Issue 29 - 1/31/26

Table of Contents

1. hot aer: things from the editors by amelia swedloff, siegfried liu, zoë fairweather

2. the man with no opinions - a critique by john sloan by ali rosenwinkel

3. a case against byler by amelia swedloff & zoë fairweather

4. midnight ponderings by siegfried liu

5. on why I love “on keeping a notebook” by annie rees

6. camera and connections by zoë fairweather

hot aer: things from the editors

amelia swedloff, siegfried liu, zoë fairweather

the plan

hey girlies! we’re back and better than ever with some hot new writing. we apologize for the hiatus, it’s hard being normal girls like us. perhaps you’ll see more of us in the future…

the good

QYLC, heated rivalry, train rides (long ones), books, digicams, QYLCrushes, snow, snow days, j term, warm glow street lights, divine intervention, bangs, meeting a friend at college, knitwear, beanie, the hillwalker, welcoming people

the bad

QYLC, heated rivalry, broken zippers (twice this month), dehydration, ice, geese hate, hitting your funny bone (ulna), stranger things finale, bangs, greed, eating celery

the ugly

QYLC, sleeping on gym floors, phone charger wars, roaring a/c all night long, carrying four bags at the same time, performative males, no bangs, talent show fiasco, sweat

   The Man With No Opinions

A Critique By John Sloan

ali rosenwinkel

Everyone says he has no opinions. This is meant kindly. It suggests an open mind, balance, and a certain intelligence. In conversation, he listens more than he speaks. When he does speak, it is to clarify what someone else has said, or to remind the group that things are rarely simple. He speaks only in broad terms. The words he says make sense, but they have no meaning. 

He is invited places because he does not make trouble. At dinners, he sits where there might otherwise be tension. If voices rise, he waits. If they fall, he fills the space with a small joke or a question that turns the conversation. People leave feeling relieved. No one feels pressured. 

When events happen such as elections, strikes, or shootings, he follows along. He reads enough to know the names of those involved. He understands the timeline. He knows which words are charged and how to avoid them. If asked directly what he thinks, he pauses. He explains that he is still forming his view, that more information is needed, and that it is important to hear all sides. This answer satisfies most. It sounds respectable.

Those who speak with urgency often speak past him. They try again, slower. He nods. He does not contradict them. Later, they cannot quite remember what it was he said, only that he seemed reasonable. They stop asking.

At work, he is described as steady. In meetings, he summarizes disagreements without resolving them. He is trusted to moderate. He is never accused of bias. Decisions pass through his hands unchanged. 

He believes strongly in fairness. He dislikes extremes. These concerns do not attach themselves to any particular situation; they exist on their own, floating above events. They make him feel principled without making him choose. 

He is proud of his restraint. He has seen other people commit too fully to other people's pain. They become difficult. They lose invitations. They exhaust themselves with passion. 

When asked later, in quieter moments, where he stood during certain debates, he struggles to remember, afterall, how could he recall something that never happened? He remembers conversations, not actions. He remembers being present. 

People continue to respect him. They say he is thoughtful. They say he sees “the big picture.” They say he is someone you can talk to; a good listener. He agrees with this assessment. It feels accurate. 

He has no opinions, and it has never cost him anything. He will go to bed tonight, the same person he was the day he was born. 

a case against byler

amelia swedloff & zoë fairweather

The girl I had a crush on when I was 11 is not the love of my life. We never even dated. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t know that I ever liked her – and that is 100% OK. The important thing about the girl I had a crush on when I was 11 is that she helped me realize that I was gay. Obviously, I’m not living in the ‘80s fighting supernatural creatures from alternate dimensions, but I think the same sentiment is true. Your “gay awakening” shouldn’t necessarily be your one and only true love. If we all spent the rest of our lives with the blue-haired she/they that taught us something important about ourselves, we’d end up living rather boring lives.

