At just twenty years old Kane Parsons has become the youngest filmmaker to open at number one in the US with his psychological horror film Backrooms. The film took in a whopping $82 million during its first weekend, which is also a record for the production studio A24.

Based on Parsons own YouTube series of the same name, Backrooms was inspired by the ‘creepypasta’ of the same name — ‘creepypasta’ being the online phenomenon of legends or folktales shared across the Internet with the intent to scare the reader, with the likes of Slender Man being one of the most widely known.

Parson’s Backrooms is a chilling psychological thriller that plays with the melting boundaries of reality to explore concepts of time, memory and infinite roaming space. Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is a failed architect who owns a furniture store and is currently in therapy. His therapist, Mary (Renate Reinsve), is trying to help Clark break old cycles that are stopping him from succeeding in life, but she’s also dealing with her own past trauma.

In the basement of his furniture store, Clark discovers that he can move through one of the walls and into a strange and seemingly endless expanse of bizarre rooms. Clark explores the space but quickly retreats when it’s apparent that he’s not alone. He tells Mary about his discovery but is met with skepticism and she worries about Clark’s declining mental state.

Clark enlists his assistant manager Kat (Lukita Maxwell) and her boyfriend Bobby (Finn Bennett) to explore the backrooms and bring back proof of its existence but when Clark doesn’t return to therapy, Mary goes looking for him and finds herself in the same dangerous and erratic unknown.

From the film’s concept to its execution, Backrooms is such an impressive story idea and Parsons handles it with real skill and a very focused, astute directorial eye. It’s a sharp and unnerving watch and it’s the kind of text that film students, especially horror lovers, are going to lose their minds over.

The concept of these big, strange, uncanny rooms all connecting in infinite loops is naturally unsettling and make for a brilliant location for much of the film’s narrative. What better place to have your characters get lost within than these liminal spaces that, at first glance, are unremarkable but become stranger as you explore them.

These kinds of liminal spaces (empty office rooms, hospital corridors, deserted waiting areas) are inherently a little spooky due to their utter mundanity and the ways in which our minds cannot seem to help but imagine a rip in the seams of normality; forever looking for ways to find something outside the realms of our own boring reality, even if that is through fear.

Clark’s discovery of the backrooms is immediately unsettling then as they begin so almost like reality but just a little off. There is obviously something not right in the backrooms; the piles of office furniture, the changing shape of the rooms and the doors that lead to new spaces, but they’re close enough to normality to lull you into a false sense of security also.

It’s only as Clark and the others delve deeper into the backrooms, pushing through any voice in their heads that tell them something isn’t right, that they discover the terror and danger they truly hold. This makes for very visceral watching; I could feel my limbs twitch in anticipation of what could be waiting around each new corner, I felt the claustrophobic intensity of the changing spaces and I very nearly shouted ‘fuck no’ in a packed cinema.

The backrooms work as an interesting representation of how our minds process and hold onto memories, the messiness of it all, the way we replay memories so frequently and so aligned with our own perceptions of truth that they are consistently altered, often drifting further from reality the more we replay them.

Clark experiences this initially without even really realising it. His own memories are melted in the backrooms in strange and uncanny ways. His therapy work with Mary could be the very cure for losing himself in the backrooms, she’d already tried to encourage Clark to think differently about his painful memories, but the longer you spend within the backrooms, the harder it is to end the loop of your own destruction.

Clark doesn’t have to change or better himself in the backrooms, he can remain the same version of himself that he recalls in his memories; a victim, somebody cheated out of the life he had planned, and in the backrooms, he doesn’t have to face an alternate true. That is where the real danger of the backroom lies, if you’re not careful, you’ll fall victim to your own percieved truth and become a monster of your own making.

This theory is especially interesting then once Mary enters the backrooms and experiences fragments of her own memories melting into the backroom’s mystery. Mary has based her life’s work on teaching others how to end cycles of self-sabotage, the loops we find ourselves in, and in-turn heal from the trauma of having a mother who was agoraphobic and kept her locked up inside.

One could argue that the difference in Clark and Mary’s experience within the backrooms all comes down to how we revisit memories, how we frame them in our minds and process them in a way that allows us to escape the intensity of victimhood, even when that may well be our experienced truth.

Beyond just the backrooms themselves, the people we meet there are these uncanny valley nightmares. They appeared as people if we experienced glitching in real time or if the devil had it’s own version of The Sims. For me, these were some of the most unsettling moments within Backrooms; when the line between human and monster were blurred.

Thinking about this further, there is a reoccurring analogy used and quoted by Clark throughout the narrative of Backrooms: "It's like describing a dog to someone who's never seen a dog before and then asking them to draw it"

If we combine the ‘dog analogy’ with the strange non-human’s we meet in the backrooms, one could argue that this is an interesting metaphor for AI. How no matter how much humanistic code we feed it, it will never be legitimately human, there will always be something uncanny and wrong about it.

This is just one theory based off the ‘dog analogy’ featured in the narrative but, in general, there is so much to explore and question from this one piece of dialogue. This could relate to the concept of uncanny valley and AI concerns, as discussed above, but I’d argue that it is also another way to look at memory, this time specifically when it comes to trauma.

Could the ‘dog analogy’ be another way to represent the weight and difficulty of discussing trauma? Mary’s trauma is told to us through flashbacks and memories, we see how Mary must carry the burden of trauma in her everyday, how it shows up randomly and without consent.

I wonder then whether the ‘dog analogy’ is another way of explaining the burden of trauma, of discussing traumatic memories, and the ways in which it is impossible to ever properly be able to get someone to understand that which has not happened to them. I think that this all plays into the running theme of our memories and how we process them, how easy it is to be at their mercy.

I haven’t stopped thinking about Backrooms since I watched it and honestly, I am just thrilled to have been able to watch and love two great horror films two weekends in a row (You can read my Obsession review here). As a genre, it’s about time horror gets the recognition it deserves (thank you, Sinners, for bagging those awards) and for independent and new filmmakers to be able to tell these kinds of smart, unnerving stories.

Parsons builds such morbid mystery within the backrooms that it’s impossible not to find yourself wanting to see and know more. While the final act ends a little abruptly and certainly leaves you with more questions than answers, Parsons has allowed himself the room to create more stories and potential franchise growth.

I’m here for it.

I’ve been writing my first manuscript for a few years now. It’s changed and developed. I’ve loved it and hated it, and then loved it again. It’s been a lot of things but the core story has always remained very much the same.

Mould is Katie’s story.

Without any warning, Katie’s partner packs his bags and leaves her, letting her arrive home one evening to an empty flat. In the midst of her sorrow and confusion, Katie notices an otherworldly mould has appeared on her bedroom walls and it’s growing at an alarming rate.

Katie becomes obsessed and communicates with the mould, convinced that it has arrived in order to transform her into the creature she’s always truly believed herself to be.

Ignoring the desperate pleas from best friend Zola and tough-loving mother Emmy, Katie shuns reality, preferring instead to wallow in the swampy waste-land the mould has built for her. While Katie begins to mutate and lose sight of herself, her life outside of the mould starts to crumble.

Will Katie choose life and the people left who love her or will she succumb to a darker existence trapped with the mould?

I’ve spent the last six months querying the manuscript to literary agents and I’ve gotten nowhere with it, and while the reality of the publishing industry is not lost on me, it doesn’t feel any less heavy nor disappointing.

I received some extremely helpful feedback from the brilliant (I couldn’t recommend her services/Substack/podcast more) and it was clear that I needed to go back in for another, deeper edit.

Except I hit a brick wall. I couldn’t decide if I had anything left in me to give.

There were too many questions rushing through my head like wayward trains on weaving tracks for me to feel enthusiastic about the work I’d already done or what else there was left to do.

What if this was as good as the story was ever going to get? Maybe the quality of my writing just isn’t good enough. Do you have to be a natural born talent to be a successful writer or is this something I can keep working on?

I spent the next morning at my day job with a box of tissues next to me so that I could absentmindedly cry while answering emails and running reports. If there is a specific kind of fatigue you get from consistently chasing your creative dreams and not getting anywhere then that was what I felt.

How do you know when it is time to give up on a project?

I’ve been having the wobbliest of wobbles. About Mould and my ability to write in general. It’s honestly made me so sad. What if Mould never makes it? When you believe in something so much, the thought of it rotting away on my laptop is actually heartbreaking.

What about self-publishing? I hear you ask. I think that for a lot of people, self-publishing is a brilliant and successful option. I just don’t think it’s the right option for me. I think I’d actually been kind of awful at it.

I don’t think I have the kind of brain you need to self-publish successfully, at least not to a standard I’d feel comfortable with. I don’t know enough, I still feel too green and, although I’ve had poems and prose published here and there over the years, I don’t feel like I know enough about the literary world to really feel like I belong there yet.

If Mould is ever going to be published, I want and need guidance from an agent that gets the story and believes in it like I do. Is that so bad? I’m sorry if I’m not meant to admit that I still need that kind of acceptance or validation that I am not entirely useless at stringing a sentence together.

