Foreign.

Hello, I'm your host, Inman Narrowin, and this is Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, a monthly podcast of anarchic literature where we take our monthly feature, turn it into an audio feature and and then interview the author. We're looking for content that doesn't know where it fits in for people that don't know where they fit in. You can get a copy of the monthly zine by signing up for our patreon at patreon.com strangersinatangled wilderness or you can read for free at tangledwilderness.org this month we have into the Terror, Gabby and Cuervo 1 by Jackson Culpepper.

Into the Terror Castle is a piece.

Of short fiction about urban exploring the horrors of capitalism and cryptids.

Maybe.

And if you like it, it's a series and you can find more from jackson@linktr EE jccolepepper. As usual, the piece is read by bflowers.

If you want to read along, go.

To tangledwilderness.org and check it out for free. After the piece we have an interview with Jackson about their piece. The Word of the Month is about those who wish to remain hidden. But before we get to all of that, we are a proud member of the Channel Zero network of anarchist podcasts. And here is a jingle from another show on the network.

People need ordering principles 12rules4 is a podcast about fascism in the far right from the perspective of the left. It's obviously great stuff, but don't take our word for it here. Here is a word from our sponsor. I'm Jordan Peterson. Now that I have been injected with the anti fascist super soldier serum, I renounce all my rubbish beliefs about hierarchies and the distribution of sex and dedicate my life, my soul to the 12 rules for what podcast. So that's 12 rules for what? A podcast about the far right. Get it? Anyway, you get your podcasts.

12 rules for what?

Have you ever pondered the origin stories of the crust punks playing banjo on the street for money with dirty dogs and impeccable teeth? Have you ever been curious about the guy with the disintegrating black T shirt who works at the Collective Cafe and still manages to travel Europe for six months without a trust fund? Ever wanted to know what it's like to live in a dilapidated house with 11 people, five dogs and one cast iron skillet? Hi, I'm Kat Rea and on my podcast punkjores, I'm going to be talking to all my weird friends and friends of friends and friends of friends of friends about the hustles we self proclaimed punks participate in to keep our funny little lives chugging along. Pot farms, clinical trials, crime scene cleanup, ice castle building, beet harvesting, and so much more. You've probably never heard of us but but we can be pretty fun to listen to. Find punk chores Wherever you find your.

