This Pride week, Lachlan Mitchell and Naomii Seah are doing the guest editorial, because we needed our staff tokens to start this Pride issue off with a bang. We’re kidding, mostly!
Lachlan
Okay, I’ve been enrolled at UoA for a very long time — picture the sepia-toned year of 2014, maybe an entire third of your life ago for a few of you — and I’m not really sure why we have Pride week this far out in the year. Like, Aotearoa’s Pride month was in February, and the Americans have theirs in June, so I feel like late-semester Pride is just us running to the Number 70 content creation bus. But I digress! With this issue, we’re making our own room again! Guess we just don’t know how to stop. The #queers really just can’t stop dominating, huh? Well, that word doesn’t quite apply to me, as I’m a little bit closer to the kinda-human Xenomorph at the end of Alien: Resurrection, but congratulations if it applies to you! This is the issue for you, or if you have a different identity, it’s still the issue for you! It’s Pride! It’s for everyone, I think. Maybe next year I’ll gatekeep/gaslight/girlboss. But for now, get excited. Lots of fun content ahead, definitely crafted many weeks ahead, definitely crafted under the most serene of creative environments, definitely not crafted with over a month of cabin fever in mind. We’re celebrating all that makes life worth living, and who we choose to share it with! Or who we don’t! It’s Libra season, maybe we don’t wanna make those choices. Have fun!
Naomii
As one of Craccum’s certified LibrasTM, I can wholeheartedly confirm that decisions are harder in Libra season. Or maybe that’s just because there were so many amazing submissions for Pride this year: so many stories to tell, so many perspectives to share, and so, so much to celebrate.
Yet this parade is also a march. To be frank, I cried many times while producing the Features section of this issue–from sadness, but also from joy. I’m so proud to be surrounded by a community that wants to have these discourses. I’m proud to be able to platform our amazing writers, and our amazing people.
Some of these writers are my friends. Jake and Arela came into my life through a mutual friend, and I have been grateful for every minute of wine drunk conversation we’ve had–you’ll find these conversations, among many, many others, beautifully distilled into pieces that make you think outside your comfort zone. I’m not just talking about our allies, either.
These conversations exist outside of Pride week, Pride month, and Pride issue. These are the conversations happening in our community. And existing alongside these conversations is so much joy to share. We hope you find it here too.
