GRAVITY LOOP ᎠᏗᎾᏌᏁᏍᎩ ᎫᏓᎸᏗ The Speculative Fiction Anthology

GRAVITY LOOP ᎠᏗᎾᏌᏁᏍᎩ ᎫᏓᎸᏗ The Speculative Fiction Anthology

organized by Lichen Euchella @lichenritual and Ocean ET @hr_freud.

gravityloop.org

Donations of $50 or more are eligible to receive a 1 Year Print Subscription to Gravity Loop.

Donations of $140 or more are eligible to receive 1 Year of Gravity Loop Club Membership, which includes a print subscription along with our Dirtsheet printed newsletter and other bonuses.

Contact us with receipt and mailing information.

Please use FUND.GRAVITYLOOP.ORG to share this GoFundMe and our Full Proposal for reading below, regarding our plans to publish translations in Indigenous, Moribund, and Endangered languages.

//// ABOUT

We are a Quarterly speculative fiction comics publication inspired by Old Pulp and Weird Fiction. We also release Special Issues in-between and occasionally art in other mediums. ISSN 3064-6820

Digital Issues as well as Print Issues are available through our Ko-fi web store with our backlog available to view for free. Our Ko-fi page can also be made to make one-time donations for helping cover material costs.

Gravity Loop also has a Print Subscription available along with an advanced Club Membership which receives monthly mailed newsletters that include editor journals, industry updates, exclusive art, maybe even responses to + letters from You.

You can support Gravity Loop by subscribing to our Patreon .

It's been a whirlwind of developments and progress in only a year of issues yet.

Now is the Era of GRAVITY LOOP.

In a store near you Soon.

//// STATEMENT

We are not an Indigenous-only anthology but we do especially look to the Diasporas, the Marginalized, and the Unseen. Of Every Kind. Simply because that's the types of folks we come from.

We are here to deliver the world all the stories that anyone bowing to investors wouldn't dare put in print.

Comics is a wasteland and Gravity Loop is doing soil remediation.

//// FUNDS

1. Gravity Loop is working to help preserve Moribund Languages, especially Indigenous Languages Of The Americas, and we are requesting Donation Funds to aid in Our Efforts

2. We are first-and-foremost working with the Cherokee Language.

I am a Cherokee Person, an Elementary Speaker currently enrolled in the Cherokee Nation language courses with the intent of obtaining a certificate, my educational background includes Japanese language translation, and I consider myself a dedicated Cherokee Cultural Revivalist.

As global entertainment trends shift, Moribund Languages need an even greater variety of modern works available to maintain interest as well as foster common use. There is a dearth of contemporary reading material in the Cherokee written language and as an artist I see a tragic absence of Cherokee comics when it is a printed medium that still dominates the entertainment market one hundred years after popularization. There is a general lack of popular, contemporary, non-children’s, and non-religious reading material published in Cherokee. This is a topic of discussion that immediately comes up whenever I encounter another Cherokee Nation Citizen or Eastern Band Cherokee who happens to know some of the language, recognizes the syllabary, or is able to read words in Cherokee. There is unfortunately not much motivation to build vocabulary and most folks, especially At-Large Cherokee, don’t encounter our language regularly enough to obtain fluency.

Gravity Loop’s purpose is publishing, printing, as well as maintaining availability of a classic Pulp style Anthology Magazine in multiple Moribund Languages, with Native American Languages as our First Priority.

I have started correspondence with people ready to work on International Market translations (Portuguese, Spanish, French) who can also help us eventually get in touch with other Indigenous Language Speakers in Canada, Mexico, Central America, and South America.

We are now building a network of like-minded Language Revitalists who are interested in the translation of contemporary Poetry, Speculative Fiction, Science Fiction, and Fantasy, especially in the format of Comic Strips, Literary Comics (Hugo Pratt, Hector Oesterheld, Patrick McEown), as well as Journalism Comics (Joe Sacco, Art Spiegelman, Shel Silverstein).

Our Anthology could be described loosely as something like Metal Hurlant or Heavy Metal magazine, in its original run, but constructed around moral and ethical imperatives familiar to fans of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone.