Podcasts Gabby and Cuervo Issue one Into the Terror Castle Written by Jackson Culpepper and narrated by Beeflowers. Published by Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. Jackson Culpepper he they is a teacher, writer and zine artist. His debut short story collection, Songs on the Water, won the landmark prize in fiction and was published by homebound publications in 2022. The stories in that book are all about growing up in the southern culture of Georgia with both the beautiful parts and the heartbreaking parts. His ongoing zine series, Gaby and Cuervo, follows the adventures of a punk collective and a psychic witch in a cyberpunk future. When he's not writing, Jackson is usually hiking, playing tabletop games, and going out to goth night. We got the ghost show idea because Nick was always watching these ghost shows. Compilations of haunted house investigations, people tromping through abandoned hospitals, and oh my God, the stuff from Japan. He pointed out how they faked all of it, hiding cuts in blurry motion or simply sending their friends to peek a boo out from the end of a creepy hallway. He could critique it, which I respected, but he loved that stuff. I thought it was all bullshit. If ghosts could come back and haunt people, how would the rich get any sleep? Anyway, I'd never seen a ghost or anything. We put our scheme together out of the ghost hunting model. Cheap ass production plus posting across platforms, plus the cutest of us screaming in the thumbnails and boom. Money for redacted. Redacted is the overthrow of capitalism. That's how I wound up in the woods behind the city, in the abandoned industrial district, where it was so gross that even the squatters had left. Or had they? That was my line in the intro. Nick swung his flashlight around the warehouse's exterior. I kept expecting a ghost form or a face or something, since that's what always showed up in Nick's shows. But there was nothing. Or maybe it would show up when we reviewed the footage, something there watching us that we didn't even notice. Nick and Porkchop, one of the others from the squat, argued about whether they would add in special effects before they posted the video. No, nick said. We want it to be legit. No fake stuff. Dude, Porkchop responded. Nobody wants to see people wandering around abandoned buildings without some kind of payoff. We can get Gabs to go hide and peek out or something. Gabs is me, Gabriel, Gabby. I told Porkchop that I had no fucking desire to go hide and peek out or something. We entered the closest warehouse. We could hear water dripping. Somehow it was colder inside the place. Bits of glass or wet metal siding glittered and reflected my light as I looked around, the strewn junk cast angular shadows across the walls. Try as I might not to, I kept looking for peekaboo faces. If the videos were accurate, then ghosts mainly showed up to peekaboo around doorways and corners. On a second floor catwalk between buildings, we heard the scream. Even Nick scoffs at the rake videos, but that shit sounded like a rake video. Halfway human, halfway monster. Clearly aware of our presence and unhappy about it. We huddled, like, hunkered down, as though the monster or ghost or whatever was going to wait for us to break our huddle before it came and possessed us or clawed us to bits. We need to call this off, I said, trying to control my shaking. We keep sneaking. It's probably some druggie who doesn't even know we're here, Nick said. I punched him in the arm. Druggie? What the fuck dehumanizing bullshit is that? I punched him in the other arm. 100%. That thing knows we're here, Porkchop added. I've got a good zoom on this thing. We wouldn't even have to get that close. Shit, we could try the drone. He immediately swung off his backpack and started prepping the drone. Once the drone was up, we huddled around Porkchop's tablet screen. We watched as it buzzed ahead, making it to the end of the hallway. Porkchop guided the drone along the walls, finding a passage to the next area. All around it was graffiti that said welcome to hell. I made a noise that I'm pretty sure I've heard my cat make at other cats outside the window, Nick said, it's got a theme, huh? Porkchop asked. Keep going, nick said. The drone moved into the new passage, which was a narrow hallway covered in graffiti. There were more messages, including they can hear your thoughts, and a few very expressive images of devils, pentagrams, witchy symbols, all that stuff. At the end of the hell hallway, another large room opened up. It was too dark to see what was in it, and Porkchop eased the drone forward. That was when something grabbed the drone and slammed it to one side so hard that the feed cut out. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Fuck, I said. Shiiiiiii, Porkchop said. This was a change from let's get footage of supernatural beings, guys, which did relieve me a little. Nick reached out and rewound the footage. He looped it right before the camera flew off to one side and died. Do you hear that? He asked, bumping up the volume on the tablet. Silence. Dripping water. Then a harsh crunch. We didn't even hear it approach. Porkchop said. No. Listen here. Nick looped it tighter. We strained to hear the tablet. He was right. There was a weird buzzing sound right before something grabbed the camera. What is that? I asked. Maybe it's an old robot, Porkchop offered. It lives here and tries to scare everybody off. That made sense, except I really didn't think AI had developed to the point of wanting to be a hermit. We didn't see anything physically. Grab the drone, Nick said. We watched again, and he was right. No hands, claws, articulated pincers, just buzzing noise than dead drone. I sat back to hypothesize. Yes, I felt scared. But I felt something else too. I wanted to know what the hell all this stuff was. The clearest answer, of course, was that we needed to get the fuck out. Even in the weirdest of Nick's ghost videos, there wasn't this much stuff. Usually the location was creepy, and then maybe they saw a peekaboo shadow. That was it. But this place was like a house of horrors, like an attraction. Someone made this, I said. Because they want to scare people away, nick finished. I was going to say that, I said. Nick didn't respond. He was thinking. Porkchop was eating some hot chips from his backpack. I grabbed some. They're willing to destroy a drone, Nick said. Which suggests they don't want people filming here or probably being here at all. So we should leave, I said, crunching chips. We could get footage of the old warehouse. Hermit, Porkchop said. My stomach fell when he said it, because I really didn't want to do that, but I knew it would make great fucking content money. Content, Nick continued. We don't know how deadly this could get. If the hermit's willing to hurt a drone, they might hurt a person too. Porkchop looked at us, thinking. Sometimes Porkchop makes me nervous when he thinks we need this, he said. Like not for the notoriety, but for food, for enough gas to get through the winter. Unless one of you has a creative idea to feed the house, this is our best shot. He was right. We debated for like five nights about how to keep the house going. And gods help Us. This was our best idea. We pressed on. Huh? Porkchup said. Nick and I entered the hallway, edging past the scary graffiti. Our cameraman stood looking at his drone fallen to the ground. One side of it was crushed. We shined our flashlight beams around. If there was anyone there, we couldn't see nor hear them. The next room, which the drone hadn't been able to see into, was a cavernous warehouse. A big, empty, quasi liminal space that made me feel a hollow kind of scared. I felt like I imagine a hamster would if you put them on a stage in an auditorium. Tiny, lost, overwhelmed and watched. Nick squatted and looked at the ground. A coating of dust lay on the floor. Beneath the drone was a disturbance, probably from its own fall, but there weren't any other signs of movement to either side. Nick raised his light to the ceiling. There wasn't anything up there either. We studied the scene. Nick thought out loud. Nothing grabbed it from the ground. Nothing grabbed it or hit it from the ceiling. But. But something moved it. I made a process of elimination and looked at the wall next to where the drone had gotten hit. There on the very edge of the doorway. There were some scratches in the paint. The paint itself was a close shade to the yellow beige base coat of the corridor's walls, but not quite as gross looking. It was newer paint beneath it, a bright metal surface raised from the rest of the wall, running from floor to ceiling. I turned the corner and found a few small wires that ran out from behind the metal surface and up into the tangle of wires and pipes on the ceiling. It's a booby trap, I said. An electromagnet, Nick said. Those wires could lead to a control where a host can activate it. Depending on how powerful it is. That setup could grab a person if they had enough metal on them. It could stop bots too, Porkchop added. Is this the kind of person that bots come after? I mused. They only sent bots out after a higher level type of criminal. None of this added up. We chose a path going up to the catwalks. Through faded opaque windows, the lights of the city gleamed like candles in a far off room ahead, in the next room, our flashlights caught eyes. Many, many eyes. We froze. My heart beat against the back of my ribs. Maybe two dozen sets of reflective eyes peered back at us. A few on the bottom moved. Porkchop uttered a sound that would have been hilarious if we weren't currently terrified. We kept our lights ahead, watching three sets of eyes leave the others and move toward us. Even our high lumen lights couldn't make sense of that darkness or whatever creatures watched us from within. There was no sound as the eyes moved closer across the room, then into the catwalk 10 yards. Five bodies materialized. Three black cats stared at us. One of them sat down. The other two crept toward us with their tails bobbing. We breathed out all at once, of course. Goddamn cats. One of them rubbed against my leg. I squatted to pet it. The scary black cat purred. The next room had a wall a few feet behind the doorway, like the back of an elevator shaft. That wall was painted black with a bunch of sets of eyes painted over the black in glow in the dark reflective paint. Another booby trap. We're getting closer, nick said. I agreed. The more traps, the more Mr. Corporate Spy serial Killer Supreme Hermit Weirdo doesn't want us to get any closer. But we were in it now. To the end of the mystery. The tube show must go on. The next room was smaller than the others, but pretty tall, with ceilings about 20ft tall. Metal beams, liminal space ambience. My flashlight beam fell on a huddled figure atop a ten foot metal column. Black cloth fell over the beam and long black hair. Human, I supposed. First spotting it sent a chill through me, but I figured it was a dummy or a mannequin with a wig on or something. Get out, the figure said, and my blood turned into that sparkly goop they put in freezer packs. It wasn't a dummy with a speaker. It was a flesh and blood person. Or was it? They want us to leave, porkchup said, raising his camera. At that moment I experienced a split in my existence. The self preservation half of me decided that this person was definitely MC Serial Killer and became determined to exit the area by the most direct route possible. Another possible porkchop, influenced half of me reasoned that this person had set traps for us that were spooky but not really dangerous. They hadn't even used the electromagnet on us, and with my piercings that trap would have been devastating. Most of all, the person had nice cats, and I had a hard time imagining a bad person with nice cats. Get out and leave me alone, the figure said, raising their head this time. Their face was of course pale as vampires, with eyes darker and deeper than the shadows in the room. Maybe Latin? Hard to tell, but their cheekbones did remind me of Antonio Banderas in Interview with the Vampire, for whatever that could explain. Their gender seemed firmly androgynous. Pronouns might have been bat, ghoul. Can you tell us why you're here first? Asked Porkchop from behind his camera. No, the figure said with a growl. How about your name then? Porkchop continued. I liked the cat eye wall. That one was clever. Nick said asked. The figure looked from one to the other of us. They settled on Nick. There is an old woman behind you. She has a scar by her ear. She thinks you are being very old foolish right now. Their voice was deep and liquid, like a vat of black oil that sucks people in to drown them. I looked at Nick. He had turned pale in the cast off light of our flashlights. The figure I noticed wasn't looking at Nick but towards something a few feet behind him. Something I couldn't see. Nick, I said in a checking in tone. It's my abuela, he said. She hated all the ghost videos and stuff. She said it attracted the devil. All the abuelas say that, I reassured him. She had a scar from a dog attack, Nick continued. From when she was a girl. It nearly took off her right ear again. Cold goop blood. Leave, said the person who lived in an abandoned, booby trapped warehouse and who could also see ghosts. Wait, responded Porkchop. Look, we need money. Not just us but everybody at our house. I get that you want to be left alone, but all this. He gestured in a vague circle, taking in the warehouse, the storm outside, the black cats, the ghost furniture, etc. This is all too good not to record. The crow like person perched and watched us. One of my exes was a big chess player and she'd make me watch grandmaster games on the tubes. Those guys stared intensely at the board with this anger mixed with fear and concentration into a muddled sludge of emotion oozing out of a poker face. It wasn't a normal way for a person to look. That's how the person who lived in the warehouse