2022 Edition Three

ART · COMMENTARY · CULTURE · FICTION · NEWS · NON-FICTION · PHOTOGRAPHY · POETRY · SATIRE

Publishing the University of Melbourne's student writing and art since 1925 BOUNCING BACK—HOW MELBOURNE UNIVERSITY CHEER AND DANCE IS LIFTING OFF IN 2022 Ella McCartney. p. 10

LIKE A SNAKE EATING ITS OWN TAIL: BPD, NON-BINARISM AND TIKTOK: A TAROT READING Maggie Slater. p. 40

FINAL GIRLS Zadie Kennedy Mccracken. p. 60

AFTER HOURS Edition Three 2022

Acknowledgement of Country Farrago would like to acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the Country on which we are printed, the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people of the Kulin nation. We would also like to acknowledge and pay our respects to the Boonwurrung/Bunurong people of the Kulin nation on whose lands our campuses also sit, extending that respect to all the clans of the Kulin nation across so-called Victoria. We acknowledge the wisdom of their Elders, past and present, along with their struggle for sovereignty that is unceded.

As we enter this tumultuous time of the semester, of exams and extensions, I encourage you to connect deeper than the hum and rattle of campus. Block out the immediate chatter of latte enthusiasts and placarding advocates, of sirens and tram trolley wheels. Closing your eyes as you walk: What do you smell? What do you taste? What do you hear?

Not so long ago this time would be known as Birrin/Perrin—a time of hard work preparing for the coming cold weather, and rich, indulgent eating.

It is coming to the end of eel season and the beginning of wombat season. Bunjil, the eagle, makes his nest. The air is thick with tension and bustle as hot atmospheres from the inner reaches of the continent mingle with Antarctic gales beginning to blow in from the south.

Fresh fungi are emerging in the quiet, damp places; the ground is still warm but cool mists yawn a creeping growth across the country.

Rich petrichor is stirred as the new growth is eaten by the wallaby, kangaroo, and other marsupials. Many moths abound, some so big and fat that they would be harvested by mob as a rich source of protein. The rest are greedily devoured by birds like the tawny frogmouth, or by sugar and feathertail gliders who leap across the canopies at night. It is the mating season of this country’s ringtail and brushtail possums whose terrible squealing in the dark would help Kulin mothers hurry their children to sleep.

Where the oval is today, groups of Wurundjeri would be fishing for eels in the lake as they migrated from the Yarra ranges to New Caledonia. The thick smell of burning river red gum fills your nose as singing women on the shoreline hang eels out to be smoked and preserved. It is nearly time for both the Wurundjeri and the Bunurong to begin their ascent to their winter hunting grounds in the Dandenong Ranges.

If you’re lucky, today you might see an eel in one of the fountains or stormwater courses on campus. They still migrate along their ancient ancestral routes, these days having to negotiate steel and concrete as they do.

As we go into this busy time of pressures and deadlines, there is comfort to be found in the quiet Millenia long movement of the eel. This too shall pass—but Country is inexorable.

Patrick Mercer, Wadawurrung Kulin

Illustrated by Ivan Jeldres

CONTENTS NON-FICTION

REGULARS

22 When Real Death Enters the

02 Contributors 03 Editorial 04 July Calendar 81 For and Against: Jaden Smith

House, All Poetry is Dumb: Reflecting on Alfalfa

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Carmen Chin & Carmen Chin

PHOTOGRAPHY

49 Featured Photography Ben Levy Mollie Crompton Christian Theodosiou Ivan Jeldres Michael Sadeghi Maddy Cronn

Max Richardson

Dysphoria, euphoria, and the body in Pokémon Legends: Arceus Aries

COMPETITION

26 Finding shade under the canopies

16 SummerFest Blackout

of womanhood: learning from my mother

Poetry Competition Winners First Place: Benjamin Evans Second Place: Vanessa Chan

Roumina Parsamand

40 Like a snake eating its own tail:

47 Featured Art

BPD, non-binarism and TikTok: a Tarot reading

Sophie Nguyen

Southbank Updates

Maggie Slater

46 Tunnel Vision

Jack Doughty

Anindya Meiv

06 Office Bearer Reports

CREATIVE

NEWS

Joanne Guo

The Pram Factory: A Retrospective Joel Duggan

05 UMSU Updates

08 Featured Art 20 Featured Art

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UMSU

ART

Audrey de Lucia & Sophia Calubad Maleea Hegarty

48 Featured Art Nina Hughes

57 Featured Art Edie Spiers

COLUMNS

09 News-in-Brief

60 final girls

18 A Day at UniMelb: Libraries

10 Bouncing Back—How Melbourne

61 nitrous oxide love machine

34 Facets of Madness:

Zadie Kennedy Mccracken

The News Team

University Cheer and Dance is lifting off in 2022

Ella Mccartney

11 Are university research grants being guided by national interests?

Selina Zhang

12 Mysteries of UMSU:

2021’s missing meeting minutes Megan Tan Tan

62 fourteen things I found in my notes app, in no particular order

Donna Ferdinando

36 A WIP Around the Workshop:

Clem McNabb

The Entangled Character

Xiaole Zhan

Emma-Grace Clarke – Creative Literature and Writing Society (C.L.A.W.S.)

63 When we were teenagers 66 summer in fitzroy

38 Lost in Translation

67 Against the Hurries, Against

44 Filling Up The Static:

Mia Horsfall

Riley Morgan

French Onion Soup, Science Fiction and SPELLLING’s The Turning Wheel

Caitlyn Steer

13 Dear Diary:

The PM’s Retrospective Journal

68 That Much is Known Maisie McGregor

Stella Theocharides

Jack McMahon

74 The Untethering

58 Ordinary Phenomena: Snakeskin

The Satire Team

75 After Dark

64 Oyster: Monkey

14 Satire-in-Brief

Tharidi Walimunige

Marchella Rusciano-Barrow

RADIO FODDER

30 Radio Fodder’s Podcast Playlist

76 Moonflower

31 Radio Fodder's Music &

80 She the Sea

Fodder Blog Team

Lochlainn Heley

Helena Pantsis

Sophia Zikic

70 Murder on the Dancefloor:

Tales from Late-Stage Hospitality The Frozen Margaritas

Hirushi Muthukumarana

Film Picks

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A Momentary Loss of Muscular Coordination

Aeva Milos

the Waits

SATIRE

Weiting Chen

Fodder Blog Team

From Dusk To Dawn: Radio Fodder’s film picks for your after-hours viewing

Christina Savopoulos & Carmen Chin

Rupert Azzopardi

72 Hocus-Pocus Recipes and Rituals: Clearing the Brain Fog Marcie Di Bartolomeo

78 DIY Craft Guide: Beaded Jewellery

Illustrated by Ashlea Banon & Niamh Corbett

Weiting Chen

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EDITORS Charlotte Waters Jasmine Pierce Joanna Guelas Nishtha Banavalikar

COVER Ashlea Banon

MANAGERS Akash Anil Nair Bayley Horne Ben Levy Brighton Wankeaw Carmen Chin Christina Savopoulos Emma Xerri Jordan Di Natale Mollie Crompton Samantha Shing Trang Dau

CONTRIBUTORS Aeva Milos Anindya Meiv Aries Ben Levy Caitlyn Steer Christian Theodosiou Clem McNabb Ella McCartney Hirushi Muthukumarana Ivan Jeldres Joel Duggan Lochlainn Heley Maddy Cronn Maggie Slater Maisie McGregor Maleea Hegarty Marchella RuscianoBarrow Max Richardson Megan Tan Tan Mia Horsfall Michael Sadeghi Mollie Crompton Patrick Mercer Roumina Parsamand Tharidi Walimunige Xiaole Zhan Zadie Kennedy Mccracken

COLUMNISTS Emma Grace (Creative Literature and Writing Society - C.L.A.W.S) Donna Ferdinando

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Helena Pantsis Jack McMahon Marcie Di Bartolomeo Rupert Azzopardi Stella Theocharides

GRAPHIC COLUMNISTS Riley Morgan Sophia Zikic Weiting Chen

ONLINE COLUMNISTS Aries Chathuni Gunatilake Emma Xerri Ishan Morris-Gray Nina Hughes Zoë Hoffman

NEWS TEAM Aeva Milos Alessandra Akerley Archie Bear Bayley Horne Brighton Wankeaw Dominique Jones Ella McCartney Joel Duggan Jordan Di Natale Josh Davis Kayra Meric Max Dowell Megan Tan Tan Miriam Litwin Patrick Sexton Rebecca Reubenicht Selina Zhang Tianyu Wang Vanessa Chan

NEWS SUBEDITORS Beau Kent Daisy Assauw Emma Barrett George Tyurin Le Thuy Linh Nguyen Max Dowell Rico Sulamet Sarah Grace Pemberley Stephanie Umbrella Zara Feil

CREATIVE SUBEDITORS Aeva Milos Ava Nunan Breana Galea Chelsea Rozario Clem McNabb Helena Pantsis Izma Haider Jaz Thiele Laura Charlton Leah Macdonald Mary Hampton Melana Uceda Nalini Jacob-Roussety Nina Adams Romany Claringbull Rowan Burridge Xiaole Zhan Zoë Hoffman Zoe Keeghan

NON-FICTION SUBEDITORS Alex Thomas Allegra McCormack Bella Sweeney Clem McNabb Bridget Schwerdt Emma Barrett Frank Tyson Gwynneth Thomas Helen Tran Leah Macdonald Livia Kurniawan Mary Hampton Millie McKellar Samson Cheung Sara Vojdani Sarah Pemberton Sophie Lodge Sunnie Habgood Susan Fang Tegan Lyon Thalia Blackney Yoly (Yuzheng) Li Zara Feil Zhiyou Low Zoe Eyles Zoe Hoffman

STAFF WRITERS

Alain Nguyen Animesh Ghimiray Bella Farrelly Crystal Koa Daniel Snowden Emma Barrett

Emma Xerri Felix Kimber Hannah WinspearSchillings Joel Duggan Joel Keith Kae Girao Laura Quintero Serrano Maggie Slater Maggie Stoner Nalini Jacob-Roussety Nicholas Speed Nicole Bernadette Jalandoni S. Fitzgerald Sophie Breeze Velentina Boulter

ILLUSTRATORS Amani Nasarudin Amber Jepsen Amber Liang Arielle Vlahiotis Ashlea Banon Ayushmaan Nagar Birdy Carmen Casey Boswell Cathy Chen Chelsea Rozario Chau Hoang Edie Spiers Ella Cao Evan Goulios Grace Reeve Indy Smith Ivan Jeldres Jessica Norton Joanne Guo Leilani Leon Manyu Wang Marchella RuscianoBarrow Matilda Lilford Meadow Nguyen Melana Uceda Monica Yu Niamh Corbett Nina Hughes Pamela Piechowicz Riley Morgan Sally Yuan Weiting Chen Yicheng Xu Zoe Eyles Zoë Hoffman

Illustrated by Niamh Corbett

GRAPHIC DESIGN

FODDER BLOG SUBEDITORS

Alexi O’Keefe Anannya Musale Andrea Ann Win Lim Annemarie Potgieter Chau Hoang Christopher Prawira Emilia Weeden Janna Cinta Garciya Dingle Lana Eastaugh Maggie Ung Melana Uceda Phoebe Lee Sabrina Ke Qin Ting Samantha Shing Timothy Willett Vincent Escobal Yicheng Xu

Elina Pugacheva Issy Abe-Owensmith Joel Duggan Nikita Mohar-Williams Pamela Piechowicz Saanjana Kapoor Samson Cheung Sarah Pemberton Thalia Blackney Zhiyou Low

P H OTO & VIDEO TEAM Akash Anil Nair Alexandra Richardson Ben Levy Brighton Wankeaw Chaital Vasta Chen-Yang Lee Chong Jia Wen Christian Theodosiou James Hunter Jashan Deep Singh Joshua Davis Kayra Meric Maddy Cronn Michael Sadeghi Mollie Crompton Rebecca Vincent Suwanthi Elpitiya Acharige Tonia Pan Trang Dau Yvonne Le

FODDER BLOG TEAM Alexia Shaw Aeva Milos Beatrix Brenneman Benley Nguyen Chelsea Rozario Isabella Ross Lochlainn Heley Maia Everist-Migliore Olivia Ryan Padmo Widyaseno Rhea Chatterji Sherry Tay Tanisha Khan Zac Eaton

SATIRE TEAM Alexia Shaw Ashley Mamuko Bayley Horne Danqing Zhu Genevieve Byrne Gloria Yu Madison Barr Pavani Ambagahawattha

SOCIAL MEDIA Crystal Koa Eliza Routley Janna Dingle Madison Barr Mae Horsley Rachel Manning Samantha Shing Tejas Gandhi Trang Dau Vivien Hooper Weiting Chen

This magazine is made from 100% recycled paper. Please recycle this magazine after use.

Farrago is the newspaper of the University of Melbourne Student Union (UMSU). Farrago is published by the General Secretary. The views expressed herein are not necessarily those of UMSU.

you’re walking down an empty road, gaslights faintly bordering your vision. you see a movement in the shadows: you shouldn’t be here. its past 8pm. union house is closed. no one has been here this late and lived to tell the tale. you pause for a moment, stilled by thought as you wonder why… but you do not have to wonder for long. thick coiling hot breath brushes against your back: he’s here. tall, filthy and looming he towers over you, fully immersed in shadow save for the fear-inducing glint in his eyes. you take a deep breath. “i’m not afraid of you; i know what you are.” his voice, a deep whisper, is carried by the wind. “say it.” you choke back tears. “edition 3.” * When we think of the phrase “After Hours”, we think of the sacred times and spaces where we can let down our guard; where we’re safe from the seemingly endless stream of responsibilities and expectations which structure our days. Particularly following two years spent largely in lockdown—which were nonetheless incredibly difficult for everyone, and for some more than others—it can be exhausting to relearn the moves, steps and cues required for us to simply ~exist~ in the real, public world.

For many of us, the first few months of 2022 have been a thrilling time, marked by the forging of new friendships and the rekindling of old ones. But our days are also flooded with work, uni, and social commitments, sans a lot of the flexibility and compassion we were afforded across 2020-2021. We acknowledge that while, to some, the world might look and smell and feel like it’s *almost* back to normal, this isn’t the case for everyone. Our hearts go out to the immunocompromised, chronically ill and elderly members of our population who have been deeply neglected by our government’s “let it rip” strategy.

COVID-19 is not, and has never been, equalising.

We are writing this now in the midst of an election. Countless volunteers have occupied offices past sundown. They are carrying the election on their backs and they send us texts just before bed: “This could be our last chance to have a conversation with voters before they vote early. It’s an extraordinary achievement that no political campaign has ever come close to, thanks to you. Let’s have a huge preprepoll weekend and leave no door unknocked.” How many corflutes have you walked past? How many Josh Frydenbergs have been vandalised at midnight? How many times have you heard the word “policy”? It is 8:25pm, Sunday, Channel 9, and you are watching Anthony Albanese and Scott Morrison fumble about the definition of ‘woman’. It is 7:20pm, Friday, and a lawyer-turned-Greens-candidate knocks on your door but your housemate turns him away because he’s just clocked off work and he just wants to watch Geelong play, but the campaign cannot stop. The campaign goes on after hours. * Many of this edition’s creative pieces trace, with gentle hands, the deepest, most intimate corners of what it is to be human, laying bare the leakings of grief, loneliness and nostalgia that are put to bed in the heat and light of the day. Grief, loss and torment also decorate the pages of our Non-Fiction section. From lamenting the memories we leave behind after death to the shameful regret we feel towards the maternal figures shamed in our lives, like a snake eating its own tail, this section is haunting, introspective and cannibalistic.

Wedged between UMSU Updates and Non-Fiction, the News section is lighter this edition, pivoting to University life, and asking: What happens after class? There will always be more news than pages and time can afford. How can news clock off when people live and love after 5pm? Cold Chisel was right: Saturday night (do do do, do do, do do do, do do). There is always a “more to come”. Finally, the vibe for Edition Three’s art is mysterious, moody and tantalising, and the illustration team has nailed it!

So come in, stay a while. We’re open after hours. xxx 2022 editors - Charlotte, Jo, Nishtha & Jasmine

Illustrated by Niamh Corbett

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Monday 11

WinterFest

Tuesday 12

Tuesda19

Wednesday 13

WinterFest

Thursday 21 WinterFest

Tuesday 26 WinterFest

1pm - Weekly Arabic Dialogue Circles, 4—5pm - Creative Arabic Language Arts Collective (Online) Society WinterFest

Wednesday 27 WinterFest

Sem 2, Week 1

Semester 2 starts!

umsu.unimelb.edu.au/events

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Friday 8

Friday 15 Design Students Society Camp (FridaySunday)

Wednesday 20

WinterFest

Thursday 14

4—5pm - Creative 1pm - Weekly Arabic Arts Collective (Online) Dialogue Circles, Arabic

Monday 25

Thursday 7

1pm - Weekly Arabic Dialogue Circles, Arabic Language Society

1pm - Weekly Arabic 4—5pm - Creative Arts Collective (Online) Dialogue Circles, Arabic Language Society

Monday 18

Wednesday 6

Illustrated by Yicheng Xu

Friday 22 WinterFest

Winter Break

4—5pm Creative Arts Collective (Online)

Tuesday 5

Winter Break

Monday 4

Winter Break

JULY

Friday 1

Winter Break

UMSU /

/ UMSU content warning: mentions of sexual assault / sexual harassment

UMSU Updates Written by Sophie Nguyen, UMSU President Hey everyone!

Lately, I’ve been working with Clubs to ensure that our policies and procedures are reviewed to ensure that students are safe within clubs and their events. As per the National Student Safety Survey (NSSS) results, clubs and societies events have high a prevalence of sexual assault and sexual harassment (SASH). This isn’t good enough. We know that the University shares a duty of care to its students and UMSU is working internally to ensure that students who experience SASH are referred and supported appropriately.

I’ve also been working with other reps and the University to brainstorm some ideas about space usage of Union House as we transition into the Student Pavilion.

An Elected Reps Meeting has been successful in ensuring that students who have legally changed their name can get a new student card, free of charge. This is an important change.

The Federal Election is very soon. The Budget passed down by the current government has demonstrated further cuts to the higher education sector. We had social medias prepared to encourage people to enrol to vote and update their details. The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) has recorded a record number of young people enrolled! Very good stuff.

Like always — if you have concerns, please email me at president@union.unimelb.edu.au.

Southbank Updates Written by Jack Doughty, Southbank OB It’s the end of Semester 1 and Southbank is tired, besties. It’s been a big semester, but campus life is hip and happening, with our fortnightly barbeques bringing students together for the one thing that unites all students—free food! And our social events bringing students together after classes to hang out, make new friends, and see some awesome student art!

Collectives are a go, and the Southbank constituency has been making our presence known.

Our plans for next semester are More for Southbank.

We’re talking: More free food! Weekly BBQs instead of fortnightly (we’ve got the hang of it now), restocking our bread bin, and more free catering at events.

More social events! We’ve loved meeting students on campus this semester and getting to know people outside of class or when they’re not preoccupied with vegan sausages, but we want even more vibrant campus life, and more opportunities to break out the purple banana you know and love.

More collectives! Our collectives have been great this semester, but Semester 2, we’re wanting an even bigger outreach, and more times to meet up and talk in these safe, judgement-free, autonomous spaces. We may all be studying different art forms, but we’ve got a lot of similar experiences < 3 More communication with students, so we can directly address the issues students have.

