ᯓ Heyy, I’m Ezra (they/he)! I’m a 19-year-old neurodivergent poet and zine artist from Catalonia currently based in Ireland!! ⋆˚꩜｡
.ᐟ My interests: Star Wars, psychology, poetry, zines, Trainspotting
.ᐟ Artists I listen to: The Smiths, Green Day, Hozier, Big Thief, Dazey and the Scouts, Deftones, The Strokes, NewDad, The Cranberries, Siouxie and the Banshees, The Cure, Molchat Doma, The Clash, My Chemical Romance, Brennan Wedl
.ᐟ Films and TV shows I love (in order): All the SW films and shows (but ROTS, ROTJ, Rogue One, TCW, Rebels, and Andor are my favorites), Trainspotting, Dead Poets Society, Bones and All, Call Me By Your Name, House MD, Carmen Sandiego, NBC Hannibal, and She-Ra
.ᐟ Favorite director: Luca Guadagnino
.ᐟ Favorite poets: Richard Siken, Ocean Vuong
➤ I sell physical copies of some of my zines on Etsy and digital copies on my Ko-fi. All the money I make from them goes directly toward my top surgery fund, so purchases are deeply appreciated!
➤ I am open to collaborating on art! Although my primary mediums are poetry and zines, I’d love to work on multimedia pieces as well. I’m cool with both commercial and non-commercial collaborations. Message me to make some art together pls!!
➤ I’d love to talk about my interests with more people! If you like any of them feel free to message me B)
Misc.: very queer, vegan, trauma recovery/mental illness advocate, please use tone tags (it is near-impossible for me to tell tone over social media, especially during discussions/disagreements), trilingual (catalan/spanish/english)
One of the captivating things about Andor's tonal grief is the places we never go back to.
Once Cass & friends leave Ferrix, we never see it again. Kenari, Aldhani, Narkina, and most hauntingly Ghorman- once the characters leave, there's no going back.
The excellent production design made these places tactile, vivid, real. And then, once the characters survive the horrors and count their dead, the places are left behind. And we grieve them just the same. When Cassian and Vel toast to their lost, they toast to Ferrix, the Dhanis and Aldhani itself.
Star Wars is a franchise that struggles to leave just about anything behind, its places among them. How many times have we returned to Tatooine, somehow the most galactically important middle-of-nowhere? It's evident in the RotJ special edition and TRoS celebration montages, and in the countless video games, comics, and series that keep finding contrived ways to return to the same five-or-so planets, even those presented as specifically backwater or secluded.
But Andor makes us familiar with these spaces, planets, peoples and cultures, and lets their stories end in potent uncertainty. And it's more powerful than seeing what became of them. Cassian's life and story is one of constant displacement and motion. We feel it.
It all comes to mind as I face my own displacement from a location and community that I loved and hoped to be able return to. My path ahead will be a change, but it looks stable. It's not the end of the world, or of my world, but it is an ending. The nooks and crannies and oddities I'll never see again. The faces and names that might be sequestered to memory. There's a bell you'd ring to mark the end of your time there, and I never did get to ring it myself.
Sisyphus learns to push a new boulder. One always finds one's burden again.
The Mandalorian and Grogu fails as a movie (thematically and character development-wise) because it does the exact opposite of this. It refuses to let anything die.
Giving Din a new Razor Crest identical to his previous one adds nothing to the story and is instead just a quick way to continue providing the homogenous image of Din we got for almost three seasons.
Almost all main and supporting characters are just cameos at this point. Zeb, Rotta, the twins, and Embo are brought into the spotlight again because creating new characters for the movie would require actual character development. (The only half-exception to this is Rotta since he didn’t have an established personality in the CW movie).
Using old characters allows the writers to rely on their previously established traits and histories. This ends up making the movie feel disjointed because a bunch of random characters were slapped together and it shows. There is no other piece of Star Wars media where I felt like the characters didn’t belong in the same story.