looked at us. I don't want you to post that footage, the person said. If you post it, others will show up wanting their own footage and I won't have solitude. Which is why I am here. I mean, we're probably going to post the footage, Porkchop said, still recording. We need the money. Silence stretched the seconds into minutes. I ran my fingers along one of the chains at my wrist. Nick peered into the darkness behind him, probably trying to see his abuela. Finally they said, I will help you if you agree to delete the footage and say nothing about me or this place to anyone else. Porkchop lowered the camera just enough to look over it at the person. What kind of help? Turn it off and I'll show you. That sounded ominous. MC Serial Killer? I thought we hadn't ruled out that possibility. Maybe this is how serial killers got people in the first place. You want to find out what a weirdo does? It's a perverse human drive. Porkchot pressed a few buttons on the camera. He paused and said, if you explain and then let us go safely, I'll delete it before we get back to the house. Deal? Smart, I thought. For now, the person said, and then they dropped from their platform and stood. They were tall, over six feet, their black clothes draped around them in layers. They moved to a door at the end of the room. It led to a series of gangways and staircases, all leading up. We followed, glancing at one another with glances that communicated the same thought. We're really raising the stakes on whether this person is a serial killer, huh? We came to a final door, and when the person pushed through, our eyes adjusted to the light. The room glowed with yellow LEDs like candles. It was clean, warmer, not as damp. It felt habitable. There was furniture, desks piled with books, a small makerspace with printers and a few mounted milling machines, a kitchen with sink and burner burners, and an area with some kind of wooden dummy and bullseye targets that last made me stop in my tracks. Knives jutted from the targets, all within the smallest two rings. Okay, a knife person. I wasn't sure how to feel about a knife person. The hermit led us to a floor to ceiling window with the city's grungy lights taking up the whole view. You're from a punk house, they said. It wasn't a question. Yeah, replied Porkchop. Are you political? Are you? I blurted. I was still new to the anti fascia, anticamp politics, and questions like Are you political? Had escalated me into several fights over the last few months. Maybe seeing where this hermit lived had put me at a little ease. There had been ramen packets on the kitchen counter. Black pullovers lay over the chairs. Some of the black pullovers had sleepy yellow eyes. More black cats lounging around. It wasn't an intimidating space, aside from the knife gallery. No, the hermit said. But I have rendered my services to political groups in the past. Which ones? Asked porchophobia. Now we had to figure out if the hermit was fash. Not the fascists or anyone close to them. They said okay, if they were telling the truth. What kind of services have you rendered? Nick asked, still gawking around the space. The hermit faced us squarely, their long hair falling along the sides of their face. I am a medium, psychic and witch. I speak to the dead. I know what the living intend. I can make certain things happen. Some groups have found these skills useful. A psychic, I thought. This person can read my thoughts. The hermit turned to me and said, it doesn't work like that. I flushed and panicked while Nick asked some clarifying questions. I clamped down on my thoughts. Don't think about whether those are Latino cheekbones. No, they said it didn't work like that, though. Think, think. Maybe the hermit can read thoughts or do something like that. Or maybe my complete lack of a poker face showed my disbelief and fear and the psychic hermit saw that and decide to fuck with me. Nick told me all about mediums and cold readings. There's a whole set of tricks where hucksters can pick up on subtle cues or make good guesses to give the appearance of psychic ability. But the person did see Nixabuela, and that was harder to disprove. Maybe they were the real deal. Or maybe they were good at tricks. When I pulled myself back together, the boys and the hermit were dancing around the politics of our punk house. Porkchop said, we do some subversive shit. Are you cool with that? Yes. So, wait, nick said, his brow furrowed behind his glasses. You said you're a witch too, right? Yes. So you curse people or what? I can, and I have, only in dire circumstances. There is a cost to that kind of work and risks involved. Can you kill someone with magic? If you want to kill someone, use a weapon. The hermit had a tone of annoyance, like they'd answered all these questions many times before. I asked, how do we know you're legit? The hermit turned their full gaze on me. It made me want to roll my shoulders in to become small. I resisted the urge. They said to me, you aren't a true believer. Not yet. You washed up at the house. Desperate, they stepped across the room toward me. You hope they don't see your desperation, but they do. No, you don't have ide. They were feet away, lowering their heads to my 52 level. Their breath smelled like bitter herbs. You have fear and rage. Those old jobs, those old families, they made you small. Now you've gotten a taste of rebellion, of insurrection, and you want to never be small again. Isn't that right? Porkchop and Nick were staring at us. The hermit stood close enough that they could grab me. The hermit was right, more or less. But everything they said could have been from a cold read. I knew Nick knew that, too. Porkchop was Cool. I didn't worry about Porkchop. If the Hermit had meant to drive a wedge between us, it wouldn't work. More importantly, they didn't understand that all of us carried around fear and rage and none of us really knew what to do with them. Because of that, I understood that the Hermit, the wizard, whatever they were, they were at least partially full of shit. Porkchop and Nick got that same feeling. Something had shifted in the room, like when Shoshana, back at the house, made one of her aggressive moves en route. The Hermit had pushed too far and everybody knew it. They straightened up. Their face was impassive, partly hidden by the waves of their long hair. They looked through me. What should we call you? Porkchop asked. Since you're going to be working with us. Crow, said the Hermit. We groaned and protested. You can't just be Crow, I said. Dude, porkchop said, even though we told him over and over that not everybody considers it a gender neutral term. You might as well be Batman, said Nick. Fine, Ilse Cuervo. That's still Crow, Nick protested the Hermit. Ilse did not respond. Ilse Crow. It was going to be. Porkchop muttered something about fixing it before we posted. You said you were going to delete the footage, the Crow said with an edge to their voice. That was if you work with us, nick said. And so far we still don't know what kind of work you're offering. A black cat rubbed up against my leg. Ilce asked, what is your current campaign? To destroy capitalism, I said. But first to scam this one single staff corner store for about as much as we can take. Where is it? They asked. I told them. They turned with a disproportionately dramatic swish of their clothes, taking a seat in an antique looking armchair, an Eastlake chair. I later learned Ilse was particular vain about their furniture. They sat and were silent for a minute, which stretched into a while. Our attention wandered. I petted the nearby cats and pork chops, snuck in some B roll. Finally, Ilse Crow said, back in the 20s, a Pakistani immigrant owned that store. He had a thing for the young pop stars of that era that wasn't entirely healthy. Now it's one of thousands in a corporate portfolio. No one watches it spoof the footage aggregate so an algorithm won't spot anything and you can take them for all they're worth. We looked at Crow, criminal in disbelief. You're sure? Porkchop asked. The question there was whether the store had a dedicated manager somewhere or not. Some were monitored by type A jackboots, and others were left to a cut rate algorithm and prepared for like 70% shrink. If Ilse could tell us which was which, they explained. People leave an imprint on the places they care about. If no one's watching a place, it becomes quiet, it smells like ozone. The store you described is one of those places. Maybe their algorithm is strong, but no human cares about that place. Nick, Porkchop and I looked at each other. The hermit was a royal flush. If they could tell which stores were watched and which ones were write offs. If Then again, I was skeptical of psychics for the same reason everyone else tended to be, because they were mostly grifters. And what do grifters do but hand you a big payday and then tell you more are coming? We needed to test this person. How do you test a psychic? I said. Here's our deal. We won't post the footage. Instead, we'll finish the job on the store. If your advice works, then we'll delete the footage and maybe talk about working together. If it doesn't work, we're posting the footage but keeping the location secret. Deal, Mixcrow responded. If you post that footage, every bored dilettante with a camera will run to every abandoned warehouse in the city, eventually finding their way here. That's why your tip needs to be good. Good tip? No post, no visitors, Porkchop said with an expression on his face as easy as if he'd just polished off a plate of ribs. So how sure are you of the tip? Ilsik grimaced. They might have growled. What I told you is true. No one watches that store. That doesn't preclude some expensive algorithm capable of watching it along with hundreds of others. Some of the conglomerates have that. I can't read a machine. Then you're taking a chance along with us, nick said next. There was a standoff of glares. Ilse glared at each of us in turn and we glared back and Porkchop nonchalantly looked at us, which was his way of glaring at us to be sure. We held up. It wasn't easy to get glared at by Crow Hermit. That person was intense. Fine, they said. Eventually. Run the con. When it works, bring me the memory card so I can see it. Deleted. If you post it or save a copy, I'll curse your whole house. Curse us? Nisk asked, half in surprise. He'd been threatened with ass beatings, but never with a curse. Yes, a curse that is within my power. Now go back the way you came. With that, they turned to the window and watched the rain outside like a movie villain might. Porkchote walked out. They petted another cat before we left. The Crow wasn't wrong. We got Nick hired to the store on nothing more than an employment check from a spoofed profile and a 50 page NDA non complete waiver agreement, which he signed with a little picture of a picture bat. We worried about biometrics, but with some contouring makeup and a few degrees shift of gender expression, the cameras caught only a much more ditzy femme Nick. It was close to drag, honestly. We spoofed the cameras and cleaned the place out. Enough food and supplies for a few months, plus medications and electronics to barter. Our dinnertime conversations very quickly centered on how we could scale the operation, hitting all the neglected stores in the city, exciting possibilities for a bunch of anarchists starry eyed with successful theft. Once the job was done and a week or two went by to make sure the coast was clear, we returned to Dracula's castle. We traipsed back up to the Crow sanctum and the Hermit watched us right click and delete all the video files. Porkjop wasn't too upset about it. He'd gotten a new camera and a three drone hive out of the job. Good, the hermit said as the last phial disappeared. What is next for you? We looked at each other. More stealing? I offered. Ilse watched me. When they looked at you, it felt like they were drilling into whatever parts of your brain you left unguarded. You could do more. You are political. Yes, in theory we are, I thought. But of course you couldn't say something that non committal to the Crow. You could do more. We could do more. The oppressors are complacent and unprepared for attack. They think they've won. We raised our eyebrows. The Hermit wanted to storm the Bastille. They grimaced as though the next words were physically painful for them to say. I have been alone for a long time. Watched the world sink. I let you go before because I thought you might not be entirely stupid. And because you might be willing to actually do something. Let us go. Does that mean the Hermit had considered not letting us go? And how did they plan to stop us exactly? Thanks, Nick said. We waited. The air had changed. A visit of relief and conclusion shifted into danger once again. We didn't know what this hermit wanted or what they were capable of. The more the world had crumbled in our young lives, the more dangerous people had become. In a lot of ways, it became harder to tell who was dangerous and who was okay. It wasn't that Nick Porkchop and I and the other people were at the house weren't committed. We read Kropotkin and Serafinsky and spent whole nights debating what the hell we could do about it. The question was whether this crow was okay or not. Maybe they read our minds or finally remembered how human beings like to be treated because they offered. I have some good coffee, I'll make some and we can discuss the possibilities of our mutual endeavors. Sure, I said before thinking about it. Maybe I thought someone who lived in a warehouse booby trapped vampire castle would definitely, definitely have great coffee. Maybe I felt some hope that with the legitimate wizard we could really change things. Maybe I was stupid. Either way, we soon sat with steaming cups of truly magnificent coffee plotting how to overthrow the capitalist imperialist, white supremacist cist. Heteropatriarchal state. Now that we were an anarchist collective plus a psychic witch.

