outside after dark on a weeknight is like that. As I drove back I listened to a new release from this artist Nightspace who I like. It got me in the right mood—it’s kind of like Grimes, but from someone who isn’t a wacky capitalist shill and whose voice sounds like Robert Smith from the Cure. Nightspace has been around a few years but is just getting big. They used to live in Seattle. As I drove past the lake, I rolled the windows down so that the kids who were drinking on the dock could get a little flash of goth culture passing through the night.

My dad’s house is fifteen minutes outside of downtown, in a newer suburban development a lot closer to the farms and the cow shit stink. My mom lives a little closer in, but this week she was at a conference for work, so I was at Dad’s. He lives with his wife Kaylin, who he married when I was twelve. Both of them are okay people. Just okay. I don’t have anything personal against Kaylin, though I hate that she keeps the house looking like a Martha Stewart magazine. Houses aren’t meant to look like that. I also feel like a really smart, good person would not have married my dad, so I’m still trying to figure out what is wrong with her.

When I pulled into the driveway I shoved all my weed gear in my overnight duffel bag before getting out of the car. The lights were on so I knew they were both awake. Kaylin was in the kitchen when I got inside, looking at her phone. She smiled at me. I nodded at her. 

“Hey James,” she said. “How was group?”

“Same old,” I said. “I’m the one giving the advice these days. I think I’m probably too old for it.”

“That experience with planning workshops and stuff will be very good on college applications,” she said. She was drinking her Bedtime Sleepy Blend tea. It’s from the hippie mom yoga herb shop downtown. Catnip and meadowsweet and stuff. 

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m sure tooting my own horn about it on all the essays.”

“Did you eat dinner?”

“I had a snack.”

“There’s stuff in the fridge if you’re hungry. Oh, and I’m making some crepes tomorrow morning, if you’ll be around before school,” Kaylin said. 

“School starts early,” I said. “Seven thirty in the morning, remember?”

“I’m going to be up early to jog.” 

“Oh, cool.” I shrugged. “Yeah, if I’m up I can help with your crepes.”

“I like that collar,” Kaylin said, in a tone that let me know it distressed her.

“Well, first week of school, gotta come on strong,” I said.

My dad came into the kitchen, wearing boxer shorts and a T-shirt advertising the fact that he likes the band The Shins. 

“Oh,” he said. “You’re home. How was your day?”

“Just fine,” I said. “I’m applying to Berkley, so did some research on that after school before Compton and group.” 

My dad and Kaylin looked at each other in surprise. “Oh wow,” my dad said. “Well, that’s a big challenge. Good luck. Do you have any friends applying there?”

I shrugged noncommittally. I was not actually counting on applying to Berkeley. It was one of those things I said to my dad to shut him up from asking about why I smelled like weed. I was actually applying to a number of institutions I knew he would approve of, so it didn’t really matter. 

“Remember,” my dad said, “Make sure to emphasize all the different facets of your personality. Don’t focus on just one thing.”

“Totally,” I said. 

“Why do you want to go to Berkeley?” Kaylin asked me.

“I’d like to stay on the west coast but go to a prestigious university,” I said, “and I haven’t ruled out law school, so it might be nice to get a sense of the atmosphere there and to make friends on that track.” I went to the fridge and unloaded the key lime slime container Goober had given me onto the shelf next to the organic milk. 

“Good reasons,” my dad said. He was rummaging in the pantry. I heard the pop that signaled he had managed to pry open Kaylin’s Tupperware of carob energy cubes. 

“Yeah,” I said. 

“You need good grades for that,” my dad said through a mouthful of carob, agave and hemp seed. 

“It’s a good thing I get good grades,” I said. 

“I worry about that a little with your smoking, you know,” Kaylin said, though nobody had asked her. “You’re so smart. Do you feel like pot impacts your studying? I know the times I’ve gotten high I haven’t felt very…” she gesticulated primly. “Together.” Kaylin is the kind of person who wears gray linen and tidy Banana Republic ensembles to the beach. I doubt she has ever been untogether. 

“I have a 3.95,” I said. “As of now. And I do theater and used to do jazz band and I helped plan Gay Pride last year and was the only person under 18 on the task force. Frankly, I was the only person under 30. And I plan workshops on gay rights for nonprofits and do sex ed and canvas for local Democratic candidates and volunteered at the food bank for two years. I think I’m okay.” I filled a glass of water at the sink and drank it. “Speaking of, though, I have to do some homework before bed. I gotta go work on some chemistry. See you in the morning.”

“Nobody’s saying you’re doing bad, sport,” my dad said in that weird dry tone he has.

“Sure,” I said. “I know. Just practicing my shpiel.”

“See you,” Kaylin said brightly. “Remember, crepes!"