The concept of the “gay awakening” is an important one to many young queer people– including myself– but one that seems to be painfully misunderstood by a large portion of the Stranger Things fanbase. At the end of the fourth episode of Stranger Things season 5, Will Byers essentially harnesses the power of gay to defeat the demogorgons trying to attack his friends. Despite the less than stellar writing of that whole season, it’s quite an impactful scene about self-acceptance and learning to place your value as a person in yourself, and not what someone else might think of you. This experience is pretty commonplace for those of us who’ve experienced a “gay awakening” crush on someone in our lives, which is why I was so frustrated to see people misinterpreting this scene as subtextual confirmation of Mike and Will’s mutual gay love for one another.

Leading up to this moment at the end of episode four, Will spends the first few episodes of the season trying to concretely address his sexuality, something the show has been leading up to for years. Although some fans were hoping for sweeping romantic confessions, Will instead sought out the guidance of Robin Buckley, who came out as a lesbian at the end of season three. After finding this out about her, Will– not-so-subtly– asks about how she knew she was gay.  Robin explains to Will how she came to accept herself, and after seeing the way he looks at Mike, she tells Will about her own “gay awakening” and how she came to realize that her obsessive crush was more to do with her own insecurity than anything else. This, although less conventional than the romantic alternative, is actually much truer to my, and many other’s, queer experiences. Often, we understand ourselves better by hearing queerness explained by others. We see this scene minutes before Will unlocks his powers, from which we as viewers are to understand that his acceptance of himself and his new powers are intrinsically connected. This epic moment, which acts as the climax of his arc in the show, could not exist without his conversation with Robin, allowing him to understand his identity beyond just his feelings for a specific person. Yes, Will the preteen had a crush on his best friend Mike, but that crush shouldn’t and doesn’t define him. In unlocking his powers, Will is doing exactly what Robin did: he is liberating himself and his identity from Mike. This is what makes “Byler” (the fan-given ship name of Will and Mike) inconceivable, and frankly, reductive.

In weeks leading up to the Stranger Things finale and in the month following, I’ve seen a lot of internet outrage about the Byler ship, or the lack thereof. Many people seem upset that these two characters whose friendship acted as the central tenant for much of the show did not end up in a gay relationship. And I totally get it. I love queer love as much as– if not more than– the next person. I would have absolutely loved to see an epic queer romance in a show with the platform like Stranger Things, but Byler was not it. This is true for a lot of reasons, but most especially because it doesn’t make sense for either of their characters.

Mike Wheeler, who was initially the protagonist of the show, has spent his tenure on Stranger Things pining, head-over-heels, for Eleven. Yes, their relationship has struggled and changed over the course of the show, but it doesn’t change the fact that it is central to both of their characters. With all of the plot that needed to be wrapped up in season 5, it doesn’t make sense for the show to break up their central couple AND start a new romance between two characters, one of whom would have to go through the work of understanding his sexuality in that same amount of limited time. Unlike Will, Mike was never portrayed as queer. Our very first understanding of Will is as a “sensitive kid,” who was called “queer” by his father. Later, we see him fight with Mike (over Eleven), and Mike responds to Will by saying “it’s not my fault that you don’t like girls.” For years, Will’s queerness has been hinted at. The same is not true for Mike. In order for them to get together, Mike would’ve had to do a show’s worth of revelation in under 8 episodes while he was in the middle of saving the world. From both a practical and emotional standpoint, this just doesn’t make sense. But, nonetheless, the internet outrage persisted.