Hey, thanks so much for coming on the show today. Could you introduce yourself with your name pronouns and just a little bit about yourself, either as like a writer or just any other thing that you do in the world that you want to tell us about?

Yeah. Thank you all for having me. My name is Jackson Culpepper. My pronouns are he, him, his, or they, them, theirs. And I am a writer and a teacher. So I teach first year English at a couple of community colleges here in the Denver area. And then I just had my first short story collection that are all like sort of Southern gothic stories come out two years ago. And I've been doing zines a lot since then. So I really, I love the zine culture. It's been very fun to get into that.

Hell yeah. Oh, golly. I immediately have a funny question. What is the, like, what is the like, kind of like zine, like actual literary world, like kind of like melding space look like. Or I guess rather, how does like, actual air quotes, actual, like literary worldview, like zine culture? Does that make sense?

Yeah, I don't think they pay attention to it at all. Okay, well, here's. And that's. It's part of what I was trying to do with Gabby and Quervo because I did a lot of like. I mean, I got the short story collection, so I guess I did succeed in literary publishing, but it took a long time. It took a long time, but a lot of submissions and I kind of got frustrated with it. And that was part of getting into the zines was let me try a different way of Doing distribution that lines up more with, you know, my values and the ways that I want to not just put stuff out, but have community with it. And zines were really, really in line with that. And it's been, it's been lovely to get into that world. They, it's such a different world. And I feel like on the one hand the literary people don't really get zines, you know, like the big publishers and stuff. Although it is funny because there's. Yeah, there's one lit mag. I probably shouldn't say their name, but they basically do a zine. Like they put one short story in a zine and they send that out and it's very exclusive. So I never got published in there. I kept trying to. So, and so therefore I'm going to call it appropriation of zine culture. But the, and, and then the zine culture, like, I don't know, I think that they're figuring out what to do with fiction also because I found one at like my local info shop here, Mutiny in Denver, which is wonderful place. And it was like one self contained short story, you know, written out in the zine with a cool cover and everything. And at that point I was like, okay, this is, this is what I want to do. This is the model. But I've pitched fiction zines to some of the big distributors and some of the big publishers and like they really want, they're more into the non fiction world and like how to do different, like resilience skills and things like that, or memoir or something like that, which makes total sense. But also it's kind of like I feel like I, I want to, you know, shake the zine publishers and be like, people need fiction too. We need to use, use this art form to get fiction out to people.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel like, I don't know, it's like, yeah, even in like zine culture, like I'll like go to zine fests and stuff and there's like, I feel like hardly any fiction. There's like, or far less fiction than I expect there to be. But I'm also seeing less of, I don't know, weird random zines that I grew up on were no gods, no mattress by Enola. It was just a weird little travelogue per zine. And I feel like I'm even seeing less of that. I don't know. Yeah, I feel a little curious to like get more in touch with, with kind of like larger, larger zine culture, like outside of what we're doing here. At strangers. But. Yeah, I don't know. It's funny. It's funny sometimes.

