PULP: ISSUE 29 2026

PULP is published on the sovereign land of the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to Elders past and present, as well as Indigenous members of our creative community.

We respect the knowledge and customs that traditional Elders and Aboriginal peope have passed down from generation to generation. We acknowledge the historical and continued violence and dispossession. As editors, we will always stand in solidarity with First Nations efforts towards decolonisation and that solidarity will be reflected in the substance and practice of this magazine.

Sovereignty was never ceded. Always was and always will be Aboriginal land.

Editorial Lead Annabelle Bullock Editors Alex Butler Venusia Forcadilla Eden Witanowski Amelia Elliott Harriet McIlveen Ynes Fernandez Designed by Harriet McIlveen Ynes Fernandez

The views in this publication are not necessarily the views of USU. The information contained within this edition of PULP was correct at the time of printing.

This publication is brought to you by the University of Sydney Union.

Issue 29, 2026 Instagram @pulp.usu Facebook @pulp.usu TikTok @pulp.usu X @pulp.usu https://www.pulp-usu.com/ Email pulp@usu.edu.au

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A Note From Our Editorial Lead DO YOU FUCK WITH PULP? said the condom

on the dresser, I laughed, I was happy, I had no use for condoms, it was funny anyway, funny that it was on your dresser, and funny when you told me that apparently Hugo blew all the merch budget on condoms.

It was before my time at this hallowed institution and I heard about PULP, eagerly, from any second-hand sources I could find. Marlow Nandini Harry Ariana Bonnie Patrick Rhea Kate Huw Simon Justine Sonal Lizzy Lameah Hugo Kelly Bipasha Joan Ashray China Sasha Ege Jess Jayden Sophie Portia Rosanna all took on this hallowed tint—of PULP. At an open day I took issue 12, the love issue, and I walked around with those stickers on every piece of me, I see them still. Before I was a student or a person or a lover or a writer, there was PULP. Within four editorial teams this magazine has become (to me, at least) one of the leading student publications in Australia, giving rare, precious page space to weirdo artists and their weirdo art. Venus Harriet Ynes Eden Alex Amelia and I have now entered this cosmos, which begs the question; which came first: the universe or PULP? So in the immortal words of PULP3, do you fuck with PULP? Yours truly, Annabelle

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Lots of love, your editiors, Alex, Eden, Venusia, Ynes, Harriet, and Amelia

aliens are kinda out there man

the graft

robyn mazloumian

will you remember me?

mary koutalianos

mole person

izzi boustead

let them eat mud cake

ella kratzer

happy ending secret garden

photo review the noise floor allegra pezzullo i won’t email first btw

in the arms of our mothers

lauren maccoll

eva pearce

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The Graft Mary Koutalianos

I learnt how to ride a bike on New Year’s Day.

The obvious New Year’s resolution for my fumbling presence in adulthood—hollering and stumbling around a public green on a purple bike—removed some of the shame that had stopped me from learning to ride as a child. Being an adult who doesn’t know how to ride a bike is a lot less embarrassing than using a Tinker Bell one at eight. Legs pushing down on pedals I’ve never met before.

This week I fell off my bike onto a flat shared path. I tried to adjust the glasses falling down my face and, with only one hand holding on, I swerved to the right; then swerved even harder to avoid crashing into a girl passing by. Understandably, she was shaken by the sight of a grown adult (who seemed proficient in passing at a comfortable distance) suddenly falling into a crumpled mess, face scraping the pavement right before her feet.

Oops.

It opened a wound on my knee. It festered and reminded me of my inelegance. Daily I peel away its covering and replace the dressing with another pink maltese bandaid, watching the cells regenerate in the mini epidermis world I’ve shielded. .

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In order to graft two plants together, you must slice off the bark and expose the fleshy green cambium, the part of the branch that is alive and multiplying.

The scion is pruned down to be a nub of a branch just a few centimetres in diameter. A knife is taken to its bark, its woodiness carved away, shaped into a pointed puzzle piece, perfect for placing against its assigned rootstock. It’s best to do this in winter, when the scion wood is dormant, waiting for better circumstances to flourish.

Early spring is when the graft itself should be constructed. Select your rootstock. An established tree of undesirable variety, ready to service new life. There’s no use in wasting an entire root system just because its fruit has soured. Hack the tree down to its bole and carve a new place between cambium and bark for the scion to be inserted.

