These Vegan & Cruelty-Free Soaps Are Amazing

BY JOANNA C. VALENTE

Now that the holiday season is underway and we’re ending a year spent in large amounts of isolation away from our loves ones, and having experienced immense tragedy, it can be difficult to find ways to be kind to ourselves and also celebrate the people around us.

For me, a way to combat this is finding little joys in the everyday, for me and ones I can share. I’m in the midst of ordering gifts for my family and friends to deliver to them (as I likely won’t see the majority of them) as a way to remind them that our love is no different.

That being said, it can also be difficult finding gifts for people who may have different interests, seem to have everything they need, etc. I also personally hate giving “useless” gifts, or gifts I like that I know will sit on a shelf collecting dust.

Recently, I was in the market for a new soap. Admittedly, I love finding new ones; for me, there’s something about the textures and scents that I can’t get enough of. While most of my skincare routine is fairly utilitarian, I’ll occasionally give myself a treat - and it occurred to me recently why people do actually gift each other high quality soaps, lotions, and skincare products: Because they make you feel good. It’s a treat, and we all deserve to indulge sometimes.

I discovered Guna’s Clean Beauty line, started by Sugandh, which she describes as “a love story to my Greek heritage,” and also as “a way to promote harmony and our choices (whether food or fashion) don’t embody any form of cruelty towards people or animals.” The line consists of three natural soaps, EARTH PARADISE, BLACK DIAMOND and BERGAMOT.

The soaps are vegan and cruelty-free (like her other products), and hand-cut and poured; I have the Black Diamond and Earth Paradise bars, and the soaps are surprisingly creamy and beautifully scented - which makes my bath experience a lot more delightful. They are the perfect treat for a long day followed by a hot bath or shower.

You can learn more here.

What if the earth is asking us to be still?

BY LISA MARIE BASILE

Tune in with me.

I think about the people who will populate our future, and I ask the sky what they will see, what they will be told — through our actions and words and hunger. Will we become their ancient gods, whose lessons are bleak and hellish? Will they see how hard many of us tried and how we hoped?

Will our mythos be of hyper-consumerism, racism, lovers who are not allowed to love, bodies put into categories, plastic, the poisoned fruit, the unbearable dullness of constant performance, the addiction to the avatar, the plutocracy, the oceans crying into themselves, the sound of the air cracking against the ozone? Will all of our wounds still be present?

When I think of the people of the ancient worlds — and their gods and their cultures and their arts — I wonder what they would have wanted us to know?

Did they hope to impart a message of beauty, art, and nature? Of storytelling and culture?

Did they think we would destroy one another and the earth they danced upon in worship?

What happens to everything when we sit in the sea? Do we become a primal beautiful thing?

There is a presence that is being asked of us. Do we hear its sound? Are we the people who tolerate abuse? Are we the zombies of decadence, the digital void that consumes and hungers through screens? What if we were embodied for a day? Would we hear the great chambers of our heart, and the hearts of strangers, and the vines and sea beings we came from?

There is a constant scrolling and feeding. And it’s because we are hurting. We are disconnected. We are oppressed. We are poor. We are sick. We are not seen by society. We feel lonely, a loneliness perpetuated by hyper-connection.

How else do we live without turning to the void, which provides us beautiful and loud things to buy and be and shape ourselves into?

How do we live without abusing our neighbor, without stomping on their chest?

What if we could remember ourselves? How miraculous we are? Would we remember to be generous, to heal, to say hello? What would it look like if we all stopped pushing for a moment? What if we let the wind move us?

Positano

I feel sometimes I am a ghost. Liminal, floating through the world, eating the world around me — media and fashion and ideas that are not my own, not aligned with my values or my traumas or my soul.

I am out of time with my own soul. I am in 2020, but my heart is in the ocean eternal. I want wind and shorelines. I want fairness and justice. I want to experience beauty without the billboards looming. I want to read a book in the sunlight, and see my neighbor have the same opportunity.

But my neighbors — and your neighbors — are dying, are being murdered, and our ecosystems are gasping in our wake.

La Masseria Farm Experience

There are days that are so beautiful, so soft and real, that I have hope. These are holy days.

In Campania Italy, I have a holy day. I sit in a small stone pool. I think of the drive through the mountains from Napoli, where Pompeii stands, its breath held, looming over its land. How it preserved the stories of its people. I think always of what is preserved, what is lost.