We focus on Speculative Fiction but are open to featuring poetry, essays, and investigative journalism.

Gravity Loop is not an “adults-only” publication but is publishing mature works for the thinking people of the world with open-minded tastes.

The main components of our quarterly material are drawn as well as written by my partner, Ocean ET, and I. However, we decided to start accepting submissions (with payment of sales royalties to people who appear in the magazine) due to an influx of messages upon the release of Issue No. 2

We just released Issue No. 4, completing Year One of our quarterly issues. Work on new material for Issue No. 5 and beyond is already under way.

We are now publishing short works from Marginalized Artists and Writers around the Globe in the categories mentioned previously. Gravity Loop has positioned itself to become an accessible entry point for potentially Overlooked Creators to be featured in an International Publication that could fairly easily be translated into their Indigenous Language and would plan to keep all copies available to order indefinitely when not stocked on shelves within their communities.

All preparations for arranging translators have been by our own efforts as well as with the intent of using our own revenue whenever we are able to get past operational expenses, which is our biggest struggle in this current political climate and economy. We have been generating funds primarily by publishing the materials in English first and discussing our Language Revitalization plans upfront when advertising or discussing the project in any way.

Gravity Loop’s current model: a digital download for the latest issue is $4.00 while our backlog is offered free in .pdf form to sample and to maintain Accessibility as much as we can. The Print Edition is $7.00 plus shipping and applicable tax when bought directly from us or $8.00 MSRP on a shelf.

We are by no means a viral hit but we offer a mail subscription, accept one-time donations through Ko-Fi, and set up a Patreon account, due to an immediate fan reaction as well as direct requests to do so from our customer base.

We are not a Non-Profit but we are not against becoming one if it directly serves our goals more efficiently.

Our immediate budget priorities are: maintaining the home/office studio location (rent, electricity, internet service, website hosting), with plans for legal consultation as well as potential registration fees when we are able to build up the extra capital, followed by the start of commissioning translations from interested parties (along with offering sales royalties on the translated issues) for Gravity Loop Year One issues. The translation process will start with paying other Native Speakers, from Cherokee Nation as well as Eastern Band, to review the in-house Cherokee Edition and build up a selection of translators to rotate in.

While we are producing material for this next year’s issues, we are now beginning the process of translating Gravity Loop Year One into Cherokee. This will be followed by other Native American and Moribund Languages as we are able to immediately afford.

The impressive and immediate positive public reaction included a handful of donations from private parties to help us build up our infrastructure. We were able to design our own full-bleed printing pipeline using refurbished and customized inkjet equipment to help maintain self-sufficiency.

Gravity Loop gives off a timeless, almost vintage appearance using off-white (usually warm ivory) recycled paper for the black and white internal pages with a slightly stiff full-color cover. We refuse plastic coatings and toners. Our inks are mixed in-house with plans to eventually formulate pigments extracted from Native American plants through heirloom seed allotments I receive from the non-profit Native Seeds and seed allotments from Cherokee Nation.

Eventually, our operations will be moved to the Reservation so we may better utilize Cherokee Nation services and be closer to the people.

We dream about experimenting with corn husk pulp and printing Gravity Loop on sustainable paper grown just for the anthology.

I explain all of this to illustrate how, from work ethic to most of the themes in what we publish, Gravity Loop promotes Community, Land Remediation, Meditation, and Personal Responsibility, while coming from a specifically Native American influenced perspective.

I was raised away from the Cherokee Reservation but among family and many people from the various Native American and Indigenous Mexican diasporas that wind up in California’s Central Valley.

Ocean was raised with the values of his Eastern European Jewish family while also immersed in Tohono O’odham culture as someone who grew up in Tucson among Holocaust Survivors of another kind. Someday soon we will have Gravity Loop in Yiddish too.

Gravity Loop defined as a Single Project

3. Gravity Loop is creating a year of new Speculative Fiction material for eventual translation into Moribund Languages while we also begin translating our previous year’s work into Cherokee. This will be followed by additional Native Language translations as we are able to afford to do so.

