2021 Edition Five by Farrago Magazine

FARRAGO E DITIO N F I V E · 2 0 2 1

NEWS · CULTURE · OPINION · PHOTOGRAPHY · POETRY · FICTION · SATIRE · ART

acknowledgement of country In Edition Five, we’re returning to our roots. As the pandemic rages across Melbourne and the world, our sense of reality has become somewhat warped. With many of us experiencing increasing feelings of confusion, disorientation, and frustration at our lockdown lives, the desire to reduce our influx of daily activities and embrace simpler modes of being is all the more understandable. At a time when the concepts of productivity and self-fulfillment are forever being replaced by mental exhaustion and digital fatigue, allowing more time for self-care, looking after each other, and re-establishing meaningful connections with friends, family, and the lands we live and work on is imperative. Such is the intention behind our “stripped back” fifth edition. Many of us are now working, exercising, and taking advantage of the outdoor environment more frequently than in regular times. For many, the 3-4 hours of outdoor exercise permitted each day has become an acceptable lifestyle, even a personality trait. The affordances of reconnecting safely with the natural environment have never been more apparent, nor more topical. And as spring and summer approach, time spent outdoors has begun to feel like a luxury—daily walks, runs, bike rides and other permitted activities are opportunities for escapism from lives spent enfettered to digital worlds. And we embrace these opportunities avidly. While local lands currently function as sanctuaries offering forth joys of nature that contribute to alleviating the effects of lockdown blues, we must not forget that, as settlers on this Country, we are also benefiting from the destruction of Indigenous lands and cultures. Reaping the personal benefits of the natural environment whilst also turning a blind eye to its continual desecration for profit and political gain is not only ironic, but demonstrates a collective ignorance and inhumanity. Moreover, acts of passive recognition and brief acknowledgements are not sufficient to contribute to any form of important change. While we enjoy the fresh air, beautiful weather, steady soil and budding flora which allow us greater space for reflection, we encourage our readers to more actively reflect on the ways in which they profit from the natural environment everyday, and how they can in turn use their privilege to minimise and raise awareness about the blind, ongoing harm inflicted on this land. This natural Country which is so personally, individually good to us during these times of hardship. This Country which deserves greater attention, awareness, and respect as we enter dangerous times for our climate. It is our responsibility to ensure that our relationship with land is not based on one-way satisfaction. It is our responsibility to give back. Ailish Hallinan Wurundjeri Land of the Kulin Nation Lauren Berry Boon Wurrung Land of the Kulin Nation Pavani Ambagahawattha Out of Country

CONTENTS REGULARS 03 04 79

Editorial Calendar Flash Fiction: Dark Comedy

For and Against: TikTok

Izma Haider and James Gordon

Homesick of Home

The Age of Evan Hansen (and why Ben Platt shouldn’t reprise his role on screen)

Allie Akerley

Joanna Guelas and Nishtha Banavalikar

PHOTOGRAPHY 49

UMSU 05 06 08

Soutbank Updates OB Reports UMSU Updates Jack Buksh

NEWS 10

News-in-brief

Micol Carmignani, Megan Tan Tan and Charlene Phua

Why Noise Music is the Only Genre That Sounds Better Online Evan Keith 22 Older Anindya Setiawan 23 Charlotte (Helen Moffett) Book Review Gina Song 30 Concerts Under COVID Weiting Chen 32 Don’t Lose Your Spark Michelle Huang

Featured Photography Samuel Hadden Christian Theodosiou Akash Anil Nair Mollie Crompton Kye Harn Loh

CREATIVE 62

Connection in The Time of COVID-19 66 Donna Burroughs 13 Zoom or Doom? 69 Charlene Phua and Sabrina Lee 14 OPINION: How Can UMSU 70 International Improve Future Elections? 71 Vanessa Chan 16 University Reverses WAM 72 Policy Despite Mass Petition Vanessa Chan 73 18 “Please Don’t Ask If We’ve Tried Yoga”: Students Fighting for Disability Support Aeva Milos

NONFICTION

COLUMNS

Chelsea Rozario

Blue

Steph Markerink

Slogans and Nonsense Josh Abbey

Race Against the Odds ilundi tinga

Niobe

Gen Schiesser

The World of Dragons Zoe Keeghan

Perkins

At the Movies... Being John Malkovich: Review Brian Novak

going forward Oscar Larkin

FODDER

Tabula Rasa Neha Sharma

Summer chores Neha Sharma

Flickering

Lauren Berry

Last Girl

Chelsea Rozario

SATIRE The Satire Team

Featured Art

Classic Choc Chip Cookies

Featured Art

Torsten Strokirch

Austin J. Ceravolo

Rusty’s Cabin

The Pier Review

ART

Nishtha Banavalikar

Srishti Chatterjee

All the faces

University Budgeting 101 James Gordon

Carrie (1976): First Comes The Blood

Aeva Milos

lazy love goes loopy

E.S.

The Foggy Shores of Our Bedrooms Charlotte Waters and Lee

Birdy Carmen

Satire-in-brief

Ordinary Joys: This Column is Perfect

Drama Stew: Dissecting the World of Korean Dramas Christina Savopoulos 48 Troubles and Nibbles Emma Xerri 81 Playlist: ‘Stripped Back’ Mark Yin, Annabel Hsu, Joanne

Zou and Nishtha Banavalikar

65 14

Melana Uceda Joy Sha

Nomads

Arielle Vlahiotis

Featured Art

Cathy Chen

Illustrated by Ailish Hallinan

EDITORS Ailish Hallinan Lauren Berry Pavani Ambagahawattha

COVER Christian Theodosiou

MANAGERS Imogen Smith Megan van Vegten Sweeney Preston Charlotte Armstrong Samantha Thomson Pujitha Gaddam Ben Levy Carolyn West Mark Yin Joanna Guelas

CONTRIBUTORS Donna Burroughs Vanessa Chan Aeva Milos Charlene Phua Sabrina Lee Micol Carmignani Megan Tan Tan Evan Keith Anindya Setiawan Gina Song Weiting Chen Michelle Huang Chelsea Rozario Allie Akerley Christina Savopoulos Emma Xerri Birdy Carmen Aeva Milos Srishti Chatterjee Austin J. Ceravolo Oscar Larkin Neha Sharma Lauren Berry James Gordon Izma Haider Joanna Guelas Mark Yin

Annabel Hsu Joanne Zou Nishtha Banavalikar

SUBEDITORS Frank Tyson Elizabeth Seychell Emma Barrett Tun Xiang Foo Sarah Grace Pemberton Zoe Keeghan Amber Meyer Kate King-Smith Isabelle McConaghy Cassie Starc Nishtha Banavalikar Christina Savopoulos Mickhaella Ermita Lucy Robin Joel Keith Josh Abbey Austin J. Ceravolo Saanjana Kapoor Melana Uceda Chelsea Rozario Ella Crowley Charlotte Armstrong Xiaole Zhan Laura Franks Joel Duggan Helena Pantsis Marcie Di Bartolomeo Claire Yip Sam Hadden Nat Hollis Poppy Willis Ioanna Petropolou Bridget Schwerdt Gwynneth Thomas Charlotte Waters

COLUMNISTS

Zoe Keeghan E.S. Ilundi Tinga Charlotte Waters Lee Perkins Josh Abbey Nishtha Banavalikar James Gordon

ILLUSTRATORS Vertigo Alice Aliandy Rohith Sundaresa Prabhu Kitman Yeung Zoe Lau Rachel Ko Rai Melana Uceda Mochen Tang Georgia Huang Rose Gertsakis Michelle Chan Joy Sha Arielle Vlahiotis Birdy Carmen Casey Boswell Tereza Ljubicic Nina Hughes Torsten Strokirch Maddy Cronn Anannya Musale Zoe Eyles Cathy Chen Sally Yuan Vivian Li Marco Sy Chelsea Rozario Katie Zhang Mica McCulloch Jasmine Pierce

Emma-Grace Clarke Rowan Burridge Chelsea Rozario Josh Abbey Laura Bishop Janvi Sikand Raina Shauki Christina Savopoulos

SOCIAL MEDIA Imogen Smith Megan van Vegten Keely Tzoukos Alain Nguyen Isabella Ross Jenslie George Jessica Seychell Emily Gu Anindya Meivianty Setiawan

PHOTOGRAPHERS Samuel Hadden Christian Theodosiou Akash Anil Nair Mollie Crompton Kye Harn Loh

GRAPHIC COLUMNISTS Steph Markerink Gen Schiesser Torsten Strokirch

SATIRE TEAM Charlotte Armstrong Sweeney Preston James Gordon

Illustrated by Mochen Tang

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.

EDITORIAL PAVANI Recently, while in a maudlin mood, I went back and read everything I’d written for Farrago. The pieces themselves were fine, wordy at worst. What struck me more was my reckless honesty, how I’d seen fit to dramatise, glamourise and offer up things about myself I’d have trouble telling my closest friends for public consumption. In fact, if you read my pieces in chronological order, you can trace the trajectory of my mental health through the pandemic: watch the crisp green things I scribbled in late 2019 decay into bitter cynicism. For better or for worse, I had treated this magazine as a confessional space. I did two years of my degree online and half of it overseas, feeling like a walking tuition fee as opposed to a student. I wrote to make myself feel like A Real Person, one whose thoughts and anecdotes, if phrased prettily enough, were worthy of pages and printer ink. I wanted the students I had never gotten a chance to meet to know I was A Real Person too. And I wanted a legacy, to leave a bit of myself behind as testament to the fact that I was here I was here I was here. Well, kind of. All this is to say: your pieces don’t have to be capital-I Important or necessarily even of interest to wide swathes of the student body. If you’re writing to us purely for personal catharsis, if you’re putting out work to feel real and human and alive, even if you think no one will read it, know that I see you.

LAUREN These times are not merely bizarre and vociferous and tempestuous and no doubt a whole dictionary’s worth of other, extra ‘ous’-es. They also turn our desires and dreams into paradoxes. When I dream at night, I am not dreaming of intergalactic techno concerts, nor supermassive vampire sports. I am dreaming of orange juice-soaked gossip after sleepovers with friends. I am dreaming of sunshowers and caffeine-fixes on the commute home from work. I am dreaming of night-time drives in a far-distant summer—going everywhere and somewhere and nowhere at all. Usually, we are constantly craving more from life, for that is a young person’s right. But now there appears to be a collective scramble to pull on the breaks, even if they might appear to be broken. For this reason, we’ve escaped into minimalist heaven. I hope this strippedback aesthetic adequately encapsulates your calm dreams and simple joys. For while fantastical cinematic distractions might be our way of getting through these days, magazines and herbal tea might be all we truly need.

AILISH I cannot believe I’m saying this, but welcome to our penultimate edition of Farrago for 2021! No matter where you find yourself in the world, dear reader, there is no denying how unequivocally shit these last few months have been. Despite this, I always find solace and joy in the Farrago community, and I am incredibly grateful for each and every one of you who has supported us this year. In an attempt to escape this truly chaotic nightmare we find ourselves in, we decided to create this ‘stripped back’ / minimalist edition. While I adore the bold extravagance that has accidentally become our legacy this year, I am quite literally obsessed with how this edition has turned out. Our incredible illustrators have created some beautiful pieces of art that I hope have a similar calming effect on you as they did on me. I found assembling this mag to be one of the most peaceful & stress-free experiences I’ve had as Design Editor this year (I swear I’m actually not lying). So, happy reading!

Illustrated by Mochen Tang

All my love, A x

FARRAGO

NOVEMBER MONDAY 1 Semester 2 Examinations Begin

MONDAY 8

WEDNESDAY 3

TUESDAY 2

12pm Women & Enbies of Colour Collective 1pm People of Colour Collective

12pm Environment Collective 12pm Women & Enbies Collective 2pm Arabic Language Society Weekly Dialogue Session

TUESDAY 9

WEDNESDAY 10

12pm Environment Collective 12pm Women & Enbies Collective 2pm Arabic Language Society Weekly Dialogue Session

MONDAY 15

TUESDAY 16

WEDNESDAY 17 12pm Women & Enbies of Colour Collective 1pm People of Colour Collective 6pm CASA—BALL

TUESDAY 23

WEDNESDAY 24

12pm Environment Collective 12pm Women & Enbies Collective 2pm Arabic Language Society Weekly Dialogue Session 7pm Vex Robotics Club: Building Success— Session #4 Programming

MONDAY 29

THURSDAY 11

12pm Women & Enbies of Colour Collective 1pm People of Colour Collective

12pm Environment Collective 12pm Women & Enbies Collective 2pm Arabic Language Society Weekly Dialogue Session

MONDAY 22

THURSDAY 4 12pm Climate Action Collective (Southbank)

FRIDAY 12 4.30pm Creative Arts Collective

THURSDAY 18

FRIDAY 19

12pm Climate Action Collective (Southbank)

Semester 2 Examinations End 4.30pm Creative Arts Collective

THURSDAY 25

12pm Women & Enbies of Colour Collective 1pm People of Colour Collective

TUESDAY 30 12pm Environment Collective 12pm Women & Enbies Collective 2pm Arabic Language Society Weekly Dialogue Session

FRIDAY 5 2pm Bla(c)k Collective 4.30pm Creative Arts Collective

Illustrated by Michelle Chan

FRIDAY 26 4.30pm Creative Arts Collective

UMSU

southbank updates

President | Jack Buksh

UMSU

No report submitted.

General Secretary | Allen Xiao No report submitted.

Clubs and Societies | Kalyana Vania and Muskaan Hakhu

Heya there! The C&S department has been up to a lot! We are currently working on creating a C&S canvas subject! HOW COOL IS THAT?! Yes! Our very own Clubs & Societies subject that will help club executives keep up with all Gunther and C&S related updates and provide easy transition for them! In other news, Gunther has really been missing interacting with all clubs! And is bugging Kalyana and me to allow him to attend some online club events!

Creative Arts | Merryn Hughes and Vaishnavi Ravikrishna

Creative Arts would Really like to thank Everyone who engaged with our beautiful online Arts festival, Mudfest Home 2021! Though the festival Is officially over, you can still View over 30 stunning student works on Mudfest On Demand, GPG Virtual and our 3D Virtual Exhibition for a special extended season. In other news, Above Water was Ready to launch in late September and we were so excited To be working with your Sublime Farrago editors to bring this year’s powerful anthology to life! Follow us on FB and Instagram for all the updates @umsu_creative_arts.

Education Academic | Jennisha Arnanta and Planning Saw No report submitted.

Education Public | Hannah Krasovec and Tejas Gandhi

Hey there!! Hannah (she/her) and Tejas (he/him) here. Since our last Farrago report we’ve been focusing on the campaign to Stop the Menzies Institute. The Menzies Institute is due to open on campus in November, and right-wingers such as Peta Credlin will be on the board. $7 million of Federal Government funding has been spent on this, while the same government cut 10 per cent of university funding. Such money should be spent on our education. You can keep up to date through our Facebook page, our website and the Education Action Collective (Thursdays 1-2pm via Zoom). Stay safe!!

Burnley | Kaitlyn Hammond

One of the things I love about the Burnley gardens is that no matter the time of year, there is always something blooming. We are living through very challenging times, and with everything that is happening, it is easy to despair. But just like our gorgeous gardens, there is always something blooming—you just have to know where to look. If you are looking to stay or get involved with Burnley activities, check out our socials: Insta: @UMSUburnley / Facebook: facebook.com/burnleystudentassociation Stay safe and stay bright!

Disabilities | Brigit Doyle and Lindsay Tupper-Creed

UMSU Disabilities has been busy returning to the online world once again. Fresh off a careers workshop, we’re gearing up for regular Disability and Queer x Disability collectives, as well as trivia, AUSLAN and more! Behind the scenes, we’ve been taking a look at what the University’s up to with mental health and seeing what we can do. We’re here to help, so please (virtually) drop by or reach out to us to ask anything you might desire!

No report submitted.

UMSU

Indigenous | Shanysa McConville

People of Colour | Emily AlRamadhan and Mohamed Omer

Hey everyone! Hope you’re staying safe in lockdown! The POC department has been doing all our initiatives online (like collectives and workshops) so we are still running! Come along to our events over the semester, workshops are happening every fortnight and they have insightful discussions into specialised topics relating to racism. See you soon!