“Goodnight, kiddo,” my dad said. He replaced the carob Tupperware in the pantry and came over to me for a hug. I reciprocated awkwardly. “Love you.”

“Love you,” I said, leaving the room with my weed duffel. 

I don’t love my dad anymore—not since I was about thirteen, and came out, and he freaked out more than I expected and said a bunch of totally ugly shit and then kicked me out of the house to live with just Mom for a year while he “figured out what he was feeling” about my gender. He says he has figured out what he’s feeling and I know he read at least one of the articles my mom sends him, because he doesn’t say ugly shit any more and signed off on my top surgery with my mom, but he is still an emotionally incompetent moron who only cares about material success and shiny titanium kitchenware and gardening and like, Bjork. He has done nothing to repair our parent-child relationship. I resent him for things I would not resent a normal man for, like wearing a T-shirt for The Shins or eating carob cubes.  

Upstairs, I locked the door to my room and turned on the lava lamp my dad bought me when I was eleven. It’s orange and red and I still think it’s sick as hell. Between the lava lamp and the pink rock salt lamp Kaylin gave me for my birthday this year, my room at my dad’s house practically radiates the color pink. It’s good that it has such a comfortable glow, because besides the lighting situation it’s intensely impersonal. Just a big bed and a blank Ikea desk with some pens on it and a dresser filled with clothes I don’t actively hate but don’t like enough to keep at Mom’s. No books, no personal effects. It’s a guest bedroom. I don’t actually belong in my dad’s house. 

I could have used my vape to do my pre-chemistry smoke, since it’s less smelly, but the carob eating had annoyed me and I felt like reminding Kaylin and my father that I hated them in a subtle way, so I toked up and just opened the window into the September night. Most of the smoke left the room, so the fire alarm wouldn’t go off, but the funk would linger a while. I imagined Kaylin burning sage or nag champa incense or spritzing natural essential-oil cedar-scented air freshener when I left. 

It was early enough in the year that the stuff I had to do for my AP chem class was pretty limited, just ten problems, but I hadn’t been lying about the homework. When I finally got to bed it was past midnight. I had forgotten to check my phone for three hours. I had a text from Ian and another from Opal. 

Ian’s text read:

Should I break up with closet case? At the end of my damn rope.

Opal’s text read:

Just had a WEIRD convo with the trans man my roommate is fucking. He’s like a social work dude and he’s in law school. He said he’s maybe applying for the executive director position for Compton???? Because apparently NATALIE IS LEAVING??????? LIKE TO MOVE TO PHILADELPHIA?? DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THIS?? 

[snoopy84140-blog]

Meet the artist: Matt Lyon

If you’re a fan of Cloudberries puzzles (well, you’re here, after all!), you might have found yourself wondering how we come up with such colourful, creative and sometimes challenging images. Well sometimes we get help from truly gifted artists whose work we love.

One of these talented folks is London-based illustrator Matt Lyon, who designed our 1000-piece Symmetry puzzle. We spoke to him about his inspiration, his proudest moment (featuring Lady Gaga) and, of course, puzzles.

You create amazingly detailed patterns and seem to be able to pair colours effortlessly. Is making a Matt Lyon artwork harder than it looks?

All artists I know have their special moves and weak points, and over time focus on developing their strengths whilst navigating things they’re not so comfortable with. We all build upon things we most love, so for me, that’s doodling and playing with colour. Even so, it can take me a long time to decide upon a palette because I often want to use them all!

What kinds of things inspire your art? Are there places, people or things that get your creativity going?

So many things! I’m a big fan of folk art, especially East European, late ‘60s and early ‘70s design, and visual art in general. I listen to a lot of electronic music, which inspires the process of abstract imagery, especially in terms of repetition, patterning, layering, sequencing, etc.

Walking is the best tonic to clear my head, and living in London is great to get lost in and discover new places. And London’s galleries and museums are the best for recharging my creative batteries, especially The British Museum, which is my favourite hangout.

Describe your perfect day.

Time spent with family or friends. I don’t often get out of the city, so a visit to the coast is always a treat. I love seaside resorts with piers, promenades and penny arcades. It evokes the nostalgia of childhood holidays, from the smell of fish ’n’ chips to the sound of the sea.

How long does it take to create a really detailed piece like this one? (above)

This is a detail of a much larger design, so as you can imagine it took quite a while. I’m never sure how long my personal work takes because I’ll always have a good number of designs on the go and return to them on a rota. Stages include the initial drawing, line work in Adobe Illustrator, colouring in, and adjustments and edits in Photoshop. Once complete, I often wait to share a piece for at least a couple of months so that I can return to it with fresh eyes to see if it still looks okay.