Nothing productive results after the top layer of skin is removed from your knee. The exposed dermis squeals in presence of light and air, and it must be covered by a clot or bandaid and healed by time. Your epidermis will heal as you close your self-circulating system off from the world.

You are not grounded upon good root stock.

Veins push nutrients through your bodily vessels in oxygen and blood. You lack a cambium; the ability to facilitate connection. You lack a layer that allows you to share and regenerate and fuse. You will not grow extra limbs. Red and green flesh do not mix.

Almonds grow from plums, sprouting from cherries, peaches and nectarines. Stones and pits all siphon from the same source. Limbs grow heavy under the weight of a fruit salad bowl.

What does a Frankensteined tree know?

Does the rootstock know the water and nutrients she sends away are spent on children that aren’t her own?

Does the mycelium network tell her of this betrayal? Or did she heal her wound knowing it would connect her to another set of DNA, repairing the damage done to her bark through a graft union that would last forevermore?

To finish, wrap the exposed cuts with waxy graft tape, stretched tight over the union to keep out pests and allow damp tissues to fuse and grow.

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Robyn Mazloumian

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Baxter Mitchell-Knight

Morning comes, and you wake and you mourn and you long for coffee to mourn a little faster. They say we are the middle children of history: born too late to explore the earth, and too early to explore space. Must we be doomed to such a quick eternity? Why not use our imagination to step ahead of our time?

Hark ye! The seismic roaring squalls the “sea” beneath your life pod; rather, it’s a gelatinous matrix stretching for hundreds of kilometres in an ocean of spangled amoebic life. No hospitable landmark above that symbiotic expanse. But a volcanic footfall rocks the gel about, and a behemoth phantom flashes through the clouds. The Emperor Sea Strider, several hundred metres tall, its crested head kissed by lightning, lumbers across the “sea”. Its feet are turbines, hollow with oral tubes for feeding on the gel below. The behemoth’s infernal “eyes” leer sideways; move aside, Tiamat: nod to the Emperor Sea Strider, who divinely trudges on.

Speculative evolution (aka spec evo) is an artistic genre that designs hypothetical organisms whose plausibility is enhanced by their adherence to biology, physics, and evolutionary history. I first became engrossed with the movement when I watched Avatar (2009) and found its wildlife the most emphatic and fanciful element in that excuse for a story. Growing up with shows like Doctor Who, Star Wars, and Walking With Dinosaurs, what a bestiary for imaginary life I enjoyed! But before our imaginations rock side to side with amoebic sea striders, before we are lost in starless immensities, let us ground ourselves with Dougal Dixon’s After Man (1981). This book offers a glimpse into the future of Earth’s ecosystem: Night Stalkers, flightless carnivorous bats that walk on their forelimbs (for the wings are the stronger limbs in modern bats); and Vortex, whale-sized, filter-feeding penguins. With educational and climatic purposes, it catapulted animals across the past and future, reimagined as giants immersed in all time and marked by the seal of millennia.

But Planet Earth can leave us grim and spleenful. With all stones and seas upturned and every atom split, day by day our fantasies sigh with tears at the fabled stars. Alone in this mighty universe, seeing thousands of worlds, you will not find a heartbeat nor a hospitable world beneath such hostile suns. In such a quiet cosmos, pursuing such agnostic hopes, it is the job of the artist to story the void with ineffable possibilities. As such, it is understandable that this field is growing: it weds deductive fact and superstition, existing on that fine thread between creative expression and an intricate scientific infrastructure. It almost reconfigures the wider universe, all its voids and sinewed galaxies, as something discernable and practically explorable, indeed, even assailable.

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Emperor Sea Strider

Night Stalker, Dougal Dixon

Vortex, Dougal Dixon

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Because the alternative is bleak. Turning to the sky, we are stabbed by the thought of the void; its limitlessness shadows an existential loneliness that is darkened further by its appeal to our imaginations. But we risk gazing ourselves blind at the vast shroud of atheism that wraps around our planet. Spec evo, then, can be understood as atonement for our cosmic loneliness. Lovecraft and Fermi echoed the universe’s maddening silence back at us but left us dazzled; how shall we comfort ourselves with all this blankness in our eyes? We push off from our human isle and swoop the unbodied universe with our madness: spec evo ignites the stars with vitalism and possibility.