Activities | Phoebe Chen

We’ve been hard at work to get Bands, Bevs & BBQs going again! Lockdown 6.0 might’ve made things a bit difficult, and while we can’t have an in-person program for the next few weeks, we’re in the process of contacting bands, film crews and sound engineers to sort out some amazing, high-quality online gigs which you can stream FREE and ON DEMAND from the comfort of your own bedroom. While we can’t get on the beers with you (yet), or grab a succulent snack or three, we highly recommend you watch these with BYO bevs and BBQ.

Queer | Amelia Bright and Laura Ehrensperger

Greetings, Queers! We were so pleased to be bring you the “Villainous Glamour” Queer Ball online on 30 September! Thank you for bringing your sparkliest, most sinister glitter for an evening being gay and doing crimes. Also in the Queer Department, the Dean of Arts has not accepted the recommendations of QPAC’s Request for Review of the subject PHIL20046: “Feminism”. This is very disappointing, but we are committed to working with UMSU Education to have this issue heard at the highest levels of university governance, and then to external regulators if necessary.

Southbank | Leyla Moxham & Jamie Kim

Will Hall, Southbank Campus Coordinator, has recently resigned. We would like to thank him for the amazing work that he did for Southbank students for the last 18 months. The Southbank Campus Committee has also passed a motion to spend approximately $4000 for pandemic-relief grocery vouchers to provide necessary financial support to Southbank students. The Arts industries are still affected by the lockdowns in Victoria, and a large population of Southbank students are casual workers. Therefore, they require further welfare and financial services. Jamie and Leyla, the Southbank Campus Activities and Education Officers, are very passionate about this project.

Welfare | Hue Man Dang No report submitted.

Women’s | Srishti Chatterjee and Mickhaella Ermita

Hello!!! This month is the National Student Safety Survey, and the Women’s Officers have been busy advocating for trauma-informed policy changes that centre student safety. We saw the Uni’s policy, collected student responses and wrote to them a BIG LETTER telling them they must always do better. Alongside that, Mickhaella and Srishti have missed each other in lockdown, and are running collectives for people to catch up with their pals!!! Judy’s Punch, our autonomous magazine, is now being made by our wonderful team, and we’re so excited!!! Come along to our last few collectives, timings up on socials. Send us love, we’re tired.

Environment | Lynne Bian and Disha Zutshi

Hi!! We are Lynne and Disha, your new Environment Officers!! We are very excited to be able to work for the student body and mobilise students in supporting environmental activism through education and events. For the past couple of weeks, we have met up with the UMSU sustainability team hoping to collaborate. We have also supported our student collective, especially the Community Garden in order to help them with organising events with the goal of inviting everyone to learn about environmental activism. We have also collaborated with the Creative Arts department where we sponsored the sustainability award for Mudfest.

UMSU

UMSU Updates G’day! So apparently, it’s already the end of semester, like…how? I hope others aren’t as behind as I am in lectures and readings! Last time I wrote one of these, I think I said that “we hope to see some kind of return to normalcy in Semester 2”, and talked about how important it was to begin a return to campus. How short-sighted I was. There’s not really an easy way to look at it—this is crap and it’s a really difficult time for all of us as students. Many have lost hours at work, or lost jobs completely, and there still is lackluster support from the Federal Government on this. Lots are living alone, disconnected from friends and family, and indeed we still see no plan on how our international student community may be able to return to Melbourne. All of these factors mean that performing well in our subjects isn’t exactly an easy task. Obviously, I am sure that like for myself, seeing the WAMnesty come back into place this semester has been a massive relief for all. It is important that the University continues to adapt to student needs during this time. But also, do not forget that UMSU is here to help you. We’re your voice on campus, so when something doesn’t go to plan, never hesitate to reach out. If you need support, we’re here for you, whether that be in your degree, or life more generally. All students have access to our free Legal and Advocacy service, and our elected student representatives and departments are always happy to help you out too. This pandemic is a really really tricky time for all of us, but that’s what we’re here for. UMSU departments are continuing to run online events to keep everyone as connected as possible during these times—I highly recommend checking out the events calendar on the website. Maybe now is also a time to join one of our fantastic clubs that you’ve always wanted to join—meet new people and get involved. But mainly, stay safe, stay well and if you ever need support, get in touch. Jack Buksh UMSU President president@union.unimelb.edu.au

08 01

Illustrated by Rohith Sundaresa Prabhu

NEWS Artwork by Anannya Musale

NEWS

content warning: violence, terrorism, death, climate change

NEWS-IN-BRIEF Written by Micol Carmignani, Megan Tan Tan and Charlene Phua G20 Summit to Tackle COVID-19 Impact

Jeff Bezos goes to Space

The G20 Summit this year is scheduled to take place from October 30 to 31 in Rome, Italy. In the G20, short for ‘Group of Twenty’, government leaders from 19 countries and the European Union come together to address global economic issues. With the COVID-19 pandemic and following recession, this year’s G20 Summit is set to discuss the compounding systemic issues of inequality paramount in recovering the economic and social impact of the virus.

Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and wealthiest person on earth, went on an 11-minute journey to space in July of this year. He did so with his company, Blue Origin, which he founded in 2000 to supposedly enable a future where millions of people live and work in space. However, his expedition was not well received by most, with the main criticism being directed towards the 5.5 billion dollars he invested in his trip to space while millions of people struggle to purchase necessities.

Taliban Reseize Power in Afghanistan The Taliban, an Islamic fundamentalist group, have seized power in Afghanistan after the former US President, Donald Trump, negotiated a troop withdrawal following twenty years of military occupation. This will see a reinstitution of Sharia law, an Islamic legal system which subjugated girls and women within society throughout the Taliban’s power from 1996 to 2001. Shortly following their recent seize, the Taliban released a statement vowing to respect women’s rights within the framework of Islam, although political analysts say their conduct thus far is not consistent with such claims.

A major earthquake struck Haiti at 8:30am on 14 August, 2021—almost 11 years after the country experienced a devastating quake in 2010. The death toll, initially reported to be 277, has risen to 2,207, according to authorities. 344 people have been missing and 12,268 injured. The magnitude 7.2 earthquake’s epicentre was found eight kilometers from the town of Petit Trou de Nippes. The town was 150 kilometers away from the capital. Tropical Storm Grace also touched down a few days after the quake, leading to more unrest in the aftermath. Organisations such as Hope for Haiti and World Vision are currently offering aid.

IPCC Climate Change Report: Code Red for Humanity

Wildfires Burning Up in Greece and Turkey

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a Working Group 1 report on 9 August 2021. The report warned of crossing the 1.5 degree Celsius threshold in 20 years if immediate action is not taken to slow down global warming. United Nations secretary António Guterres said in a statement that “the alarm bells are deafening,” adding that the IPCC report is a “code red for humanity.” The report also warned of more extreme weather as the climate warms. The IPCC stated that it is “unequivocal” that human activity has caused the atmosphere to warm, and that countries should take actions such as shifting to renewable energy or reducing waste to mitigate the impacts of climate change.

On 6 August 2021, The Guardian reported that wildfires were “burning out of control” in Greece and Turkey. In Greece, a large wildfire north of Athens caused one fatality, while in Turkey, fires along the southern coast have resulted in ten deaths. Firefighters were battling at least 56 wildfires in Greece. Authorities also evacuated six neighbourhoods in Turkey, with at least 36,000 people displaced. Officials said that the current climate crisis may be to blame, as the temperatures in Greece had risen to 45 degrees celsius. Other countries such as France, Romania, Cyprus and Croatia have sent additional firefighters to help Greece and Turkey battle the flames.

Tokyo 2020 Olympics

Snap Lockdowns in Australia

After several delays caused by the pandemic, the Tokyo Olympic Games ran from 23 July to 8 August 2021. The Games saw a whopping 339 events across 33 sports held across 41 different venues in Japan’s capital city.

As the Delta variant spread rapidly throughout the country, Melbourne entered it’s fifth lockdown since the pandemic began. The fifth lockdown came as a result of the resurgence of COVID-19 cases during late July and early August. Premier Daniel Andrews has indicated that the lockdown will not be lifted until the state hits 80 per cent full vaccination rates. This is not expected until early November. At time of print, NSW had just left its most recent lockdown, while the ACT’s lockdown remains in place.

Australia had a successful Olympics, with one of the highlights being skateboarder Keegan Palmer who won the gold medal in the men’s park—scoring 94.04 and 95.83 out of 100. This was the final skateboarding event during the sports inaugural competition.

10 01

7.2 Magnitude Earthquake Strikes Haiti

Illustrated by Marco Sy

Connection in The Time of COVID-19 COVID-19 has periodically forced both official University events and various student organisations’ events online, bringing unique challenges to event organisers and educators. Despite efforts to maintain normalcy, these changes have undoubtedly changed how students interact with each other, for better or for worse.

The experience has been disappointing, given that Banavalikar sees social events as “integral” to university experience.

International students suffer uniquely from the disadvantages of online university. Tun Xiang Foo, a student currently based in Malaysia, participated in several online events, but was unimpressed. In an event that included group activities, he found that there was “no opportunity to get to know your teammates,” and that it was “too fast-paced to form connections”.

The situation is more variable for domestic students. Secretary of the Publishing Students Society, Charlotte Armstrong, organised this year’s Online Publishing Crawl. Usually an in-person walking tour, Armstrong opted to move the event online. She found this new platform made organisation easier, the event “more accessible” and provided the opportunity to speak with publishing houses not based in Melbourne.

He found another event, a trivia night hosted by LING—Melbourne University Linguistics Society—to be better and more enjoyable. This is because it was hosted on gather.town, rather than Zoom. He felt that there were “certain spaces where you can talk to people,” and that it was “more like real life.” However, he expressed grievance with the fact that he was still paying full fees for an inferior version of the university experience. “The Uni[versity]’s official position is that the quality is the same, but it’s not.” “Uni[versity] isn’t just for getting a degree… To me, you’re paying for the ‘experience’… Can you imagine paying the SSAF [Student Services and Amenities Fee], but then not being able to access events that are on campus?” Another international student, Pavani Athukorala, experienced something similar whilst organising events for the University of Melbourne Student Union (UMSU) Media Department. She found online and offline events strikingly different, saying, “In-person events were greatly popular… the online events only had about… four to five participants”. “It’s so demoralising when so few people come to online events.” Nishtha Banavalikar, another international student, organised events for UMSU International throughout 2020 and found speed friending events to be initially enjoyable. However, as the pandemic dragged on, she pointed out that Zoom fatigue “hit… coordinators and participants alike”. This year, Banavalikar has continued to struggle with participation in her events, particularly due to difficulties in advertising online events. “…It feels like Facebook event notifiers just get lost in a sea of identical ones.”

NEWS

Written by Donna Burroughs

“The social element is huge… It’s truly a loss to the uni[versity] experience as a whole.”

She spoke of some difficulties, such as the inability to participate in “interpersonal chats” and a “diminished” ability to network. Despite this, Armstrong was optimistic about the potential for online events to increase accessibility. She said they could “open up the university experience to… people who may not have been able to go before”. Others have had different experiences. Harrison Langdon, a firstyear science student, found that online social events were “not really worth [his] time.” As a college resident, he expressed great interest in “on-campus activities,” feeling that he was “more likely to forget” to attend online events. It’s not just college residents who prefer on-campus activities. Elina Pugacheva lives an hour from the city, but prefers on-campus events, saying that online events were “just not the same,” despite the “convenience” of reduced travel time. She shared the same sentiment as Banavalikar, saying that “uni[versity] is not just about getting [a] degree… the social aspect and the academic are both important”/ The lockdowns and restrictions that have characterised the past two years have undoubtedly had negative impacts on mental health. Despite their best efforts, organisers and participants of online events may be hard-pressed to find any positive mental health benefits from such activities. Psychological studies conducted on participants of multiple age groups across the world have consistently found that online communication pales in comparison to face-to-face interaction when it comes to improving mental health. For Athukorala, this was particularly evident. “Online uni[versity] events… do absolutely nothing… to help your mental health. What would help my mental health is maybe a tuition fee reduction… maybe being allowed back… into the country…”

Illustrated by Marco Sy

NEWS

Written by Charlene Phua & Sabrina Lee

NEWS

Zoom or Doom? Yet another COVID semester has gone by. However, this time we sat at an awkward halfway point between online and in-person courses and activities—a strange place between skepticism and hope for the end of the pandemic. While offshore students treaded lightly with the knowledge of Melbourne’s ongoing border closures and lockdowns, we asked some of them about their atypical fresher experience. Primary concerns of international students included the neglect and lack of reparations from the University and higher-up government institutions, considering they are the highest-paying group of students. Australia’s broader approach to international students has also been regarded as discriminatory, where citizens and resident students are allowed into the country but not international students, even if they are travelling from the same place. These points, amongst others, were raised in our discussions with students. * Cherry: “I’m an offshore student who’s about to start my second semester online. While students onshore are going back to their normal life, we’re slowly being forgotten and there are less and less programs provided for us. I believe the Australian Government doesn’t care much about international students stranded overseas given that most of them are too ‘far into the degree’ to transfer or withdraw. Given how the University advertised their courses, many new offshore students applied believing that they can enter Australia soon. Studying online makes me feel like I’m wasting all my time and money just to study something I won’t even remember after the exams. Us international students paying full fees makes it worse. No fee reduction, no university experience, just recorded lectures and Zoom. I know friends who are taking their time off, some doing reduced study loads, some just transferring out altogether. After Semester 2 if there is no sign of border opening I’ll explore my options of transferring to another university.” Raghav: “I don’t feel like demeaning the University because the education and the content [it is] providing is really great but I’m sure that if the lockdown [stays] put for a few more months, most international students are just going to transfer to another university because this is just depressing. As an international student, it was hard for me to see that the local students were able to attend uni and socialise while I was still sitting on my study table paying $20,000 for watching videos which I could find on Khan academy as well. I used to attend classes at 4am ... and it was really messing up my schedule and mental health. Socially, it’s been very hard to make friends and socialise which is basically what the first year is about but sadly I’ve never found it harder to connect with people.” Tamara: “I see my peers and I grow impatient [every day] of the possibility of having to complete the entirety of our course on Zoom from our bedroom. Personally, having graduated [high school] just before the world went virtual, the whole online experience was completely new. To describe it in one word, it was bland. I have always been the student that would speak up and interact with the content being taught, and to not be able to do that made lessons automatically boring. Even though the University tried its best to create in-person-like online experiences through workshops and tutorials, it ended up lacking in more places than it was enriching. Whilst it’s felt extremely unfair to us as international students, to be shut off with no foresight of ever entering the country and being on campus, we understand that these measures are being taken only because of the unprecedented times surrounding us. However, as an international student who is paying almost 4 times that of the regular fees, I would hope that the accessibility to professors and the academics was smoother.” * Looking at these experiences shared by international students, one thing remains clear: online learning has brought significant challenges. The issues of time differences, pre-recorded lectures, coupled with an isolated university experience takes away key elements of connectivity and engagement. To combat some of these challenges, university organisations like UMSU have sought to create a sense of community among international students through online events. Overseas students can also try to find other UniMelb students in the same country as them through social media, and arrange meetups. But even so, these efforts cannot replace that sweet in-person experience. Will Zoom university forever be the norm—and how many international students will be willing to suck it up?

Illustrated by Jasmine Pierce

NEWS

OPINION: How Can UMSU International Improve Future Elections? Written by Vanessa Chan When the results of the University of Melbourne Student Union International’s (UMSU INTL) annual general elections popped up on my Facebook news feed, as an international student, I was excited to see who would be representing our community in the following year. However, when I saw how few votes had been cast in the election, I was shocked. Only 1,140, or just over one per cent, had made their choice out of more than 20,000 international students. This low turnout raises concerns over UMSU INTL’s current electoral process. So, what should UMSU INTL do to boost student engagement in future elections? More time for better preparation “Fast” is the best word to summarise UMSU INTL’s current election procedure—10 days from the candidate information session to end of nominations; the week after, the policy speech session; two days after, the voting period. Although this can provide quick election results to impatient voters, it leaves candidates with little time to prepare. Compared to the UMSU General Elections, where candidates have at least four weeks to prepare for the election from the last day of submitting their nomination forms from the day nominations close, the hasty pace of UMSU INTL’s elections exhausts candidates. As Disha Zutshi, a presidential candidate put it, “They [UMSU INTL] do not give us a lot of time to really make our own materials, so it is like a mess […] five to six days [for campaigning] will be appropriate, keep in mind the population of the body.” Haste smashes the one and only chance of standing out in an almost completely online/virtual election.