Please hit us up on our shared inbox: southbank@union.unimelb.edu.au and ask us our favourite colour, or where to find resources about your rights as a student!

If any of this sounds interesting to you please do follow us on Instagram, and like our Facebook page, cause as great as those email blasts are, sometimes it’s a bit much. So keep track directly of everything we’re up to, get informed about opportunities to get paid to present your art, and catch anything else we might post here: https://www.facebook.com/umsusouthbank/ https://www.instagram.com/umsu_southbank/

Illustrated by Cathy Chen

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UMSU / President | Sophie Nguyen

Please refer to UMSU Updates on page 5.

General Secretary | Millie Macwhirter

Hi all! I have primarily spent the last two weeks acquainting myself with the role and playing a bit of catch up. It’s been lovely to meet you all and I look forward to meeting those I haven’t yet met. We have had two meetings of the Constitution, Regulations and Policy Working Group and have set the proposal for a CEO Oversight Committee as our key priority for the upcoming AGM, working closely with Phoebe.

The Operations Sub-Committee met and allocated money to Welfare to host Iftaars. I love admin so am thrilled to be writing up agendas, minutes and supporting UMSU and students!

Clubs & Societies | Eleanor Cooney Hunt and Benito Di Battista (sung to the melody of the tequila song) Dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dah… dun dah dah dah dah dah dah… dun dun dun dun dun dun dah dah… dun dun dun dun dun dun… dun dun daaaaaah dah! daaaaaah dah! daaaaaah dah! dah dah dah dah dah ¡Clubs!

Creative Arts | Prerna Aggarwal and Marcie Di Bartolomeo

Tastings is bubbling and brewing behind the scenes! Arts Lab has been home for our embroidery workshop with CJ Starc, and our in-person collectives! Student Artist Spotlight has received so much love! Thanks to UMSU Queer and UMSU Media for all their love and energy on amazing collaborations like the latest joint collective, and the drag make up workshop with the amazing Belial B’Zarr! Ida Bar was the place to be for PLOM—it was such a blast! Not going to lie, we’re tired. Grants, so many grant applications, so little time… Student Precinct is calling our name… Next semester we will be in the Arts and Cultural building, come say hi to us in our new office next semester!

Education Academic | Ethan Georgeou and Moira Negline Ed Ac has slowed down heaps as we settle into the academic year. Student Representative Network (SRN) applications and confirmations have come and gone (for now)!! Since confirmations are done, we’ve been catching up with the network reps to ensure that they understand and feel confident raising students’ interests to the University. As we move back onto campus, we’re keeping an eye on subject quality and delivery modes to make sure that they are equitable to all students. Looking to the horizon, we’ll be hosting BBQs and other events to gauge student needs and perspectives!

Education Public | Ruby Craven A report was not submitted.

Burnley | Kaitlyn Hammond Due to circumstances, a report could not be submitted.

Disabilities | Betty Zhang A report was not submitted.

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Illustrated by Zoe Eyles

/ UMSU Indigenous | Brittney Henderson and Harley Lewis We have been working hard with preparing for Indigenous Nationals; the team has been selected, training has been planned, flights and accommodation are currently being planned by MUSport and Murrup Barak. Blak Trivia was a really fun night, and we are very appreciative of everyone who came on the night and to our wonderful Council Rep, Jess Alderton, for MCing the night. In the future we will continue preparing for Indigenous Nationals at the end of the semester and we are holding our collaboration with the POC and Queer Departments: First Nations, Bla(c)k and People of Colour Queer Party.

People of Colour | Hiba Adam and Kyi Phyu Moe Htet Hello friends! This month has been very busy and exciting for the PoC department. This month we have our weekly Ramadan Iftars running on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Our anti-racism workshops are now up and running!! Make sure to check out our recent Environmental Racism and the Climate Justice Movement workshop. Presenter applications are open, so make sure to apply.

Activities | Bella Henry and Sami Zehir A report was not submitted.

Queer | Rook Davis and Rose Power While we had some issues due to both of us getting COVID at the same time, Queer has been running smoothly—we’re looking forward to seeing students at the Queer x Disabilities Social and the Drag Makeup Workshop in upcoming weeks.

Southbank | Nina Mountford, Jack Doughty, Alex Birch and Xiaole Zhan Greetings! UMSU Southbank has been super busy this semester with our awesome (plant-based) fortnightly BBQs, our Collectives starting back up, and other chances to hang out and meet your fellow artists! Stay tuned in on our socials cause next semester is only going to have MORE opportunities to connect with other artists, get paid to showcase your art, and MORE free food and student support < 3 Please don’t hesitate to reach out to us on campus or online!

Welfare | Lynne Bian A report was not submitted.a

Women’s | Kraanti Agarwal As we cross mid-semester break, Women’s has exciting things in the work. The ‘Zero Tolerance for Zero Action’ campaign is gearing up for a strong relaunch, as it is clear as ever that the University must be held to account. While advocacy is the foundation of our department, if you’re more looking to unwind, come to our Open Mic event at the end of semester where we’ll be showcasing the artistic talent of our women and non-binary students. Finally, we’ll be searching for Judy’s Punch (our annual autonomous publication) editors in May—commentary, creative, and graphic. Apply if you’re keen!

Environment | Chelsea Daniel and Zachary Matthews Heya pals! Enviro is getting ready to plan for the rest of the semester’s events. Upcoming events include our big Clothes Swap and bringing back the Enviro zine. Keep an eye out for that. We held our contingent to the Global Climate Strike on 25 March which was in collaboration with UMSU Indigenous and POC. We are chugging along with divestment, with the next phase coming up soon and Uni Council considering the petition early May. As always, come to our weekly collectives on Tuesdays (1-2) and Thursdays (2-3) to keep up to date on all of our things and get directly involved.

Illustrated by Zoe Eyles

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NEWS Artwork by Joanne Guo

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Content Warning: Scott Morrison; abortion; death; abuse; Johnny Depp; Amber Heard, in no explicit detail.

/ news

NEWS-IN-BRIEF Federal Election has Been Called

Duncan Maskell Back Again

Prime Minister Scott Morrison finally called a date for the Federal Election on 10 April. The election will take place on 21 May. At time of writing, polling

by Newspoll (YouGov) has shown Labor ahead, however, Scott Morrison still remains as preferred Prime Minister. Top stories of the elections so far (early May): the Greens promising to wipe student debt; Anthony Albanese admitting he did not know the unemployment rate; and Scott Morrison apparently cooking raw chicken curry. Farrago is eager to see the results of this election.

Professor Duncan Maskell will have a second term as the University of Melbourne’s Vice-Chancellor.

In an email to students, Chancellor Allan Myers wrote that “under Professor Maskell’s leadership the University has continued to be an outstanding place of education and research across a wide range of disciplines and has established a range of new initiatives and partnerships with government, industry and the community to deliver tangible benefits for society”. Maskell has been ViceChancellor of the University since 2018.

2022 Australian Grand Prix

AFLW Grand Final

After two years, the Formula 1 Heineken Australian Grand Prix returned to Albert Park in mid-April 2022. Charles Leclerc (Ferrari) won his first career grand slam, the first grand slam for Ferrari since Fernando Alonso in 2010. He started in pole position, set the fastest lap, and led every lap, winning the race ahead of Sergio Pérez (Red Bull) and George Russell (Mercedes).

499,144 attended the Grand Prix, making it the most attended sporting event ever in Melbourne.

The Adelaide Crows secured their third flag, defeating Melbourne at the 2022 AFL Women’s Grand Final at Adelaide Oval. Adelaide won by 13 points, with midfielder Anne Hatchard awarded best on ground (26 possessions, 9 marks, 6 tackles).

The 2023 AFLW Season is expected to start in December, with Crows favourite and x2 AFLW Best and Fairest Erin Phillips moving to expansion club Port Adelaide and Melbourne Captain Daisy Pearce returning to the game once more.

Future of Abortion Rights in USA

Victoria First to Record 3,000 COVID Deaths

Early May 2022 saw the leaking of an initial draft majority opinion penned by Justice Samuel Alito which suggested that the Supreme Court was prepared to overturn Roe v. Wade; the authenticity of the document was later confirmed by the Court’s press release though stated that “it does not represent a decision by the Court or the final position of any member on the issues”.

Roe v. Wade (1973) protects a pregnant woman’s liberty to choose to have an abortion in the American Constitution. For half a century, Roe has prevented all 50 states from banning access to safe abortions. As of writing, this is a developing story and Roe has not been overturned.

Victoria became the first Australian jurisdiction to pass 3,000 COVID deaths. Though Australia’s death rate for COVID lies at 0.12 per cent and is one of the lowest in the world, an estimated 30,000 Victorians have been affected by a COVID death at time of writing (early May). Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews had relaxed the majority of the remaining COVID restrictions on April 23, which included the removal of masks in most settings; proof of vaccination and check-in requirements; and quarantine requirements for close contacts.

John C. Depp II v. Amber Laura Heard Actors Johnny Depp (plaintiff) and Amber Heard (defendant) are, at time of writing, currently involved in a defamation trial; Depp and Heard were married from 2015 to 2017, having been together since 2012.

The trial is concerned over a newspaper article (an op-ed in The Washington Post referring to herself as a “public figure representing domestic abuse”) with Depp suing Heard; however, accusations of abuse (Depp says Heard abused him and vice versa) remain at the centre of the conflict. The trial has captured the public with Vanity Fair reports that daytime ratings for Court TV (which broadcasts the trial) has doubled, with Depp v. Heard repeatedly trending on Twitter and other platforms such as TikTok. At time of writing, Heard is speaking in defence of herself.

Illustrated by Ayushmaan Nagar

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news /

Bouncing Back—How Melbourne University Cheer and Dance is lifting off in 2022 Written by Ella McCartney After a difficult two years, the University of Melbourne Cheer and Dance Club is ready for an exciting 2022. This comes after competing last year in the Spirit of Australian All Star Cheerleading Federation competition, where they came first in a majority of their divisions.

The club is aiming to train and compete as much as they can with hopes to fly to Queensland to participate in the Nationals competition. In June and August, they plan to compete in Melbourne and the Nationals held in November.

“Our teams are a fun and welcoming environment perfect for people wanting to try new things and make some amazing friends!” added Ava. For more information on how to join cheer or just to support the club, visit the clubs Facebook page https://www. facebook.com/melbournecheer or contact the club through melbspiritcheer@gmail.com

Prior to COVID-19, the club competed in both local and inter-state competitions. But after spending the majority of the last two years online, the club had to move their twiceweekly rehearsals onto Zoom.

“As you can imagine, learning how to safely throw people in the air when you are kilometres apart and confined to the small spaces of our bedrooms, has its definite challenges,” said Melbourne University Cheer and Dance Secretary, Ava Wansbrough.

But as they attest, the difficulties of the pandemic have also strengthened aspects of sportsmanship.

“COVID-19 stole our chance at experiencing the highs and lows of a regular season,” added Ava. “But it allowed us to bond as a team and get to know ourselves on a much deeper level.”

This high level of affinity is common in sport but even more so in dance and cheer, echoing through the dedicated and inspirational athletes that take the stage.

Whilst most people would think of cheerleading as lifting up your teammates, the sport can also lift spirits.

“Each training brings with it an air of positivity that lifts me up, even in the darkness of lockdown,” said Ava. Not only is this environment a positive and supportive one, but it is also welcoming. Any student can join a cheer, pom, or dance team, with come-and-tries during orientation week but also mid-year try outs.

The club welcomes participants with all levels of experience too—some members come to the club with dance or cheer experience, whilst others come in with no knowledge.

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Photos courtesy of Melbourne University Cheer and Dance

/ news

Are university research grants being guided by national interests?

Written by Selina Zhang Recent government announcements on university research grants have emphasised the impact of so-called national “interests” on the autonomy and diversity of academic research.

This comes after the ministerial veto of six Australian Research Council (ARC) grants before Christmas last year, of which grants on literature, climate, and Chinese narratives were rejected. This prompted protests from within the academic community over political interference, and the overruling of an established peer review process in the name of “national interest”.

The Morrison Government also proceeded to commit more than $2 billion to commercialising university research, as part of a push to “[place] national manufacturing priorities at the core of Australian Government-funded research”.

These decisions have prompted questions over how research grants at the University of Melbourne will be influenced by expectations to fulfil political and commercial agendas.

An intersection of national priorities and academic research.

Although none of the vetoed grants belonged to researchers from the University of Melbourne, this incident of government intervention remains a critical issue for the institution’s research programme.

The ARC is one of its largest sources of research funding, particularly for Fields of Research (FoR) other than Medical and Health Sciences.

This year, the University was awarded more than $22 million for a total of 50 ARC Discovery Projects. Of these 50, 30 were allocated to the Sciences, 6 for Engineering and Technology, and the remaining 14 were spread across other FoR, such as Economics; Language, Communication and Culture; and Studies in Human Society.

Alongside the predominance of STEM projects, there are other factors which suggest the growing influence of national priorities in ARC grant allocation.

This includes the requirement for grant proposals to pass a National Interest Test—a test absent from other major government-subsidised research funds, such as the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) scheme.

“The idea of national benefit is already embedded in the application process,” explained Scott McQuire, Professor of Media and Communications at the University.

And whilst he acknowledged that “universities are always responsive to what governments deem as national priorities, especially if government puts money in front of them”, he also contended the integrity of the ARC lay in the “disconnect [of academic research] from day to day politics”.

These sentiments are reinforced by ANU Vice-Chancellor Professor Brian Schmidt.

“After all, what would our society be like when the study of history, politics and literature has to reflect the views of the minister of the day?” said Schmidt.

“Where would we be … if we hadn’t invested in understanding the foundational properties of messenger RNA when it seemed just a dalliance with no practical benefits?”

Implications for University research.

Schmidt’s call for research to “[not] just focus on what is known or thought relevant or acceptable at the time”, highlights how priority-driven projects have detracted from explorations into long-term issues.

Referring to the government’s University Research Commercialisation Package, McQuire said: “Industry partnerships can be incredibly helpful for research. But if you’re only looking at short-term outcomes or results, I think that’s the big problem … This is a really common complaint from scientists as much as it is from humanities or social sciences researchers—that as researchers, you often don’t know what the exact outcome of what you’re doing is going to be in advance … That’s why it’s research—you’ve got to discover stuff over time.”

In addition, the National Union of Students (NUS) has voiced more outspoken criticism, arguing these policies are “underpinned by a dogmatic belief that knowledge only has value when it can be turned into profit … It deprioritises studies of critical thinking and constrains universities into becoming job factories”.

With the University’s School of Medical and Health Sciences attracting almost $80 million from NHMRC grants alone this year, academics like McQuire anticipate the University is set to become “a heavily medically-oriented institution”.

As a result, they stress the need for interdisciplinary projects to form part of the University’s core research priorities.

“It’s going to be incumbent on the University to understand and take seriously the ideas of interdisciplinarity and cross-disciplinary research,” added McQuire.

Given the government’s establishment of commercial success as the benchmark for research potential, it remains to be seen whether the University will take steps to foster stronger interdisciplinary research, or instead further accommodate national interests.

Illustrated by Nina Hughes

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news /

Mysteries of UMSU: 2021’s missing meeting minutes Written by Megan Tan Tan Minutes from a series of 2021 University of Melbourne Student Union (UMSU) Students’ Council meetings remained missing until the end of the year, prompting concerns about a lack of transparency within the organisation.

In 2021, then-UMSU President Jack Buksh noticed that meeting minutes had been missing or appearing on the UMSU website at delayed times since around March.

Initially, he believed that the delay was due to the transition between general secretaries—he had done the job in 2020, and handed it over to Allen Xiao at the end of May. However, two months passed without a sign of the meeting minutes.

Typically, Council confirms the minutes of the previous meeting during the following meeting.

“We were finding that even students on Students’ Council weren’t being given the minutes of the last meeting to approve,” said Buksh. As such, Council was unable to confirm that the minutes were true and accurate.

UMSU’s publicly uploaded meeting minutes ensure transparency for students. These records detail how the yearly Student Services and Amenities Fees (SSAF) collected

by UMSU are being utilised on events and other student activities. By uploading the minutes publicly, students can see where their money is being spent, and how it is used to improve the student experience on campus. “[Students] can question the integrity of the organisation when meeting minutes aren’t made available,” said Sophie Nguyen, current UMSU President. Nguyen was also not paid for her work on Students’ Council, as the unavailability of the meeting minutes meant her attendance was unconfirmed.

2021 General Representative Tree Smith said that they tried to raise the issue of the missing minutes during council meetings: “I heard nothing back, despite sending two emails, and someone else I knew … sent an email as well, disappointingly.”

Smith tried to call for a motion of censure, which is a motion to criticise a particular policy or Council member, during the last 2021 Council meeting. In the usual process, this would have gone through Xiao, but Smith felt this was a conflict of interest. Smith sent an email to Buksh, who passed it along to UMSU’s lawyers. However, as Xiao had neglected to fill lawyer vacancies, the process was rendered inaccessible.

“I wish I had pushed [the issue of the meeting minutes] earlier, and followed up a bit closer. At the time I was trying to give the benefit of the doubt to the student office bearers involved, sometimes things crop up and we can get busy. I was hoping it would get resolved with a couple of emails,” Smith said.

Beyond ensuring transparency for UMSU, meeting minutes also play a practical role in aiding councillors in remaining on top of plans and decisions.

“Not having meeting minutes does make your role as a councillor quite difficult,” explained Ethan Georgeou, current Education (Academic) Officer and 2021 Students’ Council member. Without the meeting minutes, Georgeou found it difficult to catch up on what they missed.

“Ultimately with UMSU, there are a lot of people who do care about transparency and governance … I’ll be very honest, I think this year will be a much better year … the attitude towards governance is much better,” added Buksh.

“But what this is a reminder of is that when students are giving us their money, we need to be able to prove to them that we’re using it to meet real needs.”

Farrago reached out to Allen Xiao for a comment but did not receive a response.

As is the case with all Students’ Council, governance was riddled with factional ties, with Xiao’s ticket Community holding the majority. This meant it was difficult to hold the General Secretary accountable, as the supermajority held by Community on Council easily rejected motions against Xiao.

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Illustrated by Riley Morgan

/ satire

Dear Diary: The PM’s Retrospective Journal Written by Jack McMahon

Dear Diary, The rapture is upon us.

In my time as Prime Minister, I have seen fires like we have not seen before, cyclones as damaging as any other, a pandemic that brought the world to its knees and now floods in two states that have submerged whole towns.

People turn to science and scream from the rooftops “CLIMATE CHANGE”. And they ask me, what are you going to do Mr PM? They come to me for help, for guidance and advice. Divestment in fossil fuels? No, that can’t be it.

Investment in renewables? No, wind turbines are far too loud. It is almost time for me to ascend from my role as PM and renew my status as a shepherd, a guide for the people of Australia through these troubling times.

Since my last entry, a war has broken out in Ukraine. I admire Zelensky, who has stood by his people in a time of need. He could have easily fled the country to a safe neighbouring state and watched as his country struggled in its fight against Russian invaders. He could have bowed to Putin and his tactics, but his stoicism in the face of disaster is nothing short of incredible. It actually reminds me a bit of how I dealt with Macron at the COP26 when he said mean things about my submarine deal. Perhaps I’ve inspired the Ukrainian leader a little bit? I don’t need to know the answer, but it is a lovely thought to have. As a fellow leader in the free world, I would also like to think that in times of conflict or chaos, I too would stand by the people of my country – pending a family holiday.