Which piece of art or project are you most proud of? Do you do any other arty stuff away from the computer screen?

I guess my biggest scoop was having Lady Gaga hold a ghetto blaster I designed for Tommy Hilfiger’s Tommyland fashion show. As for other creative stuff, I’m a daily sketchbook doodler and I make a super tasty banana loaf.

Some of your designs are wonderfully fresh and psychedelic. What made you want to work with a bunch of puzzle nerds like Cloudberries?

Some of my designs have been described as visual puzzles, so we’re clearly a perfect fit! Also, my mum’s a keen jigsaw fan and she’s looking forward to tackling this one.

What’s the biggest jigsaw puzzles you’ve ever completed? Be honest!

I’m really slow at jigsaws, though I kind of enjoy zoning out when staring at the pieces trying to find the right fit. I think my biggest is 500 pieces!

Finally, what’s next? Do you have any fun projects or collaborations in the pipeline?

I’ve got a fun project *potentially* lined up over the coming months, though I can’t say any more about it in case it falls through. Aside from that, I’m about to start a collaboration with a friend of mine in the US. I’ve just received a handful of his work and over the next few weeks I’ll be adding to and developing. Aside from that, this year I really want to make a ‘zine, and finally, learn how to crochet granny squares for a psychedelic blanket.

Readmore 9 celebrities that love a good puzzle

[fromwentzicame]

do all of the rawring twenties asks

fun!! thanks for asking anon!!

1. Are you more emo, scene or punk?

emo

2. Favourite band?

fall out boy!!

3. Any New Year’s resolutions?

not really, i don’t like making resolutions because i’ll get bummed if i don’t go through with them. i hope to work on my zine more though

4. Favourite music video?

“i’m not okay (i promise)” 

5. Favourite song?

do you know how impossible this is???

6. Panic! At The Disco or Fall Out Boy?

fall out boy!

7. Favourite album?

hmm… take this to your grave or from under the cork tree

8. Do you own a pair of fingerless gloves or skeleton gloves (or the combination)?

yes! i had a pair of black fingerless gloves and then i also had the fingerless skeleton gloves

9. Do you own any band merch? If so, from what bands?

bro, so much… my chemical romance, fall out boy, panic! at the disco, pierce the veil, blink-182, brand new. i used to have paramore and sleeping with sirens too

10. Got a jacket with pins?

i have a jacket with ONE pin on it,, i mostly keep them on my backpack

11. Have you got dyed hair? What colour?

yes! it’s a deep red colour

12. Any hair dying or haircut plans for 2020?

yes, i plan to get my bangs trimmed (not that big of a deal) and i hope to go for a more reddish-purple colour

13. Crush on any band member?

pete wentz and gerard way

14. Killjoy name?

i used to have one but i don’t remember it. when i was 13 i created a story and characted inspired by danger days and the name i came up with that i really liked was “captain calamity” so maybe that

15. Are you into The Used?

not hugely, i like a few songs

16. Do you want any tattoos? Of what?

yes! i want a small black pine tree ala gravity falls behind my ear, and one day i would like to have a minimalist tattoo of a cloud partially covering the sun (a tribute to being an overcast kid) 

17. Can you play any instruments? Which?

lol no

18. Favourite My Chemical Romance song?

hard… i want to say i’m not okay because that had a huge impact on my life but really idk. a lot of the songs means so much to me

19. Do you think Twenty One Pilots are emo?

not…. really… i mean their lyrics are emo but the music style isn’t even rock.. i guess emo is always evolving but who can say anymore. i mean, i like vessel and blurryface but i just dk

20. Are you into Taking Back Sunday?

yeah, i like quite a few tbs songs

21. Do you wear any make up?

yeah the standard foundation, concealer, powder, blush, mascara, eyeliner

22. Do you have black painted nails?

no my nails arent painted. i like having painted nails but i fucking hate painting them ‘cause i suck at it. they also chip so easily it’s just a pain in the ass

23. Have you got any band posters? Of what bands?

green day and fall out boy, and i have a sex pistols tapestry. i used to have a pierce the veil poster and a HUGE my chemical romance poster

24. Do you want any piercings?

yeah i want a lip piercing

25. What’s your opinion on All Time Low? Sleeping With Sirens? Pierce The Veil?

all time low is alright. i’m not super into them as much as i was when i was younger. i have a few songs. don’t panic was the first album i bought with my own money. i don’t like sleeping with sirens, the only song i had by them was their cover of ceelo green’s fuck you. pierce the veil is okay, i used to be into them more when i was younger. i still have a few songs, they’re good. i saw them in concert when i was 14 and it was pretty cool

26. Do you think it’s just a phase or that you’ll be emo/punk\scene forever?

at this point… i think i’ll be emo/punk for a pretty long time. i got in the scene when i was 12. i’m 19 now. seven years is a really fuckin long time

27. Favourite magical/mythical creature?

vampires :) but i also like demons

28. Are you into Black Veil Brides?

lol nah… i think i might have “knives and pens” downloaded but that’s literally the only song i’ve listened to by them. i think they’re kind of ridiculous actually lmao

29. Do you like any newer emo/scene/punk bands? Which?

i like idkhbtfm if that counts. i’m not into a lot of new bands, actually. i can’t find many that grip me. i like modern baseball, if that counts as new.

