It’s been a long year for Arthur, and she needs a vacation.

The 2024–2025 publishing year began with the departure of then-Editor-in-Chief Sebastian Johnston-Lindsay, quickly followed by yet another street-thrashing Head of the Trent weekend, never-ending municipal budget deliberations, the financial fallout from the federal student visa cap, a TCSA election which the Association’s interim President attempted to defraud, more hostility towards the homeless at city council, a shitstorm of electoral misinformation, another TCSA election in which a student attempted to run their campaign on a moral panic about trans women’s presence in women’s dorms, an ice storm, and finally, the revelation that our mayor had USED THE N-WORD IN A GUEST LECTURE AT TRENT.

All this, mind you, while our printers went out of business, leaving Arthur without a print edition since February. As that fake Lenin quote goes: sometimes, a lot of stuff happens at the same time.

Challenges like these did not bedevil Arthur in years prior. As a by-product of adaptation, our paper has grown into something akin to a giant, bipedal, humanoid machine which the Editors pilot from a shared cockpit and/or neural uplink. We prefer the “mind meld” mechanic because it’s more sci-fi.

The skirmishes we face against the big bads attempting to silence the dissent to which we voice as Arthur’s pilots can be rather tiresome. “Thriving on chaos” is an exhausting way to live life, and the hectic motions of running a newspaper aren’t conducive to serenity, especially as current students. Without our main demographic around after April’s student exodus, what do we do with ourselves?

Enter: the beach episode. 

It’s high time to rest Arthur’s colossal robotic body on a beach. We all remember the Neon Genesis Evangelion episode about the Evangelion playing beach volleyball, or the one in Gundam where the mobile suits get to catch some rays, right? Right?

Contrary to popular belief, beach episodes aren’t all about low-stakes plots and lazy writing. They’re about character development. They give their characters some room to breathe. Imagine if Evangelion’s Shinji Ikari got some R&R: he simply would not have a mind-melting psychotic break.

Arthur’s notifications are off, her metallic frame is lathered in SPF 50 sunscreen (which she’ll be reapplying every two hours, of course), and she’s cracking a cold one under the sun.

The best parts of spending a summer in Peterborough usually involve getting wet; dips after work, trips to hidden watering holes, and swims in the kiddy pool await us. We’re actually quite fond of the blue-green algae blooms endemic to Peterborough waterways, and we’re hell-bent on getting some watersports in before September rolls around.

While we’re totally new to this editor business, we elected to keep some mainstays of previous volumes through the summer, namely our City Hall coverage and our weekly updates by way of The Courier. 

You’ll hear from each of us as we experiment our way through any and all media available to us: from establishing our social media empire to exploring new ways to get our audio-visual freak on, we’re keen to hone our skills for the publishing year.

We’re closing out the Book Club months late with a final instalment on the first novel in Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series, His Majesty’s Dragon. We’re just waiting for David to finish it, which is rich considering he just started a massive Neal Stephenson 900-pager. 

We’re also test-driving an Arthur Movie Night. We’re starting out with David’s pick, 1999 Cool Cymru cult classic Human Traffic, which follows a group of Welsh twenty-somethings on a drug-fueled weekend in Cardiff. It’s like Trainspotting with more jungle music and dumber accents [ed. Evan wrote that last bit; she’s allowed to say it]. 

Speaking of moving pictures, Evan is (allegedly) bringing back her beloved film column Cinevangelism for one last swing at what is culturally acceptable. That’s not all; Arthur’s lesser known cinephilic lesbian Louanne Morin is cooking up a column where she’ll discuss the Wachowsky sisters’ Matrix series in the most excruciating detail. 

David’s sage guidance makes its (un)anticipated return in the resurrection of Dear David. His tenure as resident expert in everything continues, despite the fact he barely answers any basic inquiries. 

Written diatribes aside, we’re also putting Ian to work this summer to create more videos for our various social media channels. Watch out, Peterborough! He is descending on the streets like a plague unto our houses (and WiFi connected devices). 

Arthur’s TikTok, Instagram and YouTube are due for a massive rehaul, and he’s hard at work creating content for all the Arthurians out there. This means more amazing videos like his acclaimed Ianterviews series, the brand new streeter-style interviews where we’ll be bugging passers-by, and a plethora of other ventures.

Every Thursday, we’ll be providing a weekly update via Instagram, highlighting articles we’ve published in a bid to bring local coverage to your screen at least once a week. We’re meeting the people where they’re at, which is on their phones.

Ian also has plans for what he hopes will become an Arthur tradition, his highlights of local establishments geared towards students. He hopes to profile them about what services they provide and their place in Peterborough. We hope this will serve to connect students with the community and grow Arthur’s local presence.

You might think that this sounds like work, and not very much like a summer vacation. To that, we say “probably.” 

In truth, this series is about giving ourselves a preliminary arc, something to work on from start to finish before we truly step into the big leagues of the publishing year. There’ll still be lots to write about, so the self-containment of this series is something we have to manufacture for ourselves. 

Stepping into our editorship is a scary amount of responsibility. This is our way of getting our feet in the water, and getting back into the fucking robot.