Speaking of family, I like to think that my Liberal Party is a bit like a family. Well apparently, some of the other members did not get the memo. Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells went absolutely nuts on me and said some pretty awful things. She said that I was a bully who had no moral compass. Well madam, to you I say, you are a poor loser. I think she is just mad that she didn’t win her preselection. To add to this, she questioned my religion, saying my actions conflict that of a man of faith. I mean yes, I did, potentially, encourage the smear campaign of Michael Towke for the seat of Cook that she mentioned, but that was in 2006. I repented for it anyway, so I guess you could say I am a great man of faith?

I’m not a bully. Honestly so sick of being called one.

I can feel the election getting even closer and guess what Albo went and did? Lost heaps of weight and got new clothes. What a loser! Does he really think that just because he looks a bit different that the Australian public will be fooled into thinking he is a good bloke? He’s got no idea. What he needs to do is go out and see the people, like I did. In just one week I had a go at washing hair, welding, and my personal favourite, talking to pensioners at pubs. The people want to see you out and engaging in their day to day, just like the Lord did. How can someone know what the people want if he is not amongst them? That must be why I am so in touch with the people I am representing.

And no, I’m not jealous of Albo, as I said, I am not pretending to be someone I’m not, just need to make sure he knows where he stands.

Until next time, PM (The Shepherd?)

Illustrated by Pamela Piechowicz

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satire /

SATIRE-IN-BRIEF Ormond college student “too poor” to pay for uber home

Subaru Forester driver surprisingly not a lesbian

Despite his parents paying all accommodation fees, Charles insists he cannot afford a $14 uber to Smith Street. “I even had 2-minute noodles for dinner!” he exclaimed, forgetting to mention this was because he refused the lamb roast in the dining hall.

“Check out my new wheels!” shouted Bridget Smithe, who recently posted a photo of her newly christened 1994 Subaru Forester on Instagram.

She’d been eyeing off an SUV for years and stumbled across this beauty, not knowing the strong connection to the lesbian community.

—Maddison Barr

“I had a lot of people congratulating me on coming out, even my boyfriend said he was supportive! Honestly I just liked the seat covers”.

— Bayley Horne

Ash Barty Retiring Encourages Others To Quit While They’re Ahead The recent announcement of Ash Barty’s retirement from tennis at the height of her career has inspired other Australians to similarly bow out of responsibilities after peaking too early. First-year student Hailey Pimento told Farrago about her decision to drop out of university after receiving an H1 on an essay in first semester. When asked for a comment on her decision, Pimento said: “To quote the wise words of Ms Barty herself - ‘I just know I’m absolutely spent. I know physically I have nothing more to give and that for me is success.’”

— Alexia Shaw

Honestly if you’re triple vaxxed and still haven’t COVID it’s kinda embarrassing Like where have you been these past two years?

Do you have any friends? Surely your bedroom wall can’t be that interesting? Go out to a club, rub up against everyone at the Queen Vic Markets, fuck masks.

Would you rather get covid and maybe face a lifetime of suffering long-lasting side effects which will ruin your quality of life or would you rather be lame and boring?

The choice is yours.

— Bayley Horne

Oxford Dictionary Coins the Term “McVegetarian”, for people who are vegetarians 100% of the time, except at Maccas after a night out.

In response to the rise of drunk vego friends ordering McChickens after a night out of clubbing, the reputable dictionary has added the word “McVegetarian”, and these individuals can be seen on Smith St and Spencer St in the early morning hours. A case study of this phenomenon was seen at 1am last Thursday, when a black-out drunk Gabriel Waters stood at the electronic menu screen and loudly declared “fuck it, I’m just gonna order nuggets.” The next day Waters was seen paying two dollars extra for oat milk at brunch, before loudly complaining about the lack of vegan options on campus.

— Alexia Shaw

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Illustrated by Arielle Vlahiotis

/ satire

SATIRE-IN-BRIEF Bookies Hate Him: Man finally wins multi-bet on his 473rd attempt

Final Semester Student Embarks on Severely Delayed Hoe Phase

After two years and thousands of dollars, Brett Hatman finally managed to win money betting on his beloved Hawks.

After spending the first two years of her degree overseas due to border closures, a final-semester student is attempting to cram every missed experience into her last months at university.

“Fuck me it was good, you know all my mates kept saying ‘Brett you aren’t gonna win a 15-legger’ but fuck do they know, welcome to the winners circle baby!”

He proceeded to lose all his money betting his winnings on a random Korean badminton match.

— Bayley Horne

University Searching for Volunteer Tour Guides to Take Students to New Zambreros Since discovering that 90% of the questions flooding Stop 1 were regarding the new location of Zambreros, and the other 10% were “where the fuck is the ERC?”, the University has established a volunteer program to help address these concerns, calling on more worldly students to take tour groups of people to the takeaway favourite’s new location. The tours will collect burritoless students from outside the vacant hole Zambreros has left in Union House, before leading them to the new spot. All tour guides will be given a megaphone, a fluoro vest, and sense of pride from aiding their community in such a noble manner.

“She’s always asking me whether I want to go out,” said one exasperated friend.

“It’s a Monday night and I’m doing like, two internships. We’re not first-years anymore.”

— Pavani Ambagahawattha

Budding Entrepreneur Sells Positive COVID Tests on FB Marketplace While in quarantine after having contracted COVID at a college party, second-year Commerce student Cody James was struck by a brainwave.

“I sent my tutors pictures of my positive test, and bam, extensions,” he explained enthusiastically to Farrago. “That’s when I realised-positive tests are a valuable commodity, man.”

Using his own diseased body as the means of production, our budding entrepreneur now generates at least 20 positive RATs daily. He then lists them on FB Marketplace, where they are quickly snapped up by desperate procrastinators.

— Pavani Ambagahawattha

— Alexia Shaw

Penniless Student Unimpressed by Met Gala Outfits As the 2022 Met Gala rolls around, broke university students around the world have transformed overnight into experts in haute couture.

Dressed in a $12 Kmart hoodie and SHEIN sweatpants, and clutching a bowl of Indomie, one first-year has settled in for an evening of criticising outfits that cost more than her yearly rent.

“The theme is Gilded Glamour and they’re all in black?” scoffs our young Miranda Priestly, rolling her eyes. “Ridiculous.”

Nearly every celebrity receives such dismissal, with the exception of Billie Eilish, whose outfit our critic begrudgingly admits is “ period-accuratish.”

— Pavani Ambagahawattha

Illustrated by Arielle Vlahiotis

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competition /

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SummerFest Blackout Poetry Competition

First Place Winner - Benjamin Evans

/ competition

Second Place Winner - Vanessa Chan

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graphic column /

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/ graphic column

‘A Day at UniMelb’ by Weiting Chen

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art /

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Artwork by Audrey de Lucia & Sophia Calubad

Read more weekly pieces at farragomagazine.com/nonfiction

NONFICTION Artwork by Amber Jepsen

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culture /

content warning: explores grief and death

When Real Death Enters the House, All Poetry is Dumb: Reflecting on Alfalfa Written by Max Richardson I recently cried over some graffiti. Two words sprayed in bright yellow paint on a wall along Brunswick Road, their letters smudged, running in rivulets from the rain.

In a thick, heavy hand with soft, round edges on the consonants, and the tail of the Y curled into a heart at the end; it read “R.I.P Alfy”. It was one of dozens in the same hand, all dedicated to Alfy, that I have seen across Brunswick, Parkville, and Carlton, a scribbled obituary that no doubt extends far beyond just the few that I have seen. They are simple and sincere. “Alfy”. “Alfalfa”.

“R.I.P Alfy. Our sad boy. A good boy. We miss you.”

These messages seem to be a permanent part of the landscape that I have trained my eye to notice, like a botanist with rare plants. They are usually small, on walls, bins, and mailboxes, sometimes in spray paint and sometimes pen. I have never seen one being written.

They are static in this way, and yet living, growing; new ones continue to appear each time I’m out, where just a few days ago, there was but bare infrastructure.

They are truly everywhere—once you are looking for them, they appear on every surface—sometimes large, sometimes small, but always there, always present within the world. They are, to me, incredible. They piss on the impersonality of the places they mark. They are brazenly personal; they suggest total ownership of the city; they scream in your face to listen to the grief, the loss, the pain contained in every tag. They don’t just adorn the pavements and front fences but actively reconstruct them into a site of mourning, of reflection, an endless suburban gravestone that spreads its solemn grief ever outwards.

It is, however, a troubling appreciation. In many ways, I feel like a terrible voyeur for my constant sighting of these messages. It is uncomfortable to even write about them. I hate to think that I am over-interpreting an actual death into some benign think piece about how sad they make me. Or perhaps, even, to believe that I am creating a story from nothing, a tale of loss where there is only graffiti. It certainly feels disrespectful to invent an author for them. These are real people, real loss, real lives separate from mine. It feels wrong to express my thoughts without their consent. I do not know if Alfy was old or young, even if he was—as I am making the unfortunate assumption—human. Perhaps he was a pet? Perhaps a houseplant. They project a genuine, tangible grief, but their content is deeply personal and contextual. Who am I, not knowing this figure, to comment on his life and passing? They are seen by all and yet only to be understood by few—a window to a world only those who knew him to live within. I should not be looking at them. They are not for me.

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My concern also extends to a knotty question. Of course, these are art in the sense that any act of creative expression is, on a purely abstract level, artistic in nature, but is it not incredibly presumptive of me to view them in the same way you might a painting or song about death? I certainly feel far less shame about consuming them. But what really is the difference involved here?

It cannot be the circumstances; as while raw and emotive, it is not exactly uncommon for art to be motivated or inspired by death. It also can’t be the anonymity. Would things really change if I knew the author? It seems to be in the actual encounter, the way such a personal story paints itself onto the public space. Public art is rarely confrontational and usually abstract—lacking in any concrete message, to remain palatable to any given passer-by. The death of a loved one might inspire a mural, but it’s just not the same as the brutally honest admission of grief plastered across concrete and stone. It pulls back the curtain on our inner lives; the reality of the intimate that we keep wrapped up inside ourselves that is suppressed in the public domain. You keep your head down on the train when inner lives come out—the drunkard’s rant, the lover’s quarrel, the salacious story whispered into a telephone. And yet, are these not the stories that compel us the most? For they contain within them a truthfulness that can only be understood when we remove them from the vast unknown of private life— snapshots of another’s world in all their frozen beauty, taken exactly as we hear them. The scale of Alfy’s commemoration belies that it is but one tiny glimpse into an entire history of two intertwined lives. We have eavesdropped on this public conversation, and from it, we must take only what is there; a heart wracked with great and terrible pain, and a dead boy, gone too soon.

Yet most importantly, these tags tell a tragic tale as old as time: when the people we love die, we honour them. We erect graves, statues, and mausoleums— great monuments designed to last generations, to ensure that no one forgets the sheer magnitude of their passing. We compose songs and poetry, paint and draw and sculpt and write; anything to come to terms with the terror, the gaping absence that once was a person. Death is always personal, yet rarely private. It seeps and blights; it sits in your house, and it does not leave in dusty portraits and cold empty beds. It is too much of a burden to bear on one’s own, lest it takes you too, and must thus be shared. It must be conjured into being through expression so that we might look into its face and beg for it all to go away. But what if you cannot erect a grave, and you cannot paint, and you cannot

/ culture

sing, and someone that you love so dearly, more than life itself, has been taken away from you, and the grief is so overwhelming that it breaks you apart inside and you know, beyond all else, that you must do something about it? Then what do you do?

Maybe then, just maybe, you’d walk all night in the cold with nothing but a marker and your memories, trace the streets you used to roam together, pound pavement where once he matched your stride, where you now set pace alone. Rattle up Sydney Road in a battered old B-class where you scratched your tag into the window with a key, past the stops where you would sit idly and laugh together waiting for the tram. And everywhere you go, everywhere that once belonged to both of you, every spot where you stood or sat or ran or walked: that shall be his monument. On every wall and pole, for all to see, leave a sign that defiantly says that Alfy was here, that his presence has not left this place and that he will not be so easily forgotten. On every wall and pole, honour the memory of someone you loved, someone who is no longer here but who will live on forever in

these simple declarations. Our sad boy. We miss you.

Alfalfa. Alfy. Alfy. Alfy.

And when I walked home late at night along Brunswick Road after a not very good party and saw at my feet the exact familiar words, drawn in the same hand, with the tail of the Y curling into a heart, I was wracked with sobs. I sat there, and I cried, for I knew exactly why the graffiti moved me so at that moment. That the soul of one sad boy, wandering the streets endlessly where once he walked among the living, might see messages meant just for him, calling out beyond this realm from the pavement, lamppost, park bench, painted on the very fabric of the city. A breadcrumb trail spanning miles, written desperately in the hope that they might remind him that he is not forgotten, that he is not only remembered but celebrated, triumphed as much as any great monument or tomb. Maybe, just maybe, they will guide a lonely ghost home to where the ones who love him are waiting patiently, having never stopped missing their Alfalfa.

Illustrated by Evan Goulios

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commentary /

content warning: gender dysphoria, misgendering

Dysphoria, euphoria, and the body in Pokémon Legends: Arceus Written by Aries

Shattering the Western gender binary has, admittedly, never been a central concern of the Pokémon franchise.

Since its conception in 1996, Pokémon has ballooned into a video game movement of epic proportions.

Books, movies, anime, merchandise… and, of course, the games themselves: eight generations with a ninth recently announced and over 26 years of spinoffs and sequels. The core premise of these main games, and many spin-offs, has remained essentially the same. You are a child journeying through your respective region armed with nothing but your sense of adventure and Pokémon—short for “pocket monsters”—that you capture, battle, and befriend along the way. The traditional formula of Pokémon is a turn-based team-building RPG, where you explore an overworld and battle with Pokémon to add them to your team. Pokémon Legends: Arceus marks Pokémon’s first meaningful foray into open-world video games, emphasising exploration and acquisition of all Pokémon rather than becoming the strongest.

When one thinks of Pokémon, trans rights are probably not what comes to mind. For many years, one of the first questions asked by the local Pokémon Professor was “Are you a boy or a girl?”, locking in a gender binary before the player even had a chance to see a Pokémon in action. However, starting from Generation Six, your hapless professor has learned to obfuscate the gender binary with slightly more aplomb. The question is now “What do you look like?”, proffering the player with several skin tone options split equally between male and female, in what the creators believe to be a “bold” and “revolutionary” step toward racial and transgender equality. I do not care to make excuses for Nintendo, nor any large company, about their longstanding failure to defy the gender binary. Not only because I expect very little from big-name video game companies but also because the main character is simply not important in Pokémon. You are the epitome of the everyman—a blank slate of an ambiguously-aged child, customisable in later generations but ultimately designed as a vehicle to get from one Pokémon battle to the next.

Pokémon, in other words, is not a game about the body.

At least, it’s not about your body. Much of the focus on physicality is on the Pokémon. They have unique animations, different cries, and a vast roster of potential moves. As you travel through the world, battling enemies and training your Pokémon to be stronger, the bodies you are concerned with are almost exclusively that of your Pokémon team. In some ways, that is refreshing.

For trans people, the body is a highly politicised and often challenging space to occupy. Medical gatekeeping keeps us from accessing medical transition that would

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massively increase our quality of life (or even save lives), causing emotional and financial stress so great we can’t even begin to pursue surgeries or hormone replacement therapy. At the same time, the cisheteropatriarchy and medical, industrial complex couch our existence exclusively in terms of our relationship to our bodies. They only choose to take us seriously when our discontent is severe enough under their cis-made criteria. The system is unfair, lacks nuance, and refuses to listen to trans people when we demand free and equitable access to our bodily agency. Video games can often provide a way to reclaim some of that agency, no matter how fleeting it may be. Simultaneously, however, they can be ways to exacerbate or remind somebody of their dysphoria and can foreground trans discomfort/ trauma. In my playthrough of Pokémon Legends: Arceus, I experienced both.

On the surface, Legends seems like the perfect candidate for an escapist romp. Instead, it foregrounds a far more robust sense of the body than in previous Pokémon games. The genre of open-world games uses a player’s physicality as the first meaningful touchstone in the game’s fiction. How your character moves, where they can go, how fast they can run, and how they can interact with their surroundings all serve to inform the game’s narrative. The narrative of Legends is that the main character exists in a new, pre-Pokémon world, where humans and Pokémon are cautious co-habitants of Hisui rather than close allies.

Immediately, it becomes clear that your character cannot attack and defeat Pokémon on their own.

Bodily agency is, therefore, both heightened and transferred outwards to the Pokémon you catch; the player’s will is communicated most effectively through the Pokémon able to knock Berries off trees, harvest crafting materials, and climb, swim, or fly. This is a world just learning to live in tandem with Pokémon, and appropriately, that is the narrative that your character follows as you gain the respect of more Pokémon across Hisui. When contrasted with the rest of the franchise’s cheerful ignorance of the player character’s body, the sudden centring of such a core aspect of the player experience is startling, even jarring.

Admittedly, the increased importance of the player’s body is not unprecedented. The Mystery Dungeon spinoffs have the player turn into a Pokémon and act as a Pokémon walking around dungeons and attacking with their moves. Yet this is the first title in the series that’s been so blatant about drawing attention to the relevance of the player’s body, resulting in that tenuous refuge of the distanced body being dissolved. Steps towards an increased representation of protagonist characters in Pokémon, as well as the exponential rise

/ commentary

of customisation options, have shrunk the distance between avatar and player. Yet Legends marks the first time the body itself, and not its attached paraphernalia, has been placed front and centre of the player’s concerns. For the first time in a Pokémon game, I elected to play Legends as a boy instead of a girl.

I had dimly anticipated that perhaps being misgendered in the other direction would approach something akin to gender euphoria. This was not the case. What I ended up unlocking instead was, hilariously, a new kind of dysphoria. Being referred to constantly as a young man, boy, or son was a uniquely awful experience in a Pokémon game. This wasn’t only because Legends has a bizarre amount of gendering compared to past games. Suddenly, I had a body to which I could ascribe this cheerfully oblivious misgendering. I came to resent the young brown boy who dodged Hyper Beams and caught Wurmple in the grass, hating him in a way I’d never hated the silent, fair-skinned girls of earlier games. I had never identified with the latter before, never been made to identify their bodies with my own. Legends, however, refused to let me get away with that distance. The confines of the genre had confined me in turn.

In some ways, this story has a happy ending. After a bit of grinding, I was able to buy new hair and clothes for my boy. Growing out his close-cropped hair into a ponytail and donning a sea-green kimono changed my experience with my assigned avatar radically. I no longer hated looking at him, being him or being referred to as him. He felt much closer to what I wanted, if not out of reality, then certainly out of Legends. Ironically, the closer engagement with the body, not the distance between avatar and player, allowed me to overcome this new problem. Truthfully, I had already known that this would be the solution, even before I anticipated my Pokémon Trainer’s body to be a problem at all—the power of bodily agency for transgender rights shouldn’t be underestimated. In upsetting the status quo of the Pokémon franchise’s time-tested formula, Legends mounts a spirited challenge against the distance of player and player character, prompting a refocus on the body and its interactions that cannot be understated.

Pokémon Legends: Arceus is available on the Nintendo Switch.

