When every young and delicate creative thought we have is immediately thrust into the burning light of its own marketability... 

When the attention economy demands our every moment and AI is insisted to be an adequate replacement for our own creativity... 

When our personal interpretation of the world around us, and even our vast internal world, are pressured to take the form of an advertisement... 

GET IN THE RING! 

Commodification is taking an increasingly metaphysical form, but we as queers have always resisted the insidious wars of the bought mind and sold body by insisting that the off-putting, grating, dirty, dank-cornered, achingly painful, and stenchingly strange is beautiful. 

The whole world is chanting your name. The floor is slick and sour with sweat. Duck under the rope, pick up a pen, and come up the other side a participant, active, willing to fight against the shame of beginning. Come away different, with bruises to show for it, and we will have a sick boxer's robe waiting for you. What would yours look like?

SLUGFEST Vol. 1 submissions are prompted to dwell on themes of passivity, participation, the intimacy of scrutiny, denial, second-guessing, and beginning, in the queer experience or otherwise. Works of any theme are welcome.

Urging us to look back, film remakes and series reboots offer nothing original to contend with. They sell the same shallow hit of familiarity and nostalgia. 

Astronomical budgets are drained on serving up vomit. Eat it again. Their regurgitation proves that industry does not value creative prowess. Eat it again. The future is bleak. Eat it again. Our muscles are weak. Eat it again. Imagination is impossible. Eat it again. To imagine something else is the only way forward. Spit it out. 

Have you forgotten? Something new is always strange at first. 

Haven't you ever made yourself into something new? Wasn't it strange and wonderful? 

Nostalgia is not the strongest thing you are capable of feeling. Don't believe otherwise. 

Catch the hint of something stronger in the rush of sighting queers on the street. Each is different, like flowers in a meadow. Take a walk through the forest of queerness and feel the sun shine through each of our millions of leafy forms - genders, bodies, beauties, ways of loving, life, and rhythms. 

Use your imagination to create a place where the sterile silence of sameness becomes the chatter of a quiet forest. 

What would your most fantastical future look like? Dare to be unrealistic. It can be nonsense. You don't fit anyway. 

Create something which is alien and strange even to you, as strange and alluring as your deepest desires. What would it be like if it all came to be?

Dundee. Scotland. The UK. Europe. Earth. The Solar System. The Milky Way. A very easy ladder to climb when you're already in the habit of a bi-weekly dread sesh. The overwhelming size of everything can become crushing, destroying your ability to focus on what can be changed and where you can actually see the results of your effort. Wind yourself back down, and look at the fields around you. The unending oceans on all sides. The hills and mountains. The bustling city streets. The grafitti-glitter of small town streetlamps. The shitey swing park in your childhood village with its rusty swings and kites from 2017 still stuck in the trees 'cause the council can't afford to send your uncle up a ladder. The broken glass in your stairwell. That one house between Overtown and Lanark that just keeps getting burnt down. 

Scale down your panic and look at where you are, look at how everyone interacts and builds an unspoken community together. If you're still panicking, that's fair enough. So am I. Scotland is a shithole. But it's oor shithole, and that's actually kinda funny if you think about it. 

There is no denying Scotland has had an uprising of our very own vocal fascist idealogy. See: "Unite the Clans," "Dundee Patriots." It has made a lot of people embarrassed to say they are proud of being Scottish , or how they really actually quite like the Saltire as it used to stand - as a symbol of Scottish independance and liberation from colonialism politically, materially, and idealogically. We're occupied now with worrying that people may think we're, you know, one of them types. There must be a way to have pride in our culture without being a fascist - but how? What does that look like? 

Just in the way people love to infantilise Scotland and Ireland into fantasy movie tropes - nothing more than fairies and folklore - bigotry takes away our reputation as one of the friendliest countries, full of comedy geniuses and open-minded morons. The reality of being Scottish isn't all kelpies and studying in castles. It is poverty and drug death and political injustice and being seen as a gimmick. Are Scottish surnames difficult to pronounce, or are you just trying to turn Scottishness into your easy entertainment? Is Scots "just slang" and should we "just speak properly," or are you resistant to undoing the classist oppression that you've maintained for years? 

LATHA EILE wants to see the real parts of Scotland. Oor Scotland. The grittiness. The frustration. The contradictory beauty of the country we live in. I'm not going to sit here and say that Scotland isn't pretty - it is gorgeous. Just not everywhere. We want to show people that there are so many joys to be found in the "uglier" parts of the country. 

Submissions in Scots, Gaidhlig, and Doric are heavily encouraged. As we've seen in Ireland, language is an invaluable tool for resisting colonialism, and in connecting with not the past - but the right here and now. The uprise in Gaidhlig learners is a sign of things to come. True Scots - undefined by birth but by how you welcome all with open arms - will last Another Day, and Another, and Another.

A drop of sweat distorts the image and so an endless summer begins. 

You can’t trust the seasons, so you can’t trust your senses. 

Somewhere inside the blinding white of summer sunlight: a city. Between the folds of rays are diving curving unseen streets, manic cobblestones, figures – people, helpful? What is happening here? And more importantly, what is happening to you? 

Getting sleepy? Angry? Horny? Every petrol station you’ve ever been to has had bottled water. This is either the last vestiges of order or a Tuesday in July. They say something is coming. It will be very different, very soon. How can you be certain it isn’t here already? 

For Slugfest vol 4, our summer issue, we challenge our submitters to write from the theme of Metropolitan Mirage, in whatever way it gets you thinking and creating. Think illusion, absurdity, heat, impression, refraction, haze, oasis, and fugue states. 

~VOLUME 5 theme announcing soon! ~