But in the little pool, I am alone. The bed and breakfast is quiet. Tourists are out at Capri or Amalfi, the staff are napping during siesta, making pesto, somewhere else paying bills, talking on phones. I hear the hum of a generator, street dogs barking, the starlings that fly over me back and forth, definitely flirting.

I whistle and they zip over my head. We are in conversation, I know it. The earth wants me to know it sees me, wants me to see it. I am here and nowhere else. I am completely alive. I am made for this moment; we all are.

And after the late dinners of fried fish, I walk back to my room, alone. I am greeted again by the tiny birds who flutter in and out of the domed entrance, cherubs painted across the ceiling. I think of time and nature, and its concurrent obliviousness and suffering. I think of my privilege, and what I can do to preserve these stunning things.

I think of my body withstanding 100-degree heat. How I talk to the creatures in some liminal language of love. I think of how we could all be good to one another, so good that we could all have holy days.

I think of my flesh as the wine of this land. I feel the Mediterranean and the Tyrrhenian Seas in the palms of my hands. I am so alive and grateful and awake at the altar of these moments I cry for the nostalgia that hasn’t come yet, that I know I will feel. That I do feel. I am both past and present. But mostly, I am now.

I walk up the road to a farm and am greeted by a family whose hands have nurtured and translated the earth for centuries. They climb the trees, show us the olives falling. We see the farm cats idle in their sunlight, their fur dotted in soil. They are languid in pleasure and warmth.

I lose myself in the lemon trees, smell their peels; I am blessed. I step into the cool room where they keep the jugs of Montepulciano and cured meats. A cry in ecstasy is somewhere within me.

After a long day of pasta made by hand and more wine and strangers inviting me to their table and then limoncello, I walk home to my room. I am drunk on the connection. I film the walk, then stop. I do not want to capture everything; some things just exist between me and the earth. I won’t share.

La Masseria Farm Experience

My room is called Parthenope. It is etched into the wooden door. When I open the door, that is the threshold, the portal. Parthenope is a siren who lives on the coast of Naples. I imagine her body clinging to the continental shelf, her hair entwined in shell. They say she threw herself into the sea when she couldn’t please Odysseus with her siren song. Or maybe a centaur fell in love with Parthenope, only to enrage Jupiter, who turned her into Naples. The centaur became Vesuvius, and now they are forever linked — by both love and rage. Is that not humanity?

She became Naples. She became forever. Her essence is water, is earth, is the mythology of what happens when people are cruel and jealous and oppressive. Is this the message the sirens are singing? To be tolerant? To normalize cruelty? To fill the void with empty media, with images without stories?

Lubra Casa

There is always something that could destroy us, could rid us of this existence. A virus, a volcano, our own hands.

We are temporary, so quick and light and flimsy. We are but a stitch of fabric. A dream within a dream of that fabric. And yet. Here we are, becoming the ancients, carving out a way toward the future. We visit volcanos. We mythologize the earth. We drink wine and capture beauty. But then we turn our backs — on the proverbial garden, on one another, on our own bodies.

What if the earth is asking us to be better? To be still? What pose would we hold? What shape could let all the light in?

LISA MARIE BASILE is the founding creative director of Luna Luna Magazine, a popular magazine & digital community focused on literature, magical living, and identity. She is the author of several books of poetry, as well as Light Magic for Dark Times, a modern collection of inspired rituals and daily practices, as well as The Magical Writing Grimoire: Use the Word as Your Wand for Magic, Manifestation & Ritual. She's written for or been featured in The New York Times, Refinery 29, Self, Chakrubs, Marie Claire, Narratively, Catapult, Sabat Magazine, Bust, HelloGiggles, Best American Experimental Writing, Best American Poetry, Grimoire Magazine, and more. She's an editor at the poetry site Little Infinite as well as the co-host of Astrolushes, a podcast that conversationally explores astrology, ritual, pop culture, and literature. Lisa Marie has taught writing and ritual workshops at HausWitch in Salem, MA, Manhattanville College, and Pace University. She is also a chronic illness advocate, keeping columns at several chronic illness patient websites. She earned a Masters's degree in Writing from The New School and studied literature and psychology as an undergraduate at Pace University. You can follow her at @lisamariebasile and @Ritual_Poetica.