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H.P. Lovecraft, 1931, H.P. Lovecraft Photo Gallery

Enrico Fermi at the controls of the synchrocyclotron at the University of Chicago, 1951.

The finest spec evo project, to me, is Wayne Barlowe’s Expedition (1990). After the world has withered away from climate change, humanity sends a probe to Darwin IV for traces of life and finds a lush and thriving ecosystem. Even from an aesthetic perspective, the art is extraordinary, and the creatures it depicts are astonishing in creativity and structure. The aforementioned Emperor Sea Striders, flying Skewers with jet propulsion like squid, Blister-wings that glide using inflated balloon-like sacks. With soaring visuals, Barlowe’s work in particular demonstrates the elasticity of life to manifest itself. What’s more, unlike Dixon, he’s unrestrained by Earth’s prehistory. Barlowe, with no evolutionary canvas holding him back, paints exotic scenes with a wild ecstasy. He is a god of his own world—for a god is an artist of ubiquity; atoms are his primer and quarks his conduits.

A pattern seldom discussed in spec evo projects is its portrayal, or lack thereof, of humanity and potential sapient life. The absence of intelligence in these ecosystems can perhaps be read as an environmental manifesto, a Romantic vision of a noble wilderness, untainted by that exploitative trait that wreaks its destruction against nature, or perhaps to maintain an anthropocentric locus over outer space. Whether this is true or not, the absence speaks to one of the core tenets of spec evo: to examine life as something more than human. How many aliens in popular media have an erect stance, four limbs, and eyes that the audience can find sympathy in? Of course, this is an ochrous lens: aliens would have a completely different evolutionary history to life on Earth; they may be silicon-based rather than carbon-based as we are, which could lead to anthropologies unrecognisable, baffling our understanding of biology. Among the more outstanding suggestions are those of plasma-based life, or wispy spores in the violent hearts of sinewy stars.

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Eosapien, Wayne Barlow

Eosapien, Wayne Barlow

From Expedition, Wayne Barlow

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I was always a more improvised architect of life. You start with the wild pencil strokes in all directions. Then, as though faced with a rorschach test, the hand interprets a concentrated body from the chaos. This is how I have engaged with the medium, and it is a good practice, regardless of whether you are scientifically inclined or not, to exercise your subconscious creativity. I ask you to rest your head against the paper and scribble some lines in all directions and see what incantation of an animal is conjured from your pencil ritual.

Scientific speculation is an intriguing kind of madness, the demoniac kind that gambles its faith within its laws. It allows us, trapped in modernity—the pastiche of life—to take on a unique challenge in peeking with the imagination at the boundless possibilities that life realises. There is a childlike sacredness in this process, as though we forget how young we are and propel our potential on interstellar voyages.

This field, however, is not merely conceit without reality. John Meszaros submitted his Bearded Ceticaris to the community showcase of speculative prehistoric life, All Your Yesterdays. The proposal was a radiodont arthropod that had developed densely arranged spines to act as filtering appendages. Not a year later, as though by prophecy, Tamisiocaris, an anomalocarid of this precise description, was uncovered.

When we behold these magnificent animals, characterised by their affinities for life (as we understand it) but at the same time making biology’s laws infidel, we are swept over by the black gaseous chaos of Saturn. Not a syllable of the universe is ours. Still, with our imaginations, we want to split the planets to grasp at something living, something breathing, hoping to find company in this ungraspable and darkly humoured phantom called life.

Alien Prototype, Baxter Mitchell-Knight

Alien Prototype, Baxter Mitchell-Knight

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Alien Prototype, Baxter Mitchell-Knight

Alien Prototype, Baxter Mitchell-Knight

Bearded Ceticaris, John Meszaros

Tamisiocaris borealis

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The Official Pulp Chatterbox

***We hold no liability over this

GUIDANCE: Rip out and fold.

Charge the chatterbox with energy, hold it genlty cupped in your hands and say a soft prayer ‘Dearest Pulp Almighty, Let this vessel guide me, let my Saturday be at it’s whim, and my virgin hair fry at it’s command.’

L g n ei

of

b y m

e t i n o t o h P g n i t t e we g

Birdcage w aits for you

n o em

you w i on De l find yo pop ursel fi

ct i o n

wood

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put down the phone.