Illustrated by Manyu Wang

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memoir /

Finding shade under the canopies of womanhood: learning from my mother Written by Roumina Parsamand You think you will be spared the fate of your mother. She tells you this: she used to have long hair, silken and black. It tucked under her when she sat down, and it was with her forearm tucked behind her neck, flicking outwards, that she could prevent this from happening. She had slight hips, like yours, and was all bones and bruises for her teenage life: rocky knees, limp wrists, gangly gait. When she laughed, she covered her mouth. And when she spoke, it was seldom, but always good. After school, she would fall asleep with the radio on. The dinner on the tray her dad brought her perched still at the end of her bed. With her friends, everything was funny, and nothing was important. She’d let them cheat off her tests, scrawling the answers on an impossibly folded note.

Shared with them her food, her sorrows, her joys, and them, theirs. To be your mother then was to be just a girl, and that was everything.

Your mother married young. Too young, she tells you now. No sooner than when her belly swelled against the fabric of her dresses did she look in the mirror and, for the first time, recognise change.

She learnt it then: the word Mother. Not in the knowing but in the feeling, being now on the other end of the call. And to each call she followed, Mother Mother Mother. It became her; it still is her. She tells you she didn’t know what she was doing. That your brother cried, and she with him, and when you came, she cut her hair short. She tells you it never grew long again. Fair skin turned mottled, and thin hands hardened, and her voice took on the sound of a person who now knows loss.

Did you think, earnestly, you would be spared the fate of your mother?

As time moves, you begin to see it. The way you had thought, had been taught, that those cast aside have a say in their activity. That to be young is to be forever, as is to be old, to be lost, to be just who you are in a singular moment. So that when your Mother, when a woman, tells you this: I was young too once, you hear it the same way you hear the beginning of a fairy-tale or the tail end of someone’s midday dream. Something far away and obscure, murky with the sheen of a beauty no one but the speaker can see.

You think, I will Marry Well, not Too Young. I will Bear A Child, Only Once. I will Keep Working, Call My Friends, Take Photos Smiling, Rejoice In My Gangly Gait. You think, I will Stay In Good Health, never knowing Sickness. I will Give, and Be Good, and Forgive, and Follow Truth. I will Not Cut My Hair Too Short, or Miss Anyone Too Long. I will Know How to Cook, like my Mother. I will Know Kindness, like my Mother. I will Be Loyal, and Truthful, and Stand Up For What I Believe In, like my Mother. But I will never, ever, Make The Mistakes of my Mother.

It haunts you, the thought that every woman is a Mother while every man is just a boy. That it’s not without reason that the lessons seem to hang heaviest around the neck of one gender alone.

When your story ceases, becomes unimportant, insignificant, stereotypical, theirs expands. For a man, there is life after children, and before, and without. There are no mistakes to be made that cannot be rectified with time; that is so kind without the Ticking Clock heard only in the woman’s ear. In the pain of every month, you are already made a Mother in the shadow, in the promise. And it is the woman who hurts, and suffers, and burns, made to learn the lessons which men will never need to, for they are just a boy, and you, you, a woman, a Mother.

It begins to consume you: the image of one day, a daughter. She has your eyes but her father’s gaze. Though she is loving and gentle, there are things she knows that you don’t. She comes from you, a whole person formed, and in this way, she is not yours entirely. But you try still, from here, to claim her. To call to her, to tell her stories of how you are now. You wonder if it will disappoint her, what she learns. You know she will grow far from you, and you must let her. In the hope that she will turn and see, looking back, something she understands, the way you do now.

So, you think you will be spared the fate of your Mother. But look how your hips have already started to grow and how the hair of your temples has thinned. And when you open your mouth to speak, you can hear it. The way you have taken on already the voice of someone who knows things.

A voice not unlike your Mother.

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/ memoir

Illustrated by Chau Hoang

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culture /

The Pram Factory: A Retrospective Written by Joel Duggan, Staff Writer “And so here was the lure of this magical place called Carlton, which became an obvious mecca. We [the Australian Performing Group] developed into a fierce community with our most abiding notion [being] that we could create things that were really important and do it out of ourselves and out of the way that we spoke, out of the way we moved and walked, and out of the folk memories that we all carry.”

-Graeme Blundell It’s been 42 years since the demise of the Pram Factory, but the legacy of that shambolic factoryturned-warehouse-turned-theatre continues to loom large in Carlton history and Australian culture.

The Pram Factory was an alternative theatre which operated in Carlton through the 1970s. It was the home of the Australian Performing Group (APG), an experimental ensemble which sprouted from La Mama Theatre before setting up shop at The Pram in 1970. It came to be the heart of Melbourne bohemia, kickstarting the careers of countercultural icons like Helen Garner and David Williamson.

But, before all this, the Pram Factory was, well, a pram factory—or it was during the 1920s at least, as declared by a sign on the building’s turret. Before that, it was a stable. Beyond that, the building’s history is shrouded in mystery. “It might have been a boxing ring, a place for cocaine traffickers, a pram factory itself, a place where the Melbourne Theatre Company stored old sets and old ideas,” says The Pram’s administrator John Timlin.

It is no coincidence that The Pram’s inception occurred around the same time as the 1972 electoral victory of Gough Whitlam. Whitlam represented a turning point in Australian culture, a transition out of the aristocratic Anglophilia of the Menzies era and into a contemporary popular culture that was actually Australian. “The national pride that Whitlam had encouraged meant that we could suddenly be proud of ourselves as Australians,” says Red Symons, Skyhooks guitarist and Pram music director.

It was this newfound sense of national identity that spurred on The Pram’s commitment to local Australian content. Unlike the “high art” theatres that had previously dominated the cultural landscape, they staged plays which reflected everyday Australian life.

The characters spoke like Australians, throwing around slangs and swears. They behaved like Australians, living out everyday values of mateship and ockerness. And of course, they also drank like Australians.

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The Pram was the home of classic Australian plays like Don’s Party and Dimboola—and, perhaps with the exception of La Mama, it was the only place which could even serve as home for them. Other theatres were just not up to the task of staging plays as chaotically Australian.

One of The Pram’s defining qualities was its democratic, egalitarian spirit and the unique sense of community this cultivated amongst The Pram’s regulars. Although Timlin was the one responsible for the theatre’s lease and business arrangements, most of the decision-making at the Pram took place at the regular APG meetings. There were no real bosses and everyone had a say in how things were run. But this is not to say that The Pram manifested some utopian socialist ideal either.

“The collective was a cooperative organisation in principle, but it was a shit-fight in practice,” says APG Member and Pram Historian Tim Robertson. Meetings would go on for hours and often included debates over mundane quibbles. There was always lots of wine and weed available, often leading the meetings down strange, drunken paths. Unfortunately, deeprooted prejudices also reared their ugly heads during meetings, and it was usually opinionated men who dominated conversations, even in spite of the APG’s supposed commitment to progressive values.

Outside of the meetings, APG members spent their time in The Pram towers. Many members lived there, and the towers became known as hubs of free love and solidarity.

The meetings and communal towers exemplify what made The Pram so iconic: the fact that, among all the chaos, there was a genuine sense of human connection holding the whole theatre together.

This human connection was incredibly important for the social outcasts that frequented The Pram. The theatre was known for attracting the downtrodden and the disreputable. APG member Richard Murphett speaks of performers bringing an “edge of desperation” to performances because “they weren’t actors trying to act desperate, they were people who were desperate performing”.

“There always was a criminal element involved [in the collective],” says Bob Daley, another APG member. Many had ties to anarchist and abolitionist movements The Pram—at one point, some escaped convicts even called The Pram home.

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The Pram’s openness led to it becoming the designated place in Carlton to whack up on heroin.

Daley tells a darkly amusing tale of how heroin use was so rampant that at one point the toilets became clogged with burnt teaspoons, resulting in a decision to drill holes in the spoons to cut down on usage. Although drug use such as this was far from normalised and accepted among The Pram regulars, its presence speaks to the APG’s willingness to extend their promise of community to all, even those shunned by mainstream society.

Unfortunately, human connection alone was not enough to hold The Pram together forever. After the dismissal of Gough Whitlam, The Pram’s vision of Australia and its vision for itself started to fracture.

A split arose between those who wanted to keep staging Australian plays versus those who wanted to branch out into overseas plays. The split culminated in the late 70s with a decision to hand control of The Pram over to a new generation of creatives to keep things fresh.

But this also didn’t last. In 1980, The Pram was sold off to developers. The Pram responded in typical fashion: protesting and piss-taking. In its final days, one APG member dressed as the Pope to stage a mock auction. For sale were the “spirits and rats and ghosts” of The Pram.

The Pram was torn down and instead, the Lygon Street Mall that we all know today stands in its place.

representation of the Australian underclass in all its flawed glory. “Before the Pram, there was no Australian culture that was a popular culture,” says APG Playwright Phil Motherwell.

For me, the demolition of The Pram echoes the dismissal of the Whitlam government. Two revolutionary institutions that, for a fleeting moment, gave us a glimpse of an Australia that could be different—that could be creative, egalitarian and truly rebellious—but which were defeated by the inevitable return of our conservative status quo.

The Pram’s been on my mind recently because Carlton is faced now with the loss of another historic institution: the Curtin Hotel. Another local building that embodied Melbourne culture, sold to developers after the pandemic left it incapable of survival. Of course, Carlton should not remain frozen in time, an exact replica of an imagined heyday. Yet, I am still forced to mourn the loss of the Curtin—I know from The Pram that it’s more than just a building that’ll be gone.

The Pram occupies a unique position in Australian history. In many ways, its biography encapsulates the zeitgeist of the Whitlamite era. The Pram symbolised an alternative and progressive vision of Australia that, although dirty and disenchanting, was a genuine

Illustrated by Joanne Guo

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fodder blog /

Radio Fodder’s Podcast Playlist

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Written by Radio Fodder Blog Team When we all need to take a minute and breathe but don’t want to be left with our thoughts, where do we turn? For the Radio Fodder team, it’s podcasts. Picture this: you’re trying to churn out a 3,000 word essay, and you need some white noise to get it going. Music doesn’t work this time, and you know that what you need is the soothing sounds of indecipherable conversation. As cheesy as it sounds, podcasts are avenues of self-reflection and refuge— hearing others engaged in intense discourse about anything and everything is a comfort to the soul. This playlist spotlights everything from true crime investigations and reality television stars to book recommendations; there’s undoubtedly something for everyone. Hop on the well-justified podcast bandwagon with our recommendations!

1. Christina Savopoulos — Drama Queens Many actors are rebooting their past TV shows in the form of rewatching podcasts. Drama Queens is where Sophia Bush, Hilarie Burton, and Bethany Joy Lenz reunite to rewatch One Tree Hill.

Apart from using their podcast to share invaluable behind-thescenes details, the women find the light in a difficult and negative on-set experience. They share their emotions with such freedom that you always feel like part of the conversation, catching up with old friends! They host live online events, have guest stars and dedicate time to fan questions. Even if you’re not a fan of the show, it’s worth a listen for how it invites a bit of self-reflection!

2. Carmen Chin — The Bald and the Beautiful with Trixie Mattel and Katya Zamo If you’re a fan of drag or crude comedy, The Bald and the Beautiful might have just been tailor-made for you. The hosts are seasoned queens Trixie Mattel and Katya Zamolodchikova, arguably the most prominent queens after rising to fame in the seventh season of RuPaul’s Drag Race. While the duo’s eccentric charisma and back-and-forth banter are most salient in their hit YouTube series UNHhhh, The Bald and the Beautiful is a different yet familiar beast— from heated discourse on little known facts about ‘Game Of Love’ singer Michelle Branch to queer vampires with What We Do in the Shadows star Harvey Guillén, there never is a dull moment with Trixie and Katya.

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3. Lochlainn Heley — Books Unbound Books Unbound is a delightful hour of zen filled with laughter, puns and mountains ’n’ mountains of books. Each week, hosts and best friends Ariel Bissett and Raeleen Lemay chat about their favourite and not-so-favourite reads from the last week. At the end of each episode, listeners are left with an extensive list of new and fascinating book recommendations which will make you eager to rush to the nearest bookshop. I highly suggest listening if you’re lost on what to read next or need a moment of rest with their wonderfully energetic voices.

4. Beatrix Brenneman — Emergency Intercom I always come back to podcasts as a respite from productivity and to fill silences when cooking, walking my dog or commuting home.

Emergency Intercom is the perfect podcast for this. The hosts, Enya Umanzor and Drew Phillips, are comedy YouTubers originally from Vine. The pair sit down once a week and chat about anything, everything, and nothing. As they say, “There is no emergency; we just want attention.” It’s stupid, crude fun that touches on heavy topics like mental health with a light heart. Give it a listen, just don’t expect it to make any sense.

5. Rhea Chatterji — Jensen and Holes: The Murder Squad There’s been a murder! And the killer is on the loose. My heart beats faster, an involuntary scream surges within me, that could only mean one thing… it’s time for The Murder Squad. Tune in to rediscover history’s greatest unsolved murder mysteries, unstated motives or missing pieces in the crime jigsaw. Episodes feature Jack the Ripper’s victims of Whitechapel Street, Mark David Chapman, the case of the redhead murderers and more. This podcast makes for great entertainment as the squad delves deeper into uncharted territory and overlooked suppositions. So, don your deerstalker hats and sleuth intuition, you won’t want to miss this.

6. Elina Pugacheva — Modern Love My favourite podcast is Modern Love. Each episode is a reading of an essay from a New York Times column of the same name, and every time I’m hooked until the very end. Topics range from stories of romance and friendships to asexuality, self-love and a strong distaste for small talk. In an increasingly lonely world, Modern Love is a reminder of hope and the power of meaningful connections— for even listening to a single episode connects the listener to what was once simply a detached story of human love and existence.

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Radio Fodder’s Music & Film Picks Written by the Radio Fodder Blog Team Carmen Chin — Charli XCX’s Crash Charli XCX has never been one to play the safe game, though if she seemed as disillusioned and burned out as she once claimed to be, Crash has undoubtedly signalled her re-emergence as an artist of creative force to be reckoned with.

A masterclass in sonic versatility that embraces pop conventions, leaps into territories of unknown soundscapes, and reassumes artistic autonomy, Crash never once falls short of the expectations heralded by some of mainstream music’s most talented curators; the record instead continues to challenge the purview of what defines a conformist sound.

Danielle Zuccala — The Batman (2022) The Batman (2022), directed by Matt Reeves, is the latest film centred around the DC comic book character. Although this is by no means the first liveaction movie to be made of the iconic character, The Batman successfully crafts a unique experience that stands out in the long line-up of other Batman and superhero films—from cinematography and its screenplay down to its set design and performances from Robert Pattinson, Zoë Kravitz and more, The Batman holds it own. It is truly Reeves’ love letter to Batman, Gotham City and its inhabitants. From its story to its visual execution, it’s definitely a film you’ll want to catch.

Olivia Ryan — Velvet Bloom’s Glimmer

Chelsea Daniel — Bridgerton Season Two

Velvet Bloom is an Australian alternative, neo-soul project best known for creating sonic magic through their effortless fusion of pop, jazz and rock. Composed by frontwoman Maddy Herbert and live band The Vito Collective, Velvet Bloom is a dynamic collective of artists with a recently released EP, Glimmer, in which their genre-bending prowess is on full display. They offer a familiar yet simultaneously fresh sound to listeners on the five-track record through their instinctive experimentation in mixing and melding different musical styles. While Maddy’s voice is the true showstopper on this EP, the creatives she has surrounded herself with only enhance her talent.

Bridgerton’s second season is a play on the period piece tropes adored by Jane Austen fans. This season is more comfortable in its silliness, creating an illusion wherein the Sharma sisters can happily exist in Bridgerton’s Regency England. Bridgerton tells us it’s a campy romance for us to enjoy as an act of escapism whilst simultaneously begging us to take it seriously. This causes any viewer with a knowledge of history to think critically, shattering the illusion it tries to create. Bridgerton is simply a piece of Jane Austen fanfiction, and that is all it has to be.

Illustrated by Indy Smith

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fodder blog /

From Dusk To Dawn: Radio Fodder’s film picks for your after-hours viewing Written by Christina Savopoulos & Carmen Chin

We’ve all been there: the uncomfortable feeling of seemingly endless tosses and turns in bed in a desperate, yet frustratingly unsuccessful, attempt at falling asleep for the eighth time in the same night. With your mind unable to settle, you eventually give up trying and begin thinking of something you could do to distract yourself or pass the time. Let’s be honest, we usually turn to Netflix. Radio Fodder understands, so behold: we present our top picks for an after-hours movie marathon. The next time you find it nearly impossible to get some shut-eye, from some dream-like adventures to spookier sagas, we’ve got you covered.

Christina’s Picks: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) I’m going to assume that we all know what it feels like to come out of a dream and wonder whether the dream was real, even for a split second. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind captures that exact feeling as it moves between memories, the present and the past, leaving viewers unsure of what is real. After a passionate yet chaotic relationship, Clementine and Joel break up. Clem then decides to undergo a new and seemingly popular procedure where she erases all her memories containing Joel. Joel follows suit and then navigates his memories with Clem, realising that they were meant to be too late. When you finish watching Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, you’ll feel caught in a dream-like trance, reflecting on your own memories and whom you might want to erase in your life. Because don’t we all love going down a memory rabbit hole at 1am?

Groundhog Day (1993) Bill Murray jokingly described filming for Groundhog Day as a “nightmare … [to] meet the same people every day and wear the same clothes” in a 1993 interview. Groundhog Day follows Phil Connors, a man forced to relive the same day over and over again. You’re probably thinking, “Wow, this movie seems really repetitive. Why would I watch that?” Whilst (intentionally) repetitive at times, hilarious antics ensue with Phil saying whatever he wants to people, knowing there won’t be any consequences the next day. The movie takes a heart-breaking turn when his desires to help people are fruitless; it’ll leave you wondering if any of our choices make a difference in the long run. Being the only person awake, especially when the world around you is seemingly asleep, can create a repetitive space. Our time isn’t marked by the appointments and classes we attend—it’s a single flowing vacuum of time waiting to suck us in, like Phil in his never-ending time cycle in Groundhog Day.

Twilight (2008) When we think of “after hours”, indeed images of nocturnal beings come to mind: hissing possums, wolves whose eyes act as a beacon, and of course, the most supernatural notorious nocturnal being of all—the vampire. Let’s imagine in this scenario that you’ve forgone a Buffy marathon because you’re in the mood for a film—fair enough—but that should be your only reason for opting out of that. Now, chances are someone in your life has asked whether you’re “Team Edward” or “Team Jacob”. I personally have no opinion on the matter as I only watched Twilight for the first time last year, and it was a laughable and cringe experience. I’ll never advocate for watching a film where the protagonist has no agency, whines after a guy for 122 minutes and foresees no problem with him even after he spells out that he “want[s] to kill [her]”, but I feel like it needs to make this list purely because of its blue and grayscale aesthetic. As the night goes on and you become more delirious from the sleep deprivation, Twilight only gets more entertaining, comedic even.

Editor’s Note: Farrago does not share the authors’ views of this piece and believes that Twilight is ostensibly camp.