30. What’s your favourite music genre besides emo/punk\scene?

uh. i don’t… i don’t know have any other ones. i pretty much just listen to emo/punk/pop punk. i like musicals though! hamilton, phantom of the opera. 

31. Are you into Mindless Self Indulgence?

no, i think the lyrics are kind of gross honestly lmao. but i love lyn-z

32. Favourite Fall Out Boy song?

hard to say… i think hum hallelujah. i love that song to bits 

33. Are you mostly into the so-called “emo trinity” or “emo quartet” or do you listen to a lot of other bands too?

i guess emo trinity more so. i also really like brand new though, and the brobecks. and i don’t know how but they found me. 

34. What’s your opinion on Waterparks? Palaye Royale? I DONT KNOW HOW BUT THEY FOUND ME?

35. Are you into Bring Me The Horizon?

not at all

36. Favourite solo project by a emo/scene\punk band member?

um… not sure. maybe gerard way

37. Are any of your friends IRL emo/scene\punk?

yeah i have one irl

38. Are you into drawing? If so, show some of your art!

yes i am! um, ok… i will attach a doodle i did in class 

39. Favourite colours and colour schemes?

favourite colour is black, but i also really love red!

40. What are some of your favourite lyrics?

“A failure at everything, 18 going on extinct.”

“All of the mothers raise their babies to stay away from me.”

“You are the dreamer, and we are the dream. I could write it better than you ever felt it.”

41. The Black Parade or Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge?

uh, fuck. uh… the black parade. no–three cheers–no… black parade. FUCK–

42. What’s your opinion on Paramore? Green Day? Blink-182?

paramore: i know a few songs, they’re good

green day: i also like them, i have a few songs

blink-182: i like them as well, but not a fan of their new stuff. since tom left. 

[allthethingswecoulddo]

Being a Bi Survivor- 11 Reflections

This Bi Visibility Day I want to share my story of being a survivor. Before we begin, some content warnings. 

Read with care.  ❤️

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In this post, I talk about coercive relationships and sexual violence including mentions of rape in an intimate relationship. I explore my experience of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and other mental health issues including thoughts of suicide. 

I’ve used asterisks for some difficult words e.g. I write s****l violence and r**e  

You can find links to services in this post. If you don’t feel like reading on, that’s cool!

When I read the statistics on bi experiences of s****l violence, a whole cacophony of feelings surface. I see myself and my friends reflected; surviving, processing and trying to pave a way through the rest of our lives after abuse. I hear echoes of the invalidation and ridicule that permeates public consciousness about bi identities. I’m reminded of the voices within the queer community that erase and degrade bi people, with off-hand comments or sustained attacks. And it’s not easy to find the words for those feelings or the words to explain that biphobia leads to deep and lasting harm.

Bisexual women are five times more likely than heterosexual women to be abused by a partner. In one study, 10.8 per cent of bi women reported having been abused, compared to 8.2 per cent of lesbians and 6 per cent of straight women. *

Bisexuals who experience multiple oppressions, such as trans, BAME or disabled people, face even higher rates of sexual violence. Evidence from America shows that while trans people face higher rates of sexual violence, bi trans women are the most at risk.*

I hope that by sharing my experience, other survivors will feel less alone and discover tools to navigate their way through the uncharted terrain of trauma. The role of biphobia in the abuse I experienced might not seem obvious, but it is front and center - biphobia made me vulnerable to abuse, biphobia played a part in sustaining my self-doubt and biphobia strengthened my fear that no one would believe me.

It’s important to emphasize that abuse can happen to anyone. Whether or not you are bi or LGBT+, I hope that this is useful for you.

I was trapped, and only when I left did the fear flood in.

Whilst I was in an abusive relationship, I couldn’t see it. My mental health spiraled, and my friends expressed concern about the dynamics of the relationship. I was much better at finding flaws in myself and other reasons I felt tangled up than I was at recognizing the ways my boundaries were being crossed, and my trust abused. In other words, I blamed myself from the start.

Only after I had left the relationship did I start to recognize what had been happening; that coercion and manipulation were at the heart of the way my abuser had been communicating with me and treating me. The dislocation between my inner world of turmoil and the realities of the relationship suddenly make sense, and that’s when I started to feel the fear.