Yeah. And they have comics, like, they'll do a lot of fiction comics totally. Which. That's my next frontier is to see how much drawing can I still do from like my high school art classes. But, like, they've got that. But it's the, you know, written. Written or literary fiction, that kind of thing. Like, I hope that that is a new frontier for zines that we start seeing more of.

Yeah, me too. Are there any kind of like, zines that you like, grew up on is like not really maybe the right word, but, you know, in like any literal or metaphorical sense.

I came to. I mean, I just came to this stuff kind of recently, but we've got some really. I'm lucky that in Denver we do have some good zine places. Like, you know, bookstores that have it have zines. And we've got a good zine fest once a year. So, of course, John Porcelaino, like, King Cats is wonderful. I really like that one. Fire art and style zine has been getting better and better. I think that they're relatively new. And then we've just got. We've got a bunch of really neat, weird little ones in Denver, you know, because I'm sure it's just somebody that walks into Mutiny and sells them. But, you know, it's. It's so cool to see the local expressions of this stuff, you know that. You know that the people that are selling these things are locals and this is reflecting stuff in Denver. Oh, we do have a zine library and like a zine club. So people get together and like, you know, all these different zinesters. It's really fun. We like, everybody gets two pages and then, you know, on like a theme and then we put it all together at the end. It's very fun. So, you know, and you get to see the other zinesters and you get to talk with them and see what they're doing and everything.

Hell yeah. I love that. One thing that I do like is it's. Or it's like a push and pull, I guess, seeing like a lot more zines get made in like, like indesign or like whatever. But like recently I like watched a friend like make a zine just like really old school way, like on like a photocopier. And it was beautiful. Beautiful and wonderful. And I want to. Yeah. Want to see just more. More like weird things in both directions of like, learning to use as people have more access to technology. And formatting knowledge or whatever, and then just. Also just doing kind of weird found found art stuff. I don't know. But to not sidetrack too hard from the thing at hand, which is talking about your story, could you just. Because we so rarely get to just ask an author what their story is about. Except for me, I get to do it every month. Could you tell us in your own words, what is this story about?

Sure. So it is a cyberpunk horror story, so set in a near future dystopia where capitalism has gotten so bad and, like, wage slavery has gotten so bad that there just aren't jobs. So people, you know, even more than we do now, really have to scrounge together to make a living. So it's these punks, you know, living in their little squat house, and they decide the way they're gonna make money is to go film ghost videos at abandoned places and, like, put them on the Internet for the ad revenue.

Hell, yeah.

It does not go well because they wind up way in over their heads.

Yeah. Or it goes really well, you know, I don't know. That's my goal when urban exploring. To meet, like an actual cryptid, you know?

Yeah, that's true. That's true. Yeah. And I get that people have already heard the story, so, yeah, they end up finding a queer psychic witch who's basically booby trapped a warehouse to try to keep people out of it.

Yeah, yeah.

And our punks are like, what if we were friends? What if we work together and they kind of talk them into it?

Yeah, yeah. No, I like that. I really like that little exchange. I like their exchange of being like, yeah, but what if you wanted to help us? And I like the witches exchange of being like, you said you were political. Are you really political?

That got a really big laugh when I read that at a reading in Denver here. More than I expected.

Yeah, yeah, it's really funny. I'm gonna have a weird, sidetracked tangent on this. It's really funny. What things people find funny? I do playwriting with a little theater troupe here where I live, and it's always so funny to me what gets laughs. Cause I'm just sitting there backstage being like, what are people gonna laugh at? Are they gonna laugh at my jokes? And they mostly do laugh at the jokes, but then they'll absolutely lose it over something that I didn't intend to be a joke. In the play we just did, there's this line where someone's like, having a time traveler to 1607 is having an Exchange with. With a noble who's really interested in disinheriting her and betraying her class privilege and learning more about the plight of the commoner. And afterwards, they're talking to their friend about it, and they're like, were y' all just flirting? And they're like, maybe. And they're kind of, like, roasting them about it. And they're. And then the character is like, she seemed earnest. And everyone just loses it after they say earnest, which I didn't realize was a joke, but then immediately after is like, to, you know, confront enclosure and the Rule of Kings. And, you know, that's. That's the part that was supposed to be the joke. But everyone, like, fucking loses it on earnest. And I don't know what's funny about that, but I appreciate it. Sorry, this is a long tangent.

It kind of sounds like we were trying to do politics, but we ended up flirting.

Yeah, exactly. But, yeah, no, I really like the funny little, like, riffs between the Crow. The Crow? That's the character's name?

Yeah. I call them a couple of things. So Ilsai Cuervo is the proper name.

Okay, cool. That makes sense. Although I really. Okay, I have to ask, does the movie the Crow exist in this universe? And it'll say cuervo. Seen it?

100%. 100%. Because that's best part of it is they're making fun of Cuervo for, like, oh, you just went with this. You just picked the script, you know.

Yeah, yeah. No, I really. I really liked that. They're like, you can't call yourself the Crow. And they're like, I'm a weird cryptid that lives in a. In an abandoned warehouse. I can do whatever I want.

Yep.

Yeah. No, there's some fun little rips in it. Like, what is the line when they're kind of like. The punks are kind of, like, interrogating them to see if they're on the team, so to speak. And Ilse Cuervo is immediately like, I didn't work with the fascists or anyone close to them. Like, I know what you're asking. You don't have to be cryptic about it. But I like that Ilta Cuervo is just like, no, no, no, I'm not a fascist, nor have I ever helped them. Love it. I was wondering if you could tell me a little. And by me, I mean us, our listeners, just a little bit more about kind of, like, the world that we're entering, kind of, like, socially or politically. What is the. What is one Step beyond the backdrop of what we see in the story look like.

Yeah. So I wanted to be honest about if capitalism continues to get worse, what could it look like? And there's people that extrapolate even darker than this, of course. But I did want to have that and have it be funny to have it be where you're kind of watching it for the Scooby Doo spookiness of it all as much as for the politics, because, I don't know, like, I feel like that we need a little bit of stuff that acknowledges our reality, but it's still kind of lighthearted about it. So that's the tone, goal. As far as what I thought up for what was kind of going on in the background is that, you know, climate change has gotten worse. So in this one, I'm now four or five issues into the series, so there's mentions of, like, the different weather effects of climate change and desertification that's going on kind of around where they live. Like I said, the sort of job precarity where it's really hard to get enough to live, which is why they do crimes.

Yeah.

And, you know, it's interesting. I kind of thought of setting this. It's mostly kind of in Denver area. It's never specific, but I imagined it being like that, but with like. And there's a couple of mentions of, like, super dense apartments where people are living. Like, the kind I have in Hong Kong. Like, maybe we have those to show up in American cities at some point. That's kind of what I. What I've got going on. I do get into some neat stuff for where Cuervo came from in one of the later issues, so that was fun. Yeah. Yeah. I've got one. Like, issue five is like a prequel one. I'm finishing it up now, but it's been fun to kind of explore some of that stuff.

Nice, nice. Yeah, it's definitely like, a curiosity of, like, oh, this person's like, person, thing, person, thing, question mark.