A Lippie List Inspired by Fairy Tale Films and Books

BY MONIQUE QUINTANA

Fairy tales have gorgeous aesthetics. Why not paint our mouths with them? Here’s a short list of fun fairy tale art and lippies that coordinate to their fantastical colors. 

1. Cartoons in the Suicide Forest by Leza Cantoral (Bizarro Pulp Press, 2016). A smart psychedelic and shocking punk rock doll of a short story collection.

The lippie: “Unusual” by Pretty Zombie Cosmetics

Order Cartoon’s in the Suicide Forest Here.

2. The Last Unicorn, 1982 A mythical beauty meets demon fantastical in this animated film adaptation of Peter S. Beagle novel.

The lippie: “Boy Trouble” by The Lip Bar   

3. The Tale of Tales, 2015 A trio of dark and decadent yarns inspired by the works of Giambattista Basile make up this film directed by Matteo Garrone. Starring Salma Hayek as a monster-heart-eating queen.

 The lippie: “1922- Blood Red” by Beseme Cosmetics  

4. Heavenly Creatures, 1994 Peter Jackson’s film of teenage angst, the writer’s dreamscape, and bloody matricide.

The lippie: “Paper Flowers” by Necromancy Cosmetics

4. The Lais of Marie de France, Penguin Books. A collection of narrative poems that explore the beautiful and grotesquely shape-shifting nature of love.

The lippie:  “Street Dreams” by Lipmatic

Order this book here.

Monique Quintana is a Senior Associate Editor at Luna Luna Magazine and the Fiction Editor for Five 2 One Magazine. Her work has appeared in Queen Mob's Tea House, Winter Tangerine, Huizache, and the Acentos Review, among other publications. She is a fiction fellow of the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley Workshop, an alumna of the Sundress Academy of the Arts, and has been nominated for Best of the Net. Her debut novella, Cenote City, is newly released from Clash books. You can find her at moniquequintana.com

A Grimoire For Self-Love: A Peek At Light Magic for Dark Times

BY LISA MARIE BASILE

Welcome to a sneak peak of my grimoire of self-development and ritualized living!

Though the archetype of the witch is part of what inspired LIGHT MAGIC FOR DARK TIMES, it’s also a book of what inspired me about people I love and care for, like my mother, who has had to grow and regrow several times over; like the people I know who have used their voice for personal and community change in the face of systemic oppression. It’s a book of love and care, of rebellion, of reclamation, and growth. That energy is magic.

I wrote LMDT after an editor actually spied a ritual of mine here at Luna Luna and asked me to expand on it— and so it is, in many ways, the unofficial Luna Luna grimoire.

Here are all the places you can pick up the book. And here’s a look at what’s inside:

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I’ve been using this word board to remind myself of things each day — to stay shadowy, to stay magical, to breath, to listen. Also having a little a fun with it with #lightmagicfordarktimes🔮 . What do you want to remember each day, today, right now?

A post shared by Light Magic For Dark Times (@lightmagic_darktimes) on Jan 24, 2019 at 2:15pm PST

Light Magic for Dark Times is all about ritualizing your life and finding your inner magic — by embracing the light and the shadow together.

It was written as a guide through the self.

The chapters cover everything from journaling and sigil creation to finding your own personal magic and integrating daily ritual.

The foreword was written by the inimitable Kristen J. Sollée. You should read her book, Witches, Sluts, Feminists: Conjuring The Sex Positive.

Because I’m a poet, you’ll see a lot of literary references woven throughout the book.

Light Magic for Dark Times is for the rebels, dreamers, shadow-dwellers, thinkers, darklings, & light-seekers amongst us.

You can find more inside peeks below

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A peek inside #LightMagicforDarkTimes — from journaling prompts & sigil work to shadow exploration and self-love rituals, my book is designed for anyone who wants to ritualize their life, lean into the archetype of the witch, and celebrate the many layers of self — both dark and light.