I felt it hit me like a tonne of bricks.

It might seem like a strange concept, to ‘realise’ that you’ve been fearful of someone or to ‘realise’ that you’ve been harmed. How could I not know that I’d been s******y assaulted?

The saying ‘the penny dropped’, ‘it hit me like a tonne of bricks’ and ‘my world turned upside down’ had never felt so literal as when I started to recognise that I’d escaped an abusive relationship.

My body kept secrets until I was ready to survive them.

Even at this time, when symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) kicked in and I was at my lowest, I remember being so grateful and in awe of my body. It was as if it had held onto all the feelings I couldn’t have processed and managed within the relationship.

My body waited until I was safe to release all the feelings that you’d expect in a situation of threat. I could feel the chemicals in my bloodstream, keeping me awake, alert, poised for defense. 

Hypervigilance plagued my days and nights - it was exhausting, and at the time I didn’t understand what was happening. I felt like I was losing control, and didn’t know what to believe.

Fight. Flight. Freeze. 

I’d heard of the fight or flight response, but I didn’t know you could freeze. It makes sense. When it happened I left my body, I left the room, I went into another world because the one I was in was unbearable. That’s how my body and mind protected me.

But then dissociation became a way for my mind and body to cope in the aftermath too. For me, it felt like a powerful anesthetic, numbing out every feeling indiscriminately, even the good stuff.

Random things would trigger panic or dissociation - most annoyingly, for a long time, I couldn’t listen to the song Golden Years by David Bowie. If I smelt damp clothes or saw a red rain jacket, a whole string of associations fired through me and I was hurtling towards a panic attack.

She told me to respect my coping mechanisms. I hated them. 

My therapist (who I could barely afford - that’s a whole topic of its own) explained that this was a coping mechanism and that I should respect it and work with it. But I was impatient and frustrated. I wanted to get over this, quick.

Looking back, I was struggling to accept what had happened. It was like a story I was telling myself, about someone else’s misfortune.

Time was my enemy.

This period of time, in my memory, feels warped and strange. I remember feeling minutes passing, and time was like sinking sand - it was so hard to keep moving forward and I couldn’t see a future.

I started to have thoughts of suicide. I hadn’t experienced that before and felt really scared and confused. Above all, I felt completely alone, like no one would understand - even if I had the words.

Just above the city, our dinghy, my lifeboat- Survivors’ Network.

Something that surprised me and I’ve never forgotten is how a reserve of resilience and determination, an energy that I never knew I had, surged forward just when I thought I wanted to give up. 

I found Survivors’ Network and started to go to group meet-ups. At first, I’d sit in the circle and drink the tea, eat the biscuits and smile like I was at a community meeting about, I don’t know...a litter problem in the city!?

I fooled myself into believing I didn’t belong there, that it was inconsequential and I was just coming along for the ride. I was keeping my own experience at arm's length so I didn’t have to face the fallout. But as I listened to other survivors’ stories and got to know them, I became comfortable enough to start sharing and chipping away at my shame. 

The group became like a transient family, and a lifeline when I needed it most. 

She told me she believed me.

Only a few friends knew what was going on. I started using other services like Samaritans, RISE and Rape Crisis for extra support. One night I called a hotline for survivors and confessed (to myself as much as the volunteer at the end of the line) that I couldn’t tell anyone what had happened, because I was scared they wouldn’t believe me. They just paused and said, I believe you. I felt relief radiate my chest and hot tears melting the frozen numbness I’d been trying to break out of.

Every good night’s sleep is a Fuck You.

After that, barrages of feelings were set free. One of the most difficult being anger. I didn’t know how to channel it or what to do with it.

I played Golden Years really loudly in my room, pushed myself to go places I desperately wanted to avoid because they were associated with my trauma or ran the risk of seeing my abuser by attending things I would usually go to.

I later learned that intentionally triggering yourself after abuse isn’t unusual. It was partly a way of feeling alive through the numbness, and partly my rage starting to bubble to the surface. I wasn’t going to be kept silent and hidden.

But over time I learned to redefine defiance. I remember the first time I said my abusers' name in therapy without disappearing into dissociation, I called them a wanker and my therapist - who was quite posh and quite serious- said, ‘I see your strength come back when you say that.’

My successes in recovery were small, slow and quiet - I learned to celebrate every single one. And to start sharing my journey with the people I love and trust.

It took a long time to feel like a ‘survivor.’ 

A friend who supported me at the time told me once to ‘make the abuser small, in your mind.’ For me, PTSD flashbacks were not the only way that I felt I was ‘reliving’ the trauma. Fear had permeated every aspect of my life, making me feel as if I was still living through it. The idea of shrinking down my abuser in my mind started to help me see that there was no looming, invisible threat, ready to strike at any moment. It was over, and I was safe.