With magic powers.

Oh, okay. Cool. I think. Yeah, I think that was, like, something. It was like, is this, like. What is this person? Are they a human with some magic, or are they like a fucking vampire? Like, what's which? You know, I love that it's, like, a little nonspecific, but.

Yeah. Yeah. And also the stuff. I mean, there's what Cuervo tells them, which Cuervo definitely wants to come across as some kind of monster so that they'll leave him alone, but there's also all of the magic stuff. That Cuervo claims to be able to do is based in stuff that mediums and psychics actually do claim to be able to do. So, like, I tried to kind of ground it in. This is based in actual folk magic traditions or, you know, psychic and mediumship stuff, you know, and I'm, I'm open minded about how real any of that stuff is, but this is based on stuff that people says. Things that people say are real.

Cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm curious if there's any other kind of inspiration or mechanic stuff that you were working with to craft what or how magic works or is in this world.

Yeah, it's been interesting, especially going through the next couple of issues because it's always like, there's definitely something that looks supernatural happening and sometimes it's a real thing and sometimes that's, you know, not. But I do have sort of spirit world stuff. So looking at the things that, you know, because if you, if you read people who are psychics and mediums and, you know, the ones that seem credible, at least as I've read them, the good ones will kind of try to say, well, based on us being able to do this, therefore it must. Things must kind of work like this. The spirit world must kind of work like this. And I really respect, respect the ones that will go out on a limb and try to put that together because I've heard some that just refuse to, you know, But I look, I look at that stuff because I want to kind of keep it grounded in that spirituality kind of thing as. Yeah, yeah, I mean, we can go further into that, but that, that's kind of the, the goal with the, the tone of the series is it's a little more magical than we would run into in everyday life, because that makes it fun and spooky. But also, you know, I tried to root it in. Okay, this is stuff that people say is real.

Yeah, yeah. No, I like that at least, like, kind of like what we, what we got to see in this first issue is. Yeah, it's like. I don't know, it's like almost. It's because it's like when, when the punks kind of like show up, it's. Or when they, they meet, it's like, it's. It almost feels like they're expecting to run into something like, more powerful or more like whatever than like, else. Cuervo, like actually, actually is. Which isn't that ils I. Cuervo doesn't have impressive abilities, but just that, like, it's like almost like they're like expecting like, I don't know, like some bigger, more powerful entity. And I like that there's kind of like some mystery shrouded and like, at least for now, of like, of like what they're actually capable of or can do. Yeah, it's like. Yeah, I feel like we're. It's like we're very, as an audience, very used to things that are very powerful and things that are kind of have these more air quotes, minor abilities. I don't know. It's interesting. It's a fun landscape to explore. But we kind of try. I feel like that's a little bit of the vibe too in like Penumbra City is like some of the stuff that we try to try to do in that game was like, it's like people who can do weird, cool things, but they're not like, they're not like superheroes. It's not like dnd where you become like a demigod. It's like you can do these like low key things.

But what I always thought was more interesting too is when you have some powers, but you just have to be really clever with how you use them.

Totally. Yeah.

You know, I think that's more interesting than, you know, you can do whatever you want to. Right. And that's. I guess that's kind of what, you know, what the, you know what's. What I'm trying to do with Cuervo is like, well, what if you had these very advanced psychic mediumship abilities, but then you turn that toward political stuff. You turn that toward, you know, survival programs for people. Like what could you. What could you use them for?

Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah. It reminds me of like, it's like the, the power scale is like all over the place. But I have like a weird soft spot for. I have a weird soft spot for like the like X Men comics and sort of, sort of. Because some of the, some of the more interesting characters to me were always characters who had these like kind of like minor abilities that they would just find really creative ways to use. Like, they're not like, they're not like fucking like Magneto or something. You know, they're not like changing the fabric of reality. They're like, I can phase in and out of objects. What thing, what cool things can I do with that? And yeah, just like the weird creativity is interesting. I want to talk a little bit about kind of like urban exploring, maybe that's the word to use as kind of like a backdrop. Like I'm like punks in the story. Do they do kind of like, a lot of urban exploring, or is this kind of something that's, like, new to them?

You've definitely. They definitely watch it. That's part of it. Which is a lot of what I did too. That's probably the inspiration. But I would imagine so, because I. I did a lot of this growing up. I grew up in, like, rural South Georgia where there's a bunch of, like, weird abandoned stuff. So, you know, I've done some of this. The stuff that people are doing on YouTube with it is really cool. So, you know, I thought about that, and I had watched a bunch of these, like, go into an abandoned whatever and find spooky stuff videos. You know, it's always so interesting because there is, like, there's this horror movie trope of escalation that you still have to do, even though you're supposedly doing, like, a, you know, real life thing. So it's. It's an interesting genre.

Yeah, it's like creating, like, creating a little bit of a drama inside of, like, something where they're like, maybe isn't really that much drama, but you're, like, trying to get likes or views or whatever. I don't understand the Internet these days. It's like, the thing that's made me feel like probably the oldest is like. Is, like, looking at YouTube and being like, I don't. I barely understand what's happening right now.

And that's better for you. That's healthier. Just be. Not be on it.

Totally. Yeah. Yeah, but it's like. I don't know. It's like there's kind of these, like, fun little layers, like, in. In. In this story or like, with that, where it's like. It's like, yeah, they're trying to get. They're trying to get views. They're trying to get that ad revenue. And, like, were they just gonna. Were they just gonna, like, kind of do the fake drama thing and then they ran into real drama, like.

Yeah. Cause so what's fun. And it's continued, you know, in the other issues. The nice thing about having kind of an ensemble cast like this is that you've got some who are just pure skeptics, purely practical. And that's like Pork Chop, you know, he just wants to make the money, and he's like, we will CGI stuff into this. We will trick people. We will do whatever, you know, that's it. And then you go all the way up to Nick, who, you know, is still thoughtful about it, but kind of believes in it. And Thinks there might be something here because there's a reputation for it. So. Yeah, it's fun to have. Yeah, it's fun to have that range, and then Gabby just, you know, thinks there isn't anything. But then you really got to wonder once certain things happen. So it's fun to have that range of beliefs and engagement with, you know, is this supernatural, or are we just tricking people?

Totally. And it's like the. The. Is that how the punks kind of feel about, like, else Cuervo? Is there, like, I don't know if this person's putting us on or not?

Definitely in this one.

Yeah.

And it's something. Yeah. I mean, that's kind of the fun part about the end. It becomes this chess game of who's gonna, you know, trick who in this situation.

Totally. Totally. Yeah, I do. I do. Like, that kind of added layer to if, like, because maybe just because, like, I. I instantly want to believe that, like, I'll say Cuervo is just, like, being totally or at least, like, mostly honest about, like, about their. Their abilities, but that they are then kind of, like, creating this, like, fake. Like, these, like, these, like, fake encounters or, like, fake kind of cryptids for people to run into to, like, stay away. So it's like they're like. It's like they're. They're using this, like, fake or, like. Like, shell or whatever to. To scare people away, even though it. They probably can do. Can do weird, creepy things. They're like, like, I'd rather people run into this weird trap than have to, like, actually deal with it. I don't know. It was fun.