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Illustrated by Ayushmaan Nagar

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Carmen’s Picks: Us (2019) In his directorial debut, Jordan Peele presented in Get Out the powerful motif of involuntary bodily ownership as a perturbing allegory for race relations in the United States—something that clearly touched the hearts and lives of many at the time. His follow-up to that film, 2019’s Us, is a lot more ambitious and bizarre in more ways than one. Peele explores similar existential horrors through the story of the Wilsons, an ordinary family. Their underground doppelgängers are looking to kill and replace them. Characterised by unwavering stares and animalistic vocalisations, their demeanours alone are enough to make your skin crawl. The film even references several ’70s and ’80s horror flicks like Goonies, Jaws, and A Nightmare on Elm Street, but nods to The Shining overflow. What better film to burn through at 2am than a profoundly terrifying and thought-provoking horror film with call-backs to genre classics?

Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) When he was asked back in 2013 to name his favourite out of the films he’s created, Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki chose Howl’s Moving Castle— the 2004 fantasy film he both wrote and directed. Based on Diana Wynne Jones’ novels, Howl’s Moving Castle sets itself in a fictional kingdom where magic and early twentieth-century technology co-exist. The film follows a young milliner, Sophie, turned into an elderly woman after a jealous witch casts a curse on her. In search of a magical counter to the curse, she treks the nearby hills for a solution, where she crosses paths with the film’s namesake, the wizard Howl’s infamous roving citadel. There’s something so spellbindingly nostalgic about this beautiful steampunk film—from the lighthearted, unlikely friendships formed out of Sophie’s kindheartedness to the visually stunning animations of the characters’ backstories. It quickly feels like you’re being absorbed into your screen, only to be fully immersed in Howl’s extraordinary little world—the perfect daydream of romance, fantasy and adventure for your escapist desires.

Jennifer’s Body (2009) Expectations were high for Diablo Cody’s screenwriting encore to Juno, her delicately comedic teenage pregnancy flick that premiered in 2007.

However, opinions on Jennifer’s Body seem to be heavily divided to this day.

Still, a queer-coded “platonic” relationship between Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried’s characters was enough to convince me. Fox is your textbook high school queen Jennifer—sexy, popular, and sometimes manipulative—while Seyfried plays her nerdy, timid counterpart (and best friend). But as Cody’s script worded it, Jennifer is not just high school evil; she’s actually evil. After getting possessed by a demonic succubus, she takes her place as a flesheating monster who only preys on boys. While not as traditionally dreadful as other household horror classics, Jennifer’s Body is a fun, gory watch for those chasing after something slightly blither and more playful than most others in the same genre. Or it’s perfect if you just want to watch Megan Fox wreak havoc on the men of Devil’s Kettle.

Bonus: Stranger Things (2016—present) Though it’s not a film, the first thing that came to both of our minds when trying to decide on an “after hours” marathon pick was Stranger Things.

The TV show that arguably brought Netflix its current fame is equal parts spooky and nostalgic. Set in the 1980s in the fictional town of Hawkins, a boy’s strange disappearance leads his friends, family, and the local sheriff to uncover what exactly befell him. As a result, we venture into the mystic dimension of the Upside Down—and those scenes alone are enough to warrant this show as a certified night-time binge watch.

Even if you’ve already seen the series, there’s a magic that’s captured in watching them unravel the layers of horrific truths behind Hawkins while also just witnessing a genuine friendship between the series’ leads, as portrayed to near perfection by Finn Wolfhard, Millie Bobby Brown, Caleb McLaughlin, and Noah Schnapp. Not to mention the copious amounts of era-appropriate flourishes: classic X-Men comics, Eggo waffles, Stephen King, Back To The Future—the possibilities are endless. Like the proverbial cherry on top, Season Four has also landed in May after a two-year delay, and fans couldn’t be more thankful.

Illustrated by Ayushmaan Nagar

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column / non-fiction

The Facets of Madness:

A Momentary Loss of Muscular Coordination Written by Donna Ferdinando Nestled between the Colorado mountains, the Overlook watches on.

The iconic scene of a deteriorating Jack Torrance swinging a bat at a terrified Wendy Torrance is one that is a staple in the world of horror cinema. Perhaps it is odd to describe a Colorado mountain hotel as a “watcher” of sorts, but truth be told, there is no other word more suitable. One can state without a fathom of a doubt that Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining captured the twisted depths of Stephen King’s morbidly unnerving imagination and, indeed, did it well. I’d go as far to say that Kubrick elevated the grandeur of Jack Torrance’s uncanny descent into madness from mildly concerning to downright nauseous. He stays true to the novel in portraying the few integral puzzle pieces that makes up the eerie mind of its leading character, Jack Torrance: rage, alcoholism, a medley of assorted ghouls, ghosts and phantoms, and “what the oldtimers used to call cabin fever”.

It is ironic and rather a crime that the ghouls and ghosts stick to the sidelines in tugging the strings of Jack’s conscience, propelling him further and further into an abyss that he will never succeed in climbing out of. Yet, most people fail to realise that Jack was already teetering upon that precarious edge between sanity and insanity long before he stepped foot into the Overlook. The Overlook’s illustrious history of sex-scandals, mafia shoot-outs and underground brothel operations fits right in with Jack’s particular strain of madness.

Snapshot: a son’s arm snapped in two by a father’s loving hand.

Snapshot: a pupil beaten to a bloody pulp over a prank.

Snapshot: the stench of rancid alcohol as a slurring voice mutters, “I’d give my god-damned soul for just a glass of beer.”

The bargain is made. The deal is done. Faustus weeps.

Jack’s predisposition to madness is the banquet upon which the Overlook Hotel feeds on. His son’s, Danny’s, eerie telepathic abilities may have triggered the entities out of their stupor, but Jack and Jack alone serves as the prime chess piece in their games. After all, aren’t rage, alcoholism and isolation considered other forms of madness? If, in theory, madness serves to alter a human being from sane and functional, to insane, impulsive and destructive, does not rage and alcoholism, which transforms a mild man into a violent and foul-mouthed fiend, deserve the title of “madness” as well?

Had The Shining been a different type of movie, I would have watched in admiration at the ghouls’ tricks in persuading Jack to participate in an axe killer’s murderous rampage. In another context, his inane cry of, “Here’s Johnny!” would be farcical if not downright hilarious. Yet, we are not just witnessing a serial killer in the making.

This is the story of a transformation into madness, yes, but it’s also the story of how a loving husband and father, one who strived and strived again to break away from a cycle of abuse, alcoholism and self-destruction, fails in his efforts and becomes what he has always feared he would become. It is the story of how love, ambition, family and talent weren’t enough for the allure of liquor and the snares of undiagnosed rage issues to completely fade away. It’s the story of how one

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boy, barely six years old, is forced to look his father in the eye and admit that he cannot recognise him anymore. That is the tragedy of Jack Torrance.

The very first scene in The Shining is of the happy Torrance family driving their bug through the winding roads of the Colorado mountains; a sheer drop on their left and the towering mountains on their right, like giants frozen in time from a forgotten tale. They do not know that in less than six months they will lose everything they have ever known, though Wendy certainly has her suspicions. She is the one person who suffered through Jack’s alcoholism after all. Yet, the sheer singularity of the bug driving happily up to the gaping maw of the Overlook, straight into the belly of the beast if you will, is the very picture of the inevitability of their fate; one that fills the spectator with an awful sense of dread.

For isn’t this sense of inevitability, this exact same tragedy, this exact Faustian bargain, played out over and over and over in countless lives, in every continent, every day? How many people each year gape into a maw stenched with cheap booze and suddenly find themselves trapped in the sticky quicksand of its sludge? Aren’t countless others constantly strung along by the invisible puppet master of past trauma, resentment and anger, until their own loved ones cannot even recognise them anymore?

Perhaps madness is more than a lack of necessary hormones, generational mental illness or innate psychopathic traits.

Rather, I suppose, madness is something people inflict on people, creating the evolution of harmful actions into fullblown sociopathic brimstone and sulphur.

In the aftermath of The Shining, Mike Flannagan’s sequel Doctor Sleep, the jaded Danny Torrance is on the precipice of going down the dark and narrow whisky-scented path his father once did. A revisit to the Overlook shows him his father as the eternal bartender, forever festering in his own rage, resentment and alcoholism. He offers his son a drink, just as the Overlook once offered Jack a drink and thus sealed his fate. The difference this time is that Danny staunchly refuses.

He has no anger towards a father he never could have known, no resentment to a mother who put her life on the line to save him, and no obsession with alcohol for he has long overcome that obstacle.

As expected, the only murderous rampage Danny partakes in is against the ghouls and ghosts of the Overlook, who, let’s be honest, entirely deserved it.

The horror of The Shining lies in the supernatural’s relative apathy, and the paramount role people play in instilling “madness” in those they interact with. Flipping through the pages of the novel, Stephen King quips, “This inhuman place makes human monsters”. Towards the end of the tragedy, however, the quip has changed along with the characters; a final death blow that was the one aspect Kubrick failed to include in the film: “Sometimes human places create inhuman monsters.”

Illustrated by Niamh Corbett

Illustrated by Niamh Corbett

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content warning: animal death, blood, references to violence and drowning

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A W.I.P. Around the Workshop: The Entangled Character Written by Emma Grace Clarke, Creative Literature & Writing Society (C.L.A.W.S.) “Like Joan of Arc, I’m hearing voices!”

– Ursula K. Le Guin Let me tell you a story about me. But it’s not about me, it’s about a character, who could be me if you squint and turn sideways.

Character creation feels, in a way, to be a God-like rush. I have made man in my image! Fear me, for I am a benevolent ruler of the page! But, for many writers, characters haunt the stories we write, and writing becomes a constant discovery of the people squeezed inside our brain. I do not want to seem irresponsible of the story, I have some control, but writing good characters means allowing them, and the story, to breathe.

Let’s talk about it.

If you think about it, we are constructing a character together as the words appear on the page right now.

The character is a version of me. What’s interesting is that there will inevitably be slight differences between constructions of my character, due to your understanding of language and tone and the disparities between our experiences on this floating rock. That’s one of the great things about character.

The character changes and proliferates innumerably with each interaction with a reader, no matter how small. The character becomes alive through the mind and interaction; it inserts itself within the context of your own life and community, your logic creates it and regarding this essay, creates me.

However, there are western tropes in characters that need to be addressed in a way that is constructive and critical. I want to talk about the hero. We often fall back on the hero, or the active protagonist, as a communal touchstone. They make storytelling easier, as they have clear goals and actively seek out your delicately hanging plot hooks. Still, they also come from a violent history.

But let’s go back further, to gathering berries, nuts, seeds, weaving netting, coming back with slabs of animal meat to our communities. People worked infrequently for subsistence, hours were left inert and stories were birthed from these moments of stillness—in dance, music and oral tradition. There is little excitement in gathering berries, but there is within the killing of the sabre-toothed tiger. Its slathering mouth and the blood that pours from wounds—that is what makes the story. Right?

What in the world does this have to do with character?

Well, you can’t have a seed gatherer as the tiger killer; it’s just not feasible. We need someone who will set out to kill this tiger to aid their community and receive honour. They are the hero with their spear,

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with their sword and with their gun. The community weave together to support the violent hero—with their intellect, their witty sidekick one-liners and their labour.

They are us. They are the characters who refuse linearity and haunt the future, their desires to survive continue to this day.

It is possibly time to lay those reflective weapons upon the ground and turn back to our seed gatherers and feel the earth between our fingers. However, if we are to do this in our stories, we become uncombative. We bend instead of stride forward. We fear and turn away from the villain (if there is a villain). We are running from the story; our characters become the recipient of the story rather than the initiator. They become a passive protagonist. A fearful creature, look away now writers!

Fear them!

But we’ve heard the story of the sword time and time again. It slices and bites and chews and pricks. I feel like we’ve all picked up on the rather phallic symbols, but to be explicit and for clarity: the hero character is a particularly male construction; it is the penetrator of story reality—the missionary position of storytelling.

There’s something intriguing about a character forced to face the plot. One who has to screw their courage to the sticking place and work through hardship. They are us when we face tragedy, hardship and heartbreak, issues that we did not seek out. But there’s nothing heroic about facing these troubles. It’s just something you have to do to survive. A relatable tale. Survive, then tell stories and laugh with your friends at the pub. You’re not a hero; you’re not Gilgamesh. Instead, you are the life story that has haunted our histories for centuries but has been left, for the majority, untold within western canon. Your characters can be the life story. Not the killing story. The death-end-story.

Excerpt from Over-Under, by Emma-Grace Clarke We’re here. The heavy scent of chlorine sits in the back of Josiah’s sinuses and the water is a glinting mercury under the sun. Crows sit upon the corrugated roof of the lifesaver’s empty tower, they caw to a syncopated tune, watching the food in the hands of humans. Henry Ove soared from above him, glistening upon his descent and sends a cascading splatter of droplets across the sky as he slammed into the water of the pool. Cheers followed him from the diving platform. His face warps for a moment in just before the surface tension of the water breaks, Josiah is entranced, watching the boy’s nose take on a gel-like quality for a spilt second before he breaches into the warm air, shaking out his hair and laughing.

Illustrated by Casey Boswell

/ column

Rivulets of water crawl down his body as Henry pulls himself from the pool. He’s rakish and pale as a northern river rock. Josiah looks away, focussing on the white-rusted chain link fence he leans against, running his finger across the grooves.

Josiah lets go of the chain link and holds out his hand.

Henry takes him and hauls him to his feet. Mel sits in the tower again, he can feel the burn of her eyes. She’s got a book in her hand but he can’t make out the title.

“Are you going up?” Henry asks, walking over. His feet slap on the concrete leaving dark marks behind him.

Mel is watching him from behind and her sandwich is finished now. Josiah wants to deck her, he scratches his neck instead.

Jumping from the platform sends his mind soaring out of his body. The flab of his stomach moves to his chest, and he wonders for a split second about how he looks, how his bathers fit around his butt and if Mel is still watching. The crows take flight, cutting shadows across the sun’s sterilising light.

“Naw,” Josiah replies. He turns to glance at the shadow of the diving board. “Not my thing.”

He’s embalmed in the water; he doesn’t feel the impact but the kiss of bubbles against his skin tingles.

Henry shrugs a little, “What is though dude?”

He could drown if he wanted to.

Josiah gives a mimicking shrug and Henry doesn’t have enough social tack not to tut at that. Josiah wants to consume him, possibly absorb him through the touch of skin and he feels awful looking at the boy’s body now, the movement of muscle under skin, building and disappearing with movement. He wants to peel the boy.

Not for any other reason than that he can, that such a despicable act is possible. He could go mad at anyone.

The police would be called – witnesses – and then he would be in prison. Safe and alone with a nice schedule and no decisions to be made.

He smiles.

“I dunno, man. What’s a thing? I’m pretty good at trig.”

Henry laughs, deep and rumbly. “You’re such a freak Jose,” he says. “It’s the cool thing about you. You just don’t care.”

Josiah is a bit affronted at that, like Henry is any different. “I care. I care about a lot of things.”

“Just not yourself much?”

He shrugs again and looks to the rippling water. “Eh, not particularly. People though, sometimes.” He nearly choaks on it, it’s a little too close. Mel is making her way around the pool, smiling at the kids in floaties and waving at a few of the mummies.

Henry shakes his head. His teeth are so white and gums so pink. His friends are calling him now, a few of them have jumped in since he did, sending water arcing through the air.

-

-

Okay. That’s nice and all. But how is that helpful? Don’t we need heroes? I can feel the crosshairs of Kevin Feige now. We need conflict.

I say no. Or at least the narrative and your characters should be more than the summation of conflict. The number of times my friends talked about wishing for more interpersonal interactions within their favourite Marvel films borders on ridiculous. To reduce the narrative to purely conflict is absurd and dehumanising.

Take this to your characters, shape them beyond what they can do for your story, think about what they want at their base: survival, love, community. What we all want.

But it is a laborious task to weave a story like this. For spear is easy to throw and move through temporal space in a linear line but gathering the nuts and seeds for a community is a tedious task; mundane, coiling, immortal and beautiful. This flattening of the character field shies away from individualism and rejects a narrative world with humanity at the centre.

But it allows us to engage with a real, a webbing of the universe where we live and die together in a network of people, birds, ants who have stories to tell. It is the story that does not end, for there is always another gatherer.

Always another you.

Illustrated by Casey Boswell

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graphic column /

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‘Lost in Translation’ by Riley Morgan

/ graphic column

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culture /

content warning: mental illness, transphobia, homophobia, drug use and self-harm

Like a snake eating its own tail: BPD, non-binarism and TikTok : a Tarot reading Written by Maggie Slater, Staff Writer Sometimes, we get complacent. Even with things we care about.

A couple of months ago, at twenty years old—already seven years into my gruelling mental health journey—I was diagnosed with ADHD, generalised anxiety disorder, OCD and PTSD by a psychiatrist. As you can imagine, broadcasting this on a platform like Farrago—with a readership that I actually have to interact with—is pretty fucking terrifying.

And to be entirely honest, I would rather not do it. But we’re always going on about breaking down the mental health stigma and starting the conversation, so this is me doing that. I have multiple mental disorders. I have a disability.

Oddly enough, despite all the OCD-fuelled medical researching and metacognition and obsession over what exactly all these things are doing to my brain, this does not make me an expert on all mental health issues. Sometimes, in the rabbit hole, you’re focusing so hard on how you’re going to get yourself out that you forget there are other people in there with you too.

It’s mid-2021, I’m having lunch with my new friend, Tessa, and they tell me they have borderline personality disorder (BPD). The first thought I have is something adjacent to run! BPD bitches are crazy! The second is kicking myself for the fact that this sort of stigma, stereotyping and blatant misinformation exists in my brain. I think back to the thoughts I had when my high school best friend came out to me (about a year after I had come out), and it took me the entirety of the conversation to convince myself that she wasn’t faking it for attention.

Cognitive bias is real, baby, internalised homophobia and ableism too. But all we can do is try and catch ourselves and work harder to rewire our brains by feeding them the correct information. So, I ask Tessa questions and listen to their answers, and I vow that I will make a real effort to understand better my friends with mental illnesses different from my own.

This is me bringing you along for the first instalment with the help of a tarot reading. *** Page of Cups (reversed ): This card can represent a sweetnatured child who loves home life and family. This child is a dreamer, very spiritual and a lover of the arts. This card is often depicted as a child because of their symbolism of optimism and growth. With the child’s less serious approach to life, they attract happiness.

People with BPD are thirteen times more likely to report childhood trauma and neglect than those without mental health problems.

When we take the time to understand the impact BPD has on the brain, a cause-and-effect relationship emerges.

Trauma or neglect at an early age can trigger chronic hyper-vigilance in the growing brain, which develops in a constant state of survival. This leads to a heightened sense of emotion. As a result, many people with BPD may, for example, feel intense grief instead of feeling sad or experience rage instead of annoyance. “Sexual trauma at a

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young age is not the only way to develop BPD. Anyone who feels unsafe in their home is dealing with a form of ongoing trauma. If you don’t feel safe as a kid with your parents, that’s traumatic,” Tessa tells me.

They note that the page of cups card was “the core” of themself that was beginning to materialise in early childhood. “It’s in reverse because I felt like I had to put all of it in a box and build something on top of it instead of opening to reveal. I thought that was a universal experience, and it turns out that it’s not [laughs].”

Tessa explains that the reason they were such a high achiever from a young age was because of an innate need to justify the space they occupied. Because of their general mannerisms and tendency to say everything that went through their head, they felt the need to be smaller.

Their mother wanted to beat this idea out of them and encourage their ‘real’ self: outspoken, bright, opinionated and passionate. Unfortunately, these traits aren’t always celebrated in school, and it was because of this that Tessa supressed these parts of themself.