I decided to put Mould away for a weekend; closing my laptop and giving myself room to breathe, to think and to decide whether I had it in me to work on Katie’s story some more. Despite how dejected I felt, I didn’t want to rush into declaring myself fit for nothing.

In the end, I felt like I owed Katie more. It’s a story that I still feel this almost feverish need to tell. I know that I can do the story justice. It deserves more time and more effort.

I’m not sure that I’ll ever stop feeling like I’m running out of time and I know that affects more than just my writing but telling stories takes time, doesn’t it? And all I want to do is tell stories.

I suppose this is all to say that I haven’t given up yet. Maybe I’ll know when it’s time to put the pen down because then I will actually do it. I just know that I can’t let go of Mould yet and I don’t know if I can live a life that doesn’t include writing in some form or another.

Is unrequited love not the most delicious of devastation?

For those with a disposition for self-punishment, nothing hits like an all-consuming crush; it’s the perfect stick with which to beat yourself with. Why bother with effective communication and self-agency when instead you can pine after somebody you’re 90% sure isn’t actually into you. That 10% of hope is just too seductive, isn’t it?

Curry Barker’s latest feature, Obsession, flirts with themes of unrequited loved, male entitlement, manipulation and what happens when ‘the nice guy’ gets exactly what he wants.

In Obsession, Bear (Michael Johnston) is completely besotted with his colleague and friend Nikki (Inde Navarretti) but always seems to fail to muster up the courage to tell her how he feels. The pair see each other practically every day, they talk all the time and Nikki was Bear’s shoulder to cry on when his Grandmother, who we assume was his caregiver, passed away.

When Nikki hands in her two-weeks notice and hints at needing more love and satisfaction in her life, Bear resolves to finally declare his love for her and heads to a local crystal store intending to buy Nikki a present. Instead, Bear picks up a mysterious One Wish Willow, which he breaks and wishes for Nikki to love him more than anyone else in the world. Bloody, obsessive chaos ensues.

Obsession is very much my type of horror film. It’s smart and often funny but it’s also delightfully unhinged, and trusts audiences to withstand skin-crawling discomfort; favouring prolonged uneasiness over an onslaught of jump-scares.

Curry focuses on making Bear’s world and Nikki’s inclusion in it as dark and claustrophobic as possible. From the colour pallet to the costume, everything is about making the audience feel as much dread as they can take and it works!

During a scene where Bear and Nikki head to dinner for a date, where we start to see the frightening reality of Nikki’s obsession, she’s wearing a little ‘B’ necklace around her neck and a bardot-style sweater that literally helps to keep her arms pinned to her side.

Not only does this help to connote the ownership that Bear now has over Nikki, the restriction that his wish has placed on her and how she’s trapped in it, but it also helps to add to the increasing sense of wrongness of this new Nikki. Her perfect makeup, shiny hair and pretty outfit all juxtapose the unhinged behaviour that starts seeping from her like poison, as if the sickness inside of her cannot possibly stay stuck inside a perfect exterior.

This helps acclimatise audiences to the fucked-up reality of Bear’s wish enough that they can appreciate the stakes that are at play but not so much as to not be horrified by what’s to come.

Director of photography, Taylor Clemons, does an outstanding job of creating total terror with the use of shadows and dark space. Static camera shots filled with dark, empty space encourage audiences to frantically search the screen, squinting into the shadows to try and anticipate what might be hiding and watching them right back.

As well as this, it takes what should be a normal primary setting, Bear’s home, and makes it a cocoon of loneliness that only worsens when Nikki infiltrates it.

When we’re first introduced to Bear, it’s hard not to feel a little sorry for him. He’s obviously living in the aftermath of immense loss, residing in the home he’s inherited from his Grandmother, and it certainly looks like the house of a pensioner and not a young man. When we’re not being overwhelmed with dark shadows, mustard and dingy yellow’s adorn the screen and it’s easy to see the rut that Bear has found himself stuck in.

While this does help to make audiences feel some empathy for Bear (who hasn’t desperately wished their crush loved them back?) it’s not quite enough to abolish him from the monumental mistake that is magically forcing Nikki to love him back.

There are these brilliant moments of darkness that go beyond the magic of the One Wish Willow and focus more on Bear’s sense of entitlement over Nikki. Dialogue that touches on this is breadcrumbed throughout the the narrative and hint at a more sinister side to Bear’s hapless-but-harmless exterior.

Both Michael Johnston and Inde Navarrette and brilliant throughout the film but Navarrette is certainly a standout, scene-stealing star and gives the kind of performance that reminds me of Toni Collette in Hereditary (Ari Aster, 2018). She is chillingly good at the switch from normal Nikki to obsessed Nikki.

It’s actually a very physical performance; Navarrette changes the way she moves and speaks, depending on how lost she’s becomes within the wish, and it all melts into an amalgamation of what Bear thought he wanted and the derangement of forced loved.

I love horror. It’s probably my favourite genre because it’s just so versatile and Curry Barker serves up a wonderfully twisted story that doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to violent calamity and explores modern themes through classic horror tropes.

Forget your crushes, lads. Be careful what you wish for.

Yesterday, I turned thirty-five.

I cannot honestly say that I’ve been entirely thrilled at the thought of turning another year older. I relapsed soon after my last birthday and spent the first half of being thirty-four incredibly unwell, and the second half was spent crawling back to feeling like myself again.

It’s difficult not to think about all the time I’ve lost to being unwell, to not knowing the truth about myself and trying to fold myself into a shape more likeable than who I actually am.

That being said, it did feel good to experience a birthday while finally having confirmation of my AuDHD diagnosis; a better understanding of my own identity.

Despite years of suspecting the answer, finding out I am autistic and have adhd, reading the frank diagnostic reports and speaking to a psychologist has completely blown my mind. It’s been an enormous thing to wrap my head around, I still don’t feel as if I can properly articulate the conflicting feelings of relief and grief that I am trying to navigate.

Nonetheless, I am so fucking glad that I know.

It’s like finally being given permission to be myself and to celebrate occasions, like my birthday, in a way that feels right for me.

In the spirit of trying to embrace my authentic self and all the batshit behaviour that it comes with, I decided to spend my birthday doing whatever I wanted to do, no matter how that looked to others or how they might feel about it.

I actually love a low-key birthday. Too many celebrations or anything too big just makes me feel supremely awkward. I don’t like the attention, which is ironic, considering I spend my time writing about my life, thoughts and feelings, desperately wanting to reach as many readers as possible, but I’m just not the type to willingly wear a birthday sash.

Even as a kid I thought a birthday button could get fucked.

So, what I wanted more than anything was to spend some time alone. I had plans with my family later that day, everything has become about my baby niece and so we were taking her to see some animals, and instead of feeling as if I needed to be around people, to wake-up with family or friends, I decided to spend the morning alone.

Frankly, I had the time of my fucking life.

I woke up when my body was ready, the morning sunshine peeking through my blinds and making my green bedspread look like a sparkling emerald. I had a long shower and because most of my mornings are spent at the pool, I usually shower there, but I was able to take my time and indulge in all the little beauty rituals I only do at home.

I emerged from the bathroom squeaky clean; buffed with body scrub and then slippery with coco-butter, smelling divine and feeling hungry. I ate a birthday breakfast of a cinnamon-bun and chocolate milk (like a grownup) in my underwear, sprawled out on my bed, listening to a podcast about whether or not you think you’d survive the Titanic; I determined that I would not. I’d have been down in the depths with the riffraff, no doubt, or otherwise likely to have tripped trying to get in a lifeboat and fallen to my icy death.

I spent the rest of the morning replying to sweet friends and their kind messages, reading a new book, The Boy From the Sea by Garrett Carr, having a mid-morning danger snooze and generally pottering about.

None of this probably sounds particularly exciting or significant but it made me happy. I felt relieved not to feel as if I had to follow a specific birthday formula that is deemed acceptable by social standards. I could just spend my time alone, happy to sit with myself and my thoughts.

There’s a feeling of power in that, to be able to embrace being alone and feel comfortable with myself. Giving myself permission to relax and prepare for social interaction in a way I would have previously made myself feel guilty for, judged and punished myself for.

I am beginning to appreciate my ability to be comfortably alone. Honestly, I’ve always thought it was an abnormality; proof that there is something wrong with me or confirmation that I am meant to be alone because I am not somebody easily loved.

I’m not so sure that’s true anymore. I think that my ability to spend time with myself in moments where others might feel the need for company has been a strength I’ve needed to build out of necessity.

I need solitude so that I can enjoy time with family and friends, so that I can work and feel like I am able to be part of society. I need days of life in my own rhythm so that I don’t feel so overwhelmed by everything that seems to come so naturally to everyone else.

I enjoy it and that is a relief. Yes, there are times when I am sick of myself. Christ, I annoy myself, but I am glad that I don’t let being single, being alone, stop me from doing the things that I want to do. I think learning to do things alone might be the best thing I ever did for myself, the one piece of advice I’d give to younger women, to all women.