It became something I had survived. Bit by bit I befriended my body again, and started to heal - recalibrating into the present and mapping my ‘new normal.’

My ‘new normal’.

I wish I had known that although trauma would devastate my life, it would give me an opportunity to rebuild it with self-compassion at the center. When people told me, ‘you won’t always feel like this’, or ‘you’ll adjust’- I thought they meant that I would get used to living in darkness.

Survival for me has meant a lot of private, proud moments. Managing to sleep through the night, laughing with friends, finding coping mechanisms that make me feel safe and above all, learning to open up to meaningful connection with others in a way I don’t think I did even before all of this.

Recovery is a process and one that isn’t always linear. There’s no right way to do it. If like me, you take two steps forward and one step back - just know you are never alone.

Thank you so much for reading.

Here’s that post featuring some survivor services again.

Want to know about any future posts, zines or projects about I do about being a survivor? Pop me an email at mollymaher93@gmail.com

* Both stats are taken from here: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/bisexual-lgbt-pride-sexual-assault-violence-invisible-minority-survivors-a8435226.html

*Here’s a definition of bi from Stonewall: https://www.stonewall.org.uk/help-advice/glossary-terms#b

[superfan99records]

Super Fan Illustrator Focus #2

I first met Nicholas Stevenson almost ten years ago when we shared a manager for our respective musical projects. His artwork and music were very intwined, his sleeves always struck me as being an extension of himself and his songs. One played equal part in supporting the other. I'd describe his style as being extremely playful, colourful, fanciful, distorted, magical and most of all joyful. I loved his art and have had him in mind for so many projects since. The first time we worked together he illustrated my band aboard a ship for a limited screen print single, unusually it was printed on black card making a night sky backdrop. Years later when I started Super Fan and needed a logo he was the first person I thought to ask. The brief was simply "Do something with Ice hockey sticks and maybe a shield?" He came back to me pretty quick with a whole range of variants, I picked one and this was to be the labels logo for releases 1 through to 50. He then did sleeves for both our live to tape night 'Reelin' releases and Matt McKees album too (with photos by Naomi Goggin) 

As well as picking up various awards and being exhibited, he's done work for The New York Times, Blue Note Records, The Scouts Association, Urban Outfitters, Warner/Chappell Music, Anorak Magazine and countless bands along the way. He is currently a teacher on the BA Illustration course at Hereford College of Arts, plays in the band Lucky Shivers AND is one half of the excellent Oro Swimming Hour. In short, he's a busy guy with a very colourful mind.

What did you like drawing as kid? Were there particular characters or subjects that you'd always come back to?

Thanks for the kind words Luke! I had several phases, and I was quite obsessive. Tractors, then fish, then dinosaurs, ninja turtles, power rangers, star wars... I'd draw when I watched TV and had battles with my friends trying to draw bigger scarier space ships. I found and scanned a box of drawings from the fish/dinosaur era, here my parents collaborated with me a fair bit, so I can't take total credit for them. 

Your work sometimes reminds me of Eric Carle in it's texture and colour. What are some of your favourite illustrated kids books?

Yes I love Eric Carle's work and I do quite a similar process, cutting and rearranging paintings and found textures, albeit with some help from the computer. I've always loved the book 'Goodnight Moon', it's so eerie and strange. Just a rabbit wishing all the weird, kitsch and creepy objects in its room goodnight. The colour palette is very influential. I also just discovered a Japanese book called 'The Night Train' by Shigeo Nishimura, which is hard to find in the uk, but worth tracking down. It's all pictures and no words, showing a beautifully observed journey on a night train, it's very calming and magical.

Tell us about the Bill Murray colouring book project and how that came about? It seemed to blow up online and the cover featured an illustration of Bill by Nic in his unmistakeable style. You can find them everywhere, I even spotted one in a store on a recent trip to LA. 

Mike from Belly Kids (the publisher) got in touch out of the blue asking me to contribute to a colouring book idea he had. I was a little unsure how I'd make my painting work for a colouring book and I nearly did a line drawing instead. Luckily Mike liked the painted image so much that he put it on the cover. I obviously thought the book was a great idea, but I had no idea that people would go as crazy for it as they did. I found the original painting the other day, and I'd accidentally been mixing colours on the back...

Let's talk about record sleeves. Are there any that stick out in your mind from browsing stores when you were a kid and which sleeve do you wish you designed yourself?

