sip as you play along

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beer: Bridge Road Brewers (Beechworth, VIC) ‘Magical Christmas Unicorn’ vanilla ice cream ale (330mL, 7% ABV)

zine: Widget: women in development, games + everything tech! by various contributors

I promised myself this year that I’d get better at self-promotion and to be honest, I’m doing a lot of cool shit, and I’m still struggling a lot with this. My mood disorder doesn’t help with this.

I submitted a proposal to be a speaker at this year’s Freeplay Festival, and as thrilled as I am to be taking part, there is a small voice at the back of everything in my head telling me that it’s a fluke, I’m not worth it, people won’t be interested etc. which is ridiculous because the organisers of the festival certainly wouldn’t feel that way – they’ve chosen the participants for a reason.

It could also be tied up in the fact that I’m not a professional in the games industry – never have been, never will be (unless I get a full-time job writing game narratives or game crit/reviews and such) – my chosen craft is writing, one I’m only starting to feel comfortable in.

I imagine impostor syndrome and its related iterations is one of the reasons zines like Widget exist: on the cover is a (white) woman with a rockabilly-50s-style scarf, holding up what looks like a Nintendo 64 control (what do Playstation controls look like? it’s definitely not an XBox one). The first few pages already – and rightfully – claim trans-inclusivity and the importance of women-only spaces…but so far, there’s nothing about women of colour. I don’t think this is deliberate, but ouch.

That’s pretty much been my life the last fortnight – wincing and second-guessing whether I’ve been oversensitive about the racial identity issues. But! there are the also those moments where meeting up with a mate who gets it at your fave nerd hangout and smashing dumplings next door then venturing to another craft beer hangout to make up intricate backstories for poop on the run emblazoning Omnipollo beer bottles! Chix-‘n’-beer is totally a thing!

Having lamented the lack of persons-of-colour direct rep in Widget, there’s some ace basic, super-useful info about looking after oneself, with or without a mood disorder – some super-compassionate stuff!

Of course it now makes sense why I chose a beer with ‘unicorn’ in the name, which incidentally is mentioned (just the unicorn bit, not the beer! though its consumption is generally perceived as masculine earlier in the zine). At first, there’s no vanilla creaminess at all…am starting to wonder if my seared salmon sushi bowl lunch thing has warped my palate. As the beer warms, it does get those teasing hints of vanilla! I remember when this was out in kegs and I chased a few beer places to try and snaffle a pint, but it was not to be – unicorns of any form don’t linger around long! I even drank it out of a schooner glass, rather than straight out of the bottle. I was briefly seeing a dudebro-in-disguise who tried to buy bottles of this particular beer for me, but they got smashed up in transit. It didn’t occur to him that I might have better supply network intel.

Thankfully, this female-identifying beer nerd is single and in possession of her/their own unicorns – yes, plural. I feel a bit weird drinking a not-dark beer when the nights are getting delightfully chilly, but it’s been a great, subtle dessertish beer.

Oh! Self-promo! If you’re in Melbourne, come on down to Freeplay! I’ll be chatting with Rory Green (like srsly they matched me with another poet who is writing poems to the first 151 glories on the Pokedex! and they’ve got a poem in Rabbit’s ‘Queer’ issue! it’s like I have a Sydney twin?!). We’re going to talk about our creative practice and the role playing games can have on one’s mental health and creativity generally. Teaser: it’s a win-win sitch!

I’ll also be leading a zine workshop a few days before the conference bit of the festival, and will be using boardgames and gamebooks for some inspiration as we get zine-making. I’m stoked because straight after, I get to go to Louis’ workshop on ‘bespoke’ controllers, then head to the Rabbit ‘Queer’ issue launch as part of the inaugural Melbourne Spoken Word and Poetry Festival.

 

***in case you need the reminder, my definition of ‘woman/women’ includes female-identifying humans of all types, colours, creeds. So should yours! <3

 

feck yeah females all the way

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Yeah wow, went to hell for a bit and only just emerging. I’d put on Julie Ruin while writing this, reading a zine that features female-identifying talent, and drinking beer by a female-run brewery, but because I’m always late to the party, I’m listening to M.I.A.’s album Kala (it is soooo good! but all of you in the noughties already know that huh?) because my roots are Anglo-Indian, and Kathleen Hanna (who is quoted in the intro to the zine I’m reading) would totally fucking be for it – I like to imagine. Good thing my Le Tigre album is in my car’s CD player (it’s great for getting your arse into gear on days when you’re not feeling life generally).

zine: Paper & Ink 12 ‘Girls To The Front’ by various authors

drink: Two Birds’ Brewing stout (Melb, AUS)

Katie Doherty, the guest editor, has an intro to explain her coming to writing, and also to keep up that call to arms:

It’s 2018 and we have the internet. It has been a wonderful tool to bring women together, it is inspiring and this is how it should be, long may it continue.

I’ve just finished a fantastic dinner of dukkah-crusted chicken breasts and roast veg, and dark beer is where it’s at! The weather in Melbourne is awful, but it’s also the perfect excuse to get comfy, wear lots of warm layers, cuddle cats and mates, and hold your hot drinks for longer than you need to. A lot of Australian breweries have been putting out some fab sours and goses (no, really, the taste combos and ingredients are just grown-up-sweets!), so it’s nice to have an excuse to hit the stout and um, not become too stout…? (I’m currently overweight, so that’s a dig at me, not anyone else. YOU – yeah, YOU, reading this, don’t hate on your body the way I’m hating on mine. I’m working on not hating mine less, honest).