If we come back to the primary response of survival in the brain of a person with BPD, it’s logical that the person develops the perceived skills needed to stay safe. In a high school setting, this means fitting in.

“People with BPD often have a fragmented or distorted sense of identity.”

This, according to Tessa, is “next to the truth”.

“It’s hard to find the bravery or the safety to actually

Illustrated by Matilda Lilford

/ culture explore what’s real and true when you feel like you aren’t safe or that at any point anybody in your life is going to leave you or betray you in some way. This constant underlying fear of being left or being rejected meant that it wasn’t important to me to find that true self.”

I didn’t know where to put it and nobody was recognising it or acknowledging it or trying to help me because they all thought that they had found the problem and were treating it and they weren’t … the prominent feeling was just frustration.”

Of course, as most of us know, trying too hard to fit in can often cause more harm than just being yourself. Tessa admits this tactic led to a lot of dangerous and impulsive decision-making in their adolescence that was wrongly perceived as teenage angst.

It wasn’t until another year and another overdose later that Tessa’s medication prescription was reassessed and they were given SNRIs, an anti-depressant that does not induce dissociation. Finally, after two years and around a dozen hospital admissions, Tessa received a BPD diagnosis.

“The reaction that your body gives is an overreaction.

But then the people in your life think that you’re just overreacting. It’s very hard for them to look at your behaviour and see it for what it is, because it looks like a teenager who just wants to fit in.”

“Studies show that even some mental health professionals have more stigmatizing views about BPD than any other mental healtwh condition.”

“It’s like doing everything with the bottom of the Jenga tower missing,” Tessa tells me. “Everybody else is walking around with this basic understanding of who they are and what they want and I’m just trying to catch all these Jenga blocks as they’re falling.”

These “Jenga blocks” are what Tessa uses to determine what they know for certain about themself and it’s often difficult for them to discern between useful, misleading, or harmful thoughts. “You’re going to assume all the thoughts in your head are real … and it’s so black and white, it’s either true or it’s false, so I feel a bit like fucking Peeta Mellark with his memory missing being like ‘you love me, real or not real?’, but it’s like ‘I know how to brush my teeth real or not real?’”

They’ve gotten into the habit of fact-checking every thought they have, but it’s hard work: “I get this back log, I feel like I’m doing admin all day long.”

“[Being diagnosed with BPD] has a massive impact on my access to medications because a lot of professionals will refer you rather than treating you,” Tessa says. “Those who do [treat BPD] will be so careful because it’s very easy to prescribe someone with BPD the wrong thing and then feel responsible for their death.” *** Knight of Cups: Represents change and new excitements, particularly of a romantic nature. The Knight of Cups is a person who is a bringer of ideas, opportunities and offers.

“A soul-expanding quest,” they read from the tarot booklet, “I think that’s what now is.”

A string of happy events followed Tessa’s diagnosis: they came out as a lesbian, they started dating their now girlfriend, Holly, and soon after, they came out as non-binary.

Tessa was first misdiagnosed with depression and insomnia at age twelve. By fourteen, they were prescribed Prozac, a drug that made one of their major symptoms of dissociation increasingly severe. “It feels like I don’t ever get to live in the real world, and it’s no wonder I dissociate all the time because how do I live in the real world when I have to check everything at the door?”

People with BPD are more likely to engage in impulsive or risky behaviours. This can include unprotected sex or sex with strangers, binge eating, shoplifting, gambling, and abusing drugs or alcohol.

As a result of their increased dissociation, Tessa was unable to attach consequences to their actions, leading to risk-taking behaviour. Six months after the initial prescription of Prozac, they had been hospitalised multiple times for drug and self-harm related incidents. “I sought out dangerous things and then those things put me through more trauma … and it was sort of like this snake eating its own tail.”

Frequent hospitalisation meant Tessa’s attendance rate didn’t surpass thirty percent and their academic performance (and subsequent validation) suffered. They were forced to find a new crutch: self-medication with marijuana—a tool they still use today to manage their symptoms in lieu of effective medication.

After one too many admissions, Tessa was committed to a psychiatric ward where their Prozac dosage was doubled, yet again worsening the issue. “I was in so much pain and

Illustrated by Matilda Lilford

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culture / “How can you identify as a lesbian if you’re not a girl?” and “Do you find it difficult that you don’t pass?” are just a few examples of the personal, insensitive, and speculative questions Tessa received.

“I think that if I had been in the place that I’m in now where I know exactly who I am it wouldn’t have bothered me that other people were trying to decide who I was,” Tessa says.

“At the beginning it all felt so positive but once you start putting stock into what people say, they start saying mean shit and then you can’t take it back—you can’t take back that emotional investment.”

Being perceived, judged and misgendered by so many people online was already becoming too much for Tessa.

But their dedicated fan base then took things a step further by attacking the influx of ignorant and careless people and replying to comments on Tessa’s behalf—often with misinformation. Tessa felt responsible for the negative environment festering under their videos but was unsure of how to deal with the situation without spending hours factchecking and moderating the comments section. “What can you really do in that situation except for walk away?”

I ask Tessa what impact their diagnosis had on their relationship with their sexuality and gender identity. They look at me wide-eyed, as if I had just asked the world’s most obvious question and say, “Every decision I’d ever made, made sense.”

Tessa goes on to explain the feeling of liberation their diagnosis offered: “I felt like at that point I didn’t have to perform as much. I didn’t have to perform femininity and heterosexuality anymore—I felt like that was very heavily connected to the way that I grew up hiding myself … particularly because in our society [your sexual orientation and gender identity] are very close to who you are as a person.”

Thinking back to how BPD can manifest, it’s understandable how a person who is struggling with their identity and a chronic fear of harm and abandonment would look outward to see what is an acceptable identity to assume. In Tessa’s case, a straight cisgender woman. “[I wanted to] look just enough like the other girls that they’d approve of me but just different enough that they’ll recognise me … I thought every girl grew up deciding what their femininity was going to be.”

Aside from Tessa’s BPD, there was an additional factor during this period of gender realisation that confused things further: TikTok fame. Tessa has been posting videos since 2020, but as of March 2022, their account has over ninety thousand followers. The large queer and gender diverse community of TikTok meant that users often referred to Tessa using they/them pronouns, which made them feel affirmed and comfortable on the platform.

After months with barely any followers, they hit 10k in a matter of days. There was a slow incline in the months following and then in another couple of days, they hit 50k.

The jump from 50k to 90k only took a few weeks.

“As soon as you surpass about fifty comments per post, they assume you’re not reading it, which is not true.”

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Not long after this decision (and the subsequent privating of all their previous TikToks), Tessa and Holly moved in together with three other housemates, all of whom Tessa is very close with. These intimate relationships represent something their doctors told them they would be unlikely to ever experience given their BPD diagnosis. “To have those four people who I love so much sit on that balcony with me and say, ‘what is going on? How can we help you? How do we recognize what is happening with you?

Tell us everything. Don’t put up a wall,’” is the opposite of abandonment—something many people with BPD (particularly Tessa) really struggle with. “[When I was younger] I’d just burn friendship after friendship, have fight after fight … I would always perceive peoples’ behaviour as an indication that they didn’t care about me. I would continually project abandonment onto everybody in my life and then as soon as they slipped up that would be my way of being like, ‘Aha! You were a bad person all along and I don’t trust you anymore!’ Obviously, it’s very hard to be friends with a person like that and so I understand why I lost friend after friend, but it also sucked … I ended up just settling for friends who … didn’t actually care about me.”

Despite these obstacles, Tessa is a living example of how the issues that stem from BPD can improve over time.

Their relationship with Holly doubles as real, tangible progress: “The better I get, the better our relationship is ... I can feel my recovery having an impact on something that’s important to me.”

“People with BPD commonly experience relationships that are chaotic, intense, and conflict-laden. This can be especially true for romantic relationships.”

This idea frustrates Tessa: “For a person that knows somebody with BPD it’s sometimes difficult to separate their behaviour from how they feel toward you. I love Holly so much but when you get to a certain emotional intensity it is not a time to be sitting down and effectively communicating with somebody … I think it’s very easy for a partner or a loved one of someone with BPD to see them in that state and just feel like they don’t love you.”

Illustrated by Matilda Lilford

/ culture Tessa feels as though this misconception could be prevented with a better, more-widespread understanding of personality disorders. “People see symptoms, they don’t see what’s behind the symptoms. I think that’s where the stigma really comes from.” ***

I think back to everything we discussed and reflect on my own experiences: the space, time, and energy living with mental illness occupies. To me, these final two cards go hand-in-hand. Once you learn to live alongside everything you’ve been through, once you acknowledge and learn to manage what it’s caused, it shrinks; it stops flashing so brightly and you can see ahead of you—you can see the space that surrounds you and move into it.

“It also feels like the internal and the external—I can heal internally and give and receive externally,” Tessa adds.

“It started low and ended on a high—it’s always nice to resolve with hopefulness in the last card … ‘cause I think it’s true. I think you get to a certain point with self-destruction where you realise that you can’t win and that it’s really hard to let it go; I think it’s a lifelong task to let go of all the baggage but that’s exactly what I’m doing.”

“You know the ‘I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free’ quote? It’s pretentious but that’s kind of what I’m doing… pulling back all the layers of plaster that I’ve kind of haphazardly stuck over my actual self … I’m going to try and turn this deformed woman into the person that I actually am at my core.”

With limited options because of the pandemic, Tessa is currently struggling to find a psychiatrist, particularly one that specialises in BPD and will agree to take them on as a new patient. But like all of us, they’re trying their best.

You can follow Tessa on Instagram and TikTok at @ soulessrats and find their new weekly newsletter at https:// www.soulsighs.net/.

Five of Swords (reversed): Upheaval. Conflict. Loss. There is a battle that rages on within you. It leads to self-destructive habits and both inner and outer conflict.

The illustration on the card shows a sword with a snake wrapped around it, its tongue flickering above the tip of the blade.

“The five of swords in reverse shows that you want this period of fighting to be over so you can forgive and forget and focus your energies on more constructive activities,” Tessa reads.

Alongside Tessa’s hope for the future, they resent the lingering stigma that surrounds mental illness which made their period of fighting harder than it already was. They wish more people understood how mental disorders can impact decision-making. For example, fostering coping mechanisms like substance abuse, hypersexuality, and eating disorders.

They pull another card.

Three of Cups: Celebration, friendship, creativity, and collaboration.

“It’s saying there’s going to be more of that in my future.

Hopefully where I will be able to connect with people creatively and emotionally,” Tessa says.

Illustrated by Matilda Lilford

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column / non-fiction /

Filling up the Static: French Onion Soup, Science Fiction and SPELLLING’s The Turning Wheel Written by Stella Theocharides

Recently I’ve noticed that whenever I lie down on a hard, flat surface (kitchen floor, bedroom floor, pantry floor), something in my lower back clicks into place. It is so satisfying to hear things realigning comfortably and without hesitation.

It is easy to grow fond of the idea that at any point, with a flat, hard surface, I can correct something out of place, return it to its home, give it back a required direction. This autumn, once again on the turning wheel spokes of the day, it is easy to feel magically realigned. I sleep… I get tired… I lie down and my back clicks.

I’ve been thinking about cooking French onion soup again. Onions are an earnest ingredient. They care deeply about you, working so hard to sweeten or sharpen a meal’s foundation. It is good to watch sharp onions soften in the pan with my watery eyes.

The sucrose in their cells transforms into new sugars, ones we can recognise and taste.

The first time I listen to SPELLLING’s The Turning Wheel, it slides off me. It is shiny sweet water, dribbling back into the pan from my mouth. If I try to pick it up, something in my body goes, No! It is so sincere and full of slippery wet oniony hope. Her voice is a river stone I have swallowed and now it lives in me, weird and thick and optimistic!

Things that are earnest are hard to swallow, but sometimes I swallow them anyway, and then they become either a heavy, sad weight with no levity, or bright magic I can barely control. Like a stone that flies despite its deep sincerity. SPELLLING’s songs seem to care deeply in multiple ways: her voice reaches like a bird. There are careful references to Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed. The album is imbued with science fiction and all the optimism the genre can muster. The sounds are polished and reflective, and there is very little grit or twang or any of those sweet interruptions that remind you, ah yes this is a song that has been made with hands and mouth and

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imperfect but lovely machines. It says: this album is trying to sound good, and it does. How does that make you feel, hearing something try and succeed?

It is my first month back on campus; I return to The Turning Wheel, ready to try again to absorb its steady and sweet sincerity. I hear her sing that all she has is desire in a world of doubt. She’s in a permanent revolution, she insists.

The idea of return (to routine, people, places) without loss and change is a fantasy, and perhaps not even a sweet one. Nostalgia doesn’t reanimate me. Sometimes it steadies me. Mostly it feels like a dull ache. Sometimes, very rarely, it feels like a spine returning to where it is meant to be—but then I stand up, sit at a desk and grow stiff again while moving forwards towards change.

Waiting for onions to caramelise, lying on the kitchen floor (gross), nose full of onions softening in butter, my spine settles with a now familiar click. I wonder if I need to stretch these muscles more often or if I should take up yoga. I wonder if I should listen more closely to the recorded lecture playing from my computer set up on the kitchen bench above me.

There are sharp, thick rings of a weak grief collapsing on the cast iron with thyme from the garden at work. They could burn and stick to the metal, but I’ve seasoned that pan recently and I am so full of hope these days.

At some point, SPELLLING’s optimism softens in my ears. It turns from crisp and grating to a sweet and much-needed foundation. It is a cool, shiny relief, like standing in a river in the heat or watching onions take a deep breath before they melt into sugars that taste like sugar. The collapsing-into-itself. There is magic in the transformation that can’t be undone. Magic in permitting yourself sincerity and optimism. Magic in deep change. Magic in return.

Illustrated by Amani Nasarudin

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memoir /

content warning: illness, hospitals, brief mentions of needles

Tunnel Vision Written by Anindya Meiv My grandma once opened a hair salon for me at the hospital. All mine. In a sunlit room, we asked the nurses to move the bed, and I sat in the middle with my IV drip by me, the same hand that was gripping the TV remote so tightly. Grandma filled a bowl with warm water. I tilted my head back. My hair was drenched, and I could feel the water droplets run down my back. I said nothing. It glided on my cold skin. Grandma asked a nurse to refill the bowl—over the past few days, they’d gotten along very well. Next was shampoo. I switched the channels.

No cartoons, although it was a Saturday. I had woken up way too late. It must’ve been the antibiotics.

I was only fifteen then—angsty, younger me who wanted to keep moving with time, never taking a break. When all was done, grandma carefully wrapped my head in a towel that was way too thin. I was back on the bed. For a brief second, I’d forgotten that I was at a hospital. For a brief second, I wasn’t sick. I was simply spending one weekend morning with my grandmother. There was no needle in my arm, no wheelchair right outside my room, and no buzzer going off in my head as if triggered by the slightest shift around me.

We kept the TV on all day.

If you google ‘tunnel vision’, you’d find the definition of narrow-mindedness: a lack of facts; the inability to expand beyond scope. I’ve been told I have that—I fixate too much on the little things (or one tiny thing)—and that I often invest without weighing my probabilities or consequences. I don’t think of the good or the bad; I’m just there. Some feelings are involved; an opinion based on a small speck of the moment. Then when things begin to go downhill, a bubble inflates to surround me until the positives become blurry; as I’m trapped inside, all I see is haze. My breathing quickens. I poke on the exterior to let some air out, but it’s too late. Like when losing a

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friend and I kept seeing the outline of their tote bag in random crowds, the crinkles of its fabric prominent. I wasn’t thinking about how things ended or why. No chats deleted, and no bad feelings—just the bag’s silhouette embedded in my mind.

Or that one morning when I woke up pondering on something that had happened weeks ago. Something so small, so easily put aside, yet it crept up as I lay there on my bed. Something insignificant for the bigger picture.

But right there and then, it engulfed me. It was like a developed roll film: one photo darker than the rest. All I could think about was that one photo that I forgot there were others I should look forward to. The colours faded.

But I’m twenty-something now. And as the doctor is poking a needle into my arm and a nurse grips my other one for support, all I can think about are those water droplets on my back. They run down my spine. I focus.

If I try a little harder, I can picture my grandma with a bowl filled to the brim. It’s March. December was the last time I rang her. When they put an oxygen mask over me, and I know I’m about to drift into a deep sleep, I hear her voice, and I swear, I can almost feel her fingers on my scalp, massaging it with the tiniest bit of shampoo.

As I breathe in and out, I think about the switching channels. Then, the moment of drowsiness of waking up and staring at unfamiliar faces reminded me of my little private hair salon.

I look up at the ceiling, imagining the sun’s rays poking through and onto the walls, even though there are no windows in this room. My eyes conjure up the unseen morning’s shadows.

I enter the two words again. Tunnel. Space. Vision. Enter.

To be set on one thing, one website reads. I suppose that isn’t so bad.

Illustrated by Amber Liang

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Artwork by Maleea Hegarty

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Artwork by Nina Hughes

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Photography by Ben Levy

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Photography by Mollie Crompton

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Photography by Christian Theodosiou

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Photography by Ivan Jeldres

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Photography by Ivan Jeldres

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Photography Photography by

by Michael Michael Sadeghi Sadeghi

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Photography by Ben Levy

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Photography by Maddy Cronn

CREATIVE Artwork by Edie Spiers

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column / creative /

Ordinary Phenomena: Snakeskin Written by Helena Pantsis Nothing drains you quite like the sun. Feet in the sand and hands half-buried in the ground in the search for shells and pebbles and the almost tangible memory of a childhood in these waters. I remember, you’ll say, the shallows where I learnt what seaweed felt like when it wrapped around my ankles, and the sea glass that cut like it does on the land. You’re there with a friend. She drove you both down in a huge second-hand Mitsubishi burning too much oil and that must cost fifty-five dollars to fill. The beach stretches out in front of you like a Monet painting, blurred in the haze of the midday sun. You ask your friend to spread sunscreen across your back, and you feel her trace the moles carved into the shallow of your skin like they’re constellations and you are a map of galaxies. She’s never worn a swimsuit before, never let the sun touch the tops of her thighs or the curve of her stomach, but she does in front of you. She trusts you, and you can’t tell whether the heat in your cheeks is from your gut or the unrelenting sun above. Summer blisters the undersides of your feet, thongs left to melt on the shore while you cool your bodies in the rising tide. Small balls of gelatine wash up against the sea foam, translucent spheres of light. She calls them jellyfish eggs, though you’re not sure that’s what they are. You fight the urge to squash them between your toes. Salt rolls off the rotting ocean and onto your drying lips; you can feel the water shuffling lifetimes of quartz, granite, basalt, and shipwreck, empty beer cans, spilt oil, and plastic residue. It is an archaeologist’s dream, holding stories in mouthfuls of water. Your friend splashes you, in that playful way friends and more-than-friends do. The ocean slows you down in your chase, leaping like spacemen in zero gravity. Yet she moves, carried in the wind like a train made of silk chiffon. You both relent, falling back to be carried like driftwood. Chills run down your spine, goose pimples make tracks on the flat of your chest. It’s too cold at first, then too comfortable to leave. You lie in the sun, waiting for the heat to dry you up, body splayed out like the sea stars you used to marvel at on excursions to the Melbourne Aquarium. Your friend tells you there are more grains of sand on earth than all the stars in the sky. In the evening you hear fireworks or a car backfiring a street over, sitting next to each other so your damp thighs touch, and you stare at the sky like it’s your sunscreen slathered back. In due time you’ll realise the sunscreen didn’t quite cover you. You’ll wind up burning and red, it hurting to sleep at night. Your skin will peel a week after the burning subsides, reminding you of the riptides, keeping part of you tethered to the salt and the shore. The smell of fish and foam made something pleasant when you drive past the shoreline, and the sand spilling from you a never-ending replay of that day. You wonder if all the stars in the sky make up the grains of sand inside your shoe.