4. Gravity Loop exists to foster the endless growth of the human mind and the many human languages. A key component of this is that we are ensuring there is modern reading material made by living people, in popular styles, available in Moribund Languages so that we may pull them from such a described state.

We know that art made in any medium can be rich with meaning.

We believe that every language has a unique perspective to show us all.

We live to keep our ancestors’ tongues still being spoken and letters still being read.

We see that we can effectively aid many others with what we are doing in order to help language revitalization efforts and encourage modern use.

We understand this all starts with our own languages.

5. Gravity Loop, if defined as a single project, does not have a definite end state or entirely tangible cost. Gravity Loop serves as a labor of love; this is mine and my partner’s ongoing life effort. We began this project out of pocket with great career sacrifices while holding absolute belief in Language Revitalization and Cultural Revival.

Amount Needed

We are requesting a minimum of $7,500 to, at the least, secure One Year of the Gravity Loop quarterly anthology’s base operational budget.

6. Grant funds to secure our publishing headquarters for one year will allow us to release over 225 pages of modern reading translated into the Cherokee language. Gravity Loop will handle printing, distribution, and advertising while also preparing more material to begin translating into Cherokee around Q1 2026 or sooner.

Through grant support, we can easily have the major expenses of Rent, Electricity, as well as Broadband Internet Service out of the way, which means our revenue can more efficiently be put to use entering the translation stage. This would be followed by worry-free printing of samples and a larger amount of donation copies for libraries that keep comics on the shelves. We will also be able to start contacting businesses interested in selling Gravity Loop, Gravity Loop Cherokee Edition, and fielding interest in additional Native Language Editions to be made available.

If we have the most expensive operational costs completely secured for one year, we would immediately be in a position to pay multiple translators just from sales and subscriber revenue, let alone any private donations or additional grant money received.

We would certainly be able to achieve the primary goal of a Cherokee translation, fully establish ourselves along with building towards continuous independent operation, and expedite translation of Gravity Loop into Native American languages.

7. For sourcing additional paid translators along with language peer editors of Gravity Loop Cherokee Edition, I plan to start with consulting Karynlee Berstecher and Dawnenna Sue West of the Eastern Band Language Master/Apprentice Program.

I have not directly discussed this stage of planning with them but I have spoken to them online about the project and have posted the enclosed materials in a public setting.

These are my professional contacts for Cherokee language now after years of casually discussing on their Facebook page esoteric terms I have found or have been looking for within scanned historical documents in Cherokee writing.

Recently, a chatroom server feature was incorporated that Siyo! Eastern Dialect Cherokee Language Beginners has been using extensively and I was added to aid in discussion. I have been recognized and applauded within there for my ability to add cultural/historical contexts to words or grammar being discussed that I have found in my endless research as well as bringing to light issues that plague Cherokee language learning across the board along with general document translation pitfalls. I am also making efforts to build contacts for Overhill dialect translators within Cherokee Nation.

8. Alongside this, I am beginning a related project to seek out all documentation on our Lower Dialect. Eventually, I want to incorporate this research into Gravity Loop and potentially contact interested families that spoke Lower Dialect into the 1900s and the families that spoke Cherokee who remained near Dahlonega, New Echota, or in the Southern Appalachians after Removal.

9. Gravity Loop is not a tribe-sponsored project at the time of writing this but does have an intertribal scope.

Ocean ET and I, Lichen Euchella, handle Gravity Loop administrative tasks, produce the core material, organize other creators for publication, manage translation contracting, as well as run our own custom printing equipment.

This is a personal and ancestral project that we see as the continuation of our families’ works as well as a way to ensure our peoples thrive.

10. Ultimate success of Gravity Loop would be seeing continual publication under its own power and self sufficiency in as many Moribund Languages as possible.

Short-term project success could be stated as having Year One of Gravity Loop translated into the Cherokee language and easily available by Q1 2026 with a year’s worth of new material ready to also be translated into Cherokee at that point.

Thank you for your consideration and potential aid in preserving Moribund Languages as well as supporting a place for unknown or marginalized creators to make their way into the published world.

Gravity Loop

LICHEN EUCHELLA and OCEAN ET