Mm.

What. What did you run into and what else did you run? What. Any amusing things that you ran into on. On YouTube while researching how to kind of, like, this crew together?

Yes. A lot of it. You know, it's. I went through a process, and all this is just, like, when I'm bored, and I, you know, don't have the wherewithal to do anything but look at YouTube, you know, because I started out, you watch the ghost videos, and, you know, I want to believe, so I watch them, and at first I'm like, oh, my God, this is so cool. But then you watch the debunking videos, and then you're like, oh, I see how they did that. I see how they did that. Which is most of them now. Like, now I can kind of see. And anything that they do on TikTok. You can do so much editing on TikTok that almost none of the TikTok things where they're doing spooky stuff. Ghosty stuff is real. But every now and then you find one where it's like, I don't know how they did that. And I've got a handful of those, you know, so that's fun to find. And it is fun to find because it's such an international thing. So, like, a lot of this is, you know, Americans and, like, you know, different Anglophone people doing it. But then there's a big community of Arabic people. So, like, people in, like, Jordan who will go into abandoned buildings and, like, it's different, you know?

Yeah.

Because. Because there. There's. They're not saying it's ghosts. It's like gin. And there's a lot of. They really like to just like, yell prayers in Arabic and then kick doors. Like, that's just. So they call these guys, they call this genre, like, the Bismillah guys, because that's like, they yell Bismillah and then like, kick a door in to try to catch a ghost or something. And every now and then one of the doors kicks back.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

So there's like that stuff. Like, it's different when it's in, like, Indonesia or when they do it in Japan. Like, it's really international, you know, this genre of people faking stuff on YouTube. So when you look at it from kind of a meta perspective of like, what is this genre that's developing? How are people doing this? Like, how are they structuring it? How is it different from country to country? It's still really interesting, even though, you know, most of it's probably fake.

Yeah, yeah, but I like the. I like the thread that it's like. I like to imagine this isn't at all a new thing with technology. I like to imagine this is something people have just been doing forever. But that's kind of where a really interesting thing happens, is that occasionally it's like you find stuff that is maybe actually real or at least has a really big question mark next to it. And. Yeah, that's. That's really interesting. It's like the. Well of. Is life imitating these fictions that we create or is fiction imitating real things? And it's like, I don't think the answer is not quite all that simple sometimes. Does that make sense?

Yeah, yeah. And some of it, I mean, to be clear, some of the appeal is just some of these people are really, really good. Like, you know, it's fake, but, man, it's like professional horror movie level stuff that they're doing and like, really clever, creepy things to do. Like. Like, there's one that. So it's a Chinese ghost video. And again, he's going in this abandoned hotel, and it's. It's like really, really falling apart. Like, there's water dripping down everywhere. Everything's kind of rotted. The fun thing about the. The Chinese ghost hunters is the way you deal with ghosts in China is you just yell. Swears at him. So this. This guy is like, yelling all this horrible stuff and like, my Internet or whatever. And he sees, like, for some reason, there's some chains hanging in this big atrium. And so he sees the chains moving, which is like, okay, that's fishing wire, whatever. But then he cuts over, and on one wall, the bottom part of the wall is missing, and there's just two feet hanging down. All you can see is, like, the feet kind of doing. Moving back and forth. It's the creepiest thing. And it. And it. The act. I don't know if it's acting or not. I get. I don't know. But anyway, like, he looks at it and it takes him a second to, like, process what he's looking at. And then the Chinese swear words just really start flying. Like they're just because he's. He is freaked out at that point and stuff like that. It's just like, I don't care if it's real or not. That's fun to watch.

Like, totally. Yeah. Yeah. I like when it doesn't matter. Have you. It was a weird question. Answer this or don't answer this. Have you had any. Have you had any personal supernatural experiences that leave you to question more of. I have no fucking clue. And like, maybe this is real, maybe it's not, but leans towards real.

Yeah, I. I have because I do some of this as, like, spiritual practice kind of stuff. So I've had some spooky things happen with that as far as, like, I still want to see a ghost. I still want to be somewhere and, like, have something like that happen. I've got like, my. Yeah. I mean, my spouse has seen stuff, and she does not want to see any of this stuff, which makes me believe her even more. But I'm still holding out for seeing something one day.

Yeah. Yeah. I had a. I feel.

You know.

When you, like, maybe feel a little skeptic about something someone tells you and then, like, are immediately, like, proven that person is proven correct, and you're like, and now I feel bad that I didn't believe you. I briefly lived in a haunted warehouse on the East Coast.

And you've had this experience.

Yeah, and I, like, had. It's like when my friend, when who lived there, was like. Like, telling me about it, and I was like, okay, like, you're a little bit of a tall tale teller, you know, like, so I was taking everything with a little bit of a grain of salt, even though I'd already had. I'd already had very strange, supernatural experience in my life. But then it's like going into this warehouse space and kind of expecting something was then very strange because I was always peeking around corners or whatever, looking for these things. And then it was like. Cause my friend would describe seeing boards levitate and stuff like that because they were building out the warehouse. And I was like, that's freaky. But I kind of mostly don't believe you. And then one day, kind of after forgetting about all of it, it's like I'm just sitting there in the kitchen chopping up some food, and, like, all of the pots and pans on the.

Stove just start rattling visibly.

And I'm just, like, sitting there watching it, and I'm, like, touching the ground and the stove and, like, nothing. None of those things are, like, vibrating or moving yet. The pots and pans are, like, rattling as if they are about to fall off of the stove. And I'm just, like, sitting there like they weren't lying, and I just, like, grab one of the pots off and just, like, everything just, like, stops. And I'm like, okay, I believe you now. Everything you told me is true. Boards are levitating.

Oh, no. Oh, that's so cool, though.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was pretty cool. If any of our listeners ever went to the bell foundry in Baltimore, there are some weird stories about that place, and they're all mostly fun. So this piece that we've just listened to is part of an ongoing series. So I don't know if you want to tell us a little bit more about that series and kind of like, if there's things that readers can expect without being spoilery, like, what. What. What kind of situations? Like, I'm asking you to plug your. Your. The. The rest of the series. What can readers expect?

Yeah, so. So after this, the. The punks do team up with Cuervo, and they come up with different schemes. So issue two is. There is they find this rich guy on, like, a cryptid forum who really wants to see a skinwalker. And Cuervo's like, I can handle. Yeah. So Cuervo's like, oh, God, I could handle that. So they take a little Cuervo and Gabby and this rich guy Dave, like he funds an expedition into the desert and they find something. So that's issue two. Issue three? Yeah. Issue three is they. They figure out that there's this mansion that this, you know, like last of the line sort of dynasty woman has inherited. And they figure out that there might be a bunch of gold hidden in it. So they manufacture a haunting in the house and then are like, we can come get rid of your haunting. And some of that is like, you know, they are just like, you know, posting multiple places on the Internet and trying to convince this woman, this house. Some of it is Cuervo does something called, you know, creating an egregore, which is like a way of manufacturing a ghost.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cool.