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Illustrated by Monica Yu

/ column / creative

Illustrated by Monica Yu

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poetry /

content warning: death, violence, mental illness, childbirth, mentions of smoking and sex use,

final girls Written by Zadie Kennedy Mccracken our final girls are back from the sanatorium scraping dregs of blood out of their blonde hair reaching with wet hands for puffs of each other’s cigarettes suck-in food-between-teeth messy-millennial icons spilling from nurse-blue EKGs, hands still full of high school memorabilia our final girls have heaven now botox, cloud houses, miniature ponies, swimmer’s bodies throwing a party, storming a museum crawling up out of the drains, back from weekly pirouette practice, running the hills in their tutus swinging baseball bats because that’s what it means to be feminine and alive, to grow up and move on from that time a guy tried to kill you & succeeded in killing all your friends our final girls ride around town in the back of a convertible truck fucking each other in lilac fields, speaking a language only they understand drinking margaritas on smith st, film-fucked grime on their teeth hungover, glitching, they creep to diners always everywhere, all at once sipping black coffee from cheap chipped mugs resigned to the endless violence because that’s what it means to be feminine and alive we’re proud of what happened a solid, steady thing like stainless steel or wi-fi we don’t yet regret it houseplants on their scrubbed floorboards, $7 rosé, election signs, dirt-eating and eventually, children from their pap-scraped, nauseous bodies labour pains & ballooning ankles no shock to someone who can still smell the guts of her best friend spilled over a concrete basement floor (pink & wet, & newborn)

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Illustrated by Casey Boswell

content warning: drug use, insects, use of a sexist slur

/ poetry

nitrous oxide love machine Written by Aeva Milos my nitrous oxide love machine delights in destruction dancing around a pile of ecstatic bones and a static face on honey-melon hillsides cuddled and coddled in spider silk while hosiery hangs from ceiling fans cupping spilt wine and spit: today is the day i give it all up every mound and every ripple ladybug hands and fallen eyelashes pinching / piercing into glossy cheeks scuttling across sulci kissing indeterminate shadows my body blooms though not so much my body as much as my liver or maybe my stomach i bequeath my most treasured items to my daughter everything i ever am i throw away for calcified pyres and funeral hearts i’ll be the artist / the gossip / the whore! before my blood tides over and my hands become soft everything i ever am i sacrifice to you my porcelain-ruby-baby my body-double you astound me you! kill me

Illustrated by Ivan Jeldres

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fourteen things I found in my notes app, in no particular order Written by Clem McNabb 1. when I have service—what happens if a tram gets struck by lightening 2. is fireball expensive 3. I’m very drunk on the 109 tram right now and the sunset is so pink behind all the houses it looks like a green screen 4. Worked at a wake yesterday—I was so hungry, and they had this huge basil plant so I ate some. In his speech, one of the sons pointed to the plant and explained how it was the recently deceased fathers last basil plant from his garden.

5. how does cryptocurrency work 6. I just heard that song in a bar, you know the one you danced to one time when we didn’t really know each other and it made me want to text you but I deleted messenger for the night so I’ll write it here instead 7. vodka pineapples are the best drink ever made 8. need to learn more about what’s happening in Ukraine in the morning.

9. for not high clem—what is that movie with jim carey where he’s in a dome 10. I promised I wouldn’t text you when I’m drunk but I met someone who knows you last night and they asked how I knew you and I didn’t know what to say 11. Sorry for ambushing you. This is a dramatic thing to do, I know. But I’m writing this out in notes first, so I get it right this time. Proper punctuation and everything.

12. Petrol station chicken schnitzel sandwiches are always worse than I remember.

Do not buy again—even if it is late and nothing else is open.

13. Keeping count on this note how many times acid is mansplained to me 14. No more writing in my notes app about you. Or anyone. I’m tired tonight and I just want to sleep. I’m listening to Pink in the back of my uber home and it’s late and I have to get up early and I’m ok, really. Life can be very sweet and good if I let it.

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Illustrated by Birdy Carmen

content warning: mentions of death, blood and sex, no explicit detail

/ poetry

When we were teenagers Written by Xiaole Zhan We were the smell of each other, the glandular oil, the acned sweat, the small of the neck smooth and vaguely feminine. We were the humanly accumulation. We were the needy homunculus. We were close, close. We were aimless as braiding hair untied and loosening, as drawing in sand as the sugar and the ease of it dissolving in the heat of our hands. And day the colour of lemons where we were quiet as kittens small heart attacks in the stillness and we were close, close. And like spring we were bladed, and like wilted daisy-chains we were lackadaisically sad. We were benign as small shocked creatures, as butterflies with blades as wings. We were close, close enough to mark each other with our hurt like the delicate nosebleeds of rich pale-skinned girls. We were animal instinct maddened in dizzying light.

We were blind birds developing eyes, and in the starless embryonic night we navigated by each other, magnetic equators, following lines fatalistic as mathematics with sex as our axiom. We were where every new thing felt like a point of no return. We were where life and death were each as bright as the other. We were the wide-eyed joy with the whites of the eyes. We were the sublimation straight past the material to the symbolic and the grand and the life-affirming. We are this body cartography. We are this mortal geography. Like spring, we are ripe for death and we make small gods of everything.

Illustrated by Melana Uceda

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‘Oyster’ by Sophia Zikic

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summer in fitzroy Written by Mia Horsfall When she remembers that January, she remembers bananas and wine at midnight.

She remembers heat slicked rooftops and a perpetual drone of moths that kept sleep at an arm’s length.

She didn’t get under the duvet for a full month. Just naked bodies sprawled over bedframes, trying desperately to ignore the sweat itching at the corners of sleep.

She remembers how Grace’s fingers picked out the chords to ‘Cherry Wine’ on the guitar and the way Henry muttered to himself as he fumbled about in the kitchen.

That summer was tea with milk and Weet-Bix with sugar.

It was hair slipping out of loose buns and sweat slicking the backs of necks. Sitting in the courtyard, drinking beer from the bottle, watching capillaries of light snake their way from the sky and down the bricks.

It’s a week after she moves out that she messages Henry and they agree to get coffee. Summer slips through the air, greasing the asphalt and flushing skin pink.

“That’s so kind!”

The moment before a glass breaks, everything is still.

There is a silence, resonant in the air as the cup clings to the edge of the counter before losing grip with everything and arcing through the air.

In that space, defined by the start and end of its fall, everything is peace.

“Because of her?”

“Well yeah, that was the main reason.”

The glass hits the ground, scattering its crystals across the hardwood. The silence is shaken, flipped on its head but only for a moment. Then the pieces settle, and the air is still again.

A week later, she talks to a blond boy with a nice smile and lets herself feel desired. He buys her a drink and it’s nice to laugh with someone she doesn’t know. They dance and the feeling of his shirt under her fingers is the only thing that tethers her to the ground.

Coffee fumbles through her stomach, lurching against her intestines until they’re left tangled and dripping.

And then her skin is in cinders, fingertips tracing patterns through the ash. Because his breath on her neck is warm and alive. Her spine liquifies under his touch. She twists her hands into his hair.

“Was it a surprise?”

Find me.

“This time it was.”

She wakes early the next morning, goosebumps trailing their way down her shoulder. Sunlight falls in feathers against the sheets.

“No, not kind. Just how I feel.”

“Why didn’t you say anything back in October?”

“I thought I did.”

Her thighs itch and she regrets her decision to wear stockings. The words congeal against her tongue, but she clears her throat and forces them into speech.

“It’s just that I don’t really act with you the way I act with my other friends.”

“Well, I wouldn’t say our friendship is purely platonic.”

“Yeah. I don’t think it is.”

They are both unsettled and she listens to their voices struggling to pin words to the sound of a heartbeat.

Now, on this street corner, there is only him and her, looking at each other over empty coffee cups.

“Why did you lose feelings?” She keeps her eyes on the table, twisting the edge of her skirt around her fingertips until a blue tinge is palpable beneath the flesh.

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“I don’t know. A few reasons, I guess.”

Walking down to the kitchen, she pours herself a glass of water and drinks it in the bathroom, mascara-stained eyes looking back from the mirror. She gets in the shower and lets the water carve caverns through flesh, holding her arms over her chest. Washing herself is a slow process, methodical, precise. There is order and a task at hand, and every step is done with care and deliberation.

Wrapping herself in a towel, she steps out of the shower and sits on her bed, letting the sunlight wash over her face.

The sky is blue and the day is hot and she is still.

Here I am.

Illustrated by Marchella Rusciano-Barrow

/ poetry

Against the Hurries, Against the Waits Written by Caitlyn Steer Two lovers on the platform across the tracks at Richmond, frail, feathery as birds, tough, thin as wire.

His silver hair glows above the green of the footy oval, fingertips touch fleetingly, the other (dirty blond), pulls him in for a kiss.

A furtive glance over the shoulder as my train squeals away, cliché I say, because the moment bobs preserved on my mind and I wonder, is this my first lesson in buoyancy against the cavalry of weeks?

~ I seem to live my life in transit, watching the hard sun or falling rain beat over steel or gravel in some impalpable space.

A train may be somewhere, by definition, but the train and the track, in practice, don’t belong.

Where do I go in this great block of hours where I’m out of time, out of place, moving faster and feeling slower than stillness?

I sleep my life away on the V-Line as if no time has passed at all.

~ Sometimes the hours roar upon me all at once.

As I flit feverishly among them I wonder if there is space for calm.

I dream of still water where I might float imperceptibly downriver, intervalled ripples like sleeping breaths, No rapid-tailed splash, nor buzzing wings overhead.

Illustrated by Meadow Nguyen

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content warning: references to suicide; objectification

That Much is Known Written by Maisie McGregor Inspired by the story of Mary A. Anderson, a woman who committed suicide in a Seattle hotel room in 1996. Mary A. Anderson was a pseudonym used by the woman, whose identity still remains unknown.

The radio spoke to him: “She had light, auburn hair and perfect teeth.” He saw her projected onto the screen of the cold-smoked car window. It told him that she was five-foot-eight and sturdily built. He was five-foot-eleven and slight—they would complement each other.

“She was childless and had undergone breast surgery.”

He considered breasts. He’d never been with an augmented woman; he’d like to know what it was like.

He thought of how they’d sit in different situations; when she was eating or running late, or how the water might fall on them in the shower. She was childless.

His birthday was last Tuesday. His mother had put thirty-seven candles in the cherry cake, three too many.

He wondered if his life had felt long to her because he was dull, or whether she thought he was older because of the way he held himself. In a way, he wished he was thirty-seven. Thirty-four seemed too typical—all men were thirty-four.

“Her age is estimated at mid-30s to mid-40s.”

Could her mother be more specific? Or was this vague estimate the sort of thing his own mother said to her friends, that he was somewhere between thirty and forty.

“She wore expensive Estée Lauder cosmetics, had pierced ears and liked velour separates.”

He liked that in women—the ability to use money, especially if it was his, and even more if it made her look nicer to him. He liked it when people tried to do things nice and this was nice to him.

He had an earring once—thinking of it made him feel close to her. He rubbed his earlobe between his index finger and thumb, circling the scar beneath the skin, thinking of her. Were her ears this tender? He didn’t own velour. He wasn’t even sure he knew exactly what that word meant, but it sounded soft and it made him think of her skin. The radio man said she took good care of herself—had “carefully polished nails, a lipsticked mouth and neatly plucked brows”. Neatly plucked brows… the words were exciting in his mouth. He imagined them falling from her lipsticked lips.

He had been sitting in his car. It was a new old car, a terracotta red Alfa of his father’s. He’d been given it on his birthday last Tuesday but it felt paltry now, somehow unimportant. The sound of the radio infused in it a thick warmth that made the frame weak. As a child, this car had been his favourite hobby. Now it was limp, and the night trickled in.

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He sat in the passenger seat. He did this when he was parked—it made him feel in company even if he was alone. Facing him was a Circle K, with a hole in its wall.

The lights of the ATM flashed at him as if waving. He offered it a slight nod, the same fumbled gesture he performed when confronted with a known stranger.

The screen projected an advertisement for Bisto gravy granules. He watched it the whole way through and every three minutes, he watched it again. One day, he’d go into that shop and buy them as he was told, but he wasn’t sure when.

The radio had stopped telling him about the woman, the lipsticked pierced augmented childless soft woman. His head hurt with the pain of questions left unanswered and his arms ached with the want of her body. He thought of calling the hotel where she’d killed herself, he thought maybe they’d tell him more than they’d told the paper. He thought of visiting her in forensics, being alongside her still body. He might pass as family had she not said in her note that she had nobody. If only he could have gotten to her and let her know that she had him, that she had him with such a force that he’d never known. The gravy advert flashed again but now it was taunting: it screamed at him and laughed at his inaction. It was music that now came from the radio, a low murmuring that whispered to him like an echo of her. He thought of her there, he imagined her smell and her voice and her handwriting on that sticky note. He turned to the driver’s seat and uttered to himself: “Mary A. Anderson”, “Mary A. Anderson”, “Mary A. Anderson”, repeating it with every flash of light emitted from the ATM. It hit the headrest like a spotlit fragment of her.

His fingers traced its outline and it smiled.

He spoke to her there for a while, laughing at the thought of gravy and birthday candles. He asked her how old she really was and watched her perfect teeth between her lipsticked lips as she told him of her mother and why she had matched the ritual of her death to the ritual of her life.

The sun dipped further below the shop roof and in the darkness, her light on the headrest grew.

From then on, his days were spent with her, in that terracotta car. He drove there early each morning to take the same parking spot opposite the ATM, making sure to position the headrest so that her light might lie on it more comfortably. He looked forward to dusk: it was then that she became most animated, most at ease in his company. He knew that he’d follow her anywhere.

There, dreaming beside her, he felt close enough, that much was known.

/ creative

Illustrated by Ivan Jeldres

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content warning: misogyny (gendered slurs), alcohol, mentions of sex

Murder on the Dancefloor - Tales from Late-Stage Hospitality: The Frozen Margaritas Written by Rupert Azzopardi Summer always comes shyly to Melbourne, where patches of sun peek between weeks of dismal skies and harsh wind. We awoke at 2pm on a dreary Sunday with a galling realisation that, should we have started our laundry then, the clothes wouldn’t dry in time for the surprise shift work had sprung on us for the next day. Only a drink could solve our torment; we decided upon Blackcat at 4 and set out beneath the grey clouds and haphazard Christmas decorations of Brunswick Street. By the time we arrived, however, the sun had begun shining in strips across the street, and the clouds were banished to distant Viewbank. As nice as it was, I could not stop thinking about wearing damp trousers at 11am the next day.

Dark shops sat squatly along the eerie street all the way up to the bar’s shaded side door, beneath its mess of vines. The bar, earthy and chestnut, glowed in the late afternoon light. We ordered our frozen margaritas and sat on the cushions by the front window. The short cup felt cold in my hands.

The taste of Tajín lingered on my lips.

“It was grey half an hour ago,” Sadie said, shading her eyes.

Sadie shook her head again.

“How was it?” I asked, still in disbelief. She paused.

“It… happened,” she said. I winced, but began to laugh again.

“Needed a release from last week, to be honest.”

I thought of the week in question as I stared at my waning drink. She made a fair point—yelling customers, stony-faced managers, opening from our own closes, with minimal sleep and minimal food to fuel the work. I conceded that every hospo worker in December probably deserved a guilty, end-of-the-week root.

“Not a fun week. Nearly at Christmas though,” I said. I tried to think of what I’d get my parents.

“This week was especially bad. I asked for a tenminute break so I could cry,” Sadie said.

“You cried last week too,” I pointed out.

“Because some guy called me dumb bitch.”

“This is the first time I’ve seen sun in about three weeks,” I replied. I glanced around the bar.

“Good point. What was it this time?”

Groups of people chatted idly on the lounges.

I stretched, and the tips of my fingers brushed the tendril of one of the plants draping from the window frames. Spindly fans rotated from side to side. It was a gorgeous afternoon indeed, and despite the glare, we were quietly enjoying it. We had just spent the best part of the last six days working, and being able to ward off the loom of responsibilities for a couple of hours felt like a rare privilege.

“Ha. Fuckin hell.”

“It’s so peaceful,” she said. A man sitting outside rolled up his sleeves, and I caught her staring. She shook her head. “But I’m so tired.”

“Aren’t we all?” I replied. My feet ached.

“I had depression sex with Drew after we closed.”

I laughed, thinking she was joking, but then remembered them leaving together.

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“No way.”

“One called me a dumb whore.”

I remembered that I had a keg delivery that I had to handle by myself, along with opening the bar. I considered the last, frosty dregs of my margarita, and of the rest of it swimming in a near-empty stomach. The measly staff meal the kitchen provided had been left out for five hours, and I began to regret picking at it. I wondered why they bothered leaving oysters and barbecued chicken out. The only edible thing was the vegetable dumplings, and that was pushing the definition of “edible” to an extreme: a cold, calcified skin and an interior macerated into a mush.

I went and bought two more frozen margaritas.

The sinking sun spilled over the ochre-coloured cushions, and I caught my reflection in the mirror. Warmth enveloped me, and I sunk into the couches. We touched our glasses and said “cheers”, as we sipped in the afternoon’s blaze.

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Illustrated by Weiting Chen

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Hocus-Pocus Recipes and Rituals: Clearing the Brain Fog Written by Marcie Di Bartolomeo

Hello hello! It’s me again, your local apothecary and witch Selena Sparklemoon!

Now I hate to confess this to y’all, but I have been going through a bit of a rough patch. Normally my brain is full of ideas—sometimes so many of them that my head feels like it might explode! But right now I’m running on empty, and my noggin’s got nothing. It’s a condition you are likely all too aware of: brain fog.

Now for anyone who hasn’t the foggiest on what brain fog is, let me give you a quick little summary.

It’s like being caught in a constant state of forgetting everything; you’re struggling to find the words you need, or the motivation or focus to get anything done. You feel like slime in outer space, lost and without substance, completely devoid of anything resembling the ability to function. It’s kind of like being underwater and trying to make out what someone is saying outside the water—I tried this with Amon once during one of our swimming classes; could not make out a single word of what they were saying.

In other words, it sucks, and it sucks bad. Especially when there’s keen readers like you who trust me to pump out recipes and rituals by the pound. I’m drowning here, and I’m honestly finding it difficult to cope…

Which is exactly why I’m writing a recipe all about how to get rid of brain fog! That’s right, I’m still gonna provide all you lovelies with another recipe that will hopefully help y’all out with your own brain fog (and maybe get myself out of this little funk).

We will be making a pot of sweet peppermint, lavender and candy caps tea for this one; a herbal, sugary brew that will be sure to perk anyone up and supercharge your brain.

