plans and ideas

i think i'll try to structure this in "issues" for now, one for each month. i'm pretty new to this so i'll keep it simple. at some point i will probably get upset about it and sort by topic or establish subcategories or smth along those lines, but if i make it too complicated in the beginning, nothing will ever happen. it would be fun to have a gallery of polaroid pictures and lists of books and reviews at some point. maybe add some of the writings that didn't make it into zines. there will probably be some more blog-like posts, random photos and things i find interesting.

introduction?

i don't like introductions, i never know what to say. but it makes sense to start with one so i'll try. name (zero, for this purpose) and pronouns (he/him and it/its), sure. i'm autistic. and trans*. and queer, "achillean oriented or angled aroace" probably describes it best, but attraction is honestly just a weird concept to me and i don't completely understand it, so the nuances are difficult. i mostly just say gay asexual.

i'm in my 20s and i live in germany, where i'm currently enrolled in university, trying to study physics, and have a mini-job in the local library. aspiration-wise i'm stuck somewhere between astronaut and archivist; in reality i'm often stuck in bed. i have some kind of chronic fatigue, but i don't know the reason or diagnosis yet.

apart from that i like taking mediocre polaroid photos, feeding the murder of crows in my neighborhood (the two most familair ones i named edward and victor) and everything to do with books (especially horror). i own a lot of plants, collect trinkets in jars and enjoy decorating jackets (sometimes with said trinkets, but mostly buttons and patches, a lot of them self-made). i have notebooks full of lists and lists of all my notebooks.

writings

i love writing. as soon as i knew how, i started writing stories. if i remember correctly the first one i ever wrote was about chess. i was fascinated by chess pieces, especially the rook (it's called "tower" in my first language and that always made more sense to me, so i will refer to it as such) because it felt so out of place. queen, king, pawn, knight, bishop, etc. - and then there is the tower. the image of a full-blown tower moving, rushing towards the other human-sized pieces, rushing towards me, was very vivid. so i wrote about it.

the second fiction i remember writing was a series about a time-traveling couch.

i don't remember exactly why i stopped, but for several years i didn't write much outside of what was required for school. looking back, i was probably too depressed and anxious, but the reason is not really important. i got back into it properly last year, when a close friend and i started collaborating on what turned into a zine of dystopic fiction. it's the first thing i ever worked on that got published in some way and while scary, the process was very inspiring and rewarding.

anyway, i added two flash-fiction texts i wrote a while back. (most of my texts have one-word-titles and for clarity i'll write them in caps locked. the title also links to the text.) the first is called CHANGING. it follows a glass octopus, who has the ability to adapt to and mirror it's surroundings by basically shape-shifting. unfortunately it has no control over it and gets very confused, scared and disoriented. for me, it's about masking, but it doesn't have to be. everyone can interpret however they want. the second one, SWIMMING, is an abstract discription on how trauma and flashbacks can feel.

currently reading

• "tender is the flesh" by agustina bazterrica
• "the vegetarian" by han kang
• "firefall" by peter watts
• "begin the world over" by kung li sun
• "babel" by r. f. kuang

election day

today is election day in germany and i'm conflicted. not about voting of course, i already voted, but about the coming weeks, maybe even months. it's gonna be a relief that the election campaigns are finally over (they have been exhausting and aggravating to say the least) but i'm afraid that the coming government-building-phase will be even worse. it's pretty clear who is going to be chancellor and while i'm not happy about that at all, at least i had time to mentally prepare myself for it. the polls and predictions have been somewhat consistent too, so even though it's daunting and terrifying that about 1 in 5 people think "might as well vote for the nazis", that too is nothing new. that doesn't make it "better" - i would prefer if no one votes for the afd - but at least the results won't be a shock.

several of my friends are going to or hosting watchpartys (maybe "wakes" would be a better term, at least when it comes to the atmosphere) but i've decided against joining. i totally see the appeal and community-support is super important, i just don't have the capacities to be socially active and process emotions, especially of people i care about. i'm not very good at that (processing emotions in myself and others i mean. and identifying them. and reacting appropriately. i have alexithymia) and 1) i don't think i could be helpful and supportive to anyone, 2) there is a good chance i might even make it worse for them (i strive to be at least a net-neutral to my surroundings) and 3) i don't think it would do me any good either.