A post shared by Light Magic For Dark Times (@lightmagic_darktimes) on Jan 28, 2019 at 11:53am PST

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I have always felt a connection with darkness, the space between here and now, the shadow. For so long I have felt not only a home in the dark—but too comfortable, almost naturally made of it. I do not think this is a bad thing. I understand its liminality & language, just as I think others do when they encounter a hardship or loss or trauma at a young age. This changes our hearts, our wirings, and even our physiological responses. . Shadow work is about reframing those changes and making that liminality work for you—the pain is not always a negative. I believe it is an opportunity to transform, or cycle through transformations, as I learned early from a mentor. It might take a while, or feel bumpy, but it can happen. . For example, when I was much younger in my teens and in foster care, I always held the blaring sense that I was different, invisible, not enough. I heard the others gossiping about me and I longed to vanish, to be validated in my heartache, and I pined for the traditional family unit with all the trappings that come with it. For many years I lived with shame and silence and anger, not realizing in those very differences was my entire world. . Shadow work is the work we do to look into those feelings and internalized ideas to disassemble or rearrange them to bloom better things for ourselves. My shadow work was always through writing and self-listening and even though I’m not nearly perfect, I have been able to make peace with my past and turn that shame into pride. I hope that those of you reading the book or those of you that are looking to pick up the book find some healing and opportunity in it. When reading it, you are the guide and you are in charge of the results. 🖤🌗

A post shared by Light Magic For Dark Times (@lightmagic_darktimes) on Sep 29, 2018 at 11:42am PDT

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🍃Spending time in nature—also called ‘earthing’—has been well-documented to have a positive effect on our mood and physiological health. Connecting with water or flora or the soil helps us come back to simplicity, our natural selves, & the quiet, pulsing energy of our creativity and joy. 🍃

A post shared by Light Magic For Dark Times (@lightmagic_darktimes) on Sep 12, 2018 at 9:46am PDT

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This photo is courtesy of @divine.goddess.vibes—thank you! It is so special when someone connects with the book. Though the archetype of the witch is part of what inspired LIGHT MAGIC FOR DARK TIMES, it’s also a book of what inspired me about people I love and care for, like my mother, who has had to grow and regrow several times over; like the people I know who have used their voice for personal and community change in the face of systemic oppression. It’s a book of love and care, of rebellion, of reclamation, and growth. That energy, that goal, is magic. I don’t have all the answers, nor does this book, or anyone, really— but it is a guide to finding your own for yourself. 🖤

A post shared by Light Magic For Dark Times (@lightmagic_darktimes) on Dec 10, 2018 at 12:24pm PST

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Lisa Marie Basile is the founding creative director of Luna Luna Magazine and the most recently the author of "Light Magic for Dark Times” and "Nympholepsy." Her work encounters the intersection of ritual, wellness, chronic illness, overcoming trauma, and creativity, and she has written for The New York Times, Narratively, Sabat Magazine, Healthline, The Establishment, Refinery 29, Bust, Hello Giggles, and more. Her work can be seen in Best Small Fictions, Best American Experimental Writing, and several other anthologies. Lisa Marie earned a Masters degree in Writing from The New School and studied literature and psychology as an undergraduate at Pace University.

An Interview with Le Balm’s Cecilia Corrigan & Monica Nelson

BY DEIRDRE COYLE

When I watched the first episode of Le Balm—the new web series by Cecilia Corrigan and Monica Nelson—I cackled, then anxiously touched my face to check the quality of my skin, then cackled some more. Le Balm follows a makeup vlogger named Madeleine who decides, after the 2016 presidential election, to convert her many followers into radical activists by smuggling coded messages about overthrowing the regime into her beauty product reviews and tutorials.

In the past year, women's media has been full of articles on self-care as both coping mechanism and radical act. Le Balm questions the validity of this rhetoric with dark humor and compassion. As Corrigan wrote to me in an email, "Dealing with questions about complicity, beauty standards, and the privilege of self-care in a time of political disruption, the series brings together the worlds of our current political climate of anxiety and the messages of women's beauty culture."

Despite a shaky connection between New York and Los Angeles, I video chatted with Cecilia and Monica in the hours before their West Coast launch party.

So I first wanted to ask how you came together to work on this project, and where you’re both coming from?

Cecilia: I met Monica when we were both working on another short film, Crush, which was another piece that played with dark comedy to critique a certain sector of culture—in that case, the art world. We have pretty different backgrounds—my background is academic, and I started out in poetry, now I write and perform weird comedy, and Monica has been working in branding and advertising for years.

Monica: Different backgrounds, for sure. But we share an interest in using narrative and humor to make a cultural critique, that’s sort of the space where every idea we tossed around landed. Cecilia is amazing at creating these intuitive comedic characters that mirror back a very honest reality.