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You will need the following: ★ Two cups of peppermint leaves—we’re going for a mighty kick with this brew! ★ Half a cup of lavender. Our ol’ favourite ingredient making another return ★ A quarter cup of candy caps—the sweetest mushrooms that can be ★ A spoonful of licorice extract. I know some of y’all aren’t big fans of licorice, but trust me, it’s necessary (and honestly pretty good) ★ Two drops of genie tears—you can still make the tea without this super rare ingredient, but it’s not gonna have the same kick. As for where to find this elusive ingredient, the night market occasionally stocks it. It also helps to have a genie friend who’s in the mood to help out (like my buddy ol’ pal Peppermint) ★ Scissors as sharp as they can be ★ Your finest mortar and pestle ★ One wooden spoon ★ A bowl of river water purified by your local water dragon spirit. Tea’s nothing without some good ol’ water ★ A kettle to boil the water up to a piping hot steam ★ Your favourite mug—whether it’s covered with flowers and doggos, or your favourite literary or screen characters. Mine’s a picture of Amon napping, so cute!

/ column / creative 1. Pick your peppermint, lavender and candy caps. You can do this from your local market or graveyard, or your very own garden. You can also get it shipped, but I would recommend growing them yourself if you can—the fresher it is the better.

2. Cut up your peppermint and lavender and leave them out to dry in the moon until the next sunrise.

3. Grind up your candy caps with your mortar and pestle into a fine dust.

4. Pour your water into your kettle and leave it to boil for seven and a half minutes.

5. Once your water’s well and truly boiled, pour your candy cap powder into your water, followed by your peppermint and lavender. Add a spoonful of licorice extract and stir clockwise for two minutes and anti-clockwise for three.

6. By this point your tea should be golden with specks of green and purple. If you managed to acquire genie tears, carefully add them to your tea and stir for another minute. Be prepared for a small explosion at the end of the minute!

7. Whether you have added your genie’s teardrop or not, drink to your heart’s content, and get excited for when your brain fog’s no more!

8. I have brewed up a pot of this invigorating genie’s tea. I’m sipping it right now, and I already feel like I can take on any challenge or obstacle!

I feel so invigorated, in fact, that I may take up Peppermint’s offer to go to a ghoulish open mic party in the graveyards after all. Who knows, partying may also help keep the brain fog away.

9. That’s all from me for now! Tune in next time where I will go into detail on how to make the most scrumptious meal that will be sure to give you a burst of energy on your next big adventure!

Illustrated by Jessica Norton

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poetry /

content warning: death and grief

The Untethering Written by Tharidi Walimunige The teacup quivers in her old hand Of sunken skin between engorged Vein tracks. Fine china Weathering the storm of her Grief. The cup rattles against its saucer, Like tectonic plates fumbling To relearn each other’s edges.

A tsunami of tea surges up The circumferential china coast.

Before more than a drop of lukewarm liquid Peaks and crests Over the lacquered cliff, The old woman speaks.

There’s too much to say! What utterance Is worthy?

Is it the toasted sugar kisses?

Or when we waltzed in the kitchen To spring’s symphony?

Should I speak of the mothballs We didn’t need, that I hid In your dresser to await the pleased Crinkle around your eyes?

Or how your touch tilled the plains Of my palm? These hands Will never be the same After years clasped in yours.

The maiden of afterlife answers.

Tell him what he needs to hear.

Turning her aching gaze to the side, out Into the hallway, she beholds him.

The front door’s brass handle Glares through his hipbone.

A too-big suit and briefcase in hand, He waits for her customary farewell.

A peck and be safe at work.

Not the fare for today, though.

The tips of the old woman’s lips Tremble in rising.

I take it back. I can go on Without you.

And as sherbet fizzles On the tongue, the spectre shimmers And shatters.

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His corpse lies On the coffee table. Its concave Chest expands, inflated By the soul’s return. Encased In mortal flesh, he is ready To fade.

To cross.

Coating the corpse, the maiden Of afterlife pours melted Red wax. She beckons The old woman to give up Her strangled china.

Teacup set aside, The widow’s steady hands Receive the final offerings.

The old woman presses white Heather blossoms into the setting liquid, Glazing his cheeks and collarbones For peaceful passage.

Her last funeral rite is of her own Determination. She sprinkles Toasted sugar on his lips.

For love’s sake.

Illustrated by Ella Cao

content warning: alcohol/drugs

/ creative

After Dark Written by Marchella Rusciano-Barrow The poison trickles down your throat, coating your insides in a sickly warmth. It flushes your cheeks and greases up your joints. It makes your eyelids droop and your focus fuzzy. It sends a flurry of giggles from your mouth.

Neon lights groan to life as they crawl out of hiding.

Leaning in from the edges, their eyes slide across your body, in and out of your nose, your ears, your mouth.

Your breath hitches slightly as you wait for their verdict.

They nod their heads. As you were.

You wander inside, welcoming the thumping bass.

Everything is bathed in blue and green and red lights that cut across the floor. You see them swinging their legs over the edges but they’re not looking at you.

They’re drinking and laughing and dancing. They don’t look so scary in the dark. You are invisible to them, and it feels fucking great.

careening down. Feathers sprout out of your arms. You spread them wide.

The trolley snags on a small rock, or a ditch in the road.

It sends you flying, cutting through the crisp night. You know you’ve hit the ground, but you can’t feel it. You can’t feel anything.

After some time, you manage to drag yourself up off the sticky tar. You can feel pieces of your body starting to return. Weighted fingertips, tense knees, a swollen stomach. You limp forwards, hearing their echoing calls from passing laneways. Their eyes bore into the side of you. They’re getting closer. One takes a long drag of its cigarette, leaning against the light post, shaking its head at you. Your heart starts to pulse. They’re the ugliest at this time.

Birds? Birds. Fuck.

You revel in your complete lack of control. You are no longer burdened by that liquidous sack. Vibrations crawl through your toes, creeping up your spine. You feel your shoulders jump up and down and down and up. You bump and grind and bounce against the bodies around you. The air tastes… salty?

You know what comes next.

Maybe they make eyes at you. Maybe they don’t. Maybe you smile and touch and feel. Your heart slams down hard. Your chest feels full. You take long, deep breaths, dragging in air. You’ve never felt this god damn happy in your entire life. Tears escape from the corners of your eyes. Euphoria. That’s what you’re feeling. You close your eyes and turn your head towards the ceiling.

You crawl inside, close the blinds, and drag your blanket over you. You bring your knees up to your chin, squeeze your eyes tight and wait for the hammering sense of dread to ease. And when it does…

Wipe that smile off your face!

And

I FUCKING CAN’T.

Hair plastered across your face, you escape to the black, glistening streets. There’s an abandoned shopping trolley lying on the pavement. You flip it upright, stand in the centre of it and send yourself

It crawls out from behind the buildings. Reaching its limbs through the gaps, bathing everything in grey-blue tendrils. Your only hope is to get back before it makes its way past the tips of the trees.

You do it again.

And again.

sigh again.

Illustrated by Sally Yuan

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fiction /

MOONFLOWER Written by Lochlainn Heley Sol#1

Sol#5

The trick is to stare between the stars and earth. Breathe deep to slow your mind, then focus on the earth as if it is the one moving.

The plants have a language. That’s my first instinct, from their pulses and bends of growth.

Are you falling away? Is it rising away from you? Physics says it’s both. Watch it rise. Once you do, you tend to forget that stars are only visible from the ground you leave behind.

Weeks spent testing: the more seeds I plant, the stranger they become. Each one I place into the ground looks completely normal— something else is changing them.

The earth hovers ahead of me, luminous in the darkness above the silver-grey ground. I keep staring up as I walk, my eye occasionally catching on pockets of mountains or craters.

Each step sends loud vibrations crawling into my helmet.

The breakthrough comes after I finally sit still.

I let the plants grow wild, hoping the cause will reveal itself, and watch them grow in their own astounding ways.

Eventually, the Habitational Unit Base rises into view, a large dome held up by an exoskeleton of scaffolding. With its size and reflective outer shell of thin aluminium, it looks out of place against the expanse of sand and stone.

Several hundred more steps and I reach the back of the HUB. Along the wall sits a small box with buttons for oxygenation and solar.

I turn them on, then round the HUB shell to the entrance, ready for sleep after the journey.

The roses sprout into rebel tumbleweeds that fling themselves into the air once agitated, leaving the unmistakable tell of tiny white rosebuds wherever they roll.

The w vera patch explodes into tall trees with grey bulb leaves; their fruit sprouts as silver spheres with spiny skin, similar to the earth original. The pomegranates become silver mushrooms, tinted red-gold, fervently claiming the bodies of fallen plants.

Each day in the same spot outside the HUB airlock, I stare at the budding silver garden in front of me. Without noticing, I fall into the same trick.

Streams of earthlight filter through the bulb leaves of the Aloe Vera tree above me, while a collection of adolescent rose-weeds sits to my left, rearing to fling themselves away.

Ahead, one of the original Moonflowers thrives just beyond the Aloe Vera shadow, its faces angled towards the earth as always.

I bury my feet deeper into the soil, inhale the image around me and relax into the familiar trick. The words wash forward on their own.

To the same tempo as the plants, I speak by lifting my hand then lowering it to rest on my hip. I end the sentence by making a small circle in the ground using my foot: I couldn’t sleep much last night.

One of the Moonflower heads slowly turns to face me. A constellation of movement and pulses responds.

Was it a “bad dream”, as you call it? Moon asks.

That’s when I notice the vines.

Breath in. Watch it rise. Watch it move.

Yes, I say. I dreamed I was naked and curled up in a field. But I was so small. I couldn’t tell if I was short, or if the plants were tall. They were all there above me, swaying in the wind.

They’re the same silver as the soil, woven through the scaffolding next to the airlock entrance. At their base, dozens of unmoving cords coalesce and tangle, then tether deep into the ground. At the end of each vine sits a cluster of large disc faces, each with hundreds of flame-shaped silver scales.

The lavenders’ upward pulses are the first to catch my eye, now silver pine trees with blue trumpet flowers. As I sit, calm and still, I can faintly make out the movement and colour of a voice.

I suddenly realised they were your flowers—our flowers. I couldn’t escape the fear that I was going to be swallowed. Taken into darkness. I just kept lying on the field, afraid. And then I woke. I couldn’t get to sleep after that.

Is someone speaking through the flowers?

Moon stays silent. Or speaks too softly for me to read it.

They’re beautiful.

I cup one of the discs in my hand. The scales rim its perimeter in smooth grey skin. The rest of the mass is a deep purple, dark enough to reflect my own face inside my helmet.

Flowers. They really are flowers. No air, no water, no decent sunlight with no atmosphere. But here they are. Each of the large heads is angled up and out, towards the luminous blue and green orb I stared at moments ago.

The lavender thrums up and out. Awake. I think that’s what it said.

Sol#9 The garden continues to flourish. Blooms of purple, blue, and subtle red-gold now weave throughout the growth.

I wiggle my suited feet in an unclaimed spot of ground. The grey soil slides up my foot, now glittering with the flecks of decomposed plants.

I risk a question. Do you have dreams too? I keep wondering.

More silence. I start to rub my forefinger to my thumb.

Do you dream about earth? Like how sunflowers dream of sun.

The Moonflower turns back to the earth.

The surrounding plants eventually pulse an answer instead.

Moonflower does. We don’t.

Earthflower? I think, but that doesn’t sound right.

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I can imagine it would look invisible from above. Just another layer to Moon’s skin, hidden in plain sight.

Illustrated by Sample Student

/ creative

Sol#13

Turn me into a bee. I decide to be a bee.

Over the last month, I’ve noticed the Daisies starting to move away from the garden. Day by day, the small flowers with their purple triangle heads migrate a little further, until they reach the top of a distant small hill.

Moon pauses before giving their answer. The whole silver forest moves. But… Moon does not need bees, they say.

I sit down beside them. It’s a nice view you’ve chosen.

I thought so too, they say calmly. We agreed that Daisies would be most comfortable on the hill. This will be our spot.

There it is again. We… Our… I’ve always thought it was me misunderstanding the new language, a slip of translation.

I continue to bury myself, slow hands shovelling large gravel mounds to the side.

I am being honest, Moon says. Look around. I don’t need bees—Moonflower has never needed bees.

I keep going.

It’s not how this works, they say.

Then we will do something different. Different but still Moon. Change me.

Daisies, I venture, are you Moon?

Why?

Yes, they say.

Who better to coexist than two beings who have come to understand the way the other sees?

But you are also Daisies.

Yes. The answer rings in my mind.

Does that mean Daisies are… is Pomegranate?

Yes, they say, but different. A different change.

I pause to form my next question carefully.

But if Daisies is Moon, who changed Daisies?

I search for a final hook to convince Moon to my side.

Let’s start simple. What about wings?

Moon pauses, their attention caught. Wings?

Wings like a galah. And eyes like a cat.

Moon waits.

And feet, I add. Feet like a wolf.

Moon remains silent.

Was Daisies always Moon? I try again. Even before I dropped their seeds into the soil.

The garden stills. No! My heart falls.

Yes, Moon says, but only when Daisies decided they were Moon.

Glands… gas glands like a fish. We can use them to create lift for flight instead.

I walk back down the hill. Moon’s answers crash like waves in my mind.

Then legs like a frog, I say, piling soil onto my feet. Every plant in the garden rustles with anticipation.

Moon is Daisies.

And a tail like seaweed.

Daisies is Moon.

And fur like a tiger.

Moon changed Daisies.

Daisies decided to be Moon.

I step to the edge of the silver garden, though it stopped being a “garden” some time ago. A dense forest now encircles the HUB, broken only by the path of pineapple grass leading to the entrance.

I remain still, like the first time I saw the Moonflower. It’s been so long since that surprise.

The dirt comes to my chest.

Teeth like an ox.

I layer the final mound to my helmet and cover my sight in darkness. If Moon says more, I don’t know. My eyes drop into the deepness.

I wake several days later. Daisies, Lavender and Moonflower look down on my body, waiting for me to rise.

Daisies decided to be Moon.

Can one decision really make so much change?

Slowly, I kneel down, and begin to bury myself in the soil.

Turn me into Bee, I say, hands deep in the gravel.

Pardon? Aloe Vera rustles.

What are you doing? says Lavender.

Illustrated by Grace Reeve

77

graphic column /

78

‘DIY Craft Guide’ by Weiting Chen

/ graphic column

79

poetry /

content warning: pregnancy/childbirth

She the Sea Written by Hirushi Muthukumarana

The white curved belly of my grandmother as she lies in shallow, twitching afternoon sleep resembles the sails of a ship.

Blue veins dozing beneath, pulsing along, spidering out, sluggish but loyal in their task of transportation.

The water in those submerged vessels once was in the sea. Just like I once was a particle in my grandmother and she was once a particle in her mother, which was yet before that an atom of waves, or a shark, or a coral, or a grain of sand.

That endless and effusive galaxy of wonders, ripe as red peaches, indomitable as tides and the woman’s will— it is of an entirely alien nature to the sea.

Yet, in the tiniest compartment of flesh, within entrenched atoms whizzing and whirling on ancient roads, this galaxy is the same as that where the sharks hunt, where the prow splashes, where breath is ripped out.

Blue deserts haunted with forgotten things; red caverns throbbing with a screaming want to bite into the lips of the world.

Because my mother swam beneath the white sail, and I swam there too, my breath is a cataclysm of this one particle crashing through my skin where I floated.

Bursting through still unsure, soft, osmotic flesh.

A clash, an intercourse, a dissection, an entwining.

A need as riotous and strident as air exploding from a whale’s blow-hole, surfacing, hungry to glimpse the sky of the world that birthed it from between its steadfast thighs.

Do you wonder why we all know so well, even as children, the vile, bitter bite of the sea on our tongues? Why it stings us, why it leaves us momentarily blinded when the watery shards strike our eyes?

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Illustrated by Jessica Norton

For and Against:

/ regulars

Jaden Smith

For

by Carmen Chin Nepotism babies are Hollywood’s own version of an epidemic—you scroll through your Twitter feed one day, and there’s some update on a member of the Kardashian-Jenner clan you didn’t ask for (how exactly did they get famous?), or you’re struck with an immediate disappointment, when you find out an actor you liked has A-list parents (I’m looking at you, Maude Apatow). I must make myself clear: nepotism should not be a thing. I can’t imagine ever supporting a certain 50 Shades of Grey actress getting a leg up in the industry solely because the matriarchs in her life were Tippi Hedren and Melanie Griffith and nothing else, but Jaden Smith must be excluded from this conversation. First-born child to Will and Jada Pinkett Smith, Jaden is best described as an enigmatic presence. Forget the passé discourse about his acting or music, and focus on what matters. No one else can call themselves the revered creator of some of the most bizarre tweets Hollywood has seen—“Just Stare In The Mirror And Cry And You’ll Be Good”, “Most Trees Are Blue”, “If Newborn Babies Could Speak They Would Be The Most Intelligent Beings On Planet Earth”—“maybe he’s just being quirky,” you may think. Wrong. He’s a poet. He voiced Kaz Kaan on the abstruse American-made anime Neo Yokio—“it’s weird and barely makes sense,” you assume. Wrong again; it’s camp and takes a higher level of precocity to appreciate.

Perhaps above all is Jaden’s philanthropic pursuits. He cofounded the spring water company JUST Water at age 12, an environmentally focused initiative to reduce single-use plastic waste, before going on to bring clean water to Flint, Michigan, with The Water Box project in 2019. He launched his I Love You food truck initiative last year that serves free vegan meals to the homeless, which later expanded as a full-blown restaurant. A huge majority of nepo babies may be anything but worthy of their platforms, but if any of them were to deserve my respect, it would be Jaden “How Do We Know Cupcakes Aren’t Afraid To Be Eaten?” Smith.

Against

by Carmen Chin Picture this: it’s currently SWOTVAC and you’ve been slaving away in the Baillieu Library for what feels like five hours now (who knows how much time has passed?), trying to catch up on at least six weeks’ worth of lecture material to make sure you don’t completely biff your exam worth half your overall grade next week. You feel parched; you’ve only had three cups of coffee to drink and you’ve left your hydro flask at home. You turn to the vending machine for a quick fix, your eyes scanning the options for water—wait, a $4 carton of water, and it’s the only brand available? Preposterous, you have no choice but to fork out four whole dollars for 500ml of aqua, unless you want to risk dying of thirst. The visceral wrath born from this one minor inconvenience leaves you looking for someone, anyone, to blame. Then it hits you: you’re holding a bottle of Jaden Smith water. And it’s not even good water. How do you mess up the taste of water?

He might be what some consider a worthy nepo baby, but the fact remains that he’s still a nepo baby. I stand by what I said earlier about his tweets being poetic, nay, avant-garde, but that doesn’t mean that Jaden isn’t the most pretentious child of nepotism in Hollywood—and the bar is seriously high in that department. No, Jaden, no kid or teenager would want to talk about the political and economic state of the world right now. For someone who was homeschooled by his parents before enrolling in a private school founded by said parents, he’s made a handful of asinine statements about education: “School is not authentic because it ends. It’s not true, it’s not real.” No, Jaden, you are no better than us common folk just because you had your future prospects laid out in front of you the moment you were born, or because you bought yourself a $4 million mansion at 18. You know what? Maybe 140 characters should contain Jaden Smith.

Illustrated by Ayushmaan Nagar

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UMSU and the Media Office are located in the city of Melbourne, on the land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. We pay our respects to their elders­—past, present and emerging­—and acknowledge that the land we are on was stolen and sovereignty was never ceded.