i'm not gonna try to analyse or predict stuff, because i don't know enough to be comfortable doing so. i am also aware that this (gestures vaguely at this text but also the website as a whole) is still from a position of considerable privilege. i know that, but i'm still worried and scared, for example about the coming months. i worry that the process of finding and building a coalition will be awful and messy, full of insults and frustration, and will just end up driving more people into the arms of the afd. i have no confidence in friedrich merz to manage this situation in a productive, helpful way (or to do anything really. i deeply despise this guy and i really really don't want him as a chancellor, or in any position of power.)

this sucks.

introduction add-on

[i though it might be good to add some stuff that will probably become apparent, but might be worthwile to say anyway. i might end up just adding this to the part at the top, but at the moment i like the idea of treating this more like a journal, where it's possible to edit small stuff, but not big chunks.]

i can get very perfectionistic and anxious about "moral" topics. for example when it comes to labels and terms, i tend to be overly careful and paranoid about which ones i'm "allowed to use", because i don't want to say or portray something wrong or appropriate things that aren't mine. case in point, i just looked up if it's ok for me to say/use "paranoid" in this context, but i couldn't find a satisfying answer (not that those really exist because most things aren't as binary as my brain would like them / believes them to be, so i'm never really content with the "answers" that i do get). i'll leave it in for now because i try to not give into those kind of thought-spirals. anyway, that also applies to politics and activism and, more general, to "responsibility"-questions.

here are some label/terms/words/etc. that i am currently debate about using for myself:

• disabled - i don't completely know why i struggle with this one to be honest. i'm neurodivergent and mentally ill, which on its own "would be enough to qualify" (i'm putting it in quotation marks because i know that's not how it works, but that's how my brain thinks) but additionally i also have some kind of sleep disorder (probably insomnia) and whatever is causing my constant exhaustion, low energy levels and random pains. i'm definitely not able to do as much as is "the norm" for people my age and it affects me a lot.
• anarchist - i feel like i don't know enough about anarchism to properly consider myself an anarchist. from what i do know, i agree, but i would like to know more to be properly comfortable and confident in my beliefs. i consider myself anti-fascist, anti-capitalist and generally left-wing.

somewhat in conflict to that is my frustration / negative attitude towards content notes and disclaimers. don't get me wrong, i still provide them to my best knowledge and ability and i do understand why they are important and agree, but i just get exhausted by them if that makes sense? i think it's because i struggle recognizing when something needs a content note or disclaimer (more to that later), so i end up analyzing everything and, again, get super anxious about it. so i probably project that anxiety / stress / frustration / exhaustion onto the whole concept.

i have alexithymia, which in my case means that i have difficulty identifying, processing and describing emotions and feelings in myself and others and tend to ignore or forget that they exist. it's like a language that i only know the most basic basics of, but even that knowledge is theoretical and stiff and i have to overthink and manually translate every single word only for it to still be artificial and insufficiant. that makes it kinda difficult and frustrating to talk about emotions, relationships or boundaries, both for myself and people attempting to converse with me. it doesn't help that i also forget emotions - they are just not included in my (already hazy) memories. unfortunately that also means that i often don't recognize potentially sensitive or even triggering subjects. i'm constantly working on being more mindful and attentive and "to expand my vocabulary" so to speak (i literally have a self-made "workbook").

about names

so many names. i have the urge to explain why i use different ones. ok, so, i have a legal name, which i like but didn't want to use here for anonymity and privacy reasons. i've always wanted an author's or pen name, so this is where "vincent" comes in. i (half-jokingly) say vincent is my "parallel universe name", because under slightly different circumstances, it would have been my legal name. but it's not, so if i ever write a book, it'll be under that name because i honestly like it a lot. "zero" is more of an online name (even tho i'm not a very online person) and the name i use for publishing zines - looking back i could've just used vincent for that too, but oh well.

another text

due to the election, i remembered having written this text FUNCTIONING for a zine, but ended up never using it. it's set in an afd-ruled dystopic vision of the near future and follows an autistic university student struggling to fulfill the expectations set in him by the government under threat of physical and mental harm.

i don't write a lot of happy stories - i'm not sure i would know how to. which is not indicative of my everday-life btw, because overall i'm quite content in the little bubble i built myself. it's calm and slow and quiet, full of books and soft blankets. all of which is nice, but "nice" doesn't need an outlet. i also don't think it would be very interesting plot-wise. fear, anger, confusion and frustration however, they want out and for me, that's only possible through art. which, honestly, kinda sucks. i used to be able to go to demonstrations, political workshops and local activism meet-ups, but that's not possible for me at the moment. so i write, not as much as i want to, but sometimes.

next: issue 2.