The nature of getting older is to witness your loved ones build their own lives and families, and that is such a joy, but it means navigating time when the people around you are busy and you have to entertain yourself. Even if I weren’t single, I wouldn't want to be around someone else all of the time, and so how limited would my agenda be if I were afraid to be alone?

Look, I don’t really like my birthday, I can’t help it, but I did have a really nice day and I think that is because I spent a big chunk of it alone. It enabled me to be present for the more social parts of the day and having small plans next weekend for celebrations with friends feels doable because I am becoming more accepting of the things I need to do in order to actually enjoy celebrating.

It has been such a long road to understanding why the fuck I’ve never felt like I belong on this planet, why it takes me longer to feel comfortable in friendships, to feel safe in relationships, why I’m just unable to function like every one else, but I am really glad to have endured it, just to be able to sit with the answers.

Happy birthday to me, I guess.

When I first started reading the buzz around Caro Claire Burke’s hit debut novel Yesteryear, I promised myself I wouldn’t impulse buy a copy. I would wait. My stack of books yet to be read loomed over me and I didn’t need to give in to literary FOMO.

Except that I did because I am a weak woman and the sun was shinning, and my favourite independent bookshop had it on display, and the cover was beautiful; all buttery yellow and gorgeous. I couldn’t help myself!

The premise sounded too good to miss out on, even Ann Hathaway was so impressed by a draft of the book that she secured the rights to produce and star in an adaptation.

Yesteryear takes the tradwife fantasy and turns it into an American nightmare when uptight Natalie finds herself transported from being a modern-day traditional values, famous online influencer to a wife and mother in the 19th-century American frontier.

There is so much within Yesteryear to mull over — it’s incredibly culturally significant and explores themes around combative American politics, the rise of tradwife influencer content and preformative conservatism, family vloggers, conspiracy theories, gender expectations, internalised misogyny and female rage.

It is such a juicy read. Natalie is an outrageously judgemental and yet often wickedly funny narrator. She represents a very sad, almost cautionary tale-esque warning but also a villain of her own making. The book is incredibly easy to devour and, while I have read some criticism questioning the depth of Burke’s insights and reflections, I enjoyed reading it. I like books that can be divisive and aren’t afraid to criticise their subject matter while making us think about the nuances of how somebody like Natalie is created.

Reading Yesteryear made me think a lot about womanhood and motherhood in a way that transcended Natalie’s conservative, Christian upbringing; that which ensured she never questioned her eventuality of having children.

Women are consistently being told that having children will be the best thing they ever do, that it’s the greatest gift they could give themselves and the word, and this is certainly something Natalie believes. Natalie never questions whether she wants children or not, it is simply something she was born to do, her natural role on this earth; it’s her job as a woman.

I don’t have children, I almost certainly won't have any of my own, and so all I can really do is speculate. I can read fiction and nonfiction, and listen to relatives and friends; those already well versed in a life that involves motherhood, and come up with my own ideas.

I'll never know whether people are telling me the truth in regards to their own emotions and experiences but I listen nonetheless and wonder if motherhood can ever truly be enough for someone.

As a standalone experience, can being a mother to a child or children ever honestly be as much as anyone can want, or is this just another outdated expectation that many women still feel the need to nod their head along in agreement to?

And what about the women who freely admit that motherhood isn’t enough for them? How many of us actually support their experience and how many are secretly judging them, or themselves, for how comfortable they are about feeling similarly.

Motherhood certainly wasn’t enough for Natalie in Yesteryear, but that reality simply wasn’t allowed, it was pushed down into depths that she rarely allowed anyone else to see, rarely allowing herself to feel. Nonetheless, everything she’d been told about motherhood dissolved to nothing during the birth of her first born, and in the aftermath when she wasn’t given permission to feel anything other than elation.

“A trade must take place for this life to enter the world. As my body slowly halved open like a peach, I realized it was me who was losing my life; me who would vanish from the world to make room for this new child. I will never be Natalie again. I will only ever be Mama.”

Natalie cannot possibly tell anyone about such daunting, frightening feels while she’s at her most vulnerable because the world in which she’s grown up in won’t allow for it and if we separate her faith and family background from being the biggest contributing factors to that, I wonder how many other women feel similarly, no matter their differences.

It feels as if women are forever being told that they can have it all, that they can be their own individual self as well as being a mother, that the two can exist separately but is this even true?

The women in my life who are mothers are filled with a love so beautiful to see but they are also fucking knackered. I don’t know a single women who was truly prepared for the monumental shift in their brains post-pregnancy and labour.

I can still separate their being a mother and being the friend I knew before but is it so easy for them to do the same when they’re told contradicting supposed truths about motherhood?

It’s the best thing you’ll ever do, this is what you were born for but, don’t worry, you can also go back to work and be completely present in that environment because you’re also your own person so, no, please don’t answer the call from their nursery while you’re at work, but you better feel guilty for it because remember that motherhood was always your destiny.

Then there are those that do stay at home to raise their children and a new wave of guilt steadfastly knocks them off their feet because shouldn’t this be what they want all the time? What do you mean you want a break? It’s not like you’re working a job, you chose to have children, so what do you mean you want something outside of raising them?

Can motherhood ever be enough for anyone?

I don’t know.

It doesn’t feel like it; from what I’ve heard and seen, read and been told, but should it even matter? Should we expect women to be entirely fulfilled by motherhood? Would we even be having the same conversations for fathers?

Perhaps it’s my decision not to have children or my body clock that rudely won’t stop ticking, or seeing people I love wrestle with the complexities of motherhood, but I wonder what cultural shift needs to happen in order for us to think about motherhood differently.

To lean in to research and the funding of women’s medical history, to ensure we understand the impact pregnancy and child birth has on women, the ways in which our society is not equipped to support them, in order for women to stop feeling so intensely conflicted by their desires for life beyond motherhood.

It is no secret that I take a particular interest in cults — which, admittedly, sounds a lot weirder than it is.

I just find the entire concept and psychological fuckery behind cults absolutely fascinating and I watch a lot of cult documentaries. That being said, I love a great fictional drama with cult-ish themes. Some personal favourites include The Endless (2017, Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead), Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011, Sean Durkin) and, of course, Midsommer (2019, Ari Aster).

Therefore, I was particularly excited to see that Netflix had released Unchosen, a six-part series created by Julie Gearey and staring the likes of Christopher Eccleston, Siobhan Finneran, Molly Windsor, Asa Butterfield and Fra Fee.

Trailers for Unchosen teased a critical take on conservative Christian cults and the restrictions put upon the wives and mothers through the story of Rosie (Windsor), a devoted member whose husband (Butterfield) is steadfastly climbing the ranks of power, but whose faith is rocked when her world collides with the handsome but potentially dangerous stranger Sam (Fee).

I was, frankly, fucking jazzed to get stuck in with Unchosen and binge until fat and full on intense drama and just enough thrills to get me wondering who posed the biggest threat; those from inside or outside the church?

How was I to be repayed for my excitement?

What starts off as a drama with potential to tap in to the total psychological warfare that is cult-life quickly turns into a nonsensical thriller that will leave you feeling entirely unfulfilled. I remain starved for smart and layered drama.

The core issue within Unchosen simply comes down to narrative strength. There are so many potential narrative strands that could have been explored and developed thoroughly in order to allow us any sense of authentic experience but, instead, as many cult tropes as possible are throw into six episodes, sprinkled in as vague ideas, but are too thinly explored to create any real tension within, what should be, such a richly complex setting.

Even the core story is railroaded by cheap thriller stereotypes when, actually, focusing on Rosie’s journey to independence and sexual identity could have been a far stronger storyline were it not diluted by the silliness that became Sam’s ex-convict nut-job character.

Windsor does her best with Rosie’s character and I think she deserved a far more focused and dedicated story about her life in the cult, especially when her faith is initially rocked by more than just a sexy stranger.

In the first episode, we’re able to notice Rosie’s maternal instinct is far stronger than her dedication to following the orders of the church’s pious leader, Mr. Phillips (Eccleston), and she starts questioning their gender roles when she defies Mr. Phillips after being told to stay out of ‘men’s work’.

It felt disingenuous then that Rosie would lose her senses so quickly after meeting Sam, who saves her daughter from drowning, and embrace a sexual, love-bomb relationship in what felt like a short few skips from being enamoured by him and potentially seeing him as a representative of Christ himself, to shagging in a garden shed because he’s just too fit to resist.

While, yes, this could very well be a representation of Rosie’s naivety and emotional immaturity, this would be far more convincing if she hadn’t shown any initial questioning of faith or if Sam weren’t such an audacious walking red-flag.

Lord knows I’ve forgiven a fair share of sins for a handsome man with an Irish accent, but even I couldn’t forgive the deranged nature of Sam’s character development. I couldn’t help but groan in disappointment that we didn’t get the real, potentially devastating conflict of Rosie falling for an unchosen, someone outside of the church, that shows her real emotional depth and complexity, rather than what we were given. Which, honestly, was nonsensical.