This election was also sidelined due to its fully virtual nature. Indeed, we miss the time when candidates in their campaigning shirts stopped us on the way to Baillieu Library, introduced their policies and distributed colourful leaflets. The ambience on campus can never be replaced by fully online activities. Sufficient time is key to compensate for the reduced quality of preparation. UMSU INTL, which was approved to be an autonomous body in a recent UMSU Special General Meeting, can decide to extend the period after internal consensus. Then, the future of the UMSU INTL President, Vice-Presidents, Directors and Officers can be better known amongst the international student cohort. Alter inconsistent regulations on candidates Currently, candidates are only allowed to campaign during the voting period. In other words, they have only three days to reach out to voters on social media, which is the major platform used to explain policies during the pandemic. Nevertheless, students are easily overwhelmed by the information overload brought on by social media, leading to them selectively ignoring crucial election messages. This makes it hard for voters to make informed decisions? A longer campaign period could ease the digestion of election information. Moreover, the UMSU General Elections do not have such regulations on their candidates’ campaigning period. Perhaps, UMSU INTL’s regulations could be given an equally long voting period with UMSU’s to indicate that the international student community is just as important to the University.

Illustrated by Chelsea Rozario

NEWS

Throwing back to the voting period, I personally couldn’t even tell you what most of the candidates on the ballot looked like this year, as many missed the policy speech session, likely due to classes or other commitments. The absentee candidates lost a massive chance to present their policies to voters. Moreover, an anonymous international student explained that they did not have incentives to attend the three-hourlong session “unless we have friends that are one of the candidates”. Therefore, UMSU INTL should have a backup plan to assist these candidates in fulfilling their obligations. The student suggested that candidates could “make a video introducing themselves and why we should vote [for them]”. Another solution could be a text version of policy speeches. This could enable voters to quickly understand who is interested in being their future Union representatives. Diversify forms of promotions

students’ experience at the University, of the need to step out of their comfort zone to strengthen the bond between UMSU INTL and international students. If students cannot recognise future committees, the work of UMSU INTL will be stuck in an infinite loop—starting from a gorgeous plan, leading to successful events and changes on campus, yet students do not know who has contributed to them, so they have little interest to vote. Due to the global pandemic, international students need UMSU INTL, who represents them, strives for compassionate changes from the University and provides adequate support to get through tough times. Therefore, changes in regulations and promotions are urgently needed to raise the recognition of UMSU INTL’s central committee amongst international students.

UMSU INTL shares quality information about candidates on social media to disseminate election information to international students. Building on this, they should seek greater relevance within the international student community. UMSU INTL could collaborate with different national student associations within the University to broaden their audience. Hence, more students can stay well-informed about updates on the elections. The circumstances of the 2021 UMSU INTL election should alert the central committee, who can vote to change the regulations, and allocate resources to optimise international

Illustrated by Chelsea Rozario

NEWS

University Reverses WAM Policy Despite Mass Petition Written by Vanessa Chan AMENDMENT: Since time of writing, WAMnesty has been implemented for Semester 2. Details can be found on the Academic Board homepage and the UMSU website A petition conducted by the University of Melbourne Student Union (UMSU) Education Department recently called for the extension of Weighted Average Mark (WAM) adjustments for Semester One 2021. However, over 20,000 signatures failed to convince the University to review the importance of the compassionate policy to both domestic and international students. On 15 July, UMSU Education, the Graduate Student Association (GSA) and UMSU International sent out a joint statement via email, updating students on the response from the University:

While students generally agree that the safety net of WAM adjustment has somewhat protected them from the unpredictable academic damage of the pandemic, the University’s spokesperson recently argued that the current, un-adjusted policy is adequate. Specifically, they highlighted that preparation, flexibility and existing special consideration for compassionate or compelling circumstances are enough to overcome any student difficulties.

“Although the University acknowledges that the lockdown disrupted students’ learning, the University has unfairly dismissed our call to continue the WAM Adjustment policy in Semester 1, 2021.”

“For 2021, the University worked hard to inform students of subject delivery modes and normal WAM arrangements well before the start of the semester, giving students increased certainty when planning their studies,” said the spokesperson.

It would later state:

“Flexibility has been offered to students wishing to defer their studies, vary their study load, take a leave of absence, or seek support services through virtual channels.”

“It is disappointing that the collective voices of over 20,000 students meant so little to the University. On an issue as crucial as this, the University chose to sideline students in their decision-making process.” Despite a snap lockdown in Melbourne in Week 12 of Semester 1 and ongoing COVID-19 outbreaks in many countries, the joint statement directly quoted the University admitting that the changes to WAM policy in 2020 were based on “the transition in teaching delivery services rather than the wellbeing of our students”. In 2020, UMSU introduced the ‘WAMnesty’ campaign and successfully lobbied for a change in WAM assessment. Under the 2020 WAM policy adjustments, any subject marks that lowered a student’s existing WAM were excluded from calculations and would be flagged on a student’s transcript with a caret (^). Subject marks that improved or maintained a student’s WAM were valid however, and would appear as normal. Studying online is not yet the new normal. The quality of course delivery, face-to-face social interaction and campus life in general have all suffered with an online-centric university. These are concerns that the students have raised since the first online classes kicked off in March 2020, and with this recent decision they have been newly disregarded. The unexpected changes hit the academic performance of some students hard in 2020. Mark, a third-year domestic student, received two fails on his 2020 transcript but due to the adjusted calculation, his WAM was not negatively affected. Now he is worried about his grades for Semester 1 this year, when Melbourne entered another lockdown the week before the examination period. “My WAM [of Semester 2, 2020] was essentially saved, and [I] was hoping that it [the 2021 petition] would pass, given that I was uncertain about the outcome of my exams this semester,” he said. Mark also raised concerns that future employers may take his WAM into consideration when hiring, which would affect his career pathway:

“People say it’s about ‘experience’, whether it be [via] internships or not, but I’m sure WAM does play a part.”

“Individual students experiencing difficulties receive the support they need and those students who are not experiencing difficulties continue with their studies under normal WAM arrangements.” However, the joint statement for the WAM adjustments petition published by UMSU also highlights the legislative issues overseas students are facing—they may not be able to access support services provided by the University, such as counselling and telehealth. Even those in Australia are reportedly facing monthlong wait times for telehealth consultations. As a result, students everywhere are left unable to address their mental health issues immediately and appropriately. Irina is a Malaysian undergraduate student whose city has been in and out of lockdown since March 2020. She is anxious that her plan of pursuing an Honours degree next year may be scrapped without a high WAM. “Without the ‘WAMnesty’, I had two subjects this semester that were lower than my current WAM, which prevented my overall WAM from increasing. So I might have some difficulties trying to find a suitable research lab for my Honours,” she says. “To be honest, this only partially contributes to my post-grad uncertainty; most of my stress right now comes from my current lockdown situation and the border closure.” The pandemic is still preventing students from taking classes normally. The University should take a global perspective to evaluate the long-term impacts of COVID-19 on the wellbeing of all its students. Apart from increasing the capacity of Counselling and Psychological Services (CAPS) and developing an integrated wellbeing framework (as outlined in the aforementioned joint statement), the University should listen to the thousands of students humbly requesting a review on a controversial decision. Maybe then they could authentically show the “flexibility” and “compassion” that they have emphasised.

Illustrated by Rai

NEWS

content warning: ableism, mental illness

“Please Don’t Ask If We’ve Tried Yoga”: Students Fighting for Disability Support

accessing disability services at the University.

Written by Aeva Milos

“You come in with official documentation asking for support with a chronic condition and they ask you if you exercise”.

University is expected to be an exciting and exhilarating experience for students as they step into the freedom of adulthood. Jan Sam, who began studying at the University of Melbourne in 2018, has instead been in a tug of war with the University for accessibility support. They are one of an increasing number of students demanding greater action from the University to increase inclusivity and accessibility assistance.

For many students with a disability, a great concern has been the lack of closed-captioned lectures. The Disability Team within SEDS has been accused of being slow with the captioning process, placing students in an academically compromised position.

Jan has mobility issues and visual impairment due to an underlying and untreated medical condition. Last year, after a serious collapse on campus one day, Jan was told they would receive a call from Student Equity and Disability Support (SEDS) to discuss learning accommodations. Students who apply for Special Consideration through SEDS are eligible to have adjustments made to their studies to ensure they are not disadvantaged in their learning. This can include captioned lectures, academic extensions and use of physically accessible spaces. However, Jan accidentally missed the call from SEDS. After trying to contact them again, they were told that no one had called them, even though there was a voicemail from the department that showed otherwise. Jan then decided to book an appointment with SEDS, but they never heard from the department ever again.

Luana tried to organise a meeting with SEDS to get an Academic Adjustment Plan, but was met with repudiation. “It was 30 minutes of the Stop 1 person testing my medical condition and asking me if I’d tried yoga. I mean… sounds like a joke, yeah?”

“It makes me angry because we shouldn’t have to fight for closed captioning in the first place if the University thinks it emphasises diversity and inclusivity,” said Jan. The pandemic has further shed light on how poor the University has been in providing resources to students in need of assistance with their learning. Prior to COVID-19, Luana was told by the University that in-person attendance was compulsory, even though she stated she was in too much pain to attend. “It’s a pretty ableist move, and it’s infuriating that it took a pandemic for them to make classes more acceptable,” she said, referring to the online transition the University undertook last year. According to a spokesperson, the University is developing a new Disability Inclusion Action Plan that is expected to outline how they aim to foster a more accessible system for the next several years. “[We’re] introducing a new team structure to better align with student needs,” said the spokesperson.

“It was a very disheartening experience,” Jan said. “I was forced to take a leave of absence as I wasn’t able to cope with both my studies and disabilities due to the lack of accommodations and support.” Approximately one in five Australians live with a disability. Additionally, the Australian Network on Disability suggests that 18.9 per cent of people with disabilities aged between 15–24 years face discrimination because of their conditions. Under the Disability Discrimination Act 1992, ‘disability’ is broadly defined to encompass all different types of conditions, including physical, intellectual, sensory, learning and neurological just to name a few. However, despite extensive legal protections provided under the Act, individuals whose disabilities are classified as ‘invisible’—that is, a disability that is not clearly physically debilitating, like chronic pain and autism—still have to battle against being invalidated and questioned about the seriousness of their situation. Aruma, an Australian disability service, suggests that of the Australians who live with a disability, 90 per cent have a disability that is regarded as ‘invisible’. Third-year student Luana Donadon also had a difficult experience

“I don’t ‘look’ sick, and people tend to not believe how much my disability impacts me because of it,” she said.

“We are constantly learning from our experiences and those of our students, undertaking critical reflection on our systems, structures, attitudes and behaviours, and implementing actions to effect change, to become more welcome and inclusive.” Despite the University’s push to make learning accessible, through programs such as SEDS and Access Melbourne, there have yet to be endorsements from students that these programs are appropriate. Instead, students feel silenced and powerless in an institution that should be prioritising its student body and ensuring an equal and inclusive environment. “People with disabilities are human beings who deserve to be valued and respected,” Jan said. “I hope no one ever feels as though they have to prove their disability in order to be supported.” “And for crying out loud, please don’t ask if we’ve tried yoga,” Luana said. If you or someone you know is struggling with accessing disability services, you can reach out to UMSU Advocacy for further support.

Illustrated by Zoe Eyles

nonfiction Artwork by Nina Hughes

NON-FICTION

Why Noise Music is the Only Genre That Sounds Better Online Written by Evan Keith Like most music fans, I didn’t go to many shows in 2020. After a few short months of life going on as normal, the world closed down for who knew how long, and with the closure of work and school came the end of live music in public spaces. Just as with every aspect of life in 2020, the world of musical performance was pushed online. Most musicians struggled to adapt to the technological constraints of online musical performance, and some whole genres fell to the wayside—the impossibility of large ensembles meant that most performance styles were hideously impractical, if not impossible. Orchestras, choirs, and bands haphazardly cobbled together stripped-back reimaginings of their work, compatible with the stifling environment of high-latency, lowquality Zoom conference calls. But meanwhile, there was another style of musical performance that better managed the move to cyberspace, due in part to its curious relationship with digital technology itself. That genre is noise music. First of all, what is noise music? To those who have not heard the term before, the idea of ‘noise music’ seems self-contradictory: ‘noise’ is sound that is in some way unwanted, an inconvenience created as the consequence of another action rather than a sound created and desired for itself. Music, on the other hand, is the opposite: sound which’s creation is the action itself. A piano sonata is music; a jackhammer breaking up concrete is noise. The purpose of the piano is to create music, the noise of the jackhammer is only a sound produced incidentally in the fulfilment of another purpose: the creation of a new road, for instance. ‘Noise music,’ therefore, is any sort of musical performance that distorts or subverts this relationship. Noise music takes the sounds typically associated with incidental sound-making and examines them on their own terms. The clatter of a jackhammer, the buzz of a malfunctioning machine, the feedback of a guitar amplifier: these are the noisemaker’s instruments.

As with many of the most fringe-bound artistic mediums of the modern era, noise music first began to emerge in post-war Japan. This early noise music was responding to the inherent contradictions of Japan’s post-war miracle; the social alienation created by the country’s hyper-focus on economic and technological progress. Like so many of the artistic movements that began in Japan, the genre quickly expanded into the usual list of first-world liberal democracies known for their artistic tolerance of generally weird shit: the US, UK, (West) Germany, France, etc. Today, noise music is just about the most global music form you can imagine. While it hasn’t become a dominant or even popular genre anywhere, just about every country where you can get your hands on a computer and some broken electrical equipment is probably home to at least one individual making something they call ‘noise music’ in their garage or a public park. One thing that makes noise music unique among musical genres—and for this reason uniquely good at attracting a genuinely international community of listeners – is that it isn’t beholden to the frameworks and limitations of a particular cultural lineage or musical tradition in the same way other genres are. Every other modern style of music is linked to a heritage of music before it that the listener needs to be familiar with if they want to understand it. Intuitively hearing a rock guitar progression as it is ‘supposed to be heard’ requires a familiarity as a listener with the use of functional harmony, a framework which rock inherits from the Western classical tradition. Jazz, on the other hand, finds its lineage in West African traditional music, which brings with it a different, more modal, conceptualisation of harmony. Every modern style of music inherits the frameworks, structures, and stylings of the musical tradition that precedes it. Every style, that is, except for noise. Since the idea of noise is built on the rejection of tradition, it is equally alien to all preceding musical cultures. It has no system of intonation, no harmonic system of organisation, and no structure binding it to one culture over another. It is to all

NON-FICTION Illustrated by Vivian Li

listeners foreign, unfamiliar, and confrontational.

“If you want to talk about something that’s universal, it might be that this music is probably as close to being universally disliked as anything by most people.” —David Novak, ethnomusicologist and author of Japanoise: Music at the Edge of Circulation

As well as having a curious relationship with other musical cultures and styles, noise has a strange relationship to technology. Noise is a modern phenomenon in no small part because it requires amplification to be performed. Many noise performers today use laptops as part of their music, while other more orthodox noisemakers rely instead on more primitive consumer electronics—contact microphones, simple circuits, ordinary machines from everyday life bent and broken to produce the most hideous sounds that can be drawn out of them. For these reasons, noise musicians and their fans skew towards being very media and technology aware, and noise fans will often congregate in and around digital spaces.

noise scene is for a love of noise music. Furthermore, since noise is a genre without a ‘music industry’ in the conventional sense, most of the transmission of noise music tends to be from fan to fan, often over the internet.