Record stores were like galleries to me, I often bought albums just because the record sleeve did something interesting for me and I discovered some great stuff that way (Seekonk Pinkwood comes to mind). Anything painted, drawn, unpolished and visceral usually grabbed my attention. Bob Dylan's painting on the cover of 'Music from Big Pink', Robert Pollard's collages for Guided by Voices, Pavement's 'Brighten the Corners', Frank Zappa sleeves, Iron and Wine 'The Shepherds Dog', Beck 'The Information'... When I was an illustration student my final project was a deluxe repackaging of Elliott Smith's 'Roman Candle'. I actually love the photograph on the cover of that record, but I wanted to see what would happen if it was illustrated instead. I'd like to do the same for Midlake's 'Bamnan and Slivercork'. That album is so lyrically visual, there's a clear narrative I'm just aching to draw. One handed machinists, a balloon maker, junglers, monocle-men...

For your musical projects you always contribute the art whether it be gig posters, zines or sleeve designs, would you ever trust this job with another artist or do you feel it is too intertwined with the songs themselves?

Sometimes I'd love to hand it over and see what someone else would do with it. There's so many people I admire and would trust to do a great job... But I always feel like it needs to be me, and like you say there's a shared ethos with the drawing and recording, it seems to work. That's not to say it's easy though, my own record sleeves are the things I do and redo over and over, I'm never satisfied, my own worst client! It's harder to have a pure reaction to your own music, you're too close to the struggle of it and the circumstances of its creation sometimes.

I can often imagine many of your characters coming to life in animated form, is this something you'd like to explore in the future? 

Yes, I love to animate, and have collaborated with some wonderful animators, but often on project slightly sideways of my own interests. I'm working on my own story telling and longer forms of narrative so we'll see if that doesn't lead to some more animation in the future. 

Are there any geographical places that inspire your art or ideas?

My mother is American, and I hop back over there when I can. Portland Maine, New Hampshire, Boston are places I discovered a lot of the records I love (thanks Bull Moose Records & Newbury Comics), and that landscape, endless woods, flakey wooden town houses, fireflies... I lived in the Seychelles for a few years as a child too, tropical plants at night, ghost stories, and hidden pirate treasures are things I take from there. I'm currently renting a medieval house, I love timber frames and puffy sleeves too. I used to not be very interested in the English landscape, but I think it's going to be more important going forward.

What's been your favourite project to work on and is there a particular project out there you'd love to have a go at?

I got to produce some animated GIFs for Save the Children recently, which was a really challenging project to do, telling the story of an internally displaced refugee in Afghanistan. I was really surprised that I got to do something like that, and that I was able to translate my visuals in to something serious and purposeful in a different way. I've always said I'd love to do the seat patterns for TFL? How about they let me redo the Northern Line?

My Dad paints watercolours and often gets fixated on a certain artist or record for a long time while working. Do you have any go to artists you like to listen to while you work?

In the idea generating stage I can't have anything on anymore, I'm too easily distracted! But once the idea is crystallised and I'm just producing work I really like anything by Grouper, Ali Farka, Tinariwen, Deru, A Hawk and a Hacksaw... instrumental mostly. You've got to keep that language part of your brain shut off!

I can't imagine the answer for this being a no but are you a collector of anything? Haha, yes. For one reason or another I have: Postcards of Volcanic Eruptions, matchbox labels, plastic animals, toy trees, zines, riso prints, composition notebooks.

And finally, what's the latest with your musical projects? I hear there is a new Oro Swimming Hour record in the pipeline?

Yes! The new record is finished, there's a slightly broader sound palette this time and even more tracks, even eerier. Process wise it's still very spur-of-the-moment, songs recorded as they're being written, intensely collaborative and open. It's nice because I'm still surprised when I listen back, did we do that? I don't remember, it all happened so fast. I will most definitely be appearing sometime in 2019.I suspect you'll be hearing more from Lucky Shivers this year too, we're much more methodical and careful over those songs, but there's a record slowly being chipped away at!

You can find more of Nic’s work by visiting the link below to his homepage or following him on Instagram. Look out for further posts in this series as I talk to the other artists who have helped shape Super Fans visual identity.

www.nicholasstevenson.com @nicholasillustration

[elstonsblog]

FEB

In February there has been an increase in productivity and focus compared with last month. Unfortunately, there still isn’t a lot to show yet though, as I’ve been chipping away at multiple things. These bits will hopefully help me in achieving my goal of being ready to stall this year and working towards prospective clients. I aim to get some of these things finished in March: M.H Poster revamped; RTBC revamped; Greeting cards finished; self-promo pack fully fleshed out; tote and t-shirt designs ready for screen-print.

Much of this month has been spent creating work for a competition I can’t mention yet. This has taken up a large chunk of time. It’s been fun doing it though – I’ll talk more about it when I can. Outside of producing work for that, I’ve been playing with using more handwriting in my work, working on greeting cards, continuing learning very basic animation on AE and making ceramic pieces. 