Beyond Rosie and Sam, there are multiple snippets of secondary storylines that held so much potential for a gripping look at the toxicity and hypocrisy of cult-life but, alas, they were condensed into such a short series that it’s difficult to appreciate any of it or really comprehend what life under such religious oppression would have been like.

Asia Butterfield can give a much better performance than what he delivers and had to work with. His storyline of budding, closeted homosexuality within a community that had already excommunicated one member for their sexuality could have been an emotionally conflicting narrative string if it were given the necessary care and attention.

Alas, it is presented as a minor conflict which never really gets resolved and the same issue crops up when themes of sexual abuse, expectations of masculinity, banishment, false imprisonment, child-loss and deprogramming are all introduced but not given the time and respect such hefty themes deserve.

Look, perhaps I am being overly critical of Unchosen because I take such an interest in the wild and woeful world of cults and I certainly went in hoping for a more sophisticated, critical look at UK based Christian cults that are very much a reality in out modern society.

Nonetheless, that doesn’t excuse rushed storytelling or the watering down of important, emotive themes, and for that, I’m afraid I find myself thoroughly disappointed.

However, there are no bad performances throughout Unchosen. The cast do their very best with what they’re given and I think that with a shift in tone or a longer series, we’d experience some very different characters and a far stronger narrative overall.

I’d love to know if anyone has watched Unchosen and completely disagrees with me! Please give me a shout if you loved it or really enjoyed the thriller aspects.

In the meantime, maybe I’ll pen a post about my favourite cult documentaries because I’ve just finished The Way Down: God, Greed, and the Cult of Gwen Shamblin and that shit is WILD.

I didn’t particularly enjoy the first episode of The Other Bennet Sister. I think that I was still floating in an Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy space as I had recently re-watched Joe Wright’s fantastic 2005 adaptation of Pride & Prejudice.

I wasn’t used to not focusing on Lizzy Bennet, on her wit and willfulness, and so I suppose I found it difficult to immediately get into Mary’s story. It seems that I underestimated her just like everybody else but, luckily, I persisted and it didn’t take long to completely fall in love with her and the series.

Based on the novel by Janice Hadlow, The Other Bennet Sister focuses on the often overlooked Mary Bennet as she leaves her home in Meryton, gaining much needed space from her overly critical mother, for London, where she begins to work for her kindly Aunt and Uncle as their children’s governess.

Having seen her four sisters get married and, finding herself consistently undermined and unappreciated for her love of books and knowledge, Mary is not used to romantic suitors or feeling as if she could ever live up to her mother’s high-standards, but life in London allows her to blossom and embrace who she naturally is, leading to love and friendship, and joy.

I loved Mary’s character and I thought Ella Bruccoleri played her with such natural humour and charm. From the cadence of her voice to her facial expressions, her feeling like an outcast and her social awkwardness, I recognised much of myself in Mary and, from what I’ve seen scrolling through Substack notes, plenty of other women did also.

Watching Mary compare herself to her sisters, allowing herself to be depended on but criticised, finding herself somewhat baffled by societal expectations and yet feeling pressured by the limitations of being a woman in Regency-era England, I couldn’t help but think more about women’s identities, and how easy it can be to resign yourself to an identity that doesn’t actually feel like you.

Mary is not The Pretty One in her family and nor is she The Bold One or the Funny One. She is smart and can be humorous, she’s curious and empathetic; she has all these wonderful qualities that go unappreciated by the small group of people in her home life, but it is her perceived lack of attractiveness that feels most disappointing, especially if you were to ask her mother.

Thankfully, not all of us have mothers as critical as Mrs. Bennet — played brilliantly by Ruth Jones, whose mannerisms reminded me of my own mother if she were not an angel, but I think that, at one point or another, most women have longed to be The Pretty One, no matter what influences we have had in our lives.

While it is, of course, reductive to reduce women to one-dimensional stereotypes, it is all too easy to feel as if you must fit into a neat and specific type. It is almost a way of survival during adolescence, a way to fit in or go under the radar as best you can, enabling young people to follow trends like the Clean Girl Aesthetic and, for us millennials, there is the infamous Cool Girl monologue, originally written by Gillian Flyn and performed by Rosamund Pike as Amy Dune in David Fincher’s 2014 adaptation of Gone Girl.

It takes me back to my own adolescence. I have a vivid memory of being driven home from prom by my best friend’s mother. My bestie had won Prom Queen and nobody was surprised. She was one of those girls who everybody just loved. She was beautiful but funny and just the right amount of self-aware as not to make her intimidating, which meant the popular girls liked her, but she had a delightful sprinkling of weird about her that meant she and I found each other hilarious.

‘I’m Prom Queen,’ my friend said to her mum while riding up front. I was sat in the back, my feet pinching from the kitten heels I’d worn and hated, ‘And I’m the Prom Queen’s best friend,’ I said dead-panned. My friend laughed and so did I, but I remembering hearing her mum say ‘story of your life’, and giggling as she drove.

Looking back, this is so funny to me (one day I’ll write it into a sitcom episode) and not an entirely untrue prediction from her mum. I can’t deny that I have always felt similarly, I think the comment even gave me permission to assign myself such a role, getting in there with a self-deprecating quip or joke before anyone else could.

The truth is that I was never The Pretty One and it had nothing to do with my appearance. I was too weird and awkward, and, truthfully, my younger sister was everything that I thought a ‘normal’ teenage girl should be. She was The Pretty One because I couldn’t be and, for a long time, I hated that.

I spent a long time feeling slighted and yet desperate to be accepted. By who I wasn’t always entirely sure; perhaps by everyone, certainly by men, but I knew that I wasn’t seen as conventionally pretty and that hurt.

It stung. It still does, sometimes, when I compare myself to the beautiful women around me. I have genuinely beautiful friends, one looks like Margot Robbie and another is like a little goth Sabrina Carpenter, it’s outrageous, but not being The Pretty One is an identity I shackled to myself and, while born from external criticisms or expectations, it has been my own responsibility to shed.

Again, this is something I recognised in Mary. When she arrived in London, Mary was so convinced of her shortcomings, her perceived faults, that she used them as a way to keep herself safe from actually experiencing anything; determining herself someone unexciting, ill-equipped at games or socialising, someone not worth getting to know. I know this coping mechanism all too well.

It is with gentle encouragement from her Aunt that Mary begins to allow herself to unfurl and perceive herself as someone beyond ‘the other’. In doing so, she embraces her true self, inadvertently giving others permission to find her equally as beguiling.

This proves that which I am beginning to learn; you cannot hate yourself into somebody different and unkindness will never serve as appropriate encouragement.

I think that there might always be a voice in the back of my mind that longs to be The Pretty One and maybe that is okay.

Perhaps we all want to feel special but might we all feel so in our own skin, embracing our own identities and denying that which is thrust upon us by those that do not deserve us.

Isn’t that what Mary does in The Other Bennet Sister? I hope we get a second season and that all those that still feel very much like ‘the other’ begins to realise how wonderful it is to be a little bit weird.

Imagine being just days away from the wedding of your dreams, the one you’ve been meticulously planning with the love of your life; you’re filled with an almost manic excitement, that happy apprehension, only to find out a big, bad secret from your lover’s past that makes you question everything.

What would you do?

That is exactly what Kristoffer Borgli asks us to ponder after watching The Drama. Happy couple Emma (Zendaya) and Charlie (Robert Pattinson) are counting down the days until they tie the knot, writing their vows, celebrating with friends and, on one particular evening, making final catering choices and drinking too much wine with their best man, Mike (Mamoudou Athie), and maid of honour, Rachel (Alana Haim).

Mike and Rachel share that before they got married they decided to tell each other the worst thing they had ever done so that they could enter the marriage known that they could love and accept one another completely.

Rachel, who is insufferable, cajoles Mike into telling his own story as long as the others share theirs. As Charlie giggles his agreement and Emma chugs more wine, the group tell their biggest secrets, downplaying their significance, and Charlie barely has a story to tell.

Emma reveals that when she was a teenager she planned a mass shooting at her school, even bringing in her father’s rifle to carry out the massacre, but changed her mind at the last minute. As soon as the words leave her mouth, you can see that Emma wants to cram them back.

Charlie laughs, assured in his knowledge of his almost-wife that this is surely a joke, while Mike and Rachel are appalled. Rachel begins to berate Emma, mentioning her cousin who was paralysed in a school shooting, while the reality of the situation begins to dawn on Charlie.

Emma’s confession leads to domino effect of disaster as Emma must wrangle with her guilt and shame, and Charlie questions whether he knows her at all.

Borgli asks whether, when we commit to a partner, must we accept and love all the different versions of themselves? Can you forgive them something unimaginable if you never knew them through such a dark past?

I enjoy these kinds of morality questions but I can appreciate some of the criticism online regarding the use of gun violence in schools as a narrative twist. Gun control advocacy group March for Our Lives made a statement on their Instagram page about the sensitive theme and warned audiences that the marketing for The Drama ‘deeply misaligns with the reality it engages’.

