Lowkey the story of why I am making this magazine is kind of boring. I have always been a writer and creative or opinion pieces are how I have best been able to communicate with the world and people and things and stuff. I have also always been a weirdo--an awesome weirdo, but a weirdo notheless so being able to say things as fucked up and strange as they are, writing them and having people read them and having people get and feel and be equally weird is really nice.

When I was a junior in college I was chilling at the radio station I worked at and I got like hella stressed. I got stresseed because like dammit man, why do I gotta get a job? "why do ANY of us have to get a job" (I said that part aloud). Becuase bascically Im aready surrounded by cool and awesome people who do cool and awesome things and shouldnt that be enough for something to be like.... cool and perfect and a living thriving ecosystem??? And I theorised then to create a magazine that features all the coolness of my community and friends and that werido industrial familial self containeded artistic love pit that constantly labors in Pittsburgh. So I was like dammit I'm gonna do it. Im gonna pick a creative project and I'm gonna freaking do it.

Then I got a real job.

Which freaking sucks cus I love my job and what I do and it is creative and I get to work with audio and graphics and all that cool stuff that I love but its still a freakling J-O-B. Like if anything is slurping down all my creative jucices and leaving me BONE ahh dry. It was like this for a while actually. J word, boyfriend, circles and circles of the same sorts of days or weekends or whatever and I was just on the edge of normieville, which is a fine and dandy place to end up but i still felt this sick sick buzz in my brain. One I just couldnt shake.

So okay, I wanna work on a zine. So I start working on this poetry zine and all the pieces start to sound the same, and is all about the internet or boys or god or gore and I just felt sick.

Breakup. Devestation. I did the hard thing of choosing the no good not so certain feeling of figuring all this being a person and woe is me and who even is me sort of feeling/journey. And its like this for a while. Then I join this little stupid thing called Dead Gang. And its weird. And its super offline. And theres hella rules but theyre all fake and its funny and Im staying up late as FREAK. TLDR: It was a small group of emos and weridos like myself that kind of imploded but reminded me that I dont have to spend my whole life behind a phone or working nothing burger days by and by. It excited me.

I'll admit the magazine idea didnt come to me right away but my new (dead(gang)) freind Liam gave me a creative spark and... for the time being im running with it. I want to write and I want to work collaboratively. So thats it. Thats what started this magazine. I hope that wasn;t boring as splish. Check out our other more interesting pages. This one was kind of just for me.

--RAKE OUT