I realised recently that I haven’t drawn people for quite a bit of time. Most illustrations that I see in adverts and magazines have people and scenarios in. At the moment there isn’t much evidence of this in my portfolio and most of the time people need to see it to know you can do it. So, with that in mind, I’ve switched up my lunchtime drawing routine, instead of drawing random things and thoughts, too, more observation and to draw a person a day. This will improve my observation and character skills and be a useful addition to my portfolio. In the past, I have tended to shy away from bodies and focus more on the heads or unclothed bodies (or draw monkeys instead). This time around, I’m going to try and look more at the subtleties. The body form will stay near enough the same, it’ll be the defining elements and clothes that will show the difference of people. 

Lunchtime studies will help to build up a bank of people I can reference, once I have a few at my disposal I will then attempt at communicating phrases and business idioms (https://www.topcorrect.com/blog/50-common-business-idioms/) things like, ‘team-building’, ‘community’, ‘healthy living’ etc. these will then turn into images for my portfolio – hopefully then helping me to find editorial work as they will be examples of explaining a key point/theme, people and scenario. I will be adding this into my main tasks for 2020. 

This month I’ve taken a lot of inspiration from music, using it as a tool for interpretation. I would like to repeat this process for my favourite songs and albums so that I can build up some artwork relating to that area and explore the song deeper. 

I’ve started using Illustrator a lot more to vectorise the text pieces that I’ve been doing, this has also had a knock-on effect to the drawings I’ve produced recently as well especially the animated ones. They’ve become a bit cleaner and more scalable – but the little texture that was initially there has been taken away through doing this. I’m still trying to find a middle ground at the moment. I’ve started adding shadow so that they’re not as flat. I have started toying with the idea of getting procreate but it’s an expensive trial to see if I like it or not. In the next few months, I’m going to try bringing in some bits of texture through photoshop and have a play that way.

The time where I’m making the most physical stuff I have for a while, it’s strange that my drawing has become more digital. As well as trying texture-out digitally I’m hoping that there will start to be more of a cross over between drawings and objects – the ceramic pieces require painting the glaze on – after a while of doing this I should be more confident with a paintbrush and with that may come a bit more of a looseness to the overall look as you only get one shot with paint. I’d like to paint at least 1 big canvas that I’m happy with this year.

I’ve tried to actively consider the audience more in what I’ve been working on in 2020. Focusing mainly on products rather than a specific content/drawing for an audience. I don’t feel that I will fully understand who my audience is until I go out and talk with people at stalls etc. I’m keen to achieve this year and creating a variety of products will help to develop my practice and, possibly, widen my audience.

I’d say the most successful aspect of my work this month has been the refinement of handwritten text, both physically and digitally. I feel like the text is becoming more like how I would write normally. When writing notes I often write faster and link up characters – this wasn’t being translated into the earlier text pieces almost as if my hand would get stage fright and just make writing look a bit strange and forced probably due to the slower speed of which I was writing it. Through doing more text-based work I’ve become more confident and faster with producing it. I’ve enjoyed the process of refining it digitally and smoothing it all out. I’ve been refining the text for the MH posters as the current text is a bit funky. I’m going to be working on a set of greetings cards this month and having this refinement process in place will help a lot for the cover text on the card. 

On the flip side to that, the least successful aspect to my work is that I feel I’ve got stuck into a ‘kawaii’ loop with faces that are on things (not people), it’s been going for a while and I’m trying to wriggle out of it. Removing the nose for felt is practical logistically but then pushes it down a different sort of style, sewing on a sideways nose doesn’t really make sense to me. It’s something that hopefully through drawing more things with faces will start to carve out a suitable, transferable face that can be used for ceramics, felt and drawing. 

Overall, I think this month has helped to get the ball rolling. I hope to get most of the things that have been started this month finished in March so that by April I can start on more new stuff. I’ve started to adapt to longer/larger pieces of work but will continue to give myself short weekend projects so that I don’t start slacking or loose pace. I think a 2-month window of 1 month create and 1 month refine will help me to tie up any loose ends and not have work dragging behind me all year. I hope that in the next reflection I can show all the finished stuff that I’ve been working on this month.. and the competition entries too!

1 Felt toy, 1 Zine (need cover), 2 Cards, 1 person, 5 ceramics. 

GOAL LIST 2020 (Revised)

Make 12 Felt toys

Draw 12 People/Idioms

Draw 12 Editorial responses

Draw 12 Mindsets

Make 12 Zines

Make 12 Reasons to be cheerful

Make 12 Cards

Read 12 comics

Take 10 Polaroids a month

Write 12 reflection pieces

Design and distribute self-promo pack

Stall at an art fair