Audiences will have their own thoughts and feelings about whether The Drama handles such a subject matter with enough care and nuance and, I have to admit, coming from the UK, it’s hard to even comprehend the utter devastation of something so frighteningly real in America.

Nonetheless, Borgli wants people talking about this, he wants us to question whether Emma not going through with her plan says enough about her character for Charlie to comfortably continue living the rest of his life with her. He has purposely chosen such an emotive topic to push his audience towards a rhetoric that feels almost unimaginable.

When it comes to committing to a partner, through marriage or otherwise, do we have to accept all the past versions of them? Can you really love someone wholly if there are ghosts from their past that you refuse to accept or even acknowledge?

These are questions that can be asked on a much smaller scale than we experience in The Drama. I found Rachel’s confession ( I won’t spoil everything) to be horrifying and if I were to know that about a partner then I wonder whether I would look at them differently also, especially considering her blasé attitude and excuses — Alana Haim does a brilliant job at playing someone so unlikeable.

Personally, I enjoyed much of the tone within The Drama. Never did it feel as if we were meant to collectively laugh at the horror of the situation, Emma's awful almost-carnage, and the tragedy of gun violence in America, but instead Kristoffer Borgli laces the screenplay with a tongue-in-cheek sense of humour (that very much reminded me of British comedy), that is rooted in reality, in the awkward, often funny, very human reaction to terrible situations.

Robert Pattinson is ideal for this kind of humorous calamity. He plays Charlie with a silly kind of charm and once he knows of Emma's dark past he hits the self-destruct button in a way that allows him to vomit out all of his own neurosis. Zendaya is similarly great as Emma, I like that she never shies away from playing morally questionable characters but she always has an element of likability, something that makes us want to root for her, even when we watch her play someone as complex as Emma.

As mentioned before, whether people feel as if the subject matter is appropriate or not, The Drama is actually pretty great for subject analysis and the marriage of microelements in filmmaking to create substantial backstory and narrative pull.

From Emma’s present-day costume in comparison to the flashbacks we see from her adolescence, the interesting use of sound to create a sense of unnerving voyeurism, great music from Daniel Pemberton and cinematography from Arseni Khachaturan that aids in the feeling of an urgent, claustrophobic countdown towards the wedding.

The Drama is not the romcom that its marketing might have you believe. It’s a study of relationships, the boundaries of our own morality complex and questions whether we can forgive and forget something awful about the ones we love in order to live the kind of life we imagine for ourselves.

Reluctant Romantic

I find it highly ironic, on-brand and quite funny that I am such a romantic and yet nonetheless fairly incapable of making romantic connections. It just doesn’t happen very easily for me and that’s okay, most of the time, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t value love or romance.

I’m a sucker for a great proposal story, I love literary fiction that has a thread of romance in it and I go through periods when I crave some romantic inspiration so that I might be able to write decent love poems again (this can usually be cured by a quick flick through Hinge).

In October 2025, Vogue released an article by Chanté Joseph titled Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now? and a flurry of social media posts and think-pieces followed. A lot of what I read looked more like knee-jerk reactions from happily coupled-up (mostly heterosexual) women who felt the need to defend their boyfriends or husbands, but there were also more interesting and reflective posts from those who actually read the article.

Writing for Vogue, Joseph talks about the various reasons women might not be sharing their partners online as much as they used to on social media; from not wanting to appear boyfriend-obsessed to avoiding jealous remarks or risk losing their audience, Joseph touches on a few reasons why this might be but the most divisive reason they discussed was a sense of cringe now felt by heterosexual women when it came to showing off their boyfriends or husbands.

I thought this was interesting for a number of reasons and, despite being (mostly) happily single, I could actually understand why some hetero women might find themselves feeling that way, how I might feel similarly were I to find myself in a relationship, and I thought the following summed things up fairly simply:

“​​I was in a relationship for 12 years and never once posted him or talked about him online. We broke up recently, and I don’t think I will ever post a man,” says Nikki, 38. “Even though I am a romantic, I still feel like men will embarrass you even 12 years in, so claiming them feels so lame.”

Chanté Joseph

In my experience, sharing the highs and lows of dating and relationships is very normal within close friendships, especially those between other women, trans or queer friends, and whatever the sexual orientation of those friends, it’s always been part and parcel of those dynamics to be able to express frustration or sadness or grief over failed relationships.

Despite the safe environments we’ve built, it doesn’t feel any less mortifying to let my friends know when a man I’ve been excited about, told them about, sent them screenshots of our flirty conversation chain, has ghosted me, said something that made me see them in a completely different light or has in some other way fucked me over.

I don’t think this is a unique experience. I think when you’re a woman attracted to men and things go wrong, a little part of you dreads telling your friends because there’s a weird sense of embarrassment, as if you’ve done something wrong by giving love another go only for things to crumble, rather than the other person has been unkind or aloof or offensive.

I’m under no illusion that there aren’t men I’ve dated who might have the very same feelings about me (although I don’t think I’ve ever been intentionally unkind or offensive), but I wonder if heterosexual men feel that same sense of embarrassment when things go wrong in their relationships.

Do they avoid posting pictures of their dates or girlfriends so that they don’t have to feel the dread of anticipating people asking what happened when all of a sudden you’re not posting them anymore? Or is it just women who are attracted to men who are finding themselves less and less openly fucking thrilled when they fall in love because they’re worried about what happens if things go wrong?

My own sexual orientation has always felt very vague and I’ve been fortunate enough to never feel like I’ve had to label or worry about it, but my committed relationships have always been with men and so I wonder whether I would feel similarly if I were actively dating women in today’s romance climate.

Hypothetical questions aside, my own experiences, those of my friends who have been in and out of relationships with men and rhetoric similar to Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now? all made me feel kind of hopeless about romance and love.

Not because I believed men specifically were the problem but because there felt like a collective giving up on romance, of love and the successes of love. Have women been so badly publicly burned by men that celebrations of love now feel just too fragile to risk putting out into the world, and what does this mean for the weirdos like me who find it all a bit fucking hard anyway?

This Music May Contain Hope

I recently discovered that what I thought was just me being annoying is actually echolalia (as part of my autism and ADHD, and almost certainly still annoying), and anyone that has been around me for more than five minutes over the last few months while I’ve been anxious will have heard me repeat ‘baby, where the hell is my husband?’ over and over again thanks to Raye’s lead single ‘WHERE IS MY HUSBAND!’ from her second studio album This Music May Contain Hope.

While I’ve been questioning the whereabouts of my fictitious husband for months now, I only listened to the album in its entirety last week and it was somehow everything that I needed to hear in that moment, without even knowing I needed to hear it.

I suppose that is because I have been feeling anxious about relationships lately and this, alongside the aforementioned sense of hopelessness about romance, has cast a real melancholic cloud over my thoughts of the future.

For a long time it felt like romantic love was the top priority within everyone’s life goals and I am so pleased that, culturally, it feels as if we’re putting more importance on other forms of love, encouraging ourselves to put in time and effort into platonic love especially, but I still think it is generally true that most of us crave personal, romantic relationships; I think it’s just the way we’re wired.

That being said, there is so much about traditional romantic relationships that make me feel mildly claustrophobic. I don’t want the pressure of it all, it freaks me out, but lord knows I’m not right for polyamory, anything totally devoid of emotion and, as recently said to a close friend, I think it would be a shame if I were not to experience falling in love again, and to be loved in return.

With all this in mind, picture this:

I have just told a perfectly nice man that I cannot see him because I’m worried that I’m a tiny bit dead inside, that I am not the woman who can casually sleep with him without developing feelings but nor am I the woman who he might marry and have children with. The anxiety of having had this conversation has subsided but I am nonetheless feeling like a legitimate goblin who might die alone or live the rest of her days in the attics of her happily married friends.

I am crying in that passive way that feels silly but inevitable, feeling relieved and also lonely, but I need to drive to see some beautiful friends and so I whack my sunglasses on and play Raye’s This Music Might Contain Hope, hoping that it actually might.

Praise be! It was brilliant and hopeful, and I felt born anew as the romantic I’ve been savagely trying to murder off. Turns out you don’t have to be in love to be a romantic, you just need a bit of hope.

Listening to the album from start to finish felt like sinking into a warm and welcoming bath while that one friend whose wicked sense of humour almost betrays their wisdom hypes you up, reaffirming your loveliness, sat in the steam and fragrance of all your vulnerability.

With some old school jazz, Motown blues and big orchestral highlights (Hans Zimmer, my God), This Music May Contain Hope is a proper heart to heart, from Raye to her listeners, more than just an account of her own experiences but a thread of honesty and vulnerability the could connect all of us.

Track 6, Click Clack Symphony, with Hans Zimmer is a stunner and was one of many that made me cry in the car, but in a far nicer way than when I started. Same goes for I Know You’re Hurting and Fields (ft Grandad Michael), which is total poetry and so touching.

I love Raye’s approach to all that she’s been through, regarding heartache and frustration, but there is still than golden thread throughout the work that refuses to dull its shine on romance and love.

