 Whatever you are, it doesn't matter what you do. Wasteland is welcoming. It's like a renaissance fair mixed with like, post-apocalyptic world. In normal society people look at you strange if you're different. Out here people look at you strange if you're not different. It's appealing to imagine a world where society has sort of broken down. Those like social codes that we have about right and wrong. A lot of those are really harmful to queer people. Being trans, trying to blend in modern day society, I go somewhere and I know what the looks are. I know what people are doing. Even if you're not against it, you still look at somebody in Giggle or whatever. Those things even hurt us because we're way more astute. We see way more than the average person because we're looking for it because we feel the pain from it. People half the time won't even talk to me. If I say hi to somebody in real life, a lot of times they'll just look away or they'll just not talk to you or they'll pretend they didn't hear you kind of thing. Whereas everybody in the wasteland is friendly. You can just stop by any camp and just say hi and people will generally say hi to you. A lot of the pain that I see in the world today is people being ashamed of something within them and I don't think that's the way to a good world. I think you gotta embrace whatever your dark side is if you're into kinky sex, if you like to cross-dress. We've been taught a lot of ways of being and a lot of shame around the ways that we deviate from the norm. Here, my whole concept for Wraith was to be the desert ghost. I try to be quiet. I try not to make a lot of noise and I try and blend in with the area around me. Much like I try to do in society, except for here, it's easier to do. Try to look like you belong on a set of Mad Max movie or somewhere in the post-apocalypse. Just try to be, you know, somewhat in theme and you're gonna find yourself in a good spot. I am H.P. Lovecraft and I am the figurehead of the Pangea Queer Cabaret. So Pangea first came to the Wraith last year and we wanted something evocative of like an everything of a togetherness because it was gonna be a pansexual and pan-gender space. Here, the reaction for the little points of diversity is very open and welcoming. Everybody finds it really liberating. Like I see so many dudes that are walking around in like dresses and it's the very first time like experimenting with any kind of feminine expression and they're like, they find it's so freeing and it's so amazing. Nobody out here is gonna treat you poorly. Like if anything, they'll all stand up for you everywhere. So having Pangea, having the LGBTQ things, having drag shows, having things because we have that audience here for them to feel, you know, open and welcome. It's very eye-opening. A lot more festivals need to do things like that. There's every walk of life, every type of person here. It doesn't matter who you are, what you are, what you do. You're gonna be in a safe, general place where people will razz on you but not for the reasons that you get razzed on in society. To me coming to Wasteland is also just like building the society that I want to see and building a model of the world that I would like to inhabit. You can do that a lot more freely at places like Wasteland.