Where numbers are missing, look for signs, that or the amount of letters in the coloured phras phrases. es. Same for the external images e.g. Mango = 5, of my being = 9 Let the chatterbox be a mirror in it’s elusiveness, don’t seek random extra images rather than find the ones already dormant. This is your instagram tarot.

‘some’ dissolve int o anew

Ora

have a beer and find truth

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b eat t o a

h t watc do no ure Day s Disclo

f t he

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ed have you ever consider stand up?

to o t h

Alex Butler

I won‘t email first btw

Hey mate,

2/6/2026 22:45:34

Wow, that is so good to know. I’ll be sure to keep a look out.

It is so funny you mentioned how you’ve been feeling inspired bc I have been feeling the antithesis of that. Although there definitely is something romantic (in a melancholic, one note sort of way) about the winter, I haven’t been feeling anything good about it.

It’s hard to believe you exist at all, mate.

I’ve been thinking about what you said when you were describing the view from your window. The industr y—cranes and rigs—speckling the horizon, how wide the view is. I think a part of the reason I’ve been feeling how I have is because I’m too low to the ground: my bed, my bags, my clothes, my books, my computer and phone. It means I just flop out of bed onto the floor and I don’t use my legs first thing which makes me lazy. I roll around like a seal onto the carpet and I go on my phone. I slink to the electric heater. Ever ything is at my fingertips. I used to want things. When I sit down on my carpet, I stand up with hairs, strings, lint, paper, plastic clinging on my pants or skin. I feel too over whelmed about my room to do anything about it.

Yesterday, I saw a possum on the road. It was brand-spanking-fresh, nestled between the gutter and the road. The stream of water that had pooled off from the rain, stopped and moved around the possum, leaves and twigs collecting and nestling around him almost like they were offerings.

I can’t believe you’re real.

Is it better to be angr y or sad? This is something the five-year-old I babysit asked me. I’ve attached a photo that sort of helps explain my thoughts. I don’t believe anger or sadness is a poison, even if it is directed at someone else. It’s our body’s way of alerting us to danger, which is useful. The sky is concrete, mate. Me? My rage is a cyst. It is the size of a large grape, as firm as anything, and is nestled by my sternum.

Flat. This is the issue. My floor is flat. My surfaces are. My sky is. A slab of concrete. My bed. It makes things too easy for me. The road! The possum, who probably fell out of a tree, died from the flat. In impact onto the flat. Ever ything is at my fingertips.

You know what, actually, here is something I’ve been working on. I’ve been too shy to show you but here we go: Possum possum, Take me with you!

If I fell from the tree that you did, I wouldn’t die, only Snap my shins.

Unless I was run over by a car as soon as I hit the ground.

The end.

Fuck me, I can’t believe you’re not here. My cyst is throbbing. I’m angry, not sad. The sky is the same as the road. If I fell upside down, I’d break my shins.

I miss you so much, I want to fall from a tree. Medium height. Tall enough that you’d have to come visit me and feed me soft foods. Fuck me, I am so sad about that possum.

Yours, 26

Alex

Hey mate.

3/6/2026 12:26:37

I’m sorry if you woke up to that email.

I’m not angry, especially not at you. You didn’t deserve that, and I definitely wasn’t trying to put that on you. I was just ranting and should’ve thought before I hit send. I’m not explaining myself very well at all.

You definitely don’t need to respond to the email above. Forget it ever happened. Do you think you could?

I need to get my cyst drained lol.

It’s okay that you’re not here. Really, it’s alright. I’m good :))))) The view that you talked about, I would love to see it. From the top of a tree.

I’d love to share a blunt with you and believe that the lights on the top of the cranes are little stars. I’d love to see the oil they collect. I miss you.

I actually don’t hahahahahah :))) I hope you can forgive me.

Something strange happened to me. When I walked down the road, I braved a glimpse at the place where the curb met the road, the little crevice and the possum wasn’t there. There was a mound of brush and twigs and leaves. No fuzzy coat. No stream. No burial ceremony. No choir. No possum.

I can’t really tell whether I made the whole thing up. Like scary to think about.

Anyways, I hope this didn’t ruin everything.

I’ll message you with more care from now on.

