Golden and crackling, scorched beneath the sun, they cradle all five square miles of my hometown in their palms. When I shade my eyes against the sky, I can see a heat haze shimmering in the air over their gentle slopes. When I brush through the dry grass, it sings back to me.
During summer evenings, I frequently find myself perched atop the soft peaks behind my elementary school, or just past the pond, or bordering the end of my street. From there I have a birds-eye view of the burn scars that bloom yearly across the miles of yellow-brown slopes. They are remnants of our annual fire season: when blazes ignite across southern California and the smell of smoke permeates the air everywhere you go.
I’ve grown up hiking alongside my parents and friends, mapping the paths of the burnt land and trekking through the clouds of dust we kick up. I run my hands over snapped branches upon the earth, blackened remnants of oaks snarling towards the sky. I can’t imagine home any
Letter from the Editor
Dear Readers,
I’ve been inspired by the line that Kristen Bell’s character says on the pilot episode of Nobody Wants This: “You know what else feels good? To, um, say something embarrassing, like, the second you meet someone.” I’ll go first, since this is my first editor’s note and formal introduction to all you lovely readers of post-: Today I almost (key word almost!) overslept my dentist appointment to fill two cavities. There are about four items in my fridge currently in decomposition. I had three Depop offers rejected in a row. And I guess Kristen’s right, it does feel good! But in honesty, I think vulnerability is a practice of care. It’s an interaction charged with the genuine—to share something real, to listen without judgment.
Our writers this week are also getting vulnerable. For Lifestyle, Daniella bravely opens up about her distaste for children, spurred by a particularly cutting interaction, as
other way.
i.
The first time I was told to pack my life up into a duffel bag, I was in seventh grade, studying for my anatomy test at the dinner table.
I remember the experience in foggy snatches. The email announcing that school was canceled for the rest of the week, my phone exploding with OMG s from my friends, that dark smell of smoke that seeped through our walls. Later, it was called the “Woolsey Fire”; I turned the name over and over in my mouth for hours.
The word evacuation : first a question, then an answer.
My dad’s voice as he told us, “Everything will be okay.” The spill of hastily-packed bags in the trunk as we drove to a family friend’s apartment in Century City. My mom’s face in the flash of the streetlamps when she thought my sister and I weren’t looking. The orange radiance atop the hills like a thousand dragon tongues,
an ancient college senior; Reina shares the embarrassing moment of mistakenly identifying someone as her hometown best friend and her thoughts on homesickness. In A&C, writer Indigo dives into the vulnerability of Charli xcx and Lorde’s remixed track “Girl, so confusing” through her own life’s ex-friends and adversaries while Johan explores SOPHIE’s SOPHIE and the paradoxical intimacy and distance that comes with a posthumous album release. For Narrative, Ana gets real about “Jell-O time” and how living with her friends gets her through the sluggishness of life, and Lynn opens up about her changed relationship with nature. Similarly, our Feature writer Michelle shares the harrowing experience of California’s fire season and how she’s been shaped by the raging wild. In post-pourri, Nahye exposes her own LinkedIn stalking tendencies and the dreaded professional profile-hopping on that platform. And before you get too deep into that
hungry, starving for kindling.
ii.
Somewhere, something is always ablaze.
The Congressional Research Service defines wildfires as “unplanned fires, including lightningcaused fires, unauthorized human-caused fires, and escaped fires from burn projects.” From 2013 to 2022, America experienced an average of 61,410 wildfires annually. In fact, there are 29 large active wildfires burning across the country at the time of writing.
While wildfires are often caused by “unusually long-lasting hot lightning bolts,” the leading cause is unquestionably humans. According to the National Park Service, almost 85% of wildfires in America are lit by manmade disturbances like unattended campfires, burning debris, carelessly-tossed cigarettes, and even arson.
Historically, Indigenous people in Yosemite and elsewhere would light small controlled burns as forest
rabbit hole, check out this week’s festively fall crossword as a feel-good break.
The semester feels like it’s getting to its toughest point: endless midterms, running into people you ghosted, and other embarrassments/difficulties/obstacles abound. But the wonderful part of being vulnerable is that you may find yourself in good, if slightly miserable, company. It’s a varied and rewarding experience. There are as many valencies of vulnerability—from the humorously self-aware to the profoundly personal—as the number of post- articles in this issue (perhaps even more!), and I hope you’ll open yourself up to vulnerability as you open up this week’s issue of post-!
Being so for real,
Emilie Guan
Michelle Bi Illustrated by Emilie Guan @emilieguan42
Copy-Chief
management tools: these fires kept canopies about 40% open, allowing a greater diversity of fire-resilient plants to flourish. When European settlers entered California, they suppressed these burns and even outlawed them in 1850, believing Indigenous practices to be uncivilized and primitive. A vast amount of forests were logged to the brink and then replanted in dense clusters, completely destroying the biodiversity fostered by the Indigenous people and nature herself.
Decades later, the United States Forest Service’s aggressive policy of fire suppression began in 1935 with the "10 a.m. policy," in which they aimed to contain every fire by 10 a.m. the morning after it was reported. This has led forests to grow even more dense and thick— the tall trees and close-knit canopies acting as “a kind of deadly highway” for flames to spread.
Fires have been exacerbated primarily by climate change: the ticking time bomb we try to ignore, hovering over the horizon like a plume of smoke.
iii.
When we returned from the evacuation four days later, we’d heard our house had thankfully been undamaged; now, it was just a matter of getting home. For the most part, everything along the way looked untouched too.
Then we turned down a side street, and in half a moment, I understood fire for the first time.
The burnt houses looked like corpses. It felt impossible to observe them head-on, and so, as our car crawled by, I tried to take in one aspect at a time: the walls stripped bare from the foundation, the blackened beams like gnarled tree roots, the debris hanging from the torn gaps between. In the distance, huge blackened swathes clouded the hills.