One argument I’ve heard against the Duffer brothers since the show’s conclusion that has particularly grinded my gears has been the baseless accusations of “queerbaiting.” Now, I’m in support of most criticisms hurled at the Duffers. I, too, was bitterly disappointed with the ending of this show I previously loved so much; but queerbaiting, this was not. The OED defines queerbaiting as “the practice of incorporating apparently or potentially LGBTQ characters or relationships into a film, television show, etc., as a means of attracting or appealing to LGBTQ audiences, while remaining deliberately coy or ambiguous about the characters' sexuality; (more generally) the practice of trying to appeal to and capitalize on LGBTQ audiences or customers in a deceptive or superficial manner,” which is a wordy, but more importantly accurate definition. Queerbaiting is not when the two boys you want to see kiss in a TV show don’t kiss. It is a calculated manipulation of queer audiences to continue tuning into a show in hopes of representation, only to abandon that entirely so as to not isolate homophobic audiences. By the middle of season five, neither characters’ sexuality is left ambiguous. Will is an explicitly gay character, and while Mike never has to come out as straight or state it explicitly, there is zero indication of him having feelings for any character other than Eleven. The “longing stares” Mike gives Will are simply not substantial enough to form an argument of queerness, nor are they particularly longing in my opinion. Even so, there’s no flirty dialogue, no jokes about a potential relationship are made by other characters, and they’re never particularly intimate physically, which are all hallmarks of queerbaiting. By the time the show is over, they don’t even seem to be that close of friends. It’s clear that these people have never experienced real queerbait, and while that’s probably a good sign, reducing “queerbaiting” to something as trivial as a ship not sailed is a harmful overreaction.

In an age where media literacy is ever declining, it is vitally important for queer people to be able to recognize when their desire for representation is being capitalized on, versus when a relationship they wanted to see play out on screen simply doesn’t. By all means, write your fanfiction and make your tiktok edits; even if I get a little annoyed when I see them, I understand what this ship means to people and can appreciate some good fan content. There’s no harm in shipping characters as queer if that feels fun for you personally, but the idea that Byler was this logical inevitability that was only prevented by homophobia is ridiculous and harmful. This is not to say there’s absolutely a place for outrage about the queer representation in season five of Stranger Things. I will never get enough of complaining about the ridiculous coming out scene, or the refusal to say the word “gay,” or the insistence on period-inaccurate acceptance of Will’s queerness when they were perfectly happy to depict period accurate racism in earlier seasons. But when it comes to our queer representation, we can and should demand better than Byler. And if you’re really starved for gay boys pining for ten years, just watch Heated Rivalry.

midnight ponderings

siegfried liu

On September 13th, 2023, a wine-colored firework shot into the sky and splattered onto the ground, a grand celebration silently happening in my friend’s room. Her skin pulsed and stung with excitement in knowing that after years of limbo, the fabula and syuzhet finally grounded to become one for a brief moment. She took “the purpose of literature is to turn blood into ink” seriously, and my greatest way of honoring her is to gather up the wine into a glass and sip it as the inexplicable essence possesses my hand to write a story worthy of her.

Thinking through and writing this reason down for the tenth time, I can’t help but imagine myself as a vampire trapped in her own world of fantasy. Short stories, poetry, and other creative writings of mine about suffering always recenter to that exact moment. Am I blood thirsty to feed a desire for suffering that will never be quenched? Am I appropriating my friend’s narrative so that I may step on her back to reach some elusive academic or literary achievement? Every beam of sunlight across the pages agitates an unsteady conscience. The stories must be hidden, but my cravings must be satisfied elsewhere. It is easy to do so, for I thought this is a land where sorrow is planted at six, flowers at sixteen, and wilts for sixty years after twenty-six. For a while, I walked into the kitchen every day to pile bitter ingredients and waited for a chef to arrive.

As I walked among my peers once more after casting a gloomy shadow upon myself, my heart developed a new sensory ability. “Pain,” she gasped and turned around, only to be confronted by a more gigantic pillar. It stands where “nothing beside remains. Round the decay of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare. The lone and level sands stretch far away.” Looking up, I see millions of people clambering to the top of the giant pillar. Most of them will never ascend remotely close to the apex of their griefs; a few will turn and face the outside world before enjoying the sweet caresses of wind and gravity. What is the point of scaling up with all one’s might, knowing the slightest of chances stand in your favor? Some fools carved words at the base of the pillar. They were in different languages, but I traced them with my fingers regardless and walked around the foundation. “Coarse”, I thought.

