Written by Alex Cameron, Ollie Linton, Regan Chern, Rory Murphy
Creatures gather around an Arthurian table, for an Arthurian tale. Pixies, fairies, gnomes, and gnolls roam the forest, a menagerie of myths both fae and forlorn. And something terrible and calamitous stirs beneath, older than dirt, older than stone, older than memory itself. This semester, ScratchThat Magazine’s theme is Lore—the stories we’ve told and shared throughout history, whether that’s written, spoken, engraved, or simply lost to time. We want to uncover the lore that makes you, you!
Right now, this very second, our teams are putting their nose to the grindstone to make this semester of ScratchThat truly something special. Perhaps you’ve seen something stirring online already. If you have, that’s thanks to our Social Media team who are truly going all out, just for you. And if you haven’t heard the word, I’m sure our Newsletter team would just love to get your details and keep you up to date with all the awesome work we’ve got going up on our website. Copyediting will walk into the murky abyss, that is, unless you’re ready and willing to send us your lovely, lovely lore to satiate them. Our Content team is toiling, double, double toil and trouble, brewing something for your eyes and ears to feast upon. Well, we think. We’re scared to ask, honestly. The Launch team is already strategising, planning, ordering, and lots of other really good adjectives that help make our events so successful. You think events grow on trees? Oh, you do? Well, that’s interesting. Production is waiting with bated breath to get their hands on your work, and produce a print magazine so tactile, so glossy, and superb, and excellent that it will simply blow your head clean off. And of course, the furtive Art team, so easily forgotten. Without their vision, creativity, and steady hands, the magazine would look really, really boring. Hm? What’s that?
‘Address me,’ says the Elephant.
‘Okay,’ says the Editorial Board.
The Elephant is generative AI, and we will be taking it out back and having it shot. Rest assured, we’re keeping the boutique and hand-crafted spirit of ScratchThat alive, and our magazine will be 100% made by people. Every typo, comma splice, sentence fragment, and subject-verb disagreement is completely our fault, not a robot’s.
We want ScratchThat to be an archaeological dig site of narrative, peeling back the layers of lore from contemporary folklore to ancient and forgotten secrets. So, get involved, get digging, and get writing! We’d love for you to tell us a story, and we’ll sit around the campfire and listen.
Submissions close on the 12th of September.