We went home. Stepping through the doorframe felt like greeting an old friend. I thought of the skeletons of those poor people’s houses, their torn-up foundations slumping to the earth. I thought of, so very selfishly, the five-minute drive between there and here
I sat on my bedroom floor for what felt like hours. I imagined the wood might cave in at any second, that some ember could suddenly erupt. I thought of permanence, and the newly-fleeting nature of it all, and then everything in the world was just as hazy as the shadowy black-and-gold landscape in the distance. iv.
A 2023 Nature study found that manmade climate change has increased the risk of “extreme daily wildfire growth” by about 25% in California compared to preindustrial conditions. The last five years alone have seen 10 of the state’s 20 largest fires of all time.
This, naturally, is driven by human activity. As we burn fossil fuels, our atmosphere grows oversaturated with carbon dioxide, causing temperatures to rise: a statewide increase of about 1.5 degrees Celsius has been
observed over the past 40 years. Over the same time period, California has seen a 30% seasonal decrease in rainfall, an increase in dry vegetation, and even a spike in the length and intensity of heat waves. Taken together, the state makes the perfect kindling.
Chris Field, the Perry L. McCarty Director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, says simply, “We are in an era when every fire season is likely to be out of the ordinary.”
The pond down the street from my house shrinks each year, and the creek has long since thinned to a trickle. Every autumn, the burn spots on the hill shift, but they are always there: a sense of permanence and change all in one. Each time I gaze over the landscape I’m reminded of it all, that nothing—from home to homeland—can ever be taken for granted.
v.
One July morning, just before sunrise, I picked up a friend and drove to the open space behind our old elementary school. We spent an hour trekking up to the highest point in the area, alternating between banter and meditative quiet.
We could see our entire hometown from up here: a smattering of brown and red roofs amongst rolling waves of hills, the sun seeping slow and gold over the horizon. The world was quiet. Tall grass swayed around our hips. Only a handful of weeks remained before we separated for college, and although neither of us vocalized it, the thought hung heavy in the air.
(Later that day, the very hill we were standing atop would make national news; by some unknown cause, it’d been set aflame. I’d watch the pictures of ashy dirt scroll across my screen, thinking of the serene yellow grass we’d stood among a matter of hours before. In a matter of hours, the fire department had the small blaze under control.
The next time I went hiking, a few days later, the wounds would still be apparent—black and gray stretched across the yellow hills, as if a giant had smeared sooty fingerprints onto the earth.)
Of course, that morning, perched on the peak, we couldn’t have known what would happen. And yet a curious feeling swooped in the pit of my stomach when I gazed over the edge, across my home and the hills, the lightening sky. A thought seized me: This will never be the same again.
I said a goodbye to my friend that day, but added another one under my breath into the morning air. I knew that when we returned, the landscape would be different, and so would we; this moment, this homeland, were all the more precious for it.
vi.
There are seven principles to the National Park Service’s “Leave No Trace” nature preservation campaign: ranging from “camp on durable surfaces” to “respect
wildlife.” However, the one that’s been drilled into every Californian’s mind is to “minimize campfire impacts,” and for good reason. 95% of wildfires in California are manmade; in 2023 alone, humans caused over 7,000 blazes statewide.
Over and over, we’re taught that wherever you tread in the wild must remain pristine. The trees may appear to be sturdy enough to survive anything and the hills so endless that they are untouchable, but in the end, nothing is permanent. Nature is delicate and constantly in flux. One spark can ignite a conflagration. One ember can leave a house in ruins.
There are ways to combat climate change-driven wildfires in the long run. Methods include clearing dry vegetation and brush from vulnerable areas, building stronger power and water systems, developing effective evacuation routes and emergency plants, and more. Most critical is the educated usage of controlled burns, which are used to clear dry plant matter and mitigate fires before they even begin. There’s hope—we just have to take action on it.
Whenever we enter nature, nobody should be able to tell that we were ever there—we’re simply passing through. And yet even as we’re instructed to leave no trace wherever we tread, the wilderness has molded each and every one of us in return. I’ve found homeland not just among the chaparral of California, but in my friends’ laughter rising as we crest the slopes, my parents’ hands sliding into mine—the people I journey through the dust with, our footsteps scattered to the Santa Ana winds. vii.
And it starts and ends with the hills.
Three thousand miles away, surrounded by trees and birds I don’t know the names of, I think of them more than I expected to. I picture them yellow and black, brown and gold, illuminated by high noon sun and hazy twilights and everything in between. I see my feet planted in the earth and my home sprawled out below. I taste the salt of my sweat, the clear morning air, the smoke wafting from over the horizon.
I don’t know what they’ll look like when I return in December. Perhaps this winter will be rainy, and they’ll be emerald green, trees and bushes bursting to life. But it’s more likely I’ll find myself remapping a dozen new ashen scars, unfurled across the slopes, the constancy of change once again making itself known.
The next fire season will come, and the one after, and after. The mountains will erupt again and again. Nothing will ever be the same as it is today.
So here’s what the years have taught me: Take care of the nature that cradles you. Treasure each wild and flashing moment. Leave no trace on the landscape, look across the world, capture it in your memory.
Let yourself love. Let yourself change. Hold it all close and careful in your roughened hands.
HardLaunch
1. Virginia is for lovers 2. It’s been you all along 3. This and some premarital
“If it quacks like a girl car and it waddles like a girl car then it’s a girl car.”
“What’re
your top Ed’s? Mine are Ed Sheeran then Ed Discussion.”
Holding my iPad against my body, I steadily lifted myself into the rolling chair. Once seated, I laid the tablet on my lap and peered out through the window. My grandma, a tiny Asian woman in a straw hat, was pouring water from a mug onto the garden plants in our front yard. After each watering, she stared at the plant, standing straight. Its blooming flower, its leaves, its branches, its soil. It was a curious sight to watch her as she looked on to her garden—teeming with plants that have lived since long before me. After a while, admiring her repetitive process, I picked up my iPad and turned it on.
