Holy shit, where do we even start? It’s been a hell of a fucking year, and we’ve had the time of our lives running this chaotic ship. This is our final print edition of the year, but we’ll continue producing online content until 30 November. After that, we’re leaving you in the safe hands of our successors, Ruby, Carolyn, Katie and Stephanie, whose beautiful faces you can see alongside ours in the photo above. On that note, remember to apply to be a part of the media department next year! You can find all the details about positions and applications on the inside back page. Each of us got involved in the media department by applying for a position, so who knows? Maybe you’ll be the next Farrago editor.

Keep checking in on our Facebook page for more events this year, such as the Fitzpatrick Awards night—which will occur towards the end of November.

A huge thank-you to our friends and family for supporting us through a wonderfully hellish year. Thank you for loving us and listening to us when we needed to talk—we wouldn’t have survived this incredible year without you.

This is a humblebrag, but we’re really proud of ourselves and every single contributor to Farrago, Radio Fodder, Farrago Video and Above Water this year. We’ve expanded Farrago’s online news presence and multimedia coverage (with, for example, the introduction of Facebook live coverage), so that we are truly a 21st century news outlet. We established new photography and satire teams and started paying a few dedicated students who help run Radio Fodder, Farrago Video and our social media team. The creative section of this magazine is bigger and better than it has ever been, and we played around with funky covers and a photography section. Farrago is more jam-packed with breathtaking writing and artwork than ever before in its 93-year history.

We had so many great submissions to this edition that we decided to add an extra 16 pages, to fit as much in as we could before they take this job out of our sticky, chocolate-covered hands.

In the campus section, check out Alain Nguyen and Annette Syahlani’s student election results roundup (page 10) and Medha Vernekar’s explanation of what happened with the electoral tribunal (11). If you don’t like elections (fair enough), read Maggy Liu’s analysis of a University paper looking at why students aren’t attending lectures (14).

In the nonfiction section, Lindsay Wong’s ‘The Rise of the “Pretty Boy”’ analyses the role of the rise of K-pop in the West’s changing perception of Asian men (30), Luke Macaronas interviews the artistic director of the Australian Ballet (34) and Veera Ramayah breaks down ‘The “A” Word’—”appropriation” (48).

This month’s creative section is pretty meaty—and we’d suggest reading it through! But if you’re looking for specifics, Natalie Fong Chun Min’s beautiful poem to her mother, ‘more than wedded to the house’ (60–63), is our longest lyric yet, while Amanda Tan’s ‘????’ (70) warmed our cold, cynical hearts. If you’re looking for some longer, scarier fiction though, Alaina Dean’s ‘Mince Meat for Magpies’ (73–75) might just do the job.

There is lots of wonderful art in this edition, such as Vivienne Tran’s floral dreamscapes (55) and Charlotte Docksey’s haunting portrait (40). Also, make sure to flip to Wen Qiu’s detailed sculpture spread (78).

Without our contributors and readers, we would be nothing. Thank you for all of your graphics and words, and thank you for sticking with us on this journey.

Ashleigh, Esther, Jesse, Monique