The final stroke cracked the stone, and I fell through into the abyss. Trying to hold onto anything, I reached with futile efforts towards a branch, or a rock, or someone’s hand. With a splash, I fell into “the loam, fertile, free of pebbles and twigs”, transferring its “warm surface and dewy chill below” to my body. Darkness stared at me, a pitying mockery. No amount of emptiness could rescue me from the numbness and shame battling in my body. For three years, I’ve been down there. The lapse in human existence trapped me, pushed me around in the loam until one day I hit a wall of the cavern. There was cryptic writing on it. I couldn’t understand, but I decided to muster up the remaining strength and inched up the wall. With each step, I let my cut finger bleed and blood sizzle on the rocks until another work is written. One day, I looked over my shoulder and found myself halfway up the pillar, standing in barren land.

Many would continue their journey upward, and I don’t fault them. However, “two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by”. Back in my kitchen, I threw bitter ingredients together so sadness may rise and puff up pastries, collections of words, or my dinner.

On Why I Love “On Keeping a Notebook”

annie rees

“I rip open my thumbs,” the note reads, “in order to feel as though I’ve revealed something of importance to my audience.” Dried blood stained in the center of both palms, sweaty, stagnant classroom, 7:33 p.m. November Monday Evening. 

Joan Didion would understand that this note has meaning to me. I do have a general notion of what I was doing that night as it was only last night. That sentence arrived in my notes after reading a passage aloud to my classmates and while I read aloud and spoke my thoughts with my own voice, I ripped open the skin at the corners of both my thumbs. My thumbs bled, though I didn’t notice it until after I spoke when I looked down at my palms, speckled red with dried blood. I don’t have to question much because it’s fresh in my memory, though I can’t remember feeling that the moment held any importance, that is until now. I ripped open my thumbs as I spoke last night, thinking little about the blood. 

Here it is now: This girl spoke with her very own voice last night in class because her therapist had reminded her just a few hours before that if she is to feel threatened should anyone disagree with the sound of her voice, she will know that she has gone astray. The girl read aloud and as she read, she pick pick picked at the hardened skin on the inner corners of each of her thumbs, eventually looking down from the glowing text on the computer screen to the reminisce of red, dried on the tips her pointer and middle fingers and at the center of each her of palms as a result of her anxious plucking. She then feared that others had seen her thumbs gushing blood unknowingly and wondering what that was all about. Well, that was what that was all about. 

I am a liar, but so is Joan Didion. So, maybe the blood wasn’t gushing from my thumbs last night. But it is precisely the gushing of the blood from my thumbs that propels me to continue on about it a day later. Had I not written that down, I wouldn’t be sitting on my squishy couch listening to beautiful old lady music and reliving what it felt like to be me last night; an anxious yet determined young girl plucking away at her poor, unforgiving, bloodied thumbs. The blood gushing from my thumbs signified the vulnerability of speaking with my own voice to a class full of people and the threat of going astray through my fear of disagreement from others. Similarly, perhaps I didn’t actually “brake” my toe when I was six. I did slam it into the broken tile of our kitchen floor, ripped the nail clean off and needed stitches. And although the doctors said my toes wasn’t broken, I remember crying all the way to the hospital like it was. To me, my toe was indeed broken. 

“It is a difficult point to admit. We are brought up in the ethic that others, any others, all others, are by definition more interesting than ourselves; taught to be diffident, just this side of self-effacing.” When I was 17, I sat across from my therapist and wept because I so strongly disliked the girl I was. My every thought was targeted against her. I was entirely cruel to myself, and why? I really don’t think she deserved that at all. 