Curling myself into a tight ball, I rubbed my hands back and forth against the nylon fabric, feeling around for a moment of heat. I was stuck inside a fully enclosed sleeping bag, within a large tent that trapped little heat, on a remote coast in northern California, in the middle of a summer night. The screeching wind beat at the thin layers of the tent walls, and I listened in on the warped breathing of my parents’ snores. I had not seen a shower in an entire day, and any fresh clothes I put on immediately became a biohazard. To minimize the number of trips to the Porta Potty, I even thought of peeing my bed…or here, the sleeping bag.
Even in the middle of the great outdoors, I locked myself up in the tent with a pre-downloaded TV show on my iPad. Only in desperate times, I planned, would I touch my device—every percentage of battery counted. By the end of the trip, though, I spent the majority of my trip watching TV and very little time outside my tent. When I lost interest in the German Netflix show about drug dealing, I resorted to playing cards with my brother, cousins, extended family—just about anybody. I counted down the hours until I would leave this makeshift dungeon of tents.
Above all, while I stuck to eating instant ramen throughout the entire, two-day camping trip, I refused to take a shit. Without a way to wash my hands? This “outdoors” experience at the age of 15 left me with a lifelong lesson: Don’t go outside.
“We should go on a hike!” my friend suggested. We were deliberating on ways to make a Texas road trip fun. My friends were devotees to the sun: one played tennis on outdoor courts everyday, and the other loved to play with her dogs in a vast backyard. In our Texan
nature writing meditations on natural marvels
by Lynn Nguyen Illustrated by Junyue Ma
hometown, built on a swamp, solar rays burned our skin with a tingling sensation. Any time I took a step outside, a rush of mucus ran through my nose, while the mosquitoes hastened to my arms and legs. The sharp heat spun my already-dizzy head so that I could not even stand.
“Absolutely not,” I mechanically responded. My refusal was not a matter of discomfort but survival. After numerous proposals and vetoes, we came to a compromise. We would do a lazy river as part of our road trip.
I focused my eyes in hopes of remembering everything I saw. On this light, sunny day, Monet’s garden brimmed with leaves of rich, vibrant green, married with the bright pink blossoms that rested closely together among the trees and grass. Scattered throughout were delicate flowers of soft blue, orange, and white that stood utterly still, drawing me into a moment where nothing else but this existed—and only for that mere moment. Families of lilies floated around in the pond alongside the surface’s gentle ripples, slowly drifting this way and that way, underneath a green bridge intertwined with fluffy bushes of even more green.
I strolled along the same pathways again and again, in awe of a near-perfect beauty. The pictures I took were not to capture the visual but to remind myself of a feeling—of privilege. My family will likely never be able to witness what I have witnessed. Visiting this garden was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me but an impossibility for my parents. All of those who came before me were not thinking about seeing the beauties
of nature but instead focusing on working to better the lives of those in the future. Where I was, accessing the most beautiful of places, was a culmination of their generational labor.
On the train, my legs and feet went numb from my sopping wet shorts and socks, coupled with the air conditioning. Passerbys glanced at my bloody face, covered with scratches and bruises and bandaging. My heavy eyelids shut my dry eyes, which had been open from 5 a.m. to 8 p.m. Although I physically suffered, I would have done it all over again—biking around a lake in the Alps and swimming in the glowing blue water, despite the thunderstorm all day. Falling off my bike there only made me grateful that I could fall off there of all places. Perhaps I felt that the physical pain was worth beholding such a sight of nature.
“Let’s go hiking.”
My friend, who once played tennis on outdoor courts everyday in high school, wanted to show me what her college city offered. There was even a fun little troll sculpture I could see in the park we would go to. Checking the weather app, I saw that the summer heat in Texas was around 100°F.
“Sure, why not?” I was obligated—by my nature, by where I come from—to see.
At Trader Joe’s, I peruse the assortment of flowers for the sake of looking at the charming selection. While I ultimately pick up a bunch of dried lavender—a nocommitment plant—a pink-fuchsia orchid catches my eye. An inexplicable desire makes me lift its pot and gently place it into the shopping cart—an immediate, pulling love. I think it would look great in my dorm, except that I have never taken care of a plant before and, in actuality, have always been against it. I simply remind myself that, according to Joan Didion, orchids require acute attention, and yet its beauty is rewarding in itself.
After setting the orchid in an ideal place on a shelf, I let myself fall into a seat admiring it. Its blooming flower, its leaves, its branches, its soil. As I water the orchid, I am reminded of growth, sure and steady. Of how I am trying to continue the family tradition of gardening, of how I am the product of a want to continue, of how I will continue so that others can too.
living with friends for when time starts to feel like Jell-O
by Ana Vissicchio
Illustrated by Cho Kang
Lately, I’ve had a lot of those mornings that when I wake up, time just stretches, and I feel gelatinous. Like Jell-O. I’ve had more of them than I can count. I greet these viscous mornings with a groggy head and eyes that won’t open beyond halfway. A blindingly bright alarm clock mocks me. It’s quiet in my small dorm room. Only soft chirps float through the window left cracked open from the night before. I’m drowning in my foggy state, but I swing my legs out of bed anyways. In the hallway, I’m met with a familiar face, sluggish like mine. We exchange lopsided smiles. A bit of the heavy fog lifts.
I arrived at school 28 days ago, though it feels like an eternity. I remind myself that it’s still early. Early on in my semester, early on in my life. Yet, despite these daily mantras and small acts of occasional self-care, I still manage to bury myself in anxiety, hopelessly overwhelmed.
Just 28 days in, everything feels warped beyond recognition. Friendships have shifted, relationships have changed, classes have picked up, and I’m swamped to my knees in stress. Maybe this is the junior year slump we’ve all been warned about. The feelings that summer calmed for just a little while—the low, but constant hum of worries about anything and everything —all come rushing back. But school has started and I push on. I show up to class, I do assignments with the stomach flu, and I go to the meetings I don’t want to go to. Because eventually, the fog will thin and things will start to settle down. The semester will roll on. I’ll see a little more clearly.