So and once again they go in there and they get in over their head. The fourth is there is a like Van Life live streamer person who disappears in the woods and leaves behind a final broadcast with a bunch of spooky stuff in it. So they go to like investigate that and see like, was it real? If it was real, what was going on up there, Was it a hoax, that kind of thing. And then those four are out. So they are at the info shops here in Denver. So that would be Kill Gore and Mutiny Information Cafe. They're also on my Etsy. So if you go onto Etsy and look at like Gabby and Cuervo, they'll come up there and you know, all that stuff is linked from my Instagram @jc culpepper. So you can find that stuff there. I'm working on a fifth issue which is a backstory for both Cuervo and Gabi. It's like a double feature thing.

Cute. Hell yeah. That sounds so cool. I love this like, I just love the intersection of some like, kind of like, like, like pop culture y Internet things like the, like the. The Van Lifer, like live streamer. I don't know, it's. It's just very funny and it feels like a. It feels like a very much like a melding of like current, current, like Internet, like pop culture things and like, like just funny little cryptid stories that I would hear growing up. I don't know. That's really cool.

Thank you.

Well, that's most of the time that we have for today. Is there anything else you want to say about this piece or this world or any questions that I didn't ask you that you wish that I had asked you?

I've got two little things. First is you Know, I wonder a lot about the role of art and fiction in activism, in responding to the challenges that we have today. And that's a big part of what, I mean, a big part of this is it's fun for me. The other part is that, you know, I think that it's worth it to put stories out there that take seriously the problems that we do have and don't, you know, and don't try to like, deny them too much. And like, you know, I guess I don't want to say escapism is bad because there's a whole thing with like Tolkien and escapism where he's like, if you're in jail, you should try to escape. And we're kind of in jail at this, this whole situation.

Yeah, that's a good one.

Yeah. To have like fun fiction that takes seriously where we're at right now was kind of what I decided, yeah, this is worth sinking some artistic work into. And, and with that, you know, trying to make it fun as well. And then the, the second thing is if you want to, you know, if you want to break the ice with somebody, ask them about goat stories. Like, have you ever seen a ghost? Because, you know, worked here. And it, for me, it works. Every time I ask somebody about that, they're always like, oh my God. This one time, this, this, that know.

Hell yeah. Hell yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, I really like the. It's like there's one, I marked a line that I am half remembering now, but it's about like this kind of whatever, like a divide between like political or like non political crime. And it's like, I don't know, it's all, at this point, it's all political. Like all crime is political.

Might have been the one where like things get bad enough, everybody's a criminal.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cool. Well, thanks so much again for coming on the show today. And now we have one of my favorite little parts of the show, which is the word of the month where I ask you if you're familiar with a word and its origins and then we talk about it. Are you familiar with the phrase cryptid?

Oh, yes.

Yeah. Any guesses, ideas or just already knowledge that you have about the origins of the word cryptid?

It comes from cryptozoology, which is the. And you know, I'm English major, so I've got to get this right. So the, the crypto, I guess it's like the Latin prefect for like hidden or obscure. And then zoology is like study of animals. So it's the study of these weird animals, some of which. Well, we can go down the rabbit hole of cryptids, but I think that's where the word comes from.

Cool. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I love talking to an English major. It's like fun. Yeah. Ultimately, cryptid, like part of it comes from the word crypt, unsurprisingly, which we get from Greek and the phrase kryptos, which means hidden vault, and from the adjective kryptein, which means to hide, or crypticos fit for concealing. And an interesting notable thing, it's in the evolution of the word. The Greek word actually for tomb or grave is taphos, from thaptos, which means to bury. And so it's like, interestingly, we think of a crypt mostly now as a tomb or a sepulcher or something, when in the original or whatever phrasing of the words, Greek would have used a different word for that. And so it's like, like a crypt would more specifically mean something that you wanted to keep hidden or to hide away. And so what I like to think, at least for Cryptids, is interesting because it's like they're these hidden away things. And as we see in your story, it's like whether they are hidden by the world or whether they are choosing to stay hidden so people leave them the fuck alone. And I don't know. Yeah.

Oh, that's cool. Yeah, it's one of those. So like it meant. It meant something hidden and then it kind of turned into the being like a burial place sense of the word. Maybe.

Yeah, yeah. It's like, if I'm understanding the lineage of the word correctly, it's like, because it's a word that crypts we start seeing in the 15th century or something. And so it's a word that is probably a word that is probably borrowed and created based on words that people found in Greek manuscripts and shit like that. And then later we start getting these other pieces of meaning attached to them. We wouldn't get occult until the 1600s. And then enigmatic, cryptically, if you're speaking cryptically, wouldn't come until the 1900s. And so it's like that fun, interesting thing about words is that they just get these little pieces of context or meaning added onto them over time.

Oh, that's cool. Somebody needs to use kryptein as like a, like a dark fantasy protagonist name. That would be a good one.

Well, Calypso, basically. Calypso? Oh, yeah, the same, Same roots. Yeah. Or like Calypso being like one who is hidden or the hidden one. I don't know.

Oh, that's cool.

Yeah. Yeah. What I'm learning through explorations of etymology is that literally half the words that most people think are cool are based off of the Greek root to hide. It's ultimately Kelly, like calypso, like apocalypse, like crypt. Cryptid. It's like they all. They all come back to the. The Greek word for to hide, which is wild.

That's cool. You know, and it's something. I mean, it's. We're probably over time, but, you know, with like this series of stories. Yeah, well, and with. And with cryptids and with cryptozoology. I think the thing. The reason we keep coming back to them is because you can't ever figure it out.

Yeah.

You know, like, like, with, with the Bigfoot stuff, it's like there's some pieces of evidence that are pretty compelling. There's a lot of people that fake it, but you just. We just cannot. You know, maybe there's an argument to be made that, like, you can't set up enough studies in the places where people see them. I don't know. But like, it's just not something that Western imperial science has. Is capable of figuring out. And it's nice to have places in the world like that where it's like, you know, the sort of, you know, the like Western capitalist and, you know, all this kind of stuff, like really wants to have control over everything. Have control everything. You have to like, name everything and understand it and have it cataloged. And there's still this weird, you know, outer layer of stuff that we just can't. I think that's why people keep coming back to this stuff.

Yeah. It's good to have a little mystery in the world. It'd be so boring if there wasn't.

Right.

Which seems like a great place to leave it for the day. Thanks so much again for coming on the show today. And are there any places, cool things, etc. That you would like to shout out before we go?

Yeah. So again, the zine series is called Gabby and Cuervo. So that's available some Denver local info shops. It's also on Etsy. If you go on Etsy and search Gabby and Cuevo, that should come up. My insta where I'll direct to all this stuff is at JC Culpepper, my short story collection, which is Southern Gothic. It's more realistic than this stuff, but it is so Southern Gothic that there are still ghosts. So that is called Songs on the Water and that is. Yeah. So came out a couple years ago. It's called Songs on the Water that is available wherever books are sold.

Hell yeah. Well, thanks so much and maybe we'll see you again sometime.

Yeah, that'd be great. Thank you all for having me.

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