I question what exactly it was that I wanted to remember when I wrote on April 30th of last year, a list of what I would buy if I went grocery shopping in an Icelandic supermarket. Will I be going to Iceland any time soon? No. Do I have a fiery passion in my heart for grocery stores? Yes, but what an odd thing to do to occupy my time: online shop at an Icelandic supermarket and make a shopping list knowing you will most likely never shop there. But Joan Didion knows just as well as I do that that is not entirely the point. Sure, I wrote that because I was probably bored and will most likely never go grocery shopping in an Icelandic supermarket, but on days when I’m feeling especially bad about the vastness of my forehead or the high pitched tone of my voice, it is this list of Icelandic groceries that reminds me what is most important about this girl and her large forehead: on a day in April of last year, her boredom propelled her to go grocery shopping on her computer in a foreign country. The joy it brought her in that state of boredom to examine the shapes of bread loaves and the color of the yogurt containers sold at a supermarket in Iceland, is what it means to be her. I now think to myself as I read the shopping list, “what an interesting girl.” 

Didion, Joan. “On Keeping a Notebook.” https://cdn.thewirecutter.com/wp- content/uploads/2020/04/Joan-Didion-On-Keeping-a-Notebook.pdf

cameras and connections

zoë fairweather

On a long and rainy Monday this past September, I was waiting for the train home from a doctor’s appointment after a very full day of school. I was sitting on one of the benches at the station and messing around with a new camera I had just bought a week prior, when my train approached and the conductor stepped out to announce it. I was lost in thought and distracted by my new toy, so I didn’t really notice that the train had arrived until it had veered into awkward waiting territory. As I hurriedly gathered my things, the conductor assured me that I didn’t need to sprint across the platform and that the train wouldn’t leave without me.

I, now more calmly, approached the train and noticed the conductor wearing the same camera bag I had just bought for myself to store my new camera in. When I notice something cool about a stranger or have a thought that feels pertinent to share, I really try to be the kind of person to say something about it. I determined that this was interesting enough to share and I was in the mood for a conversation, so I said to him “Oh! I have that same bag!”, and then took a seat. 

When the conductor came to scan my transit pass, he asked me if I was a photographer. While I was still pretty new to photography, and a little nervous to talk about it, I took out my new camera to show him. I soon found out that this guy was a lot more into photography than I was, and he seemed to know everything there was to know about various types of film and digital cameras. He was thrilled to hear that I was still trying to figure out the settings and he gave me all kinds of tips on how to achieve different effects on my camera specifically. We also found out that we had bought our bags from the same camera store in Philadelphia, and he excitedly told me about all of the different events he had been to there and how cool it is. He had to keep moving because he had a job to do, but I was just happy to hear him talk about photography with so much passion, and it made me excited to keep taking pictures.

After maybe ten minutes, he came back to my seat to continue our conversation, and he took out a small pocket notebook. Inside it, he explained, were all the polaroids that he took on his most recent trip to Thailand with his family. He went through some of his favorites, and told me about the shot composition and his reasons for taking each picture the way that he did. I was totally fascinated by how much thought he put into something that I would never really think much about in the first place. If I was somewhere new and I saw something I wanted to take a picture of, I would just take out my phone or maybe my camera, and take the picture, but he was so methodical and enthusiastic about a simple photo, it really changed my perspective on photography, and all because I decided to speak to a stranger.

I, as I’m sure literally every other teenager in the world has, have sometimes struggled with social awkwardness and feeling unsure of myself, but as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that I don’t have to have every single thing figured out and cut out all semblance of awkwardness or uncomfortability to have thoughtful conversations. It’s become increasingly important to me to not seal myself off from the world just because I might say the wrong thing. That’s why I’m constantly pushing myself to talk to new people and to try to break that invisible wall between me and the rest of the world happening around me. Whatever any of us may lack in perfect conversation skills, we can all make up for in kindness and enthusiasm. Many of the most meaningful insights I’ve gained have come from people who I’ve never seen again, and only because I decided to strike up a conversation when I could’ve easily gone about my day and ignored them. It may seem a little trite, but I really do believe that every single person has something beautiful and important to say if we only get over ourselves enough to listen.