P.S. I just remembered I forgot to tell you one thing: when we were 15, do you remember that gatho that Mel hosted. Her parents were in Canberra for her older sister’s graduation lol. I remember that bc her older sister was the one who gave us the grass. Well I actually think Mel rummaged around her desk and grabbed it. I hadn’t smoked EVER before and idk what possessed me to start that night, especially bc we weren’t that close yet and I was still attempting to win your favour. It was us, those boys (Matt and Blake and that lot), Mel and those girls. I never liked those boys. I could never fit in with them however much I tried. I would think about every word I said. I didn’t feel close with you girls either tho so idk. Everything I said made me feel like a fucking pussy.

I smoked the shit and cried the whole night.

I wonder whether I should smoke again. Whether I’d cry. Do you think I should? I would love to do it with you sometime. Cry, that is.

Please help me Lol :)))))))))))))) Alex

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Hey mate,

10/6/2026 21:32:57

Sorry to bother. Me emailing you again isn’t me trying to get you to respond quicker. I hope you don’t think that’s what I’m trying to do.

I’m sorry if I’ve scared you a bit over the past week. I was just thinking about you because of the weather and what you said about your view.

I’m super conscious of the fact that it may come across like I’m trying to manipulate you to respond but I swear I’m not trying to.

I just think it prudent that I let you know where I’m at: I haven’t cried in seven years. I think that is why I feel like I’m vibrating with anger all of the time.

And I know how it sounds for a dude to be super angry so I’m aware of that.

Flagging that. I just think that the crux of the issue for me is that I sleep on the floor (which makes me feel low) and because I feel low, I’m too lazy to cry?

Something like that? Or too depressed to cry or smth.

I was thinking about the possum. What turned out to not be the possum but to instead be a mound of leaves and mulch. Maybe that’s what I am to you? (I don’t want to be forward or presumptuous but just go with me for a sec). In highschool, I was a guy friend to you because I was nice and you genuinely trusted me bc I also didn’t get along with the other guys. I cried when I was high which made me vulnerable and approachable or smth. And I fully understand why you didn’t like the other guys, trust me, but I also think I felt weird about being the guy that cried in front of everyone that one time. So then I sort of toughened up and tried to butch up a bit, yk? So I lulled you in, because I was nice, but really I’m just angry because I felt like I was weak? So then I tricked you and you can see that about me now and now you don’t want to be friends anymore? Does that sound right?

I guess what I’m trying to say is that nothing is as it seems and you’ve seen the real me and freaked out which is valid. I have a cyst and it pulsates. That’s the truth.

I guess I just miss you. I guess I wish the possum was real so that I could cry. I guess I want you. In my life. I guess I feel it less now.

I’m going to get so fucking high tonight, I swear to god.

I’ll keep you updated, Alex

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Hey mate,

11/6/2026 7:12:39

I’m in the ER right now. I’m sorry I’m emailing you.

I got high by myself and climbed my roof. I cried so hard, my tears muddied my vision and I slipped and fell off onto the path.

I only broke my arm and winded myself.

I wanted to see the view but I just ended up like a possum on the ground. Or maybe I’m a pile of mulch instead. Whichever one you prefer.

I wanted to see the view you were talking about. Except your view is so far away from my view. I couldn’t see any industry speckling the horizon. Only the crowns of some trees.

I think I’m going to move back home. I don’t like living alone.

I wish you’d respond to me. I’m sorry I’m so angry. I’m not angry at you, if you’re worried about that.

Just to clarify, I’m not in love with you. In case you were scared of that and that’s why you’re not responding to me. I’m not in love with you. I just love you. I would be your little possum hahaha :))) When I smacked the pavement, I looked up at the sky and I thought that the sky wasn’t flat. It’s round and it’s about to swallow me.

I guess the question is: i s it better to be angry or scared?

I’ll be wearing a cast for a while but I’ll be okay.

I haven’t been able to stop crying.

I probably won’t email you until you email first, just so you know.

Best, Alex

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! e m r u o l Please co

tea tea

tea tea

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Favourite Memes By Order of Appemdix, Drawn by Ynes

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Editors Appendix 1. Ynes Fernandez 2. Amelia Elliott 3. Alex Butler 4. Harriet McIlveen 5. Eden Witanowski 6. Annabelle Bullock 7. Venusia Forcadilla

ISSN 3038-2411