#aspec journal

[vooruitmariek]

a little preview of my contribution to the amazing @aspecjournal! 👀 Preorders are open!

[azuzeldraws]

Hel fron norse myth. My piece for @aspecjournal zine

 The original myth portrays Hel as kind  and her realm a place a refuge and welcome. Snørre’s Edda was in fact a christianized retelling of the old myths

[velveteen-mango]

Happy New Year!

I've been waiting months to finally show a part of this piece! Here's a little preview from my page in the @aspecjournal

Can you guess who that is?

Aspec Journal: Twitter, Tumblr

[the-rose-owl]

I can now post my piece for @aspecjournal (just in time for the last day of AAS too)! I did a piece focused on aro symbolism (and a few puns), and I really like how it turned out!

Art blog: @rosey-arts​

[kittykstudios]

“Ace of Hearts” illustration for @aspecjournal !

So excited to finally post this!

[big-eater-queen]

Preorders are available for @aspecjournal​! I wrote a little column for the zine, come get good (?) advice from my divine consultants! ✨

[arotechno]

voidpunk, or something like that

Now that it has officially been released, I am thrilled to share the piece that I wrote for the @aspecjournal! It was an honor to work on this project, and I want to thank the mods, my fellow contributors, and everyone else involved with the production of this zine for their hard work! Thanks to everyone who bought it, too, for your support of us and the Trevor Project!

--

It’s impossible to know how big the universe really is, or if there’s life on other planets, another world of people just like us orbiting some distant star. The best scientific estimates suggest there are about as many stars in the observable universe as there are individual grains of sand on the planet Earth, a number so unfathomably large it may as well be infinite. So it would only stand to reason, you think, that somewhere between here and the edge of time itself there must be someone out there for you, some living soul whose heart beats in time with yours.

But space is mostly empty, and anything or anyone out there exists on a scale of distance and time so impossibly vast that there may as well be nothing.

Sometimes, you think your heart must be something like that, like a bottomless cup that can never be filled. “Broken,” they call you. Empty, lonely, sad. Sometimes, you think they must be right, that if someone were to carve a hole in your chest, they’d only be swallowed by the empty expanse where a heart should be. It’s a funny sort of irony: despite all the infinite space, there is no one who can fit inside it.

But despite its hollowness, all things in the universe are connected, linked together in an endless tug of war that began billions upon billions of years ago. Somehow, in all the emptiness, you are here, made up, like all things, of the remnants of stars gone supernova in a time immemorial. The universe does not know you, and yet it cradles you in its palm, an intricate, fleeting amalgamation of stardust, here long enough to live a life but never long enough to know why.

Some nights, when the skies are clear and your thoughts considerably less so, you look out at the stars and try to fathom them into some discernible pattern amongst the haze of the city lights. The constellations are only imaginary pictures on an inky canvas, and the paths others have set out for you are only false constructions of social pressures. You try to trace their shape across the night sky, but you find no picket fence, no happy home with spouse and kids shining back down at you. You wonder whether when other people look up at the stars, they see something more meaningful reflected in their image. You only see tiny pinpricks of light. You do not know how to pretend.

Our own Sun is mostly ordinary, an average star whose demise will know no fanfare, should anyone be around to see it. Humans are much the same, a strikingly ordinary miracle of cosmic happenstance, each of us made out of the same nothing. But in a universe with no limits, you too are limitless, not bound to the confines that others try to place around you, an ever-expanding eternity with no definable edge. You hold your own universe inside you, an infinity within an infinity, something born out of nothing. And so you will save your own soul, trace your own destiny amongst the stars, in spite of the seemingly endless empty space that stretches between them.

Many stars are part of binary systems, orbiting one another in perpetuity. Other stars, like our Sun, formed on their own and will stay that way for eternity. Perhaps, somewhere out there in the immeasurable universe, there may even be a star without any planets to call it home, burning on its own for billions of years, even if no one is there to see it. But that star, like all things, is part of a cosmic tapestry held together by an invisible glue that we cannot see. So perhaps you, like that star, were not made to orbit in tandem. Perhaps you were made to forge your own path through the universe. But even the loneliest stars, like all things, are made of the same dust, never to be swallowed by the empty space that surrounds them. You are alive, and you are whole, because you are here, now, against all odds. So go forth, you exuberant star, and shine as you see fit, even if others do not know how to name your shape in the sky.

Can you feel it?

You are not truly alone. You never were.

[aspecjournal]

ASPEC JOURNAL: An Asexual-Aromantic Magazine - Applications Open!

Applications are now open!

ASPEC JOURNAL is a non-profit, lgbtqa+ full-sized magazine, dedicated to asexual/aromantic identities. Thirty-two pages of content, featuring articles, illustrations, and comics - created by aspec people, for aspec people! 

We’re looking for talented illustrators, writers, comic artists, and designers for our opening publication. Check out the position details! Apply to be part of this project! 

(About ASPEC JOURNAL) (FAQ) (Twitter) (Calendar) 

(All profits will be donated to The Trevor Project - an American non-profit organization focused on suicide prevention efforts among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning youth. One of the first ever major lgbtqa+ non-profit organizations to train their specialists in aspec welfare.) 

Thank you @zine-scene​ @zineapps​ @queer-zines​ @zinesubmissions​ @zinefeed​ @zinecenter​ for your support!