![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() “Is it any wonder that we see ourselves in vampires, werewolves, and other twisted creatures?” “Like so many marginalized groups, LGBTQ+ people know what it’s like to be on society’s perimeter, peering through the windows, trying to decide whether we want to be let into the party or continue living in the shadows,” she writes. In an article written for, award-winning author, journalist, and trans advocate Samantha Allen explains why it’s all too common for cinephiles in the LGBTQ+ community to relate to staple horror characters. While the fight for equal representation continues, the horror genre has historically been a safe space for LGBTQ+ artists to tell stories that aren’t solely centered on their queer identity - through an eerie yet comforting outlet. After all, members of the queer community experience the same struggles and joy as people who do not identify as LGBTQ+. If we don’t know a band we were bringing on, 1) it’s gotta be a band that we’re into, and 2) are these guys cool? Do they get it? Can we work with these guys? Most of our agreements are, like, a handshake, but the paper agreement is just one page - ‘We’re going to do this, you’re going to get this, everyone who’s working here is cooperative and friends.’ And I know that that’s not going to hold up in any court for me if that happens, but I want everyone to know that that’s the intention, doing good stuff for your friends.The LGBTQ+ community continues to fight for authentic queer representation on screen - but that representation should manifest in characters as complex and interesting as their straight, cisgender counterparts. So here, we wanted to do something smaller scale. I always thought it was really strange that there’d be these bands I’d worked with for years - before, I worked with just shy 300 different bands - and even in 10 years, you couldn’t have a relationship with them. You work with so much stuff where, at a certain point, you just don’t have a relationship with people. Was there a guiding principle behind Night Shift when it started? Was there something you felt the company had to be?Įveryone had to be friends. I don’t like trusting other people! I had to do it all myself! I wanted to be able to check the quality myself, and make sure it was being done the way I wanted. Because at Indie, you deal with bands and there’s a warehouse where you tell people what needs to be done, and you have a solid day-to-day relationship with these people, but I didn’t have the shirts pass through my hands every day, and I had to request shirts to see the printing at different sizes. And then last June, I was driving, and I thought, ‘You know, I’m just going to go do this for myself.’ There were just things that I wanted to do differently - I was trying to do something that was a bit more hands-on. When I was done touring, I got a job working at Indie Merch, which is where the Black Dahlia Murder has been doing merch, and I worked there for 10 years. And then bands started getting solid merch companies in the US, so I helped get them set up with something. This was before they had a real merch company, we’d just go on tour and order this shirt from a guy in New Jersey, or this one from a guy in Michigan. I started touring with Black Dahlia in 2006, and within a year of that I was handling all the merch for them, as far as getting designs and ordering on tour. At what point did the idea of starting your own merch company come about? ![]()
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