It just felt good to cry but feel hopeful, for romance, totally, but for more than that; for peace, however that might look.

Legacy and Loneliness

I’m starting to think that romance is actually something beyond the pairing of two people (or more, whatever works for you) but actually looks a lot more like an idea or lifestyle or belief system, rather than a tangible or measurable thing.

I think it can apply to relationships, absolutely, but I don’t think it’s that simple anymore. It is something beyond the religious or systemic commitment between individuals, I think it’s bigger and perhaps easier to access than we think. It’s art and music, and poetry, and film; an expression.

Yeah, this might all be a bit cringe and maybe this kind of thinking sways into an earnestness that sometimes makes me uncomfortable, but maybe my kind of romance will be a little bit sillier or with a wash of cynical humour that I find more palatable, but if people want to lean into that hopeful sincerity then that is their prerogative also.

For someone who often feels so hopeless, I really do believe in hope for others and maybe just holding onto that might mean I can start believing in it for myself too, and then that might be the kind of legacy I leave in the world. I think that might be a kind of romance for me.

When an ex-boyfriend of mine cheated on me, I felt an enormous amount of shame that I had ever shared anything positive about him to friends or through social media and, again, I am brought back to the Vogue article.

I get it, I felt it, it was all so dehumanising and mortifying, even on such a small scale, and I wanted to rid myself of all notions of potential, future romance, but then I think about what I’ve been able to create out of that experience, the poetry or stories, the book it all inspired, and there is a very special kind of romance in all of that.

A kind that has nothing to do with him and everything to do with me, with my ability to love, and that is worth something because, not only did I still have it in me to fall completely in love with someone else, but when that didn’t work out either, I continued to create with all that influence. There is such romance in all the art that was birthed through such pleasure and pain.

Saying that romance can exist even if you single won’t cure anybody of their loneliness, myself included, but I think leaning into a romantic life might help to shake off some of the heaviness that comes with being lonely.

I think that it will look differently for each and every one of you and therein lies the magic of it all.

I am fortunate enough to have a favourite local bookstore with a truly delightful bookseller that knows exactly what my book-type is. Her recommendations never miss and the minute she passed Rhett Davis’ Arborescence into my needy little hands, I knew I was going to love it.

Published in 2025, Arborescence skirts a satirical line and flirts with themes of metamorphosis and the collapse of life as we know it when groups of people across Australia are reportedly turning into trees.

Bren and his girlfriend Caelyn are looking to gain more satisfaction out of their lives when they begin to hear rumours of people in the forest who believe that if they stand still for long enough then they will be able to turn themselves into trees.

Bren dutifully follows Caelyn as she becomes determined to seek out these little communities and witness the phenomenon for herself and, despite the absurdity of it all, it’s beginning to spread. As more people decide to commit themselves to the process of arborescence, the world becomes greener but cities collapse and the fate of humanity is a perilous thing.

Both Bren and Caelyn must come to terms with their own feelings on arborescence, the ways in which their future has become entirely uncertain and question what it really means to be human.

There are so many interesting parallels to the real life conflicts we experience in modern society and Davis gives just enough references or sense of sentimentality to enable readers to make their own connection; allowing us to dig down to the roots of our individual beliefs or experiences.

They include but are not limited to climate change, the presence or threat of war, changing family values, gender roles and masculinity, artificial intelligence, and the various legalities of assisted suicide. Davis ensures that nothing feels too on the nose but neither does he shy away from these emotive and very contemporary themes.

As someone who has attempted to take their own life and lives with suicidal ideation, it felt impossible not to connect with the very idea of arborescence but also the many moral complexities Davis approaches throughout the narrative.

The concept of arborescence is entirely seductive to someone like me, someone who lives with mental illness, is always at the mercy of it, and finds themselves bewitched by natural splendour. I was never going to read this book and not feel such a pull towards an alternative way of existing alongside those that I love and yet nonetheless be freed from the burden of illness.

I have spent a great deal of time imagining what tree I might like to become if I were to live in Davis’ alternate reality. I would take root by water, if I could, near a babbling river or lazy stream. I have always wanted to live next to the sound of running water.

I think that a Golden Weeping Willow would be my tree of choice. I like the idea of having these long and dramatic branches that sway and dip into the water, and deep, aggressive roots to keep the riverbank safe and secure. A place that people could gather beneath, should they feel the desire to do so.

Halting my own arborescence fantasy and bringing us back to the story’s connection to suicide as a theme, more than one thing can exist and be true at the same time; suicide can be a devastatingly selfish and often unforgivable act and those that seek it are often too unwell to see or accept such a truth. Davis flirts with a similar sentiment throughout Arborescence, there is great conflict between those that choose to change and those that are left behind, but he makes such a concept even more difficult to navigate as there is nothing definitive to say that arborescence is the symptom of a mental illness.

The parallels are there nonetheless; making for an emotionally challenging but pleasing read. There is still a lot of hope to be found within the narrative and while there is a lot of speculation around the demise of man’s connection to one another and the world they’ve built, Arborescence is more than an apocalypse story.

Davis writes Bren's experiences in short bursts of prose, some sections lasting only a few sentences before moving forward with his story, and this helps us stay very much within the flow of Bren’s fluctuating moods and inner-monologue.

Experiencing the phenomenon that is arborescence through Bren is to experience it through the eyes of someone who transitions from mildly irritated skeptic to reluctant believer, and it is the surrounding characters that really experience the polarizing positions of rejecting arborescence completely and actively pursuing the change for themselves.

While Bren may not always be the most reliable narrator, he does exhibit a full range of emotions about his relationship with both Caelyn and the changing world, and despite the ways we see Bren’s life slowly falling apart, he acts as a great example of someone who finds life just happens to him but that doesn’t mean he has completely given up.

Bren’s journey shows us that hope isn’t linear. His faith wavers, more than once, and, despite his steadfast belief in Caylen, his hope for their own future becomes increasingly fragile. Davis writes as if hope can be found wherever you decide to look for it, and Bren finds his own way back to hopeful thinking time and time again.

Davis explores this throughout the entirety of the novel and there is still so much humanity present in a book about the collapse of life as we know it; a time when people are literally giving up on themselves in their human form and turn to a new life beyond that of their communities and the world we have created.

Whether that’s through Bren’s own experiences, groups of people forming small communities of their own; guiding one another through arborescence, those that continue to take care of their changed family members and even those fighting against the concept of this inexplicable phenomenon; gripping on to the last straw of humanity, there are seedlings of hope found throughout Arborescence.

They’re planted subtly in the dialogue of secondary characters or through action that otherwise might appear as hopeless. Even those choosing to turn themselves into trees are doing so in the hope that it will create a better future for the planet, a way of living that goes beyond the selfishness of man.

Even Caelyn, a character that appears so convinced that arborescence is a new strand of evolution, feels her own faith slipping away from her and yet just the knowledge of Bren’s decisions towards the end of the book are enough for her to find an alternative path that is paved with hope for the future.

This all helps to illustrate that hope does not need to be an inexplicably constant or unwavering thing in order for it to work wonders, to save lives or souls or however else we measure the success of hope. It doesn’t need to be linear, it doesn’t exist in a straight line but perhaps there is an elliptical element to it; maybe it is something we have to believe we will always come back to, thus allowing it to find us again.

As previously mentioned, there was no way I could be especially normal about how much I loved this book, it has all the elements of story theme and structure that I so love, and I found a strong need to annotate the pages as I read along.

Arborescence is the kind of book I want everyone else to read. I’ve had to stop myself from talking about it to people I know whose tastes are simply different and resist the urge to slip a copy into the letterbox of people I am no longer in contact with despite knowing they would find it interesting and that I’m still desperate to talk to them about books and ideas.

I think that’s probably a sign of humanity itself, a sign of life amongst the rubble of experience, of hope despite history, all that Arborescence so skillfully explores; green shoots of hope and faith that grow at their own speed, perhaps waiting for the sun to call them out.

This little love letter to Julia Armfield’s work will look at Private Rites (2024), Our Wives Under the Sea (2022) and Salt Slow (2019), and therefore will include some narrative spoilers. I cannot recommend all three books enough and urge everyone to give them a read before continuing to indulge me in making it through this post.

Where do I start? With the truth, I suppose. Armfield’s writing stirs something inside of me that I find difficult to articulate. It is more than the feeling of being entertained, being able to identify myself or even the recognition of creative inspiration.

Instead, there is something visceral about it. Something that causes my limbs to twitch and jerk while I am reading, as if my body is reacting to the very process that is the brain interpreting what it reads on the page.

I find myself transported in spirit to the worlds that Armfield so skillfully creates, even when those worlds are decaying, frightening and inhospitable. I think it is because of this that I find myself at home between her pages; being better suited to a world that is both more magnificent and yet stranger than the one we live on.

My soul feels a deep connection to water and so does Armfield’s writing, and in this similarity I feel I have found a home. Towards the end of Our Wives Under the Sea, Leah becomes more water than human, disintegrating through her wife’s fingertips, transformed as something altogether different from the person she was at the start of the novel.

