Last week, I was in Shanghai, sitting beside an open window. I had nothing urgent to do. No assignments. No volunteering. No part-time shift. No gym. My phone had somehow ended up on the other side of the room. The closest things to me were half an iced watermelon. Cicadas buzzed outside as if the afternoon had nowhere else to be. It had been raining all afternoon. The rain stopped. Then started again. Then stopped again. Normally, I hate weather that can't make up its mind.

PROMOTIONAL | ISSUE NINE | WHAKAKATA / HUMOUR Tashi Donnelly in conversation with Grace Augustine | @tashi_rd | Editor Dr. Thomas Stockmann is the medical officer of his small-town’s new eco-spa. An upstanding member of their close-knit community, when Thomas discovers the town’s water has been contaminated, he raises the alarm. But his truth comes at a price, when those in power - including his own brother - try not only to discredit him, but to crush him. Flyleaf Theatre Co

BREAD & CIRCUSES | ISSUE EIGHT | SCREENS Written by Luke Fisher (he/him) | @lukefish7 | Sports Columnist Annotated by Tashi Donnelly (she/her) | @tashi_rd | Editor Statistically, women’s sports aren’t as good as men’s. * *Starting strong with what is arguably the worst opening sentence we've ever published. The ball hits the back of the net with less ferocity. The runaway tries are scored at a less-than-blistering pace. The sixes sail over a boundary rope dragged closer to

FEATURE | ISSUE EIGHT | SCREENS Alejandro Davila & Faeborne For most students, gaming is a way to procrastinate after class, unwind with friends, or disappear into another world for a few hours. For AUT Creative Technologies graduate Alejandro Davila, however, it eventually became something much bigger: an opportunity to create immersive worlds of his own. Enter the world behind Alejandro’s screen: Faeborne. Faeborne is a story-driven action-adventure game following an elven

It’s 33 Degrees Today. Are You Wearing Enough Clothes? ONE MOON COLUMN | ISSUE EIGHT | SCREENS Written by Priscilla Zhang (she/her) | @p.zhangxy | Columnist Every morning, before I even look outside my window, I look at another season. It appears on my phone. My mother has a habit of telling me the temperature back home. I think it is her way of sharing something real, something happening around her body, across the 6,000 miles between us. "Yesterday was so hot and stuffy,"

FEATURE | ISSUE EIGHT | SCREENS Written by Polly Wenlock (she/her) | @p0lly2001 on Substack | Contributing Writer The artistic capacity of the human brain is, sorry - WAS a marvel. Every book, movie, show, artwork, song, recipe, blah, blah in history was born of human creativity, Until now. Screens are nullifying the power of the human mind: We’re getting dumber. Like any good thing in the modern world, it was only a matter of time until the brain too was retailed to the hig

ARTS | ISSUE EIGHT | SCREENS Written by Ethan Morais (he/they) | Ngāti Whakaue, Ngāti Pikao, Ngāti Hori ki Kohupatiki, and Malayali | @morais.ethan | Contributing Writer The camera is the defining tool of our times. To re-present the world in images is to set the parameters of the world, and to shape our collective understandings of it. Because of this, we as artists must be conscious of how and why we use the lens; we must ask ourselves what world we want to make. - The cam

FEATURE | ISSUE EIGHT | SCREENS Written by Ishani Mathur (she/her) | Contributing Writer There was a time when waiting simply meant waiting. Sitting in the car before driving home. Standing in line for your morning coffee. Walking to class. Lying in bed before sleep found you. Looking out the window on the bus. Today, those moments rarely exist. We press play. We scroll. We search. We consume. Not because we have to. Because we can. Somewhere along the way, we stoppe

INTERVIEW | ISSUE EIGHT | SCREENS Written by James A. Glass (he/him) | @magicalflamebow | Contributing Writer In today’s video game climate with big studios pressing down on consumers, it’s important that we champion independent creators and studios. I talked with Dave Oshry, CEO and co-founder of New Blood Interactive (NB) where he discussed how the studio operates, what he considers indie, and the current game dev landscape in Aotearoa. James: How does New Blood support dev