. . . The Best Concert We Never Saw Inspiration. Contrast. Examples. Love. Internal violence. And what it takes to be the rockstar that you truly are. . . . Or, in my case—our cases—metalheads with exceptions. Just a few gorgeous, shimmering, star-dusted exceptions. This Yuletide was something I will never forget. We listened to Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. We listened to it over and again—I with my dearest and only friend who, against all odds, crossed paths with me and lives by my side in this world. This year has been ripped from a thousand layers of a thousand Hells. The uncertainty . . . the loss . . . the pain that whispered its own purposes in between the razor-cuts . . . the gain that turned out to be nothing like what my expectations for them would have been, if I’d had them. As I always say: “I didn’t have expectations for what it would be, but it definitely wasn’t that.” Gods, was I in for a starblood-splattered riptide. …

The Rising Failure By Desmond Rhae Harris Story Content Warnings: Trauma, drug use This story was written all in one burst, and came to precisely 1,000 words in the first draft. This story is meant for anyone who’s struggled with perfectionism, mental paralysis, self-directed criticism and brutality, and angst related to the concept of success. In case you scrolled past the button: Please, read it. What in any hell is success, anyway? Can anyone truly define it? I was talking with someone the other day about what it means to be successful, since I’d mentioned struggling to accept that success will come my way if I just continue to try. Almost like some kind of “preemptive imposter syndrome” . . . So she asked me how I define success. And I couldn’t answer her. It took me over 20 minutes to work it out, and some nasty trauma resurfaced. I talked about how, when I was a child, even when something was “good enough,” it never was–it was simply on to the next thing, then the next, …