On a separate but related note, the emotional stakes of Andor were so incredibly high that you couldn’t help but be invested into the life of even side characters like Nemik or Lonni. TMAG just doesn’t have that because none of the characters even feel remotely connected to each other.
Grogu saves Din from lethal poison and that is met unemotively. Zeb and Din have no discernible bond over the course of the mission. Embo could’ve literally been replaced by any other bounty hunter in the galaxy and the plot would be exactly the same.
Andor made us carry loss along with the characters because as they left behind people and places so did we. TMAG doesn’t make us deal with any painful emotions whatsoever, and that feels really out of place for Star Wars, where every single film and show asks the viewer to contend with some kind of loss.
Grief in Star Wars is really important because it’s what hope is backlit against. Without it nothing feels like it carries any importance.
steel-grey skies. auditory hallucinations of radio static. burnt metal. hand tremors. the way brass turns your skin green. iodine. forgotten port towns. windows you can’t open. ozone injections. footsteps echoing in stairwells. brittle nails. the whirring of cooling fans. unknown cleaning solution. nitrocellulose. light pollution orange. lists that look like they were made by a crazy person.
I wanted to know, what do you make them about? My aunt got me a zone kit and I want to make one but I don't have any ideas
Heyy!
I make zines about my personal experiences, which usually means themes of trans-queerness, mental illness/recovery (different points in my journey, reflections or thoughts), neurodivergence (this includes fanzines of things I like), and also collages!
For a first zine I would really recommend choosing a topic that comes very instinctually to you (something you love, or have thought about for a long time). It can be as small as a specific experience you had or as big as an analysis of a greater social pattern you’ve noticed. Or you can make a fanzine! Or a collage zine! It doesn’t have to be complicated at all.
I know that Trainspotting is about showcasing just how horrible the 80s drug crisis in Scotland was but something I really appreciate (about both the novel and the movie) is the amount of humor throughout. I feel like it helps get across that despite how brutal the situations the characters are in are, there is a lot of absurdity to it all as well.
Here are some of my favorite comedic excerpts from the novel:
“After all, this man is a god tae me. Ah’d walk oan ma hands and knees through broken gless for a thousand miles tae use the cunt’s shite as toothpaste and we baith know it.” (pg. 25)
“What a fucking scene; two guys stand in the doorway ay the toilet, just pishing intae the place, which has a good inch ay stagnant, spunky urine covering the flair.” (pg. 30)
“Of course, the Rent Boy is looking like a flaccid prick in a barrel-load ay fannies. Sometimes ah really think the gadge still believes that an erection is for pishing over high walls.” (pg. 37)
“If Spud isnae HIV positive by now, then the Government should send a deputation ay probability statisticians doon tae Leith, because the laws ay probability urnae operatin properly there.” (pg. 72)
“You’d shag the crack of dawn if it hud hairs oan it” (pg. 202)
“You couldnae git a fuckin ride in a brothel wi yir cock sandwiched between American Express n Access cairds.” (pg. 203)
So many great Jedi are set apart by how they choose to die. I want to emphasize “choose” because we’ve seen multiple instances of Jedi having the option to survive but decide not to in order to save something they know is larger than them. This comes with the awareness that their immediate survival would only procrastinate their death AND would also be futile because it would not allow for a greater purpose to be fulfilled. Being a great Jedi is not only about accepting mortality, but about knowing when to die, which I would argue has to do with being in tune with the will of the Force.
Kanan is a great example of this. Not only is he one of my favorite Jedi of all time, but his death was the most brutal for me to watch. He gave his own life to save his loved ones. He had to choose between himself and others. As explored in the episode A World Between Worlds, there doesn’t exist a reality where Kanan lives where the rest of the Ghost Crew also does.