The jump from a summer mainly spent alone to constant socialization feels jarring. But, when I’m in my room, about to wallow up and cry, I hear bells just outside my door—the laughter of my three roommates, stomping into my room and singing. Their wild,
unhinged choreography drags me out of my hole, forcing me to climb out of bed and join them.
My girlfriends are like no other. They’re kind, and they’re caring, and they’ve done nothing but look out for me and love me. And over the years that we’ve known each other, we’ve conjured up ways to give ourselves a little break from the constant seriousness of school and clubs and relationships. From prank wars, to slipping love letters under each others’ doors, to covering our walls in weird stickers, to competitive Bananagrams, to salsa dancing, they get me. Our dorm hums with chaotic but loving energy.
Despite how easily moments with them uplift me, there’s this constant undercurrent of anxiety that never fully leaves. It’s a lingering feeling: not overwhelming, but oscillating in and out, growing dull at times, but never quiet. I cling to my routines when I’m alone, the little things that bring me happiness. Making coffee in the morning. Sending funny pictures to my brothers. Curling my hair. Busywork. Constant motions. Runs, pilates, walks, calling my friends and my family—I’m desperate to fill every minute with noise and music and activity. But even in these moments, no loud volume can drown out the sound of that ever persistent hum of dread.
Perhaps it’s the transition. New faces, new schedules, new habits, new surroundings—we expect ourselves to adapt immediately and face these changes like champs. There’s an unspoken rush to figure it all out and fasten our heads on our shoulders. But in reality, I don’t think it’s that easy. Sometimes, things still feel a bit upside down.
When I’m with people I don’t know well, I find myself worrying constantly that I’m talking too loud or I’m mumbling, that I’m being too boisterous or annoyingly dull. I rewind to each interaction, flipping and flopping words in my head, replaying each look.
Maybe the people I surround myself with—who I put energy and effort into, who do the same to me in return—matter much more than I thought they did. In college, where time is a scarce commodity, it matters who you share it with.
I’m lucky to have friends I can always count on. Sharing a space with them has only made our friendship stronger.
In the moments I feel most disconnected, the
smallest gestures pull me back. Like the way my roommates knock on my door when they’re bored, play music in the common room, and send me funny pictures when they know I’m home. Or how they know my class schedule and remember when my assignments are due. And how they leave the door open: an unspoken invitation just to walk in. No knock necessary.
More and more, I’ve been cherishing this comfort of a shared space, of shared lives. Living with my best friends forges moments of togetherness, whether I’m ready for them or not. We struggle in our own ways, but at least we’re doing it together. Experiencing this time in our lives as a team makes it all bearable. When every other thing in my life feels like too much, it’s comforting to know I’m not alone.
More often than not, we’re grabbing meals on the go or rushing out for class with only a quick goodbye. Yet, most nights after 11 p.m., we’re all at home, sprawled on our giant bean bags with so many stories to tell and so much advice to dole out. I’m lucky to experience these sweet moments where everything feels easy. Time doesn’t feel like Jell-O. It feels weightless, suspended, like we’re floating above our daily lives, just for a little while.
I’m learning to tackle the unease, the insecurities, the doubt. Instead of trying to make it all perfect or figuring it all out completely, I focus on the small moments—of connection, joy, and laughter—that remind me how to stay present and feel secure. The friends I get to surround myself with remind me of my value and worth every single day. They do so through the smallest things—laughing over nothing, talking late at night, pocketing inside jokes for later. Sticking by me even when I’m at my lowest.
I know there will always be days when I wake up and time feels like it’s slipping through my fingers, where everything moves too fast or not fast enough. But, I also know there are days when it all slows down, just enough for the fog to clear. Days I can breathe a little easier.
In these moments, I remember that I’m not just living with friends—I’m building something with them. Something lifelong, cherished, and untouchable. Something that makes this Jell-O-time a little less sticky. Something that makes it all worth it.
SOPHIE forever
a bittersweet glance into the past and the future
by Johan Beltre Illustrated by Ella Buchanan
Lights out. The resonant silence suddenly filled every underground dance floor in the world. Thousands of electronic music lovers held their breaths together with anguish as they slowly gathered to hear the news. Sophie Xeon, also known as SOPHIE, had passed away. On January 20, 2021, a representative from SOPHIE’s label, Transgressive, released a statement explaining that SOPHIE had suffered a fatal accident in her home in Athens, Greece.
At the age of 34, SOPHIE had built her presence in the music industry as a creative visionary, gathering the support of millions of fans. She pushed the envelope of pop and electronic music, creating a community for those who had been dismissed by mainstream society for centuries. In collaboration with music producer and close friend A.G. Cook, she pioneered a new genre, PC Music, which evolved into a subculture known today as hyperpop. From the acid bubblegum-flavored taste of her breakthrough single “BIPP” to the mindbending world of her solo debut album Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides, SOPHIE always found a way to defy mainstream society’s idea of pop music through her inventive maximalism and experimentation.
I will never forget when I first discovered SOPHIE while scrolling through YouTube recommendations. My 14-year-old self did not understand what “he’s my little ponyboy” meant, but it definitely had a little sweetness to it that I found to be both perplexing and appealing. She merged her fascination for unconventional sound design with pop music and culture in ways I had never seen before. Whether it was a crisp bubbly synth, a nonsensical breakdown in the middle of a song, or a seven-minute unsettling ambient track that could score an A24 movie, she was ready to immerse you into her world through sounds. This love for experimentation landed her collaborations with artists like Madonna, Vince Staples, and Charli XCX, pushing her vision of pop to broader audiences.
