Wrapping up the year with reflections and an announcement
BREAKING NEWS: The Strand is very excited to announce the official inauguration of Volume 65’s mascot: Rion’s cat, Lucila (see above). She fits The Strand’s ethos in every way: fluffiness, unnecessary ankle biting, and nom nom noms on dehydrated chicken treats. She has been a background member of the paper’s community for four months now, and is finally ready to make her public debut beyond the #random Slack channel. She would like the greater Vic community to know that her office door is always open and she encourages everyone to please pick up that stick with bells and feathers so she can practise her jumps.
At this point in the semester, we are already missing the blissful, class-free days of reading week, and are anxiously awaiting the winter break. Like most students, we’re doing everything we can to procrastinate studying for finals, so we thought this would be the perfect opportunity to reflect on the first half of Volume 65, tell you a couple of riveting stories, give you a review of our office’s Halloween candy, and introduce you to our manifestation board – this is an unthemed issue after all!
Across the board, our masthead was ecstatic to have access to office Halloween candy; after all, most members of the paper hadn’t stepped foot into our office before this fall. Of all the office perks, chocolatey goodness wrapped in fun-sized packaging was one of the year’s most anticipated. But, as we sit here with nearly empty serving bowls on our tables, we’ve come to notice that Wonderbar, Mr. Big, and Crispy Crunch are just… awful, and so disappointing. They’re way too crunchy, and crunchy caramel is, just, so bad. Trust us. We will not be buying these again next year.
Our manifestation board remains mostly empty, save for one item that has withstood the test of several board erasures: “Manifesting that Rion & Faith come to their senses and become Swifties!” I (Rion), can promise that this manifestation board is not the most effective way of turning us into the Queen of Pop’s biggest fans, and I (Janna) whole-heartedly disagree. There’s even a kind arrow pointing out to the phrase, “no. <3” letting newcomers to the office know of the board’s success rate.
This issue is our final publication this 2022. We welcome you to explore our team’s take on 2022 in Arts and Culture. In News, Maya Hutzul reports on Twitter’s acquisition deal. Elaine Lee’s “Extension Request” in Poetry is a phenomenal piece to wrap up the year, and we are honoured to be the first to publish such a work.
We don’t know about you, but we’re certainly glad to be putting 2022 behind us. We can’t wait for you to see all the Strand-things we have planned for next year, including the launch of our Fluidity Magazine. We’ve run out of time to tell you our stories, so we hope you will keep your eyes peeled for our first issue of 2023—all we can say is that we’re feeling very futuristic about it.