Cecilia: One of the things I like about this character is that she’s almost uncomfortably familiar, like she’s just taking the idea that self-care can be a radical political act to its natural conclusion. So even though it’s parody, it also feels uncanny. I think we were interested in that discomfort.

Monica: Yeah, and there is truth to it as well. The idea for Le Balm started at a women’s group that was organized the week after the election. Everyone was trying to figure out how to respond. Then Cecilia was kind of joking about doing a beauty guru character who’s having a political awakening after the election, and I was like "we should actually do that." That’s how Le Balm got started.

Cecilia: Yeah, that group was cool; I know a few similar groups cropped up that winter. This one was called Feminists Against Fascism—it was all women, a lot of them worked in media, many of them were activists. I found myself thinking about the beauty industry and "women’s media" a lot at that time, and about the idea of a coastal elite. The election brought so much misogyny to the surface, but also revealed so many of the limitations of a feminist politics that isn’t intersectional.

In a way, is this character in Le Balm also grappling with these questions?

Monica: Yeah, in her own way. She’s just taking it very, very literally.

Cecilia: It definitely comes from a relatable place. I first got the idea in a moment of recognizing my own ridiculousness, when I caught myself deeply stressing out about whether I should switch my moisturizer with the changing climate, and simultaneously freaking out about the terrifying political changes that seemed to be already affecting vulnerable people in a really immediate way. I was like, "wow I’m the worst." And you know, I think one of the things that saves me from going crazy is laughing at myself.

Monica: The idea of using what we know, and our own personal experiences seemed really important. I was shaken by the way that women were receiving information, and how it was being framed. All of a sudden all women’s media outlets turned to women’s causes, and you would literally read an article about a social justice cause and a moisturizer in the same typeface and tone. I still have screenshots from that time period that we would send back and forth. Literally posting these headlines that were like, "Are you bleary eyed because of the news? Here are some eye brightener tips."

RELATED: Interview with Sarah Forbes, the Curator of Sex

I did want to ask about the character. We don’t actually learn much about her background in the show, her story before she deleted all of her social media and then restarted it. But clearly she’s a privileged character: a young, attractive white woman able to make her living vlogging (she talks about her sponsorships in the first episode). Could you talk a little about how this character’s conception of "radical activism" is informed by these advantages?

Monica: This girl is earnest. That’s something that’s really important to us. This character did kind of exist in this bubble before the election. She was very sheltered and was able to create this whole ecosystem that was just hers. Her aesthetic was probably a little more decadent, or kitsch. But then her world was sort of blown. When we were briefing the team for the shoot, I would say "Imagine a girl that discovered politics and Garance Doré in the same day."

Cecilia: Yeah. She was definitely in a bubble before. I think a lot of people with a certain kind of privileged complacency felt like they had to become political, become "woke," right after the election. I imagined that whatever was going on with her in the lead-up to this moment, like whatever happened between the election and her new videos, was probably pretty messy. I think this is more than just a re-brand for her: I think she imagines that she’s going to be a real activist now. And in these videos we’re just watching her struggle to make makeup tutorials into political statements, about causes she just found out about and barely understands.

But I also find that struggle endearing: she’s striving to be better, she’s trying to use her influence for good, with, I think it’s called "cringe-worthy results?" She’s been in the business of selling self-improvement for a while, but now she wants to do a make-over on her soul, like Cher in Clueless (who, incidentally, is also a privileged white woman). It’s easy to make fun of people like her, but we decided not to make it a total mockery. It’s a complex situation, right? She’s trying to get involved, but she doesn’t know what she’s doing. And in the last episode I think we see her realizing that she might not actually be offering any useful advice, or helping anyone, by telling them that if they have self-confidence and look good it’s going to protect them from real political and legislative threats to their safety.

Monica: She’s just like, "the show must go on!" And, just like everyone, she’s trying to find new meaning and purpose in what she’s doing. She’s thinking, "I have this audience I could educate about these things."

Cecilia: Monica’s direction really helped bring that out, for me, when I was trying to find the character in the performance. At first I was doing her in a really over-the-top, you know, like, "Hiiii Guys!", like, vocal fry, totally kind of bug-eyed and scary, which is actually—you do see a lot of that. But Monica was like, "This person should be someone that you like. You have sympathy for her, she’s really different, and she has all these different interests, but she’s basically someone that you might know, or meet at a party, that you have empathy for." I do feel empathy for her.