Bodies of water, the ocean in particular, evoke a sense of rebirth, baptism or transformation. Even the rhythmic back and forth of the tide suggests something that goes away, will always return, but comes back as something a little bit different each and every time.

These themes feel so prevalent within Our Wives Under the Sea and are not unlike the state of being I experience when I find myself in any body of water. This is especially true when I am able to swim outside. The feeling of coming back out of the water as someone slightly different from the person who entered never fails to find me. This feeling, along with the chill of the water, seeps into my bones like a new marrow.

There is an otherworldliness to any body of water. I cannot help but recognise that there is something about lakes and our oceans, waterfalls and rivers that feel, in their own way, ethereal.

It is beautiful, really. Until it is not. Until we think deeply about the frightening reality that is our unknown ocean. That we have only explored approximately 5% of it and that there could be any number of secrets hidden deep below.

I adore the way Armfield also plays with these kinds of binary opposites until we find ourselves looking at a murky, backwash soup of the frightening and the mysteriously beautiful.

Throughout Salt Slow, which is a collection of short stories, and within Private Rites, a sense of morose supernatural coils itself around the understanding of human emotion and relationships.

In both books, we read heavy and nuanced exploration on the ways in which we love one another, especially within queer relationships, and Armfield uses the ocean and water to reflect an endless sense of potential unknowing.

The recognition that something or someone might appear as one dimensional or even shallow but are far more complex beneath the surface can be read in ripples throughout Armfield’s work. She has spoken before about writing queer characters and the relationship between the ocean and queerness, and she explores this so beautifully throughout her work.

I re-read Private Rites a few weeks ago and have since read many other brilliant books but my mind keeps coming back to Armfield’s work and the ways in which she captures a sense of folkish mystery that makes my heart sing. Those characters are still fresh in my mind, I have thought of them fondly as if they’re old friends, and I find myself struggling to remove myself from that world.

Should Armfield’s next novel not feature such an aquatic atmosphere or tone, I find it difficult to imagine that she wont turn her hand at something equally bewitching.

In the meantime, you’ll find me writing my own strange mystery. I hope you’ll get to read it one day.

You know the type of person that is just kind of good at everything? Those people that pick up hobbies or habits really easily. They can casually grab a guitar and strum a few notes or they nonchalantly mention every sport they actually play really well in.

I hate those people. I am not that kind of person. There aren’t a lot of things that I am especially good at. Which I find mildly infuriating, since I am someone who wants to try lots of things and gets excited at picking up a fun, weird hobby.

I’ve always wanted to be good at something like archery or fencing or roller derby or fucking silversmithing. The only time I’ve ever tried archery involved me almost piercing my own breast and a very stern look from the instructor, so that’s the vibe I’m usually bringing to new ventures.

It wasn’t until I started working with young people that I realised I’d finally found the thing I was good at. Whether that was working with mainstream teenagers or children with special needs, I had found something that I wanted to do for a job that I was actually good at.

Writing was always going to be the dream, it still is, but I felt relieved to be good at something that I cared about, a field I could actually work my way up in and still feel like I was doing a little bit of good in the world.

I ended up working for a charity whose culture had a tendency to become part of your identity and, while the work was hard, there was a real sense of collective job satisfaction. Being able to facilitate the inclusion of disabled children in activities or interests that they were otherwise unable to access was pure fucking joy.

Do you know what it’s like to take twenty children with various disabilities to Legoland on a busy Saturday during school summer holidays? I do! It’s carnage and chaotic, and you come up against plenty of barriers but it’s also hilarious and important, and I loved it.

I think back to that time, before COVID and other jobs, before c-PTSD, ADHD or Autism, before I became really unwell, and I don’t recognise the woman I supposedly was.

She was out there, secretly absolutely mental, but nonetheless getting to grips with catheters and gastro-feeds, cooking terrible pasta bake for thirty hungry kids during after school club, removing the potato from their jacket-potato, doing their personal care, legging it across main roads because one of them decides to do a cheeky runner and has no sense of danger, trying to get them to stay sat down in packed cinemas, arguing with ignorant members of the public, managing teenagers who were given too much responsibility, grieving the loss of children, monitoring kids with severe seizures and spending hours caring for children with challenging and violent behavioural support needs.

Sometimes I can’t believe that was my job. I’ll speak to former colleagues about our time working there and we’ll laugh at how much responsibility we were given, how often we would look across a room of chaos with wide-eyed disbelief and catch each other doing the same thing, and every memory is washed over with a sort of manic tone of hysteria.

I would get home from work and have nothing left for myself; no energy or tolerance for my own needs. Days off were spent recovering from what it took to be good at my job, letting people down by bailing on plans and beating myself up by wondering why I couldn’t juggle everything like everybody else seemed to do. I didn’t think there was any other way to live.

I was made redundant during COVID and it took taking another, only slightly less hectic, job to realise that my health was spiraling, and now I’m paying the price for pretending to be somewhat normal for thirty-odd years.

Turns out it’s really bad for you to repress everything. Who knew?

A couple of years ago, I took on an admin role at a creative university so that I could take a break from big responsibilities and work on finishing my novel (it’s finished, I’m in the query trenches, help me) but my health has been in steady decline and so my confidence has taken a bit of a beating.

I am really trying to commit to treatment for my health but I feel so overwhelmed by it all and so work aspirations have taken a backseat, and I don’t really know what I’m good at anymore.

I’m working-class, I grew up watching my dad work harder than anyone else, and so I just assumed that work would always be my top priority. The only way to pay the bills, obviously, but also a way to measure my self-worth.

I never thought I would feel too unwell to work. I’ve taken for granted that my need for money would always trump my health concerns, pushing through bad patches as best I could, but I have come to realise that existing that way is to live on borrowed time, and doesn’t the devil always come to collect their debt?

I took five months sick-leave last year. It was hell. I didn’t think autistic burnout was real until I read it in black and white on my assessment paperwork, that’s down to my own ignorance, where it professionally summed up that if I didn’t learn to stop masking all the time then it was going to kill me.

Still, I thought, if I wasn’t working, what was the point of me? How could I justify anything, spend a single penny, think myself worthy of help, if I wasn’t contributing to society in a way that made me feel a little more normal.

I’ve been back at work since the new year and I know that I need to prioritise health, I’m working on it, but I can’t help but question - if I’m not putting everything into work then how do I know what I’m good at?

Why does this freak me out so much? Perhaps it’s internalised ableism or my need for validation that I am not the worst person ever or that I’m terrified of being poorer than I already am or maybe I am still struggling to come to terms with how unwell I became, and how difficult it has been to claw my way back.

I think that it is probably a bit of everything, isn’t it?

It would perhaps be appropriate or culturally correct to say that I have learnt to find worth outside of a climate that values capitalist rhetoric but I would be a hypocrite in doing so.

While I don’t hold anyone else to the same standards or unfair expectations that I find myself trapped within, there is undoubtedly that voice in my head that wants to reinforce my fears of being judged as lazy and using my health as an excuse to shrug off responsibilities.

Yet, I ask myself, would I really work if I were to win the lottery tomorrow? Are me fears really about wanting to positively contribute to society or am I just frightened of being seen as disabled by my health?

Because the truth is that my disorders, conditions, whatever you want to call them, can and do become disabling. They are disabilities and I'm afraid to say that.

It's an ugly confession but an honest one. It’s ableism and insecurity, and low self-esteem. It's a contradiction of everything I ever fought to provide for the children I worked with. A mockery of what I ever told them to believe about themselves, and that is shameful.

But shame is a hell of a drug, isn’t it? It’s yet another thing to work on.

I want to be able to accept myself, my health, and still believe that I am good at things. I hope that some kind of youth work will be waiting for me when I'm feeling more capable or that someone might see the potential in my novel and give me a chance.

I hope that I might be able to prove myself good at those things, but wouldn’t it be marvelous not to feel the need to be good at anything at all?

Things I’m actually alright at:

- Bad accents

- Providing loved ones with snacks

- Throwing a strop

- Giving compliments

- Sofa naps

- Being hard on myself

- Maladaptive daydreaming

- Snogging

I don’t fangirl over a lot of people but Louis Theroux is one person I imagine I might lose my cool around were I ever to meet him. I don’t think that there is a Theroux documentary that I haven’t watched and I credit a lot of my curious nature towards communities outside of mainstream culture to watching his work in my late teens.

His newest work, Louis Theroux: Into the Manosphere, is a Netflix documentary that takes a look at the world of male online influencers peddling a “red-pill” ideology that encourages boys, as quoted by Harrison Sullivan aka hstikkytokky, “to be fucking boys, not soy boys or gimps”.

Not only does Theroux spend time with TikTok creator Harrison but he also focuses his attention on entrepreneur and internet personality Justin Waller and podcast host Myron Gains. All three men are known for their controversial opinions on gender, masculinity and the subordination of women.