Anyway, Two Birds being a Melbourne brewing stalwart in an industry that is still quite male-dominated is fucking fantastic. For women to stand out, it’s hard – you pretty much have to be flawless, work harder than your male counterparts who will see you as a bunch of shitty things they shouldn’t see you as (try being a woman of colour in ANY industry here in Australia, and the microaggressions are pretty depressing. This is one of the reasons I hadn’t been blogging here regularly, despite achieving some cool shit in my personal writerly life). Seriously, this stout is just ticking so many boxes for me – it’s not sweet, but not salty, so it’s washing away that savoury dukkah hint left in my mouth. It’s silky and sippable – after a mouthful, the roast malts linger on for a while. The taste sensation that keeps on giving. I’ve stretched it out to about the halfway mark of the zine I’m reading.

Don’t make me single out any contributions from this issue – there’s poetry, short fiction, sequential art, and general beautiful artwork, from creatives from North America, Britain, and Australia After reading it all, I felt full in that way you feel after eating one of the most notable meals you know you’ll have for a few years and not wanting the full feeling to disappear!

 

Totally listening to The Julie Ruin now, not to be confused with Julie Ruin – which I do confess to having on a burnt CD but would lovelovelove to buy a legit copy of it if it’s ever available again #feministwishlist

It’s also taken me two sittings to read; when I started this, the plan was to read a zine in one sitting, but this one is long, and good, so it really deserved the proper amount of time to read it. I’ve finished it the day after I started this post, chugging down my ol’ faithful, big mugs of my regular looseleaf Earl Grey tea. ‘Girls Like Us‘ chimes as I finish writing this post. I’m glad there are so many awesome women in the world. Maybe one day it’ll become a regular thing to actually acknowledge and appreciate that.

 

Speaking of which! If you want to support this female-identifying creative, I will not say no to a few bucks to cover zine or drink costs! I have one of these: paypal.me/eatdrinkstagger/5

reading autumn in welcome

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I’ve just dashed back home from a fab reading engagement at Counihan Gallery – I got to read two stories out to children and their grown-ups from Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls 2. It was Melbourne-proper – looked like there was an actual storm, the driving conditions were not favourable (very, very cartoon dust-cloud windy!)  and can only imagine how horrid it would be for those without personal transport.

As I bustled back into the warmth of the house, I made myself a massive mug of Earl Grey tea (using my Red Hill beer stein!), then decided it’d be a good time to finally read colleague and poet Anne M Carson’s Writing on the Wall – it’s technically a book (has an ISBN) but I’m treating it as a zine because it’s not listed on Goodreads. This chapbook-sized collection discusses an issue that we might not think applies to us, in our first world comfort – that of slavery.

Anne’s poems are set in an ancient Graeco-Roman time, and begin with a description of a wall that has existed for nearly three thousand years. Before the suite of poems formally begins, there is an essay by Professor Jennifer Burn on the nature of slavery and its more contemporary manifestations. It’s shocking that it has any at all. How do we reconcile our own lives of privilege amidst the existence of such dehumanising practices? Which still exist today.

This is where things like tea, for me, become a blessing and meditation. An everyday act, occurrence, but one not to be taken for granted. Yes, I am an atheist, but there is something about drinking a hot beverage when cold to the bone that seems a blessing, heavenly. It isn’t that I want to avoid thinking about the horrors of humanity, but that simple, everyday pleasures can help to give you a window into and out of them. We can only do our best with the tools we’re given at any given time, and slavery seems worlds away from me, though emotional abuse and trauma is not – that personal pain is always at the back of my mind. I’ve only really felt comfortable acknowledging that as it has stopped affecting my day-to-day life, in the last year or so.

I fear I may have polluted this tea blend by brewing it as strongly as I could and then adding the slightest dash of milk – as soon as I opened the pouch of pyramid tea bags, the scent of fresh ginger and lemon hard sweets wafted up! It tastes like that in tea form too – the black tea used is very, very subtle despite my efforts to brew it super-strong. This is the second of the Jenier teas I’ve tried as received through my Bookishly subscription, and I think I’ll end up ordering more teas from them, hehehe.

Anne’s poetry is a lyrical, narrational style which is both approachable to read, and yet so deceptive in its simplicity of statement and conciseness. Here’s a couplet from ‘4. The Son Becomes a Man’:

I am to be freed? It hardly seems possible. My master, / he has never more deserved the title than now, in its relinquishing.

Or Aristotle’s unfortunate influence in ‘2. The Will is Read’:

…challenging Aristotle’s claim that slaves / are living tools, property, used at will. Stalwart against wrath, / they urged freedom for slaves… / Greeks could learn from us. / But Aristotle argued louder, his word had the crowd.

We also need to ensure that once people escape abusive states of being, that there is support to ease them into what their lives should have consisted of. This too is hinted at in ‘6. Emerging’:

Walking unravels knots; / limbs, spine, thoughts begin to loosen from confinement.

(…) Doubt slithers — / how will I account for myself in the world?

Very sobering, yet elegant reading. You can learn more and also help by visiting Anti-Slavery’s (Australia) website.