“This community based on favours and friendship rather than monetary value/business/lies is the most valuable creation to ever come out of the genre.” —Dawid Kowalski, Polish noise musician (a.k.a Purgist)

For all these reasons, I think noise is the only genre that is truly suited to the performance setting of 2020 and the future—the online show. It needs no grandiose ensembles, it is already transmitted online, and it does not rely on physical ticket sales to sustain itself. On top of this, it sports a fanbase that values community over commerce, that transcends cultural boundaries, and that lives by and through the internet. In this new world in which ever-more of our interactions are mediated through alienating communications technology, noise is just about the only sort of music that makes any sense.

This, of course, lies seemingly at odds with the fact that quite a lot of noise music is created through the destruction of technology. The most innovative noise musicians are not simply using electronics in the way they are supposed to be used. In fact, it is somewhat of a badge of honour in noise circles to have been able to manipulate a seemingly ordinary consumer device into something capable of terrifying auditory results, and even more so when those results turn out to be physically dangerous to the performer. As you may have guessed, performing noise music is rarely a profitable endeavour. Audiences at physical shows tend to be small and rely on word of mouth, and noise artists tend to avoid mainstream circulation of their recorded music simply by virtue of its style. However, this can lead to a dynamic of greater authenticity than in other styles of music. Since there is ‘no money in it’, as it were, the only reason anybody ever enters the

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Older

Written by Anindya Setiawan

*inspired by Nightly’s ‘Older’

I found a grey hair today. I wanted to pluck it so badly. To pull it. Inspect it. Make sure it wasn’t just my eyes playing tricks on me. I looked at my reflection in the mirror for such a long time that for the slightest second, I’d forgotten what I was even doing there in the first place. Then I was back, as my eyes fixated on the silver glimmer of my very first grey hair under the harsh bathroom lighting on a winter morning. On the tram, I thought about when I was seven and my grandpa asked me to pull out his greys when they had just started emerging. He’d sit on a lawn chair—the plastic kind that’d been in the family for generations and yet never seemed to break—facing the backyard with a cup of coffee in hand. An iced cappuccino that was always way too sweet and filled to the top. I’d stand up on a stool behind him with a tweezer in hand. Then, I’d start pulling. When I got tired, grandpa would bribe me with coins for my piggy bank, an ice cream from the back of the freezer (hidden from all the other cousins) or let me feed the stray cats of the neighbourhood. The list went on. It would always work. We had the best times. Over the course of the entire day, and then week, all I kept thinking about was that one damn strand of hair. Am I growing older, without truly realising it? Were moments passing me by? On a rainy Thursday night, I called home only to cry afterwards. Things were piling up. My cousins were working, my friends were moving on. When my parents were my age, they had their plans set up. Meanwhile, I was stuck listening to the same songs on repeat and memorising every beat. I couldn’t help but think, what if I’d taken a different route? What if I’d decided to study science the way everyone in high school had expected me to? Would I be feeling any differently now? At the end of the week, I decided to clear out my wardrobe. I needed a change, and it felt like a start. Yet, as I folded my old Disney pyjamas into a box, ready to be sent off, I couldn’t help but feel the gravity of its significance. It scared me—the fact that I was getting older as my life stayed the same. Before bed, I scrolled through my camera roll for a little while and a photo from when I was seven popped up. There was a sinking feeling in my stomach that spread to my chest, and I clutched my phone a little tighter in my grip. My grandpa’s hair turned fully grey a few years after, and eventually, our little hairdresser moment came to an end. It became clear to me that I’ll never be able to keep up with my life. Things are changing continuously, from one day to the next. You can’t freeze time. After breakfast comes lunch, then dinner—with snacks in between. Moving out from somewhere meant moving into another place. I’ll find another grey hair soon, and maybe then, I’ll be brave enough to pluck it out. I’ll flush it down the toilet and go on with my day, head full of jet-black hair even under the sharp bathroom light. Perhaps by then, I’ll be a little bit more okay with the idea of the unknown. Or maybe I won’t. Either way, I’ll still be the same person—the exact age I’m supposed to be right there and then. I’ll be me, led by all my past decisions. Sitting tight on this emotional rollercoaster, I hope to make friends with fear as it is the seemingly wrong decisions that always turn out to be the absolute right ones. I’m no good at getting older, but maybe that’s all part of the plan.

Illustrated by Torsten Strokirch

Written by Gina Song

NON-FICTION

Charlotte (Helen Moffett) Book Review Not many people finish Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice wondering about the fate of Charlotte Lucas. Post-canon interrogations of the novel have included: What if a murder happened on the Pemberley estate? What if Elizabeth Bennet was a millennial vlogger? What if zombies attacked England? All the above questions have been placed before: Whatever happened to Elizabeth’s friend, Charlotte? The absence of Charlotte Lucas in modern retellings of Pride and Prejudice is understandable on paper. Charlotte marries arguably the most insufferable man in the novel (Wickham might have been a rake but at least he was entertaining) in a passionless, economically motivated marriage. In comparison to the stirring will-they-won’tthey of Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth, Charlotte’s life appears cold and unfulfilling. Like Elizabeth, the reader observes Charlotte’s marriage as a necessary, pitiful evil. For a woman of thirty, with no dowry or remarkable beauty, Charlotte is what is known in Victorian England as a ‘woman with no prospects’— shown to be a polite euphemism for ‘old hag’. Enter Helen Moffett’s debut novel Charlotte—both a re-telling of the events of Pride and Prejudice and a continuation of the novel. Charlotte Lucas is introduced as both a shrewd rationalist and loving mother, reeling from the loss of her young son, Tom. The marriage between Charlotte and William Collins is treated by Moffett as less of a death sentence than a mutually beneficial partnership. In recent years, the marriage economy has seen a renewed critical interest, whether it be the lavish scheming of Bridgerton or whispers of a new Austen-style dating show. At its best, Charlotte emulates Austen’s own shrewd gaze of the marriage economy and the savviness required when your worth cannot be properly bartered. Confessions in the rain and marrying for love are possibilities if you have beauty and a dowry—but Charlotte Lucas must be calculative. At times, I wished the novel leaned further into the heroine’s savvy. Economic scheming can be narratively engaging (Austen’s own Emma and Lady Susan are evidence of this) while also critiquing the socioeconomic setting. In a confrontation with Lady Catherine, Charlotte is at her most engaging when forced to rely on her shrewd observations and economic know-how. This is the Charlotte Lucas that immediately recognised Bingley’s affections for Jane, who managed to finesse a marriage proposal only days after the man propositioned her best friend. At times, the novel spends too long in attempting to make these actions sympathetic instead of leaning into their scheming fun. Helen Moffett’s Charlotte is firmly located as a character study, likely appealing more to fans of the book than newer readers. For lovers of Austen, Moffet deftly re-introduces a well-loved universe through the eyes of a peripheral character while providing an interesting meditation on what constitutes as a romantic heroine.

Illustrated by Zoe Lau

ART 24

Illustrated by Melana Uceda

ART Illustrated by Joy Sha

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Ordinary Joys: This Column is Perfect Written by E.S. What was the best thing about school camp? Potentially the marshmallows toasted over the fire, seared to their ideal crispiness. Perhaps the chaos of group activities, building a raft out of miscellaneous items and venturing across the town river. Maybe the bus ride there—where the popular boys blasted their music—and everyone was zapped up on Skittles and sour snakes. But no. The best part of school camp was seeing your crush in their sweatpants and a hoodie. You had spent a whole year catching glances at them in two settings: the classroom, where you gazed at the back of their head three rows in front of you. And the playground, where you wistfully watched them steering the Year Five basketball team to victory. But now you got to see them hunched over a cereal bowl, rubbing sleep from their eyes at seven in the morning. You saw them queuing in line for the shower and loping around in washed-out trackies. How bizarre. How thrilling. The sweatpants changed everything. They showed a messiness, a more dishevelled dimension of young Jack (or was it Joel?). The sweat pants transformed the idealised version of him who existed only in school uniform between 9:00 a.m. and 3:30 p.m., Monday to Friday. Ten years later, I felt the same jolt of joy upon seeing my friend, who had always been immaculately put-together, sprawled on my couch with an emergency-grade hangover. I woke up next to her with a splitting headache. We spent the day dry heaving into twin buckets until the sun went down. Ciara ate a single box of Saladas while I downed glass after glass of electrolytes. We watched New Girl for six hours straight, pausing only to groan, “I’m never drinking again.” The night before, Ciara had been a vision, her eyelids dusted with gold, pearl-drop earrings catching the beams off the strobe lights. But I loved this next-day version of her just as much. I felt, as the hours stretched by, a slow strengthening of friendship. A layer of trust deepening with each glimpse at Ciara’s mascara-blotched face. Scruffy sweatpants and hangovers are the enemies of perfection. Perfection demands constant performance, perennial refinements. But there is something liberating and joyful about seeing someone’s imperfections and having them learn yours. In the messiness of other human beings, we can catch our breath. And so, perfection repels me. Granted, Kim Kardashian’s iconic 2019 Met Gala dress was a wonder. She looked like an ethereal mermaid rising from the ocean in a shimmering haze. But to create the impossible hourglass figure, KimK wore a corset designed by famous couturier Mister Pearl, a sartorial decision of which she said, “I have never felt pain like that in my life.” This night was four years after giving birth to her second child, Saint West. Kardashian’s waist was so cinched that she couldn’t sit down or use the bathroom. This seems an absurd price to pay for cultivating the ‘perfect’ silhouette; the perfect red carpet photo; the perfect woman. I used to detest being called perfect by a boy I loved in high school. He read my indignation as self-deprecation, an inability to see my own beauty. In fact, my resistance stemmed from white hot rage. Why would I want to be perfect? I wanted the psychic space to be mean sometimes, unforgiving sometimes, messy and selfish, reactive or lazy. I felt as stifled by these confines of perfection as Kim’s waist at the Met. Give me the choice of a sloppy hangover or aesthetic perfection. I’ve already grabbed the electrolytes.

Illustrated by Mochen Tang

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content warning: parental abuse, bullying, religious trauma, animal abuse, mentions of blood.

Carrie (1976): First Comes The Blood Written by Nishtha Banavalikar Carrie is a slow, tormentuous descent into madness bundled into a 97-minute visual mirage. It’s an excellent subversion of every notion one may have of the ‘coming-of-age’ film, almost forcing you to grapple with your naivety and childish expectations of hope and survival. No one survives the high school horrors of Carrie. Rather, what we see is a society cannibalising itself and a documentation of every step it took in its disastrous demise. The film cuts right to the chase with an introduction to Carrie’s fragile mental state. We see a slow-motion pan of a locker room, the ethereal glowing bodies of young girls who laugh and slap each other with towels like something out of a ‘70s soft porno. The film lulls us into relaxed voyeurship, coaxing us into hazy safety. Carrie hides in the back of the showers, the only one yet to bathe and hidden by hot curtains of steam. She touches herself and relaxes in her private corner when suddenly, she sees blood begin to trickle down her legs. Horrified, she screams out for help, convinced she’s dying. The other girls laugh and hysterically pelt her with tampons and pads as she screams and crawls into a corner. Their teacher, Miss Collins, breaks up the scene but not before Carrie bursts a light bulb in deliria. Her first experience of womanhood is terror both for herself and the people around her. This terror incites a telekinetic ability within Carrie, one the film ties with her emotions as an extension of her power, an observable impact to her surroundings and visualisation of the damage done to her by her environment. It’s a humanising experience for the audience to watch her abilities be triggered by her fragility, framing them as a self-defence mechanism. But her extremely religious mother dubs her powers as the manifestation of sin—insisting Carrie has been sinful when she gets the ‘curse’ of her period. “You should’ve told me, mama,” she cries, but her mother ignores every word. She tells Carrie, “first comes the blood, then comes the sin,” while Carrie weeps to be held. Her mother then drags her across the floor, hits her and

locks her in a wardrobe where Carrie is forced to pray to a crooked statue of a crucified Jesus. Her mother doesn’t talk to her like a mother, not even like a person, but instead as a prison guard forced to deal with the thing she hates the most everyday. For her mother, Carrie must be punished for allowing herself to fall victim to the sin that is womanhood. She prays for hours and then timidly thanks her mother before breaking down in the safety of her room. Afterwards, Carrie’s emotional state becomes more fragile and her powers continue to grow. Carrie takes a week off after her bathroom meltdown. The girls who ridiculed her get a week’s detention and two of the girls, Chris and Sue, take it personally. Sue feels guilty and pressures her boyfriend Tommy into taking Carrie to the prom in her place. Chris on the other hand, infuriated by the threat of having her prom attendance taken from her, sets out to ruin Carrie White’s life. She enlists the help of her own boyfriend and they visit a farm where they bash the head of a pig in gruesome surround sound. Sue screams to “do it, do it, do it” as they drain its blood and save it for their ‘plan’. The scene is horrific and directly contrasts Sue, who excitedly pesters Tommy for updates and genuinely looks forward to Carrie White’s prom debut. The prom looms over all their heads, a coming-of-age ritual that we, the audience, have learned to dread. The build-up promises a startling violence that feels so alien to the rest of the film, so unwarranted for Carrie White. Carrie is finally worn down into accepting Tommy’s invitation but her mother refuses to let her attend. Carrie cries, “I want to be a whole person. I want to be normal!” Her Mother still insists it’s Satan working through Carrie. She attributes sin to Eve, “And Eve was weak and loosed the raven on the world. And the raven was called sin… and the Lord visited Eve with the curse, and the curse was the curse of blood!” Her mother fears the power of women and believes that embracing womanhood, as Carrie is doing, is akin to making a pact with Satan. “I can see your dirty pillows,” she

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tells Carrie in disgust. “Breasts mama, they’re called breasts. And everyone has them”. For the audience, it’s cathartic to see Carrie throw back her screaming mother with her powers. She is attempting to take back her body and mind. Her mother merely prays, but whether it’s for Carrie’s salvation or demise is unclear.

gaze she throws knives to hold her mother back. Each one of them ties her to the wall in a sickening, crooked crucifixion.

Carrie arrives at the dance with Tommy, flooring everyone with her presence and beauty. “It’s like being on Mars, you’ll never forget it”. Tommy convinces her to dance and for a moment everything is beautiful—they spin, laugh, dance and kiss as the lights around them soften and the music sways. Then comes the announcement for prom king and queen. Chris’s plan goes off without a hitch—she rigs the votes and Carrie gets announced. She has a fairytale moment as she walks to the stage, illuminated by the spotlight as the world around her quiets down and pays attention solely to her. She flashes a beautiful, grateful smile and we feel her joy, her relief as things go okay. She’s safe.

In its linearity the film is akin to a commentary on how people are pushed to their breaking point. Carrie is a study in monster hood—we see her unbecoming in startling clarity, know every step it took to get there and though we can foreshadow the destruction yet to unfold we never feel inclined to stop her. Carrie is a protagonist whose journey earns our sympathy, whose trials and tribulations become our own. We root for her, cheer for her even when she uses them to silence her mother or knock a statue off of her ignorant principal’s desk.

Then a bucket of pig’s blood falls. Soaked in blood she screams, horrified. The bucket falls further and hits Tommy, knocking him unconscious. Everyone laughs at her, shrieking in delight at her humiliation. Chris emerges from her hiding place and gleefully taunts her. Carrie loses all control. Paying homage to the opening scene wherein Carrie’s horrified, blood-soaked form causes a crescendo of her power, she goes catatonic. First comes the blood, then comes the sin. She locks the doors. Sets the fire hoses loose at full power, propelling bodies across the distance of the room. People are being flung across the room or trampled in attempts at escape. Electricity flows through the water, electrocuting more. Her every glance brings annihilation. Eventually, she sets the whole building on fire. First comes the blood, then comes the sin. Like a ringing prophecy, her blood-soaked form exits the scene as her coming-of-age crescendos into its final horrifying moments. 73 people die. She comes home to her mother who makes her wash up without a word. “Mama hold me... Please, hold me.” She does and then after a few moments, referencing her lustful taste of sin with Carrie’s father, “I should have killed myself when he put it in me,” her mother stabs her. In a panic, Carrie runs away and with her

Carrie runs to the wardrobe and hides, crying as the house sinks into the ground in flames.

Carrie is a horrified product of cruelty. We see her punished for every moment of self-love and indulgence to the point she wants to pray herself away. At home, Carrie is fervently attacked and abused by her mother; hated both for her sexuality and her existence as a product of her mother’s sexuality. At the beginning of the film, we see Carrie, unable to inherit her mother’s fear, instead learn to be timid and apologetic, fearful and abiding. Not a monster. Not active and deserving of the violence that surrounds her. Carrie’s character design at first is so minimalist, unborn; pale face, hair, eyelashes like a canvas for which we hold a naive hope that things could go another way. The film contributes to this narrative that Carrie can truly escape her situation. After all, what did you expect? Are we all ‘Carrie White’, oblivious to the real cruelty in the world? Instead, Carrie White does become a monster. But the origin of her monsterhood is not some vast ‘unknown’ as the source material seems to imply, nor is it Satan; rather it is a product of retaliation to the contempt society holds for women—especially those who embrace their womanhood. There are no innocents; there are only assailants and survivors, but no one is unscathed. Every participant willing or not is a cog in the machine, spreading their influence through religion, social cruelty or ignorance. The ‘big bad’ is the witch hunt of women even by other women.

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‘Concerts Under COVID’ by Weiting Chen

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‘Concerts Under COVID’ by Weiting Chen

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Don’t Lose Your Spark Written by Michelle Huang As a high school leaver, anyone older who inquires about your future plans will often express with a bitter smile, softened gaze, and a flash of pity in their eyes that “it only gets worse from here.” “Yeah, right,” I would always think, accompanied by a mental scoff. Of course, as a school leaver, you regard anything that is not a fixed routine as something of a treat. You’d think these adults need to stop being so dramatic, get over themselves, and face their problems more maturely. You’d probably say to yourself, “I’m sure it won’t be that bad. I’ve got a whole life of freedom ahead of me!” In fact, I often feel rather indignant when these condescending grown-ups say anything of that kind to me. How dare they challenge my unrealistic optimism? And how dare they assume that solo travelling glamorously will not be my full-time job that earns me six figures and a book deal while I own an NYC apartment decorated with a built-in walk-in wardrobe even though I never actually live there? Alright, one can dream. The internal tug-of-war that occupies my mind during these interactions is that subconsciously, I know they’re right. I know that these people have ‘lived’, but their lived experiences aren’t something that can easily be transferred or taught to others. The feelings can only be felt by those who have been there. Regret for the past is inevitable. So, denial helps me cope with the fearful truth that the future isn’t as hopeful as I have made it out to be. Frankly, actualising this shattering idea is something I would rather not do.

Now, I do not mean to disregard the experiences of growing up that can turn a person jaded or cynical, but I just wish that people older than me could celebrate my blank slate, rather than ruthlessly dumping on it. I’m baffled by their audacity in projecting their regrets, their fleeting youth, and their disillusionment onto me. Why can’t they just let me indulge in my naivety? Tearing up my hopes for the future won’t fix your past. Just because all your dreams couldn’t be fulfilled, doesn’t mean mine won’t...right? Despite my persistent self-justification, each time I hear their ominous sentiments, I feel the seams of my soul being slowly picked apart. Each stitch, which was once sewn with deliberate intention, tightened and strengthened to security, now collapses by the undoing of a single strand. Perhaps, as innocent leavers, we decorate our lives by sprinkling hope all over them like glitter on a floor. These older folks come and vacuum up the glitter, because to them, our colourful view of the world is a nuisance, an inconvenience to the ‘real’ world. Or it is perhaps a reminder of the regrets in their own lives: the broken promises, the failed dreams. But I guess even when the majority of the sparkle is lost, some glitter will inevitably still be stuck in the crevices of the carpet. Sometimes, when the light is just right, even if only just for a brief moment, a reflective flicker will catch your eye. Like a stubborn glisten in the eye of a pouty kid with furrowed brows trying their best to hold back tears, perhaps we are just determined to prove ourselves to the world.

Illustrated by Sally Yuan

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‘The Pier Review’ by Torsten Strokirch

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Homesick of Home Written by Chelsea Rozario

“Cause it’s getting kind of quiet in my city’s head. It takes a teenage riot to get me out of bed, right now.” Brain fog hits as Daydream Nation jolts me awake. Sleep escapes me when it is silent. It was the volume of KL traffic, screaming street vendors and familial conflict seeping under the cracks of bedroom doors that became my lullabies. When I was in it, that city seemed soulless. Devoid of character, only concrete pavements with cracks so immense my slippers would get caught and disappear, lost forever into the mud it was built on. Kuala Lumpur literally translates to ‘Mud Colony’. There was a dissonance about it, constantly disquiet but constantly desolate. My adolescence was spent smelling chicken necks and frog legs on walks to LRT stations and leaving phones in Grabcars on the way to school, on the way home from dive bars. They served $1.60 liquor Mum vehemently believed was moonshine brewed in longkangs of Johor Bahru, Dad’s hometown. Being a teenager in red light district KL was being incoherent in the back of a stranger’s car speeding down the Smart Tunnel, inebriated by rainbow LEDs, surrendered to a car seat headrest, discovering the band Car Seat Headrest at that exact moment. It was walking over a Sumatran Tiger exhibit to get to Year 12 history and never going to the overpriced water park attached to it. It was getting my fingers crushed by Hayley Williams’ ex-husband at a pop-punk gig and tourist trapping expat boys to pay for club cover charges. It was watching friends get arrested for king-size rolling papers on the dashboard of a Perodua Myvi, a milo tin of a first car, and then seeing them bribe their way out. I never learnt how to drive. The sky favoured hazy shades of biannual haze to blue. Courtesy of Australia’s ‘recycling’ being burned in Indonesian landfills. What are balconies without views of kampung dirt roads masked by mountainous rubbish piles from stolen land? Perhaps this conditioned me to move to it. It had nothing left to offer me apart from cigarettes stolen from Mum, smoked in the bathroom only with the shower running. Which is why I left and never looked back. 18 years in one place, 18 years wanting an escape. “Get the fuck out. Move to the city baby, it’ll all work out.” And so I did. Northcote reminds me of Old Klang Road. I search for pieces of home wherever I go. I find shattered concrete and potholes, maybe the scent of dampened tobacco. If I am lucky, if it is a good day, the aunty in the saree shop will smile at me. On Smith Street at midnight, you see unlaced Doc Martens and disposable vapes. In KL it was only stilettos and hyperfemininity I rejected, along with the toe blisters. Empty packs of Dunhill Blueberries decorated the roads instead Longing for familiarity makes me romanticise it all. What is heartbreak if not homesickness for a home that is no longer there? Sometimes it is staring longingly at asafoetida in my pantry from a white owned organic shop on High St. It is the sudden recollection of grandma hunched over open flames, tempering ancient generational oil with curry leaves, mustard seeds and dried chilli—to singe nostrils and ignite tongues. TV static sizzling of ginger garlic paste sent bits flying around the kitchen. Stuck to skin and burned right through. I am decorated in ginger garlic burns. Grandpa heaved murungakkai off the tree in the garden where the pets were buried. Sometimes he brought the leaves with him, those would be the greens for the day. They were thrown into dal, then splashed onto an asbestos ceiling speckled with pandan juice. A family of musang lived up there, only heard at night when keerai curry wasn’t bubbling in cast iron. I haven’t been home in 2 years. I am slowly forgetting faces, quickly losing the memory of voices. When I catch myself missing that city, I remind myself, home was never family, it was juvenile delinquency and an asbestos hut that is now an Airbnb. As a distraction, I jam headphones in and dream of KL teenage riots to get me out of bed.

Illustrated by Kitman Yeung

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content warning: mentions of suicide and mental illness. spoilers for ‘Dear Evan Hansen’.

The Age of Evan Hansen (and why Ben Platt shouldn’t reprise his role on screen) Written by Allie Akerley On 18 May 2021, the first trailer for the film adaptation of acclaimed Broadway musical Dear Evan Hansen dropped. Like many fans of the show, I was excited to see what new developments director Steven Chbosky (of The Perks of Being a Wallflower fame) would bring to the story. And like many other people, I was dismayed at the casting choice for the titular character, as portrayed by Ben Platt, who originated the role onstage.

Anyone familiar with Dear Evan Hansen is aware that it is an emotional show. Suicide and mental health are primary themes, and during the show we witness Evan soaring to euphoric highs and crashing to rock bottom. Evan remains a morally grey character. He inadvertently leads the family of a recently deceased classmate to believe he was his friend, partly by accident, and partly to get closer to the boy’s sister whom he has a crush on.

My thoughts were summarised in a text I sent to my friend later that day: “The cast is good. Ben Platt’s wig is not.”

To suggest that a younger actor could not accurately portray the complexities of such a character is incredibly dismissive of how talented young artists can be. When I visited New York at the end of 2019, and saw Dear Evan Hansen, I had the pleasure of witnessing Andrew Barth Feldman, who was 17, the exact same age as Evan, embody the role. Evan’s verbal tics, insecurities and anxieties were elevated, as Barth Feldman’s age only helped Evan become more relatable to the audience. Evan’s social anxiety and extreme awkwardness are emphasised to the point that some scenes are genuinely uncomfortable to watch. When Evan breaks, the audience breaks with him. When he inadvertently deceives the Murphy family, his actions come across as genuinely mistaken rather than malicious.

Clearly, I wasn’t the only one. I logged onto Twitter (which I always do when I want my beliefs validated) and found thousands of tweets criticising Platt’s role, comparing him to the actors from Grease and wondering who thought Ben Platt could pass as a high schooler! In response, Platt stressed to Vanity Fair the urgency of his casting, allowing him to “remain teen-adjacent”. More recently, Platt has been under fire for his comments that “were [he] not to do the movie”, the adaptation would have never been made. Perhaps he has a point; Platt’s father Marc is the movie’s producer. Now before I go any further, I would like to set a disclaimer: I have no problem with Platt as a performer or a person. His portrayal as Evan on Broadway was nothing short of incredible. However, there is a clear issue with his casting and how this will impact Evan’s character.

On screen, young actors have proven time and time again that they maintain the ability to truly embody difficult characters who make questionable choices. In Joe Wright’s 2007 Oscar Winner Atonement, Saoirse Ronan earned a (highly deserved) Oscar nomination for her turn as Briony Tallis, a character who still inspires vitriol today. More recently, young actors

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such as Alan Kim, Quvenzhané Wallis and Millie Bobby Brown have demonstrated that age is not a factor when creating riveting and complex performances. This age gap brings about an additional romantic imbalance. Kaitlyn Dever, who plays Evan’s love interest Zoe Murphy, is also not a teenager. However, at 24, she passes much better for a high schooler than Platt does. While we are yet to see the pair in action, initial scenes from the trailer make Platt look like her teacher rather than her boyfriend. The effect is unsettling. Scenes between Evan and Zoe are at risk of appearing awkward at best and unbalanced at worst. Even in a movie where the majority of young characters are played by adults, Ben Platt reads as far older than his co-stars. Simply, Platt does not LOOK 17. He doesn’t even look 20. It is safe to say that most teens will never look like Ben Platt. But a lot of teens have the talent and deep empathy needed to play the character of Evan well, with all his complexities.

Evan’s struggle to be accepted for who he truly is. Ben Platt’s Broadway performance as Evan was incredible. However, I feel that this casting decision is misguided. As recounted in Vanity Fair, the goal of this film was to immortalise Platt’s portrayal as Evan. If this truly is the case, why not instead create a proshot musical, featuring the original cast, and instead have actual teenagers in the film adaptation? The magic of theatre is the lack of realism and a suspension of disbelief–it just doesn’t have the same effect as film. Moreover, this casting decision inadvertently positioned Platt to become a figure of ridicule. As a result of this, his performance will be overlooked in favour of criticisms about his appearance. As one YouTube commenter put it, “No one cares that Ben is 27. We care that he doesn’t look 17.” And that makes all the difference.

I believe if an older actor embodies this character, there is much less room for the suspension of disbelief. Onstage there is a lack of realism, allowing older actors to portray younger characters. Onscreen, realism is often key to a good story. If Evan is portrayed by an older actor, it’s likely that Evan’s actions and choices will be perceived as far creepier and more manipulative than the screenwriters intended. What I (and many other fans of the show) want from this film is a realistic and faithful adaptation of the musical that will honestly speak to teenagers and those who identify with

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Illustrated by Steph Markerink

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Illustrated by Steph Markerink

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Slogans & Nonsense Written by Josh Abbey Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics belongs to a unique society. It is one of few philosophical works to commit a logical error in the first line:

Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.

Because the business model of academic philosophy is built on constant disagreement, philosophers have still not decided which logical error Aristotle makes. It might seem that two and a half millennia is a long time to disagree on what error Aristotle makes in the first sentence. But philosophers have failed to agree on the meaning of knowledge for even longer than that. Without resorting to the hieroglyphs of formal logic, Aristotle’s error is to go from talking about ‘some good’ to ‘the good.’ Even if it is true that every activity aims at some good or aims to be good, this does not mean that every activity aims at the good. Despite their similarities, ‘some good’ and ‘the good’ are not the same in the same way ‘some pasta’ and ‘the pasta’ are not the same. One might hesitantly call this a fallacy of equivocation. The words are the same, but the meanings are different. Amongst other things, the tweets of Donald Trump provide a good example:

If Hilary Clinton can’t satisfy her Husband what makes her think she can satisfy America?

In this brief episode of misogyny, ‘satisfy’ is used with two different meanings. The fallacy of equivocation is widespread. Closely related to the fallacy of equivocation is the category mistake. Despite what the name suggests, Scott Morrison’s being Prime Minister is not an example of a category mistake. A category mistake ascribes X a feature which is only attributable of Y, such a colour of sound. Fry and Laurie provide a good example of a category mistake:

That surely is a thought to take out for a cream tea on a rainy sunny afternoon.

Such ‘mistakes’ can be found in the modernist’s fevered search for novelty:

Though Robin Ellacott’s twenty-five years of life had seen their moments of drama and incident, she had never before woken up in the certain knowledge that she would remember the coming day for as long as she lived.

Here, the modernist iconoclast Robert Galbraith scintillates a spark of originality. In Galbraith’s phrasing, it is the years that are doing the seeing. A novel move; in humdrum fiction, years are rarely afforded the magic of sight. The category mistake hovers on the border of profound nonsense. There is low-level senselessness which might be parsed into sense. Take this from Terry Eagleton:

The profound is not necessarily the valid

I can’t be bothered to work out what this means. But that is mostly because this is from a book about comedy that claims, “it is worth noting that comedy does not need to be funny.” A great excuse if your stand-up bombs. Of course, any nonsense which is grammatical can be parsed into sense with the handy phrase ‘by X I mean Y,’ for example by ‘Dog I mean cat.’ Thus, the excesses of Heidegger are not condemned as meaningless but instead spawn cottage industries that attempt interpret nonsense such as: The Nothing itself nothings. The current generation rejects the dictums of Heidegger. The playgrounds are full of children arguing that there is no such thing as nothing because nothing is something. Otherwise, we couldn’t talk about it. It is heartening to learn that though I thought I had nothing for breakfast I actually had something. Like this article, my stomach is full on the something of nothing. It winds itself up on the emptiness that a lot of language use is literally confused.

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‘Nomads’ by Arielle Vlahiotis

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Drama Stew: Dissecting the World of Korean Dramas Written by Christina Savopoulos The idea behind Drama Stew has been a long time coming for Nishtha Banavalikar and Raymond Wu, hosts of the new Radio Fodder show. They first attempted to host the show in 2020, but of course, COVID complicated things, so they’re ready to try again and I’m excited to see where they’ll take it! Nishtha describes Drama Stew as a “commentary podcast about Korean dramas”. Each episode they unpack the stereotypes of both popular and unpopular K-dramas, and ultimately consider the mass appeal of the genre. “It’s refreshing to have a drama that feels close to what you know, rather than always having to adopt an American or British narrative. It’s fun to see people who look like you or the people around you.” —Nishtha Banavalikar Nishtha and Raymond find comfort in seeing certain storylines played “over and over again” in K-dramas. Raymond praises the dramas as they “play around with tone a lot more than Western dramas”—no doubt a refreshing change. For instance, whilst a show may feature elements of the thriller genre, they also include light-hearted moments, adapting the original genre in the process. Drama Stew has a different angle to other podcasts which discuss K-dramas. Nishtha and Raymond openly discuss the problematic themes which are often excused as ‘elements of the genre’. These themes include abusive power dynamics, rampant misogyny, and heteronormative storylines. When asked what their ideal dramas would look like, Nishtha and Raymond advocated for a balance of “lightheartedness, intensity and safety” for all characters. Raymond is particularly excited for people to hear their “perspective on [their] favourite dramas, and dramas that aren’t [their] favourite”. They plan to air episodes focused on certain “‘dramas’”, for example medical dramas. Nishtha hopes Fodder listeners can “enjoy looking into another country’s culture”, something they may not have had the chance to do before. K-dramas are stereotypically treated as lesser entertainment, and Raymond and Nishtha hope that through their critical analysis, listeners will be invited to further understand and appreciate the genre style. Drama Stew airs Fridays at 3pm on Radio Fodder. Drama Stew’s graphics are by the extremely talented Vivian Li. If you have any questions about the show, or simply want to rant about K-dramas, Raymond and Nishtha can be reached on Instagram @dramastew.

Illustrated by Nina Hughes

ART Illustrated by Cathy Chen

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Race Against the Odds Written by ilundi tinga

Representation matters. It’s important to point out that everything written in this piece and in all my pieces is from my personal experience. I cannot, and do not, try to represent all Black people. Have you ever questioned your very existence? I started to question my existence when I did not see myself reflected in the media. Not seeing, learning, or hearing stories about people who look like or have similar identities to you feels lonely. Representation is the act of speaking or acting for someone, or the description or portrayal of something in a particular way. Representation matters because it motivates inclusion that helps people feel seen. It provides a source of hope and guidance, a feeling of visibility, and a sense of belonging in the world. When Black Panther came out in 2018, my Black friends and I were so excited to watch it. The film means a lot to me, not only as a Black person but as an African as well. To some, it may just be another superhero film, but to me, it was a source of comfort and hope that challenged negative stereotypes around Black people. It portrayed Black people as educated, cultured, kind, and happy, which felt like a first. Seeing Black characters of different skin tones at the centre of a story that was set in ‘Africa’ (although Wakanda is a completely fictional country, I know people who think it’s a real place) was revolutionary. Usually, the media’s representation of Africa is primarily of impoverished, starving children desperately in need of a white saviour, which has heavily influenced the Western perspective of African countries. When I told a white girl in one of my university classes that I had just moved back to Australia from South Africa, she immediately pitied me and commented, “that must’ve been tough”. She probably heard all the media coverage about South Africa that focused on Black violence and criminals with the ever-present focus on poverty. It is assumptions like this that have popularised phrases like “there are starving children in Africa” which is recited almost like a mantra for when someone is being ungrateful or doesn’t finish their food. These representations created by the West help perpetuate the divide between “the West and the rest”, which ultimately serves to maintain Western imperialism, power, and dominance. A white teacher once asked me “would you rather have bad representation or no representation?” To his shock, I answered “no representation”. I explained that I would rather not see Black people on screens or in literature than see negative or badly represented Black characters because at least this way there would be fewer stereotypes and insults to my identity. What counts as bad representation is somewhat subjective, but I classify it as overly negative depictions of Black

Illustrated by Kitman Yeung

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people as consistently violent; unrelatable characters. Additionally, bad representation in the form of stories that heavily rely on stereotypes, and media that chooses to only focus on race as if Black people are only Black and nothing else. Bad representation impacts POC (People of Colour) more because we are rarely represented to begin with causing depictions of characters of Colour to carry greater significance for their race as opposed to White characters. This is because POC, even as fictional characters, are not seen as individuals but rather as reflections of their racial group. If all we see of Black people in film and television are violent, aggressive, and helpless characters then non-Black people, particularly those who do not interact with Black people, will begin to believe that this is how Black people are. This is an immense weight that POC, particularly Black people, carry in our everyday lives where our individual actions and words are taken as representative of all Black people. Similarly, this inability to see POC as individuals can have one ‘bad’ Person of Colour code all POC as ‘bad’. However, race somehow becomes irrelevant when the focus is on white people because they are seen as the default. Media reaches large audiences and so, representation of all types is important, whether in film, television or social media. Last year, the news media around the world led many people to believe that the Black Lives Matter protests were violent, a narrative built on the portrayal of Black people as ‘inherently’ violent. In reality, the situation was far more nuanced with the police and white people playing a significant part in the reported violence and riots. It’s as Malcom X said, “if you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing”. It’s important to be critical of the media we consume and to scrutinise portrayals of minority groups. Poor representation is also an issue behind the screen. A multitude of important roles are responsible for the final product, from writers to producers, directors, camera operators and many more. Part of the issue around the lack of representation in Hollywood is that the groups of people creating the films are not diverse, resulting in non-Black people producing stereotypical or tokenistic Black characters. It’s not just about feeling seen or being able to relate to stories and characters, it’s also about how a lack of representation on and off-screen means fewer opportunities for POC as harmful portrayals navigate their way back into society. In this Race Against the Odds diverse representation in all areas of society matters. Attaining good, balanced representation is an ongoing process that we can strive to improve. There are always more stories, perspectives, cultures, and people that can and need to be represented.

Illustrated by Kitman Yeung

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Illustrated by Gen Schiesser

Tantalos’ wretched daughter, how the stone

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How often I have heard the story of NIOBE,

Clung fast about her, ivyclose: and they say The rain falls endlessly And rifting soft snow; her tears are never done. I feel the loneliness of her death in mine. (Sophocles, Antigone, 670-675)

Illustrated by Gen Schiesser

FODDER

Troubles and Nibbles Written by Emma Xerri

Now in their final semester at the University of Melbourne and full of invaluable wisdom to offer their younger peers, Grusha and Vaidehi hope that their new show, Troubles and Nibbles, will help incoming international students find their stroke in the big pond. Hailing from India, both Grusha and Vaidehi are familiar with the tribulations of settling into not only a new school—full of new faces and expectations—but into a new country, with unfamiliar customs and routines. Feeling now that they could have benefitted from the wisdom and advice of senior students, both were clear about one thing when they applied for their Radio Fodder show: they would aspire to be the senior students they always needed. Grusha and Vaidehi navigate topics such as homesickness, accommodation, budgeting and exam stress. Using their five-year age gap to their benefit, they hope that students of all ages will relate to their experiences. “I believe that our show caters to a variety of age groups, as they can relate to the different types of experiences that Vaidehi and I have had because of our ages.” —Grusha Grusha and Vaidehi also hope that their show will help others feel more comfortable and at home in their new surroundings—whether that is getting to know community spaces at university or finding a sense of community through otherwise isolating Zoom screens. Feature segments include ‘Trouble of the week’ which navigates the common problems faced by international students, and ‘Nibbles of the week’, where the co-hosts share their insider knowledge on their favourite things to do in Melbourne when it is safe to do so. At the moment, Grusha and Vaidehi’s discussions prioritise topics sensitive to the hardships of lockdowns, namely mental health and exam stress. Further, with the international student cohort scattered all over the world, the show aims to cultivate a sense of inclusivity and community by exploring topics relevant to all students, rather than limiting their discussions to a strictly on campus experience. If you’re in need of some guidance on your university journey, or perhaps you just want to listen in and pretend you’re hanging out with some friends instead of sitting by yourself in your room (definitely not me), then tune into Troubles and Nibbles every Thursday at 6pm on Radio Fodder. Make sure to also follow them on Instagram @troublesandnibbles.

Illustrated by Tereza Ljubicic

Photograph by Samuel Hadden

Photograph by Kye Harn Loh

Photograph by Samuel Hadden

Photograph by Christian Theodosiou

Photograph by Mollie Crompton

Photograph by Akash Anil Nair

Photograph by Mollie Crompton

creative Artwork by Maddy Cronn

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The Feathered Storm Dragon Written by Zoe Keeghan

“Anzû was a great feathered dragon; swift as wind, fervent as fire, relentless as water. Storm clouds grew wherever he went, crackling with streaks of lightning.”

—A History of Dragons: The Truth in Mythology by Ailuv Drah Gonz

Scientific name: Draco fulgur. Origin: Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Kuwait (ancient Mesopotamia). . Diet: Omnivorous. May include dates, barley, birds and deer. Life span: 100 years. Size: Roughly two metres tall when standing on back legs. Colour: Dark grey or blue. Notable features: Feathered wings. Feathered storm dragons, as their name suggests, have feathered bodies and large feathered wings. Their back legs are clawed, while their front legs and face resemble that of a lion’s. They are often deep grey or blue in colour, with features occasionally in orange or yellow. The feathered storm dragon causes thunderstorms by creating convection cells—a process where warm air rises into cool air. This creates a circuit of rising and falling air, which can trigger a thunderstorm. These storms serve as a defence mechanism for the dragons. The feathered storm dragon was long believed to be extinct. Records of these dragons disappeared after the decline of Mesopotamian civilisation and cultures, particularly after Alexander the Great’s conquest of the Persian Empire in 331 BCE. The feathered storm dragon had vanished, remembered only in Mesopotamian myth. In the mid-2000s, a number of unexplained thunderstorms occurred across the Mediterranean and Middle East. They puzzled meteorologists—how could storms just appear? Then Gale Wethar, a meteorologist with a background in ancient history, suggested a possible explanation. An interview below:

“Interviewer: But surely you know this idea is ludicrous?

Gale Wethar: I know it sounds crazy. These storms are quite literally coming out of nowhere. But something must be causing them. That’s when I remembered learning about Anzû.

I: For those who are unaware, you studied ancient history as an undergraduate student, correct?

GW: Yes, that’s right. Anzû is the earliest recorded feathered storm dragon, first documented by the Sumerians. People believed he was the storm clouds personified—or perhaps dragonified! So instead of trying to trace wind patterns and cold fronts, we started looking for evidence of dragons. Working with several dragonologists, we actually started to see traces of life.

I: What did you find?

GW: Well, there were reports of unexplainable animal droppings, disappearing livestock and trees stripped of leaves. By now, there were storms in several different regions. Perhaps one of the most surprising developments was reports of a tussle between a burrowing sand dragon and some unknown assailants, right around the time storms were reported near the Israeli-Egypt border. What’s more, large feathers were found at the site.

I: So you believe this points towards the return of feathered storm dragons?

GW: I do.

I: Let’s say you’re right. Why would they choose now to emerge?

GW: We believe that several groups of feathered storm dragons migrated to secluded locations after Alexander the Great’s invasion. This allowed them to stay hidden until a group was disturbed, likely by conflict from the Iraq War. This group seems to have fled and alerted other groups across the region, leading to a mass exodus of feathered storm dragons. They are understandably quite distressed, which is why the storms are becoming so common.”

With this realisation, governments across the world clamoured to be the ones to resettle the dragons. The observations made by Gale Wether and her team greatly aided this process, as described by an Australian government official:

“We’ll simply track down any unusual storms, wait for the dragons to land for food or sleep, sedate them with gas or darts, and load them onto transport.”

Some dragons were relocated back to Iraq, but many were moved to other locations including Australia. This has raised many ethical issues. The dragons fled from human activity, and many argue this means humans must take responsibility. However, though dragons cannot be kept in captivity, most have been relocated to tourist parks and reserves, locations easily accessed by humans. While relocating the dragons may have saved them from distress—at least temporarily—tours to the feathered storm dragons’ new homes often sell out in minutes. Have these actions truly saved the dragons, or have they simply become another commodity for humans to enjoy?

Illustrated by Alice Aliandy

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The Foggy Shores Written by Charlotte Waters & Lee Perkins

1. The Patterned Carpet Yes, I caught you staring deeper, A rugg’n old, swaying breaches and unloosed teathers, An older god would crack you on the Krach Rock— It’s right there, where the carpet is pinned under the bed frame. Or was it when it was pinned? I forgot under the Krach rock, and you’ll surely forget too, staring. 2. The Pine Forest / Deeper Woods All lines must meet at a point. The brushstrokes on the conifer leaves, the tracks running through the forest below us, your fingers overlapping my own. All rolled into one inside your eye. I watch you, a spot of dust in the big overstretched underbelly of a bed. You, at the carpet’s frayed edge. I don’t remember when, where our journey began. You stare at a point somewhere behind me, and I wonder what would happen to us both if you moved even an inch backward. 3. Egg Fried Rice? That’d put us at the heavy eyelids, The piercing of the mellow and fumes of giving in. They blow the cooking, fresh ham and eggs, up through the coniferous canopies. That’s what wafts us along, to She Who Smiles a Little More, Guides us up from tree base to summit, fills us up for the long day. And it’ll be long my lovely, for She has tied us now to this greatest Thrum! 4. A Shared Meal / An Exchange of Warmth / In the hollow of a nook As we near the roots, her features sharpen. She stirs a pot of rice. I shed a few heavy tears. We settle inside her new house, the outside world shrunken to a small triangle. The fresh soil smells like muscles loosening, arms opening into a wide sky. We sit cross-legged and pine needles stain our jeans, happily. And then we see it, sticking in the upper chimneys, shouting at me to flee. Sorry Mum, we’re late for class! 5. Tram Tracks For class, for class, the shoes are on! Leaves blown out and skidding skating electric on the tracks.

60 01

Illustrated by Rose Gertsakis

of Our Bedrooms Up the mountain, no, to the largest room a-screeech at desks— Carpet’s a carpet burn now!

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‘The Slumber Steppes’

Breath in “Ahhhhhhh” Good to be back, no? There’s your confidence, under the leg And you can’t grab it because we’re rocking rocking It’ll be a while my love, we’re on the 96! 6. Coffee Grounds / mugs tumbled in that way across the espresso machine Somewhere around Rose St, I hear the rush and grind of fresh beans, and then a clean whistling. Of course there’s been a laziness about me, metallic at my temples, ringing my eyelids. I’m yet to have my morning coffee! My favourite café, an eye glinting behind smudged glass, slides into the space between two suited backs. “Jerry! Let’s get out at this stop.” But when I turn around, you seem to look right through me, your gaze flat and shining. 7. A Stranger’s Eyes Oh it’s a swift shift from in behind the eyes, The coffee aromas are out my eyes and ears as a new corpse flipped onto its stomach. What a shame that would be for the shopfront! A time-stripped washed-up being takes one step too far and embarrasses a friend, freezes time then plops like a rubber band ‘round a forefinger back to the base of mum’s tree. “No roses on the mountain path and no alighting from the right— it’s all had to go.” 8. The Music on the Wind You’re circles ahead of me, falling, and I can’t quite catch up. My head is yards in front of me, too loud, too sharp, the sun so bright it tickles my nostrils. There’s a party bus nearby, but I can’t see the door handle through the clouds, or reach the first step without legs giving way. Its sounds leak cold through cracks in the walls. I can only imagine what kinds of creatures live inside. A rooster, a motorbike, a xylophone. A couple birds gone astray. A few pine trees. You’re off your face by now. I clench my teeth and the chimes pull me home.

Illustrated by Rose Gertsakis

01 61

CREATIVE

Blue Written & illustrated by Birdy Carmen The butterfly trap has yellow netting, delicate as if in mimicry of its prey, though I pray, and my hands don’t mimic my gods. Instead, they sink low into my body into my being as if trying to extract some mortal sin, some meagre truth that maybe isn’t there, but my hands aren’t lithe enough they plunder the within —godforsaken wasteland, decreed— perhaps barren, perhaps broken so I take your hand, webbed faintly blue and green -veined by your wrist —a summer baby, wearing summer-coloured clothes— thin fingers fluttery w/ pulse jump and I guide the tips inward slowly towards where pain throbs sweetly your heart beating in sync. finds its target, delicate but your fingers are strong. This

—I tell myself—

is why

I pray to you, to beauty & blue man, and not to God.

CREATIVE

content warning: references to alcohol and drugs

lazy love goes loopy Written by Aeva Milos the recycled alterity of dying and rebirth leather jackets and acid in freezing heat / sweat drips ecstatically lazy love goes loopy that sweet release of carnage is freedom in its most intoxicating form i feel the fortitude in hair dye 2009 hayley williams listening to ridicule and insolence belly full of screaming and half-lipped i love you searching for divinity in my spotify friend activity reading love in lyrics and confession in playlists (will they finally grasp my heartache if i listen to sza 48 times in a row?) the kiss-less demeanours of quiet girls tying their doc martens on train tracks sipping on cheap alcohol for the second time that morning tucking crystals in bras and pinky promising love and sex in the daylight you tell terrible tales of polished adulthood refined and straight-backed destruction hiding like chipped nail polish upon your fingertips until, bathed in moonlight you crash against pavements on smith street a realisation / living this life is committing yourself to a life of decay i sit in the café across Savers wasting my last dime on a baby tee and a kiss from god and then, all at once a dawn the earth meets itself again and my lovers and i locked in clumsy embrace are reborn

Illustrated by Katie Zhang

CREATIVE

All the faces Written by Srishti Chatterjee I remember all the faces I have ever seen, strangers, loved ones, loved ones-turned-strangers. That day, on the crowded subway train, deep in a tunnel under our hometown, there were hundreds of faces, hurried, worried workers, parents, lovers, desperate to get somewhere. We were there too, going to a small cafe for an ordinary crêpe, I was already where I needed to be— safe, protected, looking at you. For once, remembering just one face— yours. I do not always recall it now, except in a few scattered memories of fleeting joy, and gut-wrenching grief that inspires immaculate Spotify playlists. Every face you ever see in a dream, is a face you have seen before— stranger on a train, the love of your life, in-between. Your face, clearer than any, Your eyes, twinkling, like the surprising quiet of sunlight. Your smile, the promise of cities left behind, of wars waged, of the desperate longings and the jolting fear of returning home, only to leave again.

What is love, but a knock on the coffin as your dreams are lowered; your 751st poem about his eyes? What is love but the face you remember like the warning gasp water makes right as it overflows out of a jar?

Illustrated by Rachel Ko

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Rusty’s Cabin Written by Austin J. Ceravolo

Illustrated by Mica McCulloch

Before heading back to the cabin, he glances at the darkening horizon. It looms beyond the proud oaks and spiralling mountaintops, stabbing the clouds with daggers of icy blue. A brush paints the sky with plumes of blood red and rusted gold. The clouds shift in the shapes of baby lambs and snarling wolves. Rusty worries it’s the closest he’ll get to real animals, at least in this world. He chooses not to think about it, and thinks instead about what he does have: the logs under his arm and their promised warmth, a cabin to sleep in and dream of tomorrow. It was all his—forever. He turns, his back to the sun, and makes for the cabin.

CREATIVE

North of Trapper Creek, beyond the rolling hills crowned in white, Rusty gathers the last of the kindling before nightfall. He swings the axe in the arc of a crescent moon, splitting the maple log with a dull thud. The two halves fall to either side of the stump and sink into the fresh snow. Rusty wipes the frost from his beard, leaving a moist streak on his leather glove. He slings the axe over his shoulder and tucks the logs under his arm. His woolly jacket shields him from the unforgiving wind.

* An unnatural chill filled the cabin. Rusty dropped to one knee, letting the logs fall. He grunted as he tossed the kindling into the dank fireplace. The ghosts of yesterday’s fire murmured in the ashes. He reached into his jacket and produced a box of matches. It was branded by a woman’s face; one eye winking, the other a blaze of fiery red, just like her hair. He took a match and struck it against the box’s red edge, producing a shivering flame. Rusty watched it eat through the wood and crawl towards his finger. It left behind a trail of black death. He threw the flame into the fireplace. A slither of smoke rose through the kindling, before a tiny flame, like the eye of a dragon, rose from beneath. Almost instantly, the cabin felt warm—alive. The fire cast a coppery hue over the interior. It was little more than a bedroom and a living area, but it was all he needed. There was a teak armchair, a stove for his tea, a cabinet for his biscuits, a bookcase for his novels, and a counter for his record player. He removed his jacket and hung it on a nail in the wall, before opening the cabinet and reaching into a jar of ginger biscuits. They tasted real. On the record player he played his favourite melody, The Sounds of Storms: Fifth Edition (no thunder). He peered out the window into the cloudy night, hoping for rain, knowing it would never come. The gods who forged this place could erect trees from the dirt and pluck the very sun from the sky, but, for reasons unknown, they could never make it rain. The thought saddened him; he turned up the volume. Rusty passed by the bookshelf, his fingers running across the leather spines. He found his favourite story, Eden’s Quarry, by P.K. Thompson, his favourite Old West author. Rusty settled into the chair, book in hand, and started reading. Still, his eyes wandered, the light of the fire painting the hand-made furniture gold. He knew they weren’t really hand-made. None of it was. It was all a lie. He tried reading, losing himself in Thompson’s quarry, but he couldn’t. His eyes wandered back to the window, and he couldn’t help but dream of something else. Something more.

* It was half past four, and Martin Fletcher counted down the minutes until five. He sat in a squeaky little chair behind a desk made of cheap oak. His office contained a filing cabinet, a faulty air conditioner and an artificial fern which brought some colour to the room. Management made an initiative to have at least two ferns in every office by the end of April, following a circulating memo which claimed artificial plants increase productivity by up to 19 per cent. It was October, and half the offices were still waiting on their first fern. Martin clacked away on his little keyboard. Half the keys were faded and it sounded like he was bashing rocks together when he typed. Martin worked for a company that worked for a paper company. His job was routine. He acted as the conduit between paper manufacturers and distributors. He knew everything there was to know about paper. He knew the different classifications of paper, the range of quality, the profit margins, and how much waste was produced. He tapped his fingers against his desk, yearning for the moment he could go home to the Artemis, that ethereal gateway to the cabin. Most of his pay went to maintaining and updating the costly Artemis device. That cold hunk of plastic and metal was the key to escaping this bitter world. He watched the time on his monitor near five. His desktop wallpaper depicted a cowboy with an arrogant smirk brandishing a magnum, a crow perched on his shoulder. It was Carson “Rusty” Adams. He was the hero of the Thompson novels. Martin didn’t really want to be a cowboy—he just wanted to be more than a man of paper.

* The air freezes inside Rusty’s nostrils. It’s an earthy, metallic smell. Rusty sits by the gushing waters of Trapper Creek. The river’s melody soothes him. There’s a graceful simplicity to it; an eternal order stretching to infinity. No matter what wars are fought, what bombs are dropped, what lives are ended, the water will run over these rocks forever. (continued over page...)

Illustrated by Mica McCulloch

CREATIVE

An owl gracefully swoops over the maples, resting on a log beside Rusty. A gift from the gods. Shimmering eyes of melted gold peer through slick feathers of iron grey. It cranes its neck and considers Rusty—judges him. The owl reminds him of the villains in those silly little books. He calls her Bandit. It’s sometime between morning and afternoon; the last embers of sunrise fading into the everlasting sky. Bandit hoots and flaps her wings, embarking on a brilliant flight. Rusty knows she isn’t real, that her feathers are just a symphony of ones and zeros crafted by the gods, but he doesn’t care. Rusty watches in awe as Bandit soars through the pale sky, and wonders if someday he too might fly. He doesn’t really want to—he much prefers the view from down here.

Martin wasn’t sure what he was looking at, but the sign said “art”, so he took their word for it. “What do you think?” asked Ella. She worked for the company too, in human resources. They’d met at the annual Christmas party and started chatting over flat wine and cheese that tasted like plastic. Martin didn’t want to ask her on a date, but he felt obliged to after their lengthy interaction. They talked of weather patterns, hypersonic trains, the war in Europe, paper, and the latest Artemis update—this time with interactive NPCs! She seemed more interested in discussing paper. He wondered if she would join him in a future update. He didn’t really know if he wanted her to. “I’m not sure,” said Martin. They’d come to the Melbourne Museum for an exhibition about post-post-idealistic art. He’d never heard the phrase before. Ella told him it was a movement started by so-and-so to rebel against the conventions of this-and-that. She seemed passionate about it. Martin fiddled with his fingers, buried deep in his puffer jacket; he wore it to cover his spindly, awkward frame. Some people were scratching their heads at the artwork; others nodded in contemplation. Martin wasn’t sure if they were faking it; he wished he was just a bit smarter. The artwork they considered was a black, volumetric 3D monitor. It spanned an entire wall, reaching dozens of meters to the ceiling and stretching out of view. No matter how far he stepped back, he couldn’t see the whole thing at once. Every few moments, a swirl of colour constructed of thousands of tiny holographic cubes would emerge and then dissipate. Sometimes they would be accompanied by the soothing melody of a harp; other times the shrill wail of a violin. Ella closed her eyes and swore she could hear voices in the echoes; Martin didn’t believe her. It was all noise to him. The many plaques in front of the screen read the words: So it Goes. “Does it speak to you?” asked Ella. Martin glanced back at the screen, trying to piece together some kind of rhythm or logic to the madness. He thought he saw a crimson swirl turn from a maple leaf to a star before igniting in a violet blaze to the tune of Beethoven. None of it made any sense. He glanced nervously at his watch. “I think I’d feel something…” said Martin, wishing he was anywhere else. “…If only I knew where to look.”

* Rusty shifted in his leather chair. The fire burned bright and warmed the cabin; the gold phonograph playing Soothing Sounds by the Bay: Second Edition (no seagulls). There were six rooms now, each bigger than the last. Byron, his husky, snoozed idly by the foot of the chair. Rusty was whittling. He’d grown tired of the Thompson novels. He knew every sentence, every word, every misplaced comma. He’d tried substituting the cabin for the Old West, but he didn’t like it. It was too hot, and it smelled terrible. He’d whittled himself a chess set, a clock, some knives, and an owl. Bandit had flown away when Byron arrived. The gods giveth and the gods taketh away. He missed Bandit, and the thought distracted him. He was trying to replicate the star he saw on that screen in the museum, the one that confused him. He thought he might understand if he recreated it, that his hands and fingers might unearth something his eyes couldn’t. He’d already cast a dozen failures into the fire, and he worried this one would soon join the others. Byron snorted; he must have been having a bad dream. The sound startled Rusty, and he cut his finger. A drop of red ran down his arm and splattered against the floor. “Look what you did!” shouted Rusty, kicking Byron’s bed. The dog awoke with a fright, before drifting back to sleep. Rusty couldn’t work with Byron’s snoring, with the crackle of the fire, with the artificial soundtrack mocking him. But he knew if he abandoned Byron or burned the record player, he’d be alone with that terrible, eternal silence. What he needed was something else. Something more. He just wished it would rain.

Illustrated by Mica McCulloch

CREATIVE

going forward Written by Oscar Larkin

I hope all your mornings are lazy mornings, sleep soaked and ripe with loamy imaginings, that you are carried back in the arms of those who love you back to yourself, I hope all your days are cosy days, a slow breath in and

out

to expel yesterday’s trauma

to go on fresh but not unscathed warm but not newborn, I hope all your nights are wistful nights, that you look up not down feel the air between dirt and star, follow the sweet hush of the street all

the

way

to your doona.

Illustrated by Alice Aliandy

CREATIVE

content warning: violence, war

Tabula Rasa Written by Neha Sharma

Though you’ve watched the earth bleached more Into a ghost town with each machine round You won’t yet forget, no vacant palette Wall-fly, eckleburg’s eye Ally and alumni You remember what they repress Not tabula rasa, they won’t make you acquiesce To their parrot press, Not another blank mind To be stamped carbon blind

Not tabula rasa, you witness New age conquistadors and their clandestine armada As the colonial ink, that lemon juice trick appears Through claw marks on Kashmir, Many swim through channels Of gaping goldfish panels, Clamped onto the fishing hook schtick Of red faced politrix Not tabula rasa, you’re the dragon of Gaza When towers collapse, when rockets reign Showering down shadows, terror as their terrain You rise in dust clouds, rinsing dull air dry As a thousand throats burst forth a blistering cry You’re the breath within them, setting the sky ablaze Evaporating the murky media haze Never the coward’s punch, you’re the pacifist’s roar Never tabula rasa, You’re the closed fist that lifts Against war.

Illustrated by Birdy Carmen

CREATIVE

Summer chores Written by Neha Sharma

These colours are carnivorous Swelling lemon yellows Leaping grass-blade greens Claw at me Climbing, calling to me Silver cobwebs spin by Flapping laundry, cotton grey and gold In the sun, That bleeding, insatiable flame These colours are so deep they stick to shadows Of the pants, the shirts, the socks But nothing bares its teeth like The sky’s unflinching blue Every time I raise my head It threatens to consume me Swallow me whole Siphoning off my soul And the colours Silver, green, gold, all Sliding into one snow clean scroll; The sky, a lacquered screen Forever watching Wildebeest, wandering god’s eye Chasm of pure light, bleached sea Ready to engulf The last crumbs of me

Illustrated by Birdy Carmen

CREATIVE

Flickering Written by Lauren Berry At 7 I woke Built castles out of mud Drew a heart in the sky At 10 I sat down Stretched my arms out on the desk Touched my cheek to the cold At 12 I leaned across Jammed my hand against the train Stopped it running off its course At 15 I walked around Heel toe toe heel Right left back in line, son At 17 I crawled Made friends out of dust mites Bled into the carpet At 21 I splashed Chin back belly up Kick harder, pointed toes At midnight I stared harder Broke matchsticks with my fingernails Flick, psst, don’t drop it

Illustrated by Sally Yuan

Written by Chelsea Rozario Stepping on possum shit in my backyard under a midnight moon, I smoke a cone, she naps in my bed. She puts on my t-shirt so she doesn’t smell like bong water on her way back home. We are in love but I am not satiated.

CREATIVE

Last Girl

Hearts so full, fingers interlaced. It is Halloween, spent on sandy sheets with socked feet—dampened, dangling. We smell like gin, petty crime and speed walking up Brunswick Street, the cologne of our Uber driver. This chalice is half full— a diet alter ego, Coke Zero of sorts is fronting, it is on the tip of my snowflake tongue. Saccharine, semi-hydrating, she doesn’t drink soda. A scratchy top with a hole in the sleeve that only just fits her is passed onto me. Cobwebbed black lace, dug out from the depths of gentrified discounts. It is soaked in cheap perfume and all-natural deodorant that does not work. Intensity and lustful friendship, going to Thursgays to eat gozlemes in boob tubes. Seeing some radio-friendly indie band live. Forgotten texts on early mornings, we get day-after-drinking shits. We move in together and she spills shiraz on the carpet trying to impress a boy. I scrub the shag carpet, bent knees stained red. She gets the room with the wardrobe I could live in and a balcony, and I drop a shameful cone piece off it at our housewarming. Her best friend called Kensington the ghetto and I don’t know how I feel about a white boy saying that. She says she hates it in this house, in this lockdown. Outpouring of tears, mental illness. It smells like teen spirit and depression. Cat piss wafts through narrow corridors onto unmade beds, mildewy carpets. She eats pasta naked in her new bed and I put the dish in the sink, romanticise our lives on Instagram while we drift apart, cry into her shoulder, ask for a hug and never speak again. We were in love. At least I was.

Illustrated by Katie Zhang

COLUMN 74

Being John Malkovich: Review Written by Brian Novak

What makes a consciousness independent? Evidently, not much according to Spike Jonze’s 1999 ‘classic’: Being John Malkovich. Craig Schwartz (John Cusack) is an unsuccessful puppeteer who discovers a portal into the head of John Malkovich (John Malkovich). Schwartz mostly plods along as an asinine protagonist, only to be challenged with fanciful moral dilemmas and philosophical nonsense. While I suppose some of the film is admirable, Charlie Kaufman’s debut screenplay is marred by his painful desperation to be ‘weird’ and ‘experimental’ for the sake of it. For example, consider the scene where everyone has the head of John Malkovich. There was no logical reason for this, so why include it at all? It isn’t even biologically feasible for so many people to have the same face. I happened to be watching Malkovich with my dear girlfriend, Millicent, who was scoffing throughout the entire scene. The only pleasure I took from this ‘film’ were the extraordinary puppet sequences, where mere strings controlled and manipulated objects. It reminded me of my own inventions, and I confess there were many times when Millicent nudged me with a knowing giggle.

For those who know me personally, you’d know I’m trying to grow the longest fingernails in the world. Film reviewing is a cut-throat industry, and one needs to stand out from the mass of samey blogs and David Strattons. I encourage my readers to give me a suitable nickname that might resonate with the public. I’m partial to ‘The Long-Nailed Film Reviewer’, but perhaps someone more creative will comment the perfect alias over on my YouTube channel: NovakReviews. Obviously, having extremely long fingernails impedes many of my day-to-day activities, such as brushing my teeth and applying roll on deodorant. Even typing this review requires an awkward distance between me and the keyboard. Millicent tells me this is only going to get worse, so now my bedroom is filled with nifty contraptions and pulley devices, like something you’d see in a Tim Burton film (please refer to my review of Edward Scissorhands). While much of Malkovich revolves around Schwartz’s relationship with his wife, Lotte (Cameron Diaz), and co-worker, Maxine (Catherine Keener), none of the acting shines; or perhaps I’m the wrong person to judge. I can’t say I relate to being in a loveless relationship, so maybe I don’t know how people behave under these circumstances. It’s amazing having Millicent as a girlfriend. We talk all the time and have great banter. Sometimes, I’ll even hold my nails up while quoting Scarface and she’ll roll her eyes. I don’t think she’s too impressed by my nail-growing endeavours, despite the fact I hit the ten centimetre

Illustrated by Vertigo

COLUMN

milestone a few days ago. It’s great waking up next to her each morning; even though we sleep in separate beds due to my fingernails scratching her awake. When watching Malkovich, I kept thinking about how the characters would live with extremely long fingernails. Certainly, the characters played by Cusack, Diaz and Keener would have had tremendous difficulty opening the doorway into Malkovich’s head. Yet, despite the film’s frequent references to puppetry, none of them knew strings like I do. The best way to illustrate how my pulleydevices and inventions work is to relate my morning routine. Before I describe them, I want to make it absolutely clear that none of my inventions are for sale. I’m proud to declare my reviews are not-for-profit and purely for the tasteful deconstruction of cinema. So, I rolled out of bed this morning and went to the bathroom. After consulting my pants-unzipping-and-underwear-sliderdowner machine (a fiddly contraption with hooks), I positioned myself above a large funnel that rests above the toilet and did my business. I read somewhere that it’s better for your thighs to urinate standing up. I pushed up a weight hanging from the ceiling on a pulley system, which released another weight onto the flush button. Most of my devices are self-sufficient, but occasionally I’ll get Millicent to assist me with things like replacing the toothpaste in the toothpaste-lever-and-squeezing machine and topping up the Rice Bubbles in the cereal-pouring machine in the kitchen (I am not sponsored by Kellogg’s). The latter involves cutting a hole into the bottom of the box and taking the Rice

Bubbles out of the plastic and fitting the slider in line with the hole and above where a bowl can fit. Millicent also gets to keep refitting the milk machine; a nifty device that starts in the fridge with a tube that enters the carton, carrying the milk out through a small hole in the side of the fridge (welded shut and air-tight), and right to a spot near the cereal machine. She reckons I could be the next Einstein with all my inventions. However, relying on her is tough sometimes. Just this morning I was running low on Rice Bubbles, but she said she was busy, so I had to settle for a much smaller bowl of cereal than I’m accustomed to. Overall, Being John Malkovich is a decent film, but with a running time of nearly two hours, it’s remarkable that nobody in the cinema fell asleep. Three stars.

*** “At the Movies with Brian Novak” is a movie review column by the fictitious Brian Novak, otherwise known as the real James Gordon. Read more of Brian/James’ column on our website.

Illustrated by Vertigo

SATIRE

content warning: drug use, animal cruelty

SATIRE-IN-BRIEF

Written by Sweeney Preston, Josh Abbey, Emma-Grace Clarke, Laura Bishop, Raina Shauki, Charlotte Armstrong, Rowan Burridge and Christina Savopoulos First time Centrelink caller complains they’ve spent FIFTEEN MINUTES on hold Andrea Fraser, a recently 22-year-old student from the leafy eastern suburbs of Melbourne, has spent the better part of a quarter hour on hold with everyone’s least favourite sugar daddy. The rushed, soon-to-be ‘youth allowance’ recipient reportedly has yoga in like, halfa.

Compulsory voting in Australia extended to include Hottest 100 voting “This is about democracy. This is what our forefathers fought for,” said an oddly spirited Prime Minister, chucking up a shacka. —SP

—SP

Ship Doesn’t Get Stuck in the Suez Canal A Second Time, Disappointing Everyone Everywhere The Ever Given passed through the canal without incident in August 2021, missing a golden opportunity to do something incredibly funny. The captain was seen waving wildly at the shore, shouting “Nice try, Suez Canal! Not this time!” —RB

In his old age, Puffing Billy legally changes name to Puffing William Puffing Billy has long been the Dandenong Ranges’ chief tourist attraction. But after numerous lockdowns, he’s had some time to reflect on his many years. “Back in my day, you didn’t have all these fancy myki cards and such, you had to buy a ticket from—”. Ugh, booooring. This Farrago reporter stopped listening. Can you “ok boomer” a train? —SP

Netflix indecision ruins yet another meal Another bowl of pasta has been left to go cold after one student spent more than thirty minutes deciding what Netflix show to watch. The choice between critically acclaimed docuseries and trashy teenage romantic drama has occurred every night this month and has been the cause of over eighty spoiled meals in 2021 for this student alone. When asked why they need to start an episode before touching their meal, the indecisive individual responded by shuffling their feet and looking away.

Students only attend campus for love letters According to a new study by Farrago, University of Melbourne students spend an average of 40 minutes curating outfits to wear to campus, solely in the hopes of being featured on ‘Unimelb Love Letters’. Students also allegedly “casually” wander South Lawn and the Baillieu library for hours. One particular student admitted to being five weeks behind because of time scrolling through Love Letters looking for mentions of themselves. —CS

—RS

Students riot over lack of enemies-to-lovers plot in chemistry textbook University of Melbourne staff have received a record-breaking number of complaints after students pointed to a severe lack of a “sexual tension-based narrative” in their final year Organic Chemistry textbook. “You’re telling me there’s not a single mention of any romantic interests, for any of the characters?! Why was this book a hundred dollars??”—Kerry Loc. —RS

Illustrated by Jasmine Pierce

SATIRE

SATIRE-IN-BRIEF Written by The Satire Team

“My ex is crazy”, says man with dead fish in Tinder profile Bradley Bennet III is a 23-year-old sparky living in a shack. The shack, reminiscent of Ernest Hemmingway’s depression trip in Old Man and the Sea, was however “not the issue” in his previous relationship. In fact, it was “all Rebecca’s fault”. —EGC

Girlboss! This undergraduate isn’t crying in the library during SWOTVAC Instead, she’s learning about investing from a white woman’s Instagram reels. She’s found a rural soap dispensary that looks promising. —EGC

Guide: How to deceive your tutor into believing you are actually capable of thought

Unborn children excited about school funding cuts to pay for sports event they won’t be able to attend

Are you struggling to conjure up a real response to tutorial questions? Maybe you’re sick of staring at a sea of blank spaces and blanker faces? Read on to find out how arts students can somehow always come up with bullshit (to varying degrees of success).

It was recently announced that Brisbane will host the 2032 Olympics. Throughout the state, children reacted with cries of joy when they realised that their impoverished future would allow the Premier to have a photoshoot with athletes.

—CA

After previous Facebook chat ends in conflict, genius boyfriend starts next convo on Insta Albert Pine (22) has put himself in league with entrepreneurial royalty after his latest brainwave. “I pulled the ol’ 1-2 switch...Our last chat ended with Brittany being mad that I was late to pick her up, so instead of messaging her on FB that I’m a dickhead who can’t tell the time, I started fresh on Insta.” Albert informed Farrago that their latest Insta convo consisted of making plans to go to the beach—to which he was also late. “Don’t worry, I’ll send her a DM on LinkedIn.”

—JA

Phew! Nadia Bartel will not face any criminal charges after Victoria Police decide they cannot possibly determine what that suspicious white substance was “It could be anything!” said a VicPol spokesperson. “Flour, bicarb, crushed up drywall—your guess is as good as ours.” “What?” said VicPol’s Chief Commissioner. “You’ve never snorted drywall before?”

—SP

—LB

Victoria Police given fart spray to deter anti-maskers In reaction to recent mass protests across Melbourne, VicPol has announced the introduction of Fart Spray to anti-riot police gear. Chief Commissioner Shane Patton shared his hope that the addition would be particularly effective at dispersing future anti-mask protesters. —RS

Illustrated by Jasmine Pierce

SATIRE

content warning: animal cruelty, death, mentions of eugenics and war

University Budgeting 101 Written by James Gordon

As further budget cuts are implemented and tutors continue to be paid below minimum wage, it has become increasingly more difficult for the University to justify the cost of a university education, leaving students to wonder where exactly their money has gone. In an exclusive report, Farrago can now disclose that student fees are being funnelled towards feeding a giant platypus called Robert Kajuga in the basement of Old Arts. The discovery was made last Tuesday by a group of lost second-year students, who were looking for the (rumoured to be extinct) farmers’ market. The students caught Duncan Maskell feeding Robert large buckets of cash in a man-made indoor lagoon as Arts students waved giant leaf-like fans up and down around the giant egg-laying mammal. The students described Robert—who was named after eugenicist and war criminal Robert Kajuga, to show the University now cares about diversity—as being roughly the size of a small shuttle bus and leaking like a geriatric dog. It is understood that Robert is equipped with an extremely poor digestive system and can only break down Furta, a protein found exclusively in money. Despite his restricted diet, Robert still manages to enjoy his mealtimes. His go-to dish is cash that has been marinated in the Union House ATMs, particularly those run by the Commonwealth Bank. Robert’s origins are yet to be confirmed; however, it is believed that he is the result of a botched IVF lab experiment involving Melbourne University boffins mixing the genes of Fozzie Bear, Jean-Paul Sartre and a random platypus. Despite puzzlement from some students, Maskell and the University board have maintained that Robert deserves to live, citing the platypus’ ability to produce a special gas with his magical flipper. The gas reportedly promotes student wellbeing by making lecturers good at their jobs and assignments intellectually stimulating, a claim that is yet to be confirmed by an independent body. In turn, the University must maintain Robert’s diet through the deliberate inclusion of “meaningless compulsory filler subjects”, such as the Arts Foundation subjects and half the Master of Teaching course. A small number of students have slammed the revelation, demanding that their fees be spent on more reasonable things, such as a Birkenstock repair shop in Arts West and a champagne fountain in the Spot. Unfortunately, animal cruelty laws prevent any reform to Robert’s lifestyle, as the slightest shift would rupture his sensitive digestive system and cause a painful death, akin to that of a gaseous beached whale. According to the University, reducing student fees slightly in response to students’ compromised education during the COVID-era would result in “a massive animal rights violation”. Not on this University’s watch!

Illustrated by Georgia Huang

FARRAGO

Flash Fiction: Dark Comedies In my dream Written by Izma Haider (content warning: animal cruelty)

You ate the dog in the kitchen under the moon like a warning light You cupped her head like water I took a picture You raised your head, told me to get your good side. When you ask me how I slept, what can I say? The morning is peacetime It is made of steel I make a threat I will not carry out.

Dancing to Death Written by James Gordon (content warning: death, murder)

When Judy was having a bad day, she cheered herself up by giving her least favourite patient an air embolism. It was the only way to find joy in the cold and soulless ward. She killed about fourteen patients in this way. The worst day in her life came when the hospital called for an external inquiry and her job was on the line. She picked herself up that day by killing 150 of her patients, timing each of their deaths so they flatlined to the rhythm of Queen’s ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’. And she danced to her song by herself one final time in that dark and lonely ward.

Illustrated by Zoe Eyles

FARRAGO

For and Against: TikTok For

Against

by Joanna Guelas

by Nishtha Banavalikar

I miss Vine this, Vine walked so TikTok could run that. Bestie, there’s a reason why Vine couldn’t run. Vine was gentrified TikTok before TikTok was a thing. On Vine, there was Lele Pons, Liza Koshy and Gabbie Hanna on repeat, but on TikTok? You can have cottagecore lesbian TikTok, tarot card TikTok, straight men queerbaiting TikTok, self-insert so you can date Tom Holland’s Spider-Man TikTok, without even stumbling upon Charlie D’Amelio or Addison Rae. All the Vine compilations are just different orderings of “Staph, I could’ve dropped my croissant” and “Road work ahead? Uh, sure hope it does”. There is no flavour to Vine anymore. Let her rest.

The year is 3021. The earth is in ashes. All that exists of humanity is Jeff Bezos’s incest-ridden lineage. They sit comfortably in their McMansion spaceship, pondering humanity’s last century as Jeff Bezos Jr. Jr. Jr.’s hand hovers over the big red button.

But it’s cringe! Only twelve-year-old eshays use TikTok! Wrong. You’re just scared. You’re clinging onto tradition so hard you can’t embrace modernity. It’s the microtargeting of the For You page that scares you, isn’t it? Well, bestie, Facebook and YouTube use microtargeting to give you advertisements about Oodies and they steal your data too.

“Renegade, renegade, renegade.” A tear rolls down his cauliflower skin. Were those not happier times? When humanity had merit? When filters would do the work of isolating attractive children and women for him and content could be freely stolen from Black creators as his ancestors had dreamed. Another tear falls.

TikTok is fun. It doesn’t need to be anything more than that to be valid. And if you stopped letting the insecure “I am cool girl, girl that is cool” you take control, then maybe you could have some extra serotonin too. Could you imagine feeling embarrassed over an app? Bye.

A haunting melody filters in:

When E-girls and furries held hands and toed community guidelines in their school uniforms. When algorithms benevolently filtered out the ugly, non-white and nonable bodied. When predators roamed free without discrimination and thousands of tiny, mentally ill voices sang the anthem of his great grandfather. CEO, Entrepreneur… Time was running out to make a decision. In moments like this, he asks: WWQARD? (What would queen Addison Rae do?) Nay… his ex-queen. She’d chosen him over her. Chosen… Trump… He growled under his breath and hit the button. Tiktok was dead. Now, he would carve humanity in his own name.

Illustrated by Cathy Chen

‘Stripped Back’ Playlist Complied by Mark Yin, Annabel Hsu, Joanne Zou & Nishtha Banavalikar

15. oyasumi—Mamerico 16. Vanishing (live)—Mariah Carey 17. Minestrone—Wez Atlas 18. MI GORENG—IJALE 19. Grow Old with Me (demo)—Tom Odell 20. Daylight (live)—Taylor Swift 21. Landslide—The Japanese House 22. Luv Letter—阿克江 23. 紅豆紅豆—Khalil Fong 24. castles of sand (acoustic)—Lewis Watson 25. waltz for hulot—Mamerico 26. Everywhere I’m Goin’ (feat. Avenue Beat)—Maddie & Tae 27. Close 2 U—Raveena 28. Broccoli’s Keeper—Dacey 29. Favorite Stuff—Khalil Fong 30. Seen My Man (live)—Trixie Mattel

Illustrated by Nina Hughes

1. my ted talk (acoustic)— mxmtoon 2. Dime Store Cowgirl—Kacey Musgraves 3. CRAZY (Hidden Track No.V 11월 선정곡 선정곡)—John OFA Rhee 4. Summer is Over (feat. Mai Anna)—Kaz 5. Antidote—Orion Sun 6. L’arc en ciel—Madame & Toean 7. White Stallion—Kaz 8. Hallelujah (acoustic)—Oh Wonder 9. a border—Mamerico 10. jam—macico 11. Remain—Christian Kuria 12. I Could Say (acoustic)—Lily Allen 13. Kiss Me (acoustic)—Sixpence None The Richer 14. The Art of Detaching One’s Heart—Phum Viphurit, Jenny & the Scallywags

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.