Theroux's documentary isn’t the first to look at this topic and one might argue that he’s a little late on the subject matter considering how much media attention the likes of Andrew Tate have gained over the recent years in regards to misogynistic internet rhetoric.

Public figures and internet personalities likes Tate have been pedaling their particular brand of hate online long enough for us to see how quickly it becomes a part of mainstream internet culture, and drama’s like Netflix’s incredibly well-made Adolescence have taken inspiration from very frightening, real gender based violence against young girls.

In saying that, anyone unfamiliar with the manosphere or similar communities may find themselves suitably shocked by some of the more extreme or disturbing comments made by the creators in the documentary, but nothing I heard or witnessed was new to me. Which is in itself depressing.

Anyone working in education will have had a glimpse at the types of comments or themes that the likes of Sullivan, Gains or Waller throw around as if their audiences aren’t hanging on their every word. The kind of casual misogyny that stops being so casual as their audiences grow bigger but younger in age.

What I did find interesting throughout the documentary was that, at one point or another, when Louis was talking to Harrison, Myron and Justin in front of the women in their lives, there are moments of, what appeared to be, vulnerability.

In the documentary we briefly meet Harrison’s mother and both Myron and Justin’s partners. Time spent with these women is limited, I would have liked to hear more from them, but each gave an interesting peek into what connects the men’s online personas with their real lives.

There was a look in their eyes, a sense of fear or anxiety that their carefully crafted persona might come crashing down if Louis gets too close to these women. Were they afraid that the women in their lives would give away an insight into a part of themselves that contradicts the life they’re trying to sell?

Some react with aggression, like Harrison. Louis asks questions about Harrison’s homophobic and misogynistic rhetoric in front of Harrison’s mother, a woman he admits disagrees with a lot of his beliefs, and then moves on to ask about his legal issues - Harrison was, at the time, hiding from UK law enforcement after crashing his McLaren supercar and injuring three people.

He immediately becomes defensive, calls Louis a twat and proceeds to ask him politically charged questions that are irrelevant to the conversation in an attempt to capture a ‘gotcha’ moment; a way to lead his livestream audience away from Louis’ questions and towards a pack-like mentality of aggressive defense instead.

While throughout the documentary there are moments when Harrison’s energy is less than welcoming towards Louis and, more than once, he attempts to evade difficult questions, his reaction was certainly most defensive while in front of his own mother. It was almost as if he was embarrassed. He didn’t want his mum to be reminded of the charges against him or maybe didn’t want to appear as being judged by Louis in front of her.

Considering how much these manosphere influencers insist that women are subordinate, do not offer much use beyond sexual gratification and shouldn’t be trusted with pesky little things like the ability to vote, it is interesting to see a different side to them, a change in behaviour, when women they supposedly care about are in the picture.

Myron and Justin’s behaviour was less aggressive but nonetheless interesting when Louis spoke to their partners. Neither of the podcast hosts were particularly keen on their girlfriends being in the documentary, and Louis questions seem to stir an uneasiness between the couples, as if the rhetoric they spew either wasn't something the women really believe themselves or even take seriously.

It’s not difficult to imagine why neither men were enthusiastic about their partners being able to speak freely to Louis. It’s about control, isn’t it? The ability to not only control the ways in which their partner or family see them, but control over the narrative they’re looking to sell about themselves.

As someone who believes that gender equality is essential and that a patriarchal society stops men from ever feeling truly happy and fulfilled, I find it difficult to watch the men in this documentary and see anything other than frightened individuals who are either lost in a clickbait culture of lots of words and very little intelligence, selling their souls for followers or so insecure about their wayward feelings that the only choice is to double down on an ideology thay strokes their ego.

You can see it in their eyes. The fear, the panic, the desperation for control. It flashes bright behind the whites of their eyes and that is what I found most compelling about Into the Manosphere.

After a particular turbulent time of being treated very poorly by an ex-boyfriend, I read The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity and Love by bell hooks, as well as To Hate and Love Men by and both books really encouraged me to approach topics like the manosphere differently, especially as I was working with teenage boys at the time.

I would recommend reading these if you're feeling particularly hopeless about the level of misogynistic hate online, much like we see in Theroux's documentary. They won’t fix everything, of course, but they may help to grip a sense of stability in one’s own relationship with men.

The answers are, as always, the education and protection of children. Protecting girls from the hateful rhetoric found in the manosphere, protecting boys from such influence. It will take a village and, whether we like it or not, it is up to us all.

There was something about the marketing for The Bride!, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s latest feature film, that always felt a little off. The trailer promised a Gothic reimagining of Frankenstein’s electrified soulmate but the tagline ‘Here Comes The Mother Fucking Bride!’ gave me the ick.

It reminded me of Deadpool-esque humour. Relying on the cramming in of swearwords as a way to make teenagers laugh. Nothing delights a thirteen year old more than hearing Wolverine say ‘fuck’.

Nonetheless, the promise of Mary Shelly magic and Jessie Buckley’s undeniably enigmatic presence lured me to the cinema and, thankfully, there is actually a lot to like in The Bride!

With a script also written by Gyllenhaal, The Bride! takes us to 1930’s Chicago where a weathered looking Frankenstein (Christian Bale) asks Dr. Euphronius (Annette Bening) to bring an end to his crippling loneliness by building him his very own monster bride.

They happen upon the grave of Ida (Jessy Buckley), a woman murdered by low level members of the mafia, and bring her back to life so that she can be reborn as the Bride.

Unfortunately, Frank and the Bride’s union is anything but simple. Not only is Ida possessed by the ghost of Mary Shelly herself, determined to tell the story stuck inside of her, but her former association with the mafia leads the couple straight into chaos and calamity.

The Bride! is a melting pot of genre, style and theme, and while there are moments of brilliance where this works to prove Gyllenhaal’s strong directorial eye, overall, the film feels more messy than masterful.

The surrealist moments that tear at the seems of one narrative layer, allowing us to fall into another, were particularly enjoyable. Watching Bale’s version of Frankenstein’s monster being captivated by black and white movies, imagining himself as some kind of classic Hollywood triple threat, and then portraying him in a tuxedo and top-hat, dancing on the set of said film that exists in Gyllenhaal’s imagined world of The Bride! was charming.

Not only does it give us an idea and understanding of the kind of life Frank wishes he could live, one that, was he not a monster, might just be within his reach, but it also sets the audience up for the more wild and nutty versions of this split it narrative and genre focus later in the film.

Because of course there’s a dance number in the middle of a Bonny and Clyde-esque story, based on a film, which was based on an idea within a historically famous novel. See what I mean by melting pot?

These highlights within the narrative are visually pleasing and are reinforced by Bale and Buckley’s chemistry, as well as their strong performances, but it was difficult to enjoy them for very long when the pace of the film feels rushed in places but dragging in others.

Often, audiences would have benefited from being able to luxuriate in the 1930’s style and Gothic aesthetic within key scenes but it felt as if they were cut early to force in unnecessary scenes or character subplots.

While Frank and the Bride are making their way across the country, living a life of excess and scandal, they’re followed by detectives Jake Wiles (Peter Sarsgaard) and Myrna Malloy (Penelope Cruz).

While Cruz’s character Malloy fits nicely into the broader themes of women’s want for empowerment and feminine rage, Sarsgaard’s Wiles felt unnecessary and, honestly, just a way for Gyllenhaal to include her husband in the film.

Ida’s background could have easily been explored through Myrna alone, allowing for more time to be spent on Myrna’s character development, which is much more interesting than anything going on with Wiles, and a believable bond between the women could have been explained better and would have only strengthened some of Myrna’s decisions by the end of the narrative.

One concept within the film that still feels mishandled is the inclusion in Mary Shelly’s ghostly spirit within the narrative. It’s an interesting concept and the vision of Shelly’s haunting specter in the chalky shadows of the afterlife, the parallels between her and Ida, and Buckley’s performance as both are all brilliant.

Upon her being brought back from the dead, Shelly often breaks out through Ida’s mouth, forcing her way to the front of her consciousness, and these moments are fun to watch but they do not feel as consistent throughout the narrative as they should have been in order for the ending between Shelly and Ida to really pay off.

Shelly’s voice is clear in the first and final act but we lose her there for a while. It felt almost as if Gyllenhaal had forgotten about Shelly in the middle of the narrative and while, yes, this is where the Bride really begins to form her own identity beyond Ida, it felt as if Shelly would have had more to say in those big moments, especially considering the big themes of women’s rebellion.

In saying this, Buckley proves to really be in a league of her own, especially after having watched her bleed a little bit of her soul onto screen in Hamnet. She is beguiling as Ida, Shelly and indeed the Bride. Those quick changes in persona, accent and cadence are wonderful to watch, and take such control from Buckley as a performer, meaning she makes it look utterly effortless.

Gyllenhaal has clearly allowed her own imagination of Mary Shelly as a writer and woman to fully play with the themes from Frankenstein, as well as what Shelly might have wanted for her undeveloped characters and concepts, and the challenges of being a woman of such talent during the time she lived.

The Bride! is an ambitious film from Gyllenhaