No Soap Radio

No Soap Radio by Togi Kayako (土宜草子), with art by RunnyCrusty first appeared in issue Issue 94 in 2021.

Summary

Some twenty-minutes-into-the-future fun, starring:

• Elia, an enby with a lifetime subscribtion to Feral Trash Panda Monthly
• Dorran, a woman who loves designing tech almost as much as she loves lists
• Cyrill, a hot guy in marketing who is quite possibly seducing your spouse as you read this

When Elia “acquires” one of Dorran’s prototypes, an unusual radio, their only goal is to pawn it off for a few credits. Instead, they wind up as an unexpected product tester and getting increasingly involved with the radio’s creator.

NB/M/F | 20,050 words

Author's Notes

A six or seven year old idea, originally intended for an S2B2 issue of yesteryear, now resurrected and turned into something else entirely. Weirdly enough, only the minor character Sienna survived intact from the original. Elia and Dorran got new names (and genders!), and Cyrill didn’t even exist in version one! The radio is much the same, but the plot was different enough that I may yet repurpose it in the future. Recycle, reduce*, reuse? (*Odds that I will reduce the amount of queer smut I write: low.)

This is intended to be the same general setting as “Going Twice” from Be Gay Do Crimes, but other than a few small nods, there’s no real overlap. I have several other story ideas in the same universe, and one very self-indulgent text game project that actually links them all together. Whether any of these will eventually be public, I have no idea.

Special thanks to my husband for his usual beta and cheerleading efforts, Aiden for giving this a once-over with regards to tech plausibility, and Runny for illustrating! He took not just the story but a hilarious mix of images with my MSPaint scribbles on top and rambling text notes and somehow made coherent artwork from this. From my side of things, it’s nothing short of magic.