Now, almost four years have passed since SOPHIE’s death, but her influence continues to be as evident as when she was alive. While receiving a Grammy for “Unholy,” Kim Petras thanked SOPHIE for her transgressive work and for opening the door for trans artists to be recognized in the music industry. Charli XCX featured a tribute song about her friendship with SOPHIE in her new album, BRAT Millions of fans of electronic and pop music still hold SOPHIE’s music and her contributions deep in their hearts.
To honor her legacy, Benny Long, SOPHIE’s brother and collaborator, alongside her family, recently released a posthumous album titled SOPHIE In an interview with Australian radio station, Triple J, her brother said, “This album is very much a community that SOPHIE brought together. It is like a family.” Spanning 16 tracks, the album features many collaborations with artists like Cecile Believe, Evita Manji, Hannah Diamond, the aforementioned Kim Petras, and many others who were close to SOPHIE.
Before listening to the album, I was hesitant with my excitement. After an artist dies, record labels, collaborators, and the artist’s family are met with the possibility of compiling a body of work that encompasses the artist’s essence based on the artist’s will. While this sounds good in theory, posthumous albums have always been polarizing among fans because they often fail to honor the artist’s legacy while respecting their creative agency and vision. For example, after XXXTentacion’s death, his record label released a posthumous album, SKINS, which many fans and journalists considered to be a “cash grab.” This was reinforced by the album’s charting success and the subsequent forced releases featuring voice notes and track skeletons that begged for the label to let the man rest in peace.
When done right, posthumous albums can allow fans closure as they get to experience a new release from their favorite artist one last time. Mac Miller’s Circles—a gold standard for posthumous albums— features carefully curated material that walks the fine line between tribute and artistic vision. It deals with the complications of grief through joyous memories and mourning resulting in a wistful shot, like realizing that the soda from the dispenser is flat after taking a sip from your cup.
The release of SOPHIE’s posthumous album is a special case. Early on in her career, SOPHIE was interested in making two albums: her experimental album, Oil, which she released in 2017, and a pop album. By the time of her death, she was already working and teasing songs for her almost-finished sophomore album. That material now lands in her posthumous album as a way to honor her wishes to release her pop album.
Ever since the album came out, there has been a Twitter feud among SOPHIE fans. Think pieces are flying left and right addressing the ethical implications of posthumous albums and the content on the album. Some wonder about the preservation of SOPHIE’s vision, going as far as to say that it does not feel like SOPHIE made it. Others are thankful for the opportunity to listen to new material from SOPHIE but feel disappointed with the album’s tracklist. Given that the release of the album was advertised as tribute to SOPHIE’s work, there was also anticipation to see if many unreleased songs like the confrontational “Burn Rubber,” the sleeky “Take Me To Dubai,” the hardhitting “First Time” feat. Nadia Rose, and many other songs would someday be officially released.
While there's reason behind some of those points given the minimalist presentation of many tracks in SOPHIE, I wonder how people would have received the album if SOPHIE was still alive. Some fans were expecting the album to be a certain way and they were going to be mad if it did not align with their notion of what “SOPHIE music” sounds like. This not only limits SOPHIE's artistic vision for what she expected her sophomore album to be but also highlights the parasocial relationship some fans have with an artist and their legacy. Given that the album was almost done, what we listened to was probably SOPHIE’s vision of the album: a hot sweaty minimalist rave party where she gathered all her friends and just had fun. It is clear that she wanted people to have fun listening to it. If fans let go of the hyper fixations of what they consider to be SOPHIE’s musical identity, they can finally allow SOPHIE’s futuristic vision of pop to truly shine and realize that her presence is all over this album.
The album portrays SOPHIE as presenting her final runway collection. Similar tracks walk one after the other, prancing in front of the listener, with each subsection showing a different facet of SOPHIE. Tracks 1–4 represent the daunting yet familiar side of SOPHIE. The futuristic battle chants in “Plunging Asymptote” feat. Juliana Huxtable were perfectly made to disorient the ears of those who didn’t pay attention in Calculus. In tracks 5–7, we see SOPHIE exploring her poppiest work to date. “Reason Why” feat. Kim Petras and BC Kingdom gives us a peek at a new SOPHIE that was to come, one that embraced her pop sensibility to a maximum. Tracks 8–12 encompass the minimalistic rave aesthetic that is so reminiscent of Berlin rave parties. “Gallop” feat. Evita Manji, SOPHIE’s partner before she died, is the perfect energy booster track that every DJ should play before the final leg of their set. Finally, tracks 13–16 encapsulate the euphoria and grief of listening to SOPHIE’s last project. “My Forever” feat. Cecile Believe contemplatively speaks to the never-ending impact that SOPHIE will always have on all the people who admired and cared for her.
SOPHIE’s self-titled album stands as a perfect posthumous album. It holds the best material in SOPHIE’s music catalog, meets fans’ expectations holding up to its genre-defying predecessor, and highlights the presence and absence of SOPHIE as a music pioneer and a human being. It envisions her ideas for the future while paying tribute to her immortal past contributions.
i love every
single girl i’ve ever had beef with is forgiveness brat?
by Indigo Mudbhary
Illustrated by Candace Park
I first listened to BRAT a few days after it came out this summer, at the recommendation of my roommate. Other things my roommate has put me onto: cottage cheese, staying hydrated, and bell peppers. In fact, I’m borrowing her sundress as I write this. I take her recommendations seriously, so when she told me that I should listen to the new Charli xcx album, I shut up and put my headphones on. I put it on in the background one night while cranking out some busy work (I know a Google Sheet hates to see me coming) and was immediately hooked. I couldn’t help but bob my head up and down to the beat, and by the end of the night, I’d already listened to the album three times in a row. A few months later, I know every track by heart. I even went to Charli xcx and Troye Sivan’s Sweat tour with my roommate, decked out in Brat green eyeshadow and the brattiest outfit I could find.
As the designated chronically online friend for many people in my life, multiple friends have asked me to explain what the word Brat means. I usually say that it means being obnoxious but in an iconic way. To be Brat is to be rude, but you’re self-aware of it. It’s like when someone swerves recklessly in front of you on the freeway, and at first you’re a little miffed by it, but then you find yourself impressed by the maneuver, and you have to admit that their neon pink convertible is kinda cunty, and you like the music they’re blaring. While everyone has their own definition of what makes something Brat, we can all agree that the word connotes something obnoxious, confident, loud, fun, and bold. However, missing from that definition is the immense tenderness found in many of the album’s songs. From “I might say something stupid,” an earnest confession that will resonate with overthinkers everywhere, to “I think about it all the time,” which explores Charli’s complicated feelings about motherhood, the word Brat, for me, evokes vulnerability—confessing your most intimate truths over club music. Of course, I understand that Charli is not my friend and that BRAT is first and foremost about profit—however, there is something undeniably intimate about a voice singing into your headphones: “Should I stop my birth control? / ‘Cause my career feels so small in the existential scheme of it all.”
And then there’s arguably the most intimate part of BRAT: the “Girl, so confusing” saga. For those who don’t know, “Girl, so confusing” details the complicated relationship between Charli xcx and Lorde, who Charli thinks might hate her, but maybe Lorde just wants to be her. To everyone's surprise, shortly after the release of BRAT, Charli announced the release of a remix of “Girl, so confusing” featuring none other than the song’s muse, Lorde. Together, they sing about their insecurities and the miscommunication that’s plagued their decades-long friendship, and, as Lorde says, they work it out on the remix.
Many Charli xcx fans were moved by the seemingly sincere reconciliation happening in real time this (Brat) summer, including Julia Fox, the muse for the album’s opening track, “360” (“I’m everywhere I’m so Julia”). In a TikTok filmed in her car, Julia cries to the remix, captioning her reaction video: “I love every single girl ive ever had beef with.”
This summer, I read Julia Fox’s Down the Drain, a visceral depiction of generational trauma, substance abuse, and the beauty to be found in femme friendships. It also explores the devastation that comes with the unraveling of such friendships and the raw tragedy of losing someone you used to have BFF necklaces with. This and listening to Lorde and Charli talk through their interpersonal strife made me realize that I, too, love every single girl I have beef with. For example: I was recently swiping through Instagram stories and came across S soft-launching her girlfriend. S and I had a beautiful friendship in high school, full of sleepovers, photoshoots, and gossiping about our crushes. After our mutual friend E sexually harassed me and S refused to stop being friends with him, our friendship died, withering away like unwatered flowers on a dorm windowsill. Whenever I saw her after we fell out, we’d walk past each other without saying hi, as if she didn’t know my deepest darkest secrets and I didn’t know hers, like the fact that she is queer and her parents are assholes about it. So when I saw her smiling with her girlfriend through the cracked screen of my iPhone, I couldn’t help but start tearing up, despite E, despite the two years of silent glances in high school hallways, despite it all.
And when I heard that L, a girl who bullied me mercilessly every day of middle school, has a debilitating coke addiction, I felt a sadness in my chest that would’ve surprised middle school me, who secretly wished for L’s demise every day. At a reunion bonfire for my school, a former classmate says, “She can’t even make it through her first period class without going to the bathroom,” and mimics L snorting. “That’s horrible,” I reply, and the words surprise me, but they feel true as I say them.
And when I ran into R, who won’t speak to me and I won’t speak to her, outside of a coffee shop in San Francisco, I didn’t want to say something mean but rather felt an urge to compliment her sweater, tell her that I hope she’s doing well, and ask about her little brother. Instead, she glared at me, I glared back, and we never worked it out on the remix.
Even the person I hated most in high school, C, is someone I found myself defending recently. C and I did debate together, and she made the second half of my senior year a living hell because of her relentless slut-shaming. But when an ex-friend started laughing about a story he’d heard involving her losing her virginity, I told him he was being disgusting. I found myself wanting to reach out to her and offer my condolences about the class of ‘22 being gross, even as I simultaneously thought she was one of the meanest and most inconsiderate people I’ve ever met.
And over spring break, as I strolled down the cobblestone streets of Seville with the person I’m in love with, I found myself thinking about SC, who I went to school with for nine years. We had multiple falling outs due to some drama long-forgotten in the hormonal mess that is eighth grade. She is Spanish and used to talk about how beautiful Seville was all the time. We all used to tease her about it, saying that we got it, she was from Spain. Years later, hand in hand with my lover, I found myself wanting to reach out to her, to say, “It’s just as beautiful as you said it would be.”
Do not let me be mistaken: I’m not advocating for all of us femmes to forgive every other femme that’s ever wronged us. And I myself have been too timid to act on any of these feelings; my fantasy about sending every girl I’ve ever had beef with the “Girl, so confusing” remix with the caption “us?” remains unrealized. I don’t think every woman or gendermarginalized person should be neatly forgiven on account of their gender—I still hate Margaret Thatcher and always will. Instead, I think BRAT invites us to look at our personal relationships with a bit more nuance. In a society that’s constantly asking us to speak in the first person (Where do I see myself in 10 years? What classes should I take? What do I want to do with my life?), there’s something refreshing about remembering that in every argument you’ve ever had, there’s a living, breathing person who disagrees with you, who may (or may not) deserve some compassion on your end. Especially in femme friendships, we’re all still marginalized by the same power structure, the one that let some random person tell ten-year-old Lorde she walks like a bitch, that lets people catcall us out of windows, that makes me put on a sweatshirt over my bodysuit on the train to the Charli xcx and Troye Sivan concert.
BRAT is more nuanced than people give it credit for, just like many of the people we have beef with may be more nuanced than we think. So maybe S and I will never have another sleepover, and perhaps I’ll never talk to any of these people again in this lifetime, but I wish them the best and I think that counts for something. And maybe one day, even if we’re old and gray, we can work it out on the remix.
thinking of home
the ruminations of a sentimental freshman
by Reina Jo Illustrated by Grace Tasel
The word “homesick” implies an illness—the disease of a constant longing to go home. However, this creeping feeling is more reminiscent of a sore muscle. Only when I am especially tired do I feel the tenderness and aches of trying to cling to my life back home.
Last week, I heard my hometown best friend’s name called across the dining hall.
As irrational as it may be, my heart skipped a beat. I whipped my head around, stabilizing myself with the back of my chair. Of course, my eyes were met with an unfamiliar face looking beyond me at their friend who beckoned them. A little embarrassed at my foolishness, I went back to enjoying my Andrews sandwich.
When I first fell victim to the freshman flu, I wished for the comfort of my bed back home. There, I knew I would be supported by my entourage of childhood stuffed animals, my mom heating up beef broth in the next room.
Walking on Thayer, I heard my hometown friend group’s song of the summer blaring out of a motorcyclist's speakers. I was brought back to night drives with my friends, windows down, music blasting.
My friend group’s made-up lingo falls on oblivious ears here in Providence, and I find myself internally giggling at something that reminds me of a joke from back home. Even if I try my best to explain, I always conclude with a dismissive “you had to be there.”
On FaceTime, I crash-course my friends on recent life updates. I answer, “Wait, is he the tall
one or the med school one?” and “So is that your class at night-time?” in the short 20 minutes of free time we have overlapping. Knowing basic facts about each other’s lives and routines isn’t as easy as it once was.
Coming to Providence, I flew over with bags of my favorite Japanese gummies, knowing they would provide me comfort at the end of a long day. The second week of school, I finished the last one, reminding me of how long I had been away already.
This past weekend, I threw the last of my clothes that still smelled like my home closet in the school washer. The foreign detergent I bought at Target right before move-in now dominates the familiar lavender scent.
These little aches remind me of how much my life has changed in the past month.
At the same time, I don’t wish to go back.
The heaviness left from missing my friends and family is relieved by the excitement of making new friends. Late night drives are replaced by late night gossip sessions in library study rooms, and new inside jokes bring me to doubled-overgasping-for-breath laughter. I’ve found myself slowly falling into a new routine here, shaped around spending time with new friends while staying connected to loved ones.
How grateful I am to have so much to miss from back home. How grateful I am to let so much more love and joy into my heart here at my second home for the next four years.
get off my lawn! reflections from a grumpy old college senior
by Daniella Coyle Illustrated by Lesa Jae
I was bouncing home along the cobblestones of this beautifully-old college town of ours, Seven Stars baguette in my tote, with just the implication of fall in the cooling air and the first curled leaves underfoot. It was a lovely night. I was ready to happily spend it alone, making garlic bread and binge-watching HBO’s Girls on my roommate’s parents’ account. I was enjoying the independence of living off-campus, shopping for dinner without being beholden to the nightly selections of the Ratty and the spooky ways they made my stomach feel. And as I took a crisp, deep breath as delicious as the champagne I am now legally allowed to drink, I felt happy with my early adulthood.
I even smiled at the little girl walking by in her lace pink dress, swinging hand in hand with her father in front of me.
Now, what sparked this smile, this display of pure human emotion? Nostalgia or hope for the future of the human race perhaps? It was big for me. Because the truth is that, normally— and please refrain from getting your pitchfork— children bother me. Namely, the way they are. I generally don’t find them cute. I do not coo at them in their strollers, nor as they waddle, nor at pictures of them on an iPhone held in my face by a doting parent. I ignore them as they gaze up at me or hold out their toy to me. I don’t find it charming when chocolate or red sauce is smeared all over their wide-eyed faces.
I don’t like ice skating, but I accompany my friends to the rink during the winter so that I can stand on the side and enjoy the hilarious sight of a child falling—bonus points if they have a ridiculous puffy coat on. I am not religious, but I pray hard for anyone except one of them— screaming and fidgeting and kicking—to sit down next to me when riding public transportation. I groan when one of them goes viral for saying “me!” when asked if they want to go to the Four Seasons Orlando. Kids, in short, annoy me.
Of course, I suppress my inner distaste with my best polite smile, but it’s not as much to spare parents’ feelings as it is to preserve my image as a Normal Member of Society. But today, I’m coming clean: I don’t like kids.
And no, I’m not so cruel as to attempt to convince you not to like them either; I realize that everyone acts as though children are the shining beacon of joy in this nasty, brutish, and short life, and I am the unpopular one with this take. You may find me cold, bitter, a mockery to the maternal purpose of womanhood—I don’t care. My opinion is steadfast.
So when I saw that little girl—the picture of little girlhood, holding hands with her father—and my immediate reaction was to smile, I thought my cold heart was thawing. I was suddenly being picked up from kindergarten early, hand in hand with one or both of my parents, and en route to my childhood home, or the park, or the ice cream shop—it didn’t matter. I was noting the tastes and smells of the first autumn I would remember, all of them sweet and conspiring to forge my favorite season. I was looking at every single thing with the cool rush I would eventually learn was awe.
And when I looked at something too big, leaned my head too far back, and saw every single color churning in the sky, I didn’t fall, but instead felt my mom’s hand squeeze mine, the shoes around my growing feet, and a sort of shield between me and the big bad world.
That’s when the little girl said to her father, after we’d passed one another: “Did you see her? She was scary. That girl looked scary.”
And immediately, I was no longer a child, but once again a quickly passing spectator of a stranger in a timeline eons away from my own. I was not cute and wide-eyed, everything coming to me brand new and wrapped with a bow. I was scary—I’d been war-torn, weather-beaten, and through the wringer of life. I was an old woman looking back on my childhood memories sadly, pathetically, hoping to get back some fresh vigor I never would. I was also alone, no parents to keep me from flying away or running into danger. If I did, it would be my own fault.
I’ve always heard that kids are honest. If you want to know if you’re ugly or pretty, ask a kid, or better yet, wait for them to offer the information unprompted. Great for them—I am glad they have the opportunity to express themselves honestly without filter or consequence—but for someone with a history of being insecure, it has the effect of making me terrified of them and what they might say. I was ready to declare this interaction the worst-case scenario. Scary? Did she think this because of my dark clothes, black eyeliner, and tattoos? Or was it something less superficial: did this small girl of only a handful of years somehow know something true about me? My dark and twisted mind, the fact that I sometimes write really bad poetry, that I ate an egg past its expiration date, that I’ll be alone forever?
My friends laughed when I told them this anecdote, but it was not so comical to me. What gave this inchoate smudge of a human being the
right to insult me like that? Okay, that was harsh. Rather, why was she allowed to be so rude? I once apologized for implying I didn’t like a song my friend put on aux. That’s when I began to think that this one-sided feud I have with children is
not just because they are annoying and sometimes sticky for some reason. There’s jealousy fueling the fire.
They have no responsibilities, not even for random girls’ feelings whom they pass on the sidewalk. They get driven around, they can still be anyone. Sure, there’s the process of going through the very beginnings of school again, but anything that happens will be followed by an entire life to get back on track. They don’t pay for anything and get driven around everywhere. They are not expected to suck up to people they know nothing about for the small possibility of being considered for a job. They have no idea what the FAFSA is. They get designated time to play and have never had to merge onto a busy highway. They don’t know anything yet—other than toys and lollipops and maybe a U.S. president or two—and it does them good.
What changed? What if I still want to be a kid? I’d be a really good one, I promise. I would never allow my mom to scold you for watching an rated-R movie on the airplane while I’m next to you. I’d practice the best hygiene of any child you’ve ever seen. And most of all, I would savor the opportunity to–even if just for one more day— experience the protection, the safe knowledge that everything will be okay, the moments of feeling small wrapped in my parents’ arms.
Then again, there are privileges to growing up, to standing on the cusp of real adulthood. I’m seeing my passions burgeoning before my eyes and taking classes in cool things, and when I talk to my friends, I get the sense that I am becoming someone real. Plus, what I didn’t mention was that next to my baguette, I had a bottle of wine in my tote bag too.
POST-POURRI
BEFOR E YOU GO
doom scroll
the horrors of the LinkedIn deep dive
by Nahye Lee Illustrated by Fiona McGill
There is a draft of an article or an essay or a story or a narrative that is due today. Or yesterday. The dorm is dark, my roommate is asleep, and I sit cross-legged with my back against the cold, white prison wall of my room. I am attempting to write. I am in writerly crisis. I am experiencing writer’s block. Everything I type is hackneyed and boring and unoriginal. Even writing about my inability to write is, I think, a little overdone.
So, I do what any self-respecting, rational writer would do. I type linkedin.com into my search bar, except I don’t even have to type out the full address. I get as far as “li,” and Google— and its meticulous record of my search history— does the rest for me.
Scrolling through LinkedIn in the wee hours of the morning is a special brand of existential crisis. I like to think it starts off innocently enough—there is a high school classmate whom I knew tangentially, exchanged brief hellos with in the hallways, and it’s not long before I suddenly start to wonder how she’s doing. Sure, I know what college she went to by virtue of our high school’s college acceptance Instagram page, but there’s a little itch in the back of my mind that needs to be scratched. Did she end up majoring in Political Science? Did she turn to Computer Science? Public Health? Pre-med? Is she in any clubs? Does she have a summer internship yet? Any research? Fancy connections?
There’s no room to even take a breath. I scroll through her profile, sighing in relief when I find there’s not much to be afraid of, though I’m not sure what threat she could even pose to me. Then, I see the accursed sidebar menus: “More profiles for you,” and “People you may know.” There is an intimidating collection of people who look more accomplished than I am: a first-year at Harvard University on a first-name basis with my state senator. A CS-Econ senior from Brown who is “proud to announce [they] recently finished a summer analyst internship at Goldman Sachs!” Then, there’s that someone, older than me, whose life trajectory is an
uncanny prediction of what I could be if I make the right choices.—if I join the right clubs, meet the right professors, smile at the right people.
This is the horror of LinkedIn. Faced with the endless expanse of accomplished profiles stretching out before me, I start to question if I will ever amount to anything meaningful. If I will fade out into another mildly overachieving face by the time I graduate, absorbed into the vast, welcoming masses of postgraduate interns.
Lists of every individual achievement, every part-time job, every single summer program. By the end of a LinkedIn session, there is nothing but an amorphous swarm of college students giving the vague impression of professional competence. All this, for just that.
Everything in life will eventually fade out, compartmentalized within the neat categories of “Experiences,” “Education,” and “Honors.” You may eventually be defined by the school you went to, the clubs you were in, the internships you’ve experienced. Someone will print your resume out, highlight the key parts, and turn you into someone to emulate. Then what?
LinkedIn is the ninth circle of hell. Stare into LinkedIn, stare into the void.
What about late-night snack runs with your roommate? What about that party you went to last weekend? What about the question you asked in your lecture today that made the professor really think? What about the fact that you’ve been going to the gym every other afternoon? What about your daily journaling habit? What about—
Isn’t that part of your life too? Isn’t that an achievement? What about an internship warrants more recognition than your commitment to cutting down your caffeine intake? Shouldn’t employers value the steadfastness seen in your daily 5K run? Maybe even more than a twomonth unpaid stint? The horror of LinkedIn is perhaps less about the idea of comparison, relative incompetence, or even nihilism—it’s the reductionism of it all, the minimization of your hours into neatly palatable categories that leave no space for the joy in your life. Personally, I’ve started logging my daily steps.
by Ishan Khurana
Illustrated by Cayden Garrett
“And when the dance is learned, when it is ingrained in the very fibers of her muscles, she becomes larger than herself—a surprise to us and even to herself. She becomes something beyond.”
— Mack Ford, “A Tangle of Movement”
“As I held on to the hug, all the colors and words and shapes and sounds of that moment held on to me with a symphony of voices that sounded like ‘you are here you are here you are here.’ I am here, gladly.”