Monica: I thought it was really important that she have depth, and that those things came through. That it felt like she was an actual woman struggling with these things.

Cecilia: Basically what I’m saying is that Monica was like, "Try doing good acting. Like that, except with acting."

Are you worried about the NSA watching the series?

Cecilia: Um. No.

Monica: It’s more like what if the beauty industry NSA sees it. But, actually it’s been funny having interviews with beauty brands. I show them a few episodes and they are laughing and fully understanding what we are doing, but then they say, "This is so funny, it’s amazing, we could never do anything like this."

Cecilia: And we knew that. The reason that we didn’t really pursue doing this like for a brand or even a magazine per se, is because we wanted it to exist on its own in a modular way, which adds an uncanny tone. It looks and feels like a beauty vlog. But at the same time it’s dark, character-based comedy. And the intersection of those things is unusual: it’s just its own thing. Hopefully in an enticing way.

Did you want people to initially view it as a real beauty vlog?

Cecilia: I think that the primary way to read it is as comedy, at least that's our intention. But it's presented in a coy way. But if people read it as a beauty vlog, that’s awesome.

In an email, you’d mentioned wanting to work in a "venn diagram of beauty journalism, political commentary, and unhinged comedy." Could you talk more about how those ideas overlap in Le Balm?

Monica: We had so many conversations about how we wanted to put it out. And at the end of the day, we just said, "This is original content." It’s scripted, but it’s playing with meta-reality. There are heightened moments, but it could be real, on some level. Nothing we’re talking about is fantasy. And I think that realism is something both of us are interested in exploring, that essayistic quality. We’re both interested in creative work as a critical practice. But then again, this piece goes back to some of the things we know best. Performance for Cecilia, and for me, creating "content." Le Balm uses those two things to write an essay about this very specific sector of our culture.

Cecilia: Absolutely: the performance of branded content creation. Le Balm is an imitation of vlogger culture, and a tribute to it. It’s comedy about beauty content and it also is actual beauty content, in a way. It’s an expression of this weird moment we’re living through, rendered through this really simple and clear concept. It feels very conceptual to me in that way.

Monica: I think it asks its viewer to imply the depth, and to read into it. I think that’s the type of content that I’m most excited about.

Cecilia: Yeah. I’ve always really loved stuff that lives in a certain frame but does something different inside of that frame. The work that excites me the most lives in a certain context but plays with people’s expectations. A lot of the ideas in Le Balm are everywhere right now, and there’s been some amazing journalism recently about the strange relationship between contemporary politics and beauty culture. Of course, Le Balm isn’t journalism, even if it is kind of essayistic.

Monica: I think it is rooted in documenting a real phenomenon. Now, beauty is a really powerful category, much more powerful than fashion, because of its ability to create such personal change. Historically, beauty industries have always boomed during political turmoil because beauty is something you can control. Like Elizabeth Arden and all these brands being like, "Red lipstick is empowering!" We have an episode about that. Maybe there is an innate truth to it, because you feel better. It’s a real feeling.

Cecilia: It does seem like there’s so much emotion attached to that space now, so much public feeling around beauty, skincare, makeup. It’s like the final market where people believe buying the right products could actually make them better people. So the character represents something I think is a huge part of life in America and the developed world right now. The new form of aspirational luxury is self-improvement: you want your skin to look better, you want to spiritually be better, politically be better. I think this character wants to believe what we all want to believe, to some extent, that we can have control over our lives and that we can prevent chaos from enfolding us by focusing on self-improvement.

Monica: Beauty is definitely an exercise in control.

Will there be more Le Balm, either in this form or another, in the future?

Cecilia: I’m working on a pilot that’s an expansion of this world.

Monica: I think we also like the idea of using it as a discussion piece. That’s the thing I’m the most excited about, is seeing what people get out of it. It’s been really fun to hear the reactions of people from different backgrounds. There are these funny signifiers that trigger things for people.

Cecilia: Yeah, one of the things I’ve noticed in comedy is that people, when things hit too close to home, tend to be kind of repulsed, they’re like, "Ugh, I hate that character," if they identify too much. Whereas if you’re more distant from the character, you just laugh.

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Deirdre Coyle is a writer and goth living in Brooklyn. Her work has appeared in Electric Literature, Lit Hub, The New Republic, Hobart, Joyland, and elsewhere. Find her on Twitter at @DeirdreKoala.