It would be short-sighted if this act was viewed as one done solely because of his love for Hera/the Ghost Crew, because he knew that Lothal’s fuel depot specifically was crucial to the Empire (for the TIE Defender program). At this point, the Ghost Crew were already involved with the larger Rebel fleet and he knew they had a role in that as well.
Obi-Wan also sacrificed his life so the Rebellion could survive. By fighting Vader, he made sure Luke, Leia, and Han could escape and thereby complete the mission of destroying the Death Star. He delayed his death until the very moment it was necessary to make sure the others could fulfill their greater purpose.
Luke himself did something very similar when he projected himself onto Crait to fight Kylo Ren long enough to buy the Resistance time to escape. He singlehandedly delayed the First Order so that the last remainder of Resistance fighters could regroup and continue to fight back, which they eventually did.
This list would not be complete without Anakin, who gave his life to defeat the Emperor, thereby marking the start of the Empire's dissolution. ROTJ introduced very explicitly that being a Jedi is about selflessness and sacrifice in general, and death is usually portrayed as the highest form of sacrifice. We see that motif over and over, as seen in the above examples.
Hi, your zines look super cool. How did you get into them?
I have been super interested and I have a mental idea of what I want them to look like aesthetically, but I don’t know what to do mine about in a way that I’m providing information that maybe adds some value. I don’t really want to repeat someone else’s talking points
How do you come up with the idea you want to share in your zines?
Hey, thank you!
I was aware of zines due to my knowledge of the riot grrrl movement and in June of 2025 I decided to make my first one. There wasn’t a particular reason why I started then and not before, but it probably had to do with being exposed to more zines online + a growing desire to express myself through another art medium!
The content you put into your zines (what adds that “value”) is at the intersection of your personal contribution (your perspective, lived experience, opinion, etc) and the research you do (not always warranted, but depending on the topic you may want to include historical information or external points of reference).
The first part is especially important because that’s what makes your zine unique (i.e. not repetitive of what others may have said before you)!
I keep a list of zine ideas that I add to whenever I think of a topic I feel a sense of urgency to share. This ranges from a recent emotional wound to a band I’ve developed an infatuation with to a series of observations I’ve made that I haven’t seen (many) other people talk about. What all of my zine ideas have in common is that there is an underlying passionate need to tell other people what I think and feel.
[I hope this helps! Feel free to ask me any other questions.]
“Hawkwood” was published by Ouch! Collective this May.
This poem is about the nostalgia I feel toward New England (specifically the Siwanoy land I lived on) and what the experience of leaving as quickly as I did as a child was like. It was very rushed and sudden and it uprooted my sense of belonging a lot. That period of my life will always remain very treasured but distant.
Look,, here’s the thing,,, being an artist is a fundamental state of being as much as it is a series of actions. The identity of “artist” exists for anyone whose life (your grounding in reality, your sense of direction, your perception of The World) is projected through the lenses (yes, multiple) of creation.
And (!!!) being an artist is also a lifestyle (no, this doesn’t mean art has to be your job at all). The making of the art in and of itself is the solidification of the artist. There is a constant tension, a friction between the artist and everyone and everything else and the art is the way to bridge that schism.
So, of course, you can be uninspired, unskilled, unprepared, unsure, misdirected, hesitant, terrified (etc etc) of making art and still be an artist. But. You cannot remain in the state of purgatory waiting for the moment you feel you’ve reached a satisfactory level of creative purity to start making art or taking your art seriously.
I hold the firm belief that everyone has at least one form of artistic expression and that people who (due to childhood/teenage discouragement, busy corporate and family lives, or a lack of confidence) don’t create through those mediums repress that instinct. That doesn’t mean everyone is an artist per the definition I presented, but it does mean the capacity for that identity exists.
When I say being an artist is a “fundamental” state of being that doesn’t mean it’s something you’re born with, it’s just a characteristic so pervasive in your way of experiencing the world and yourself that it’s inextricable from who you are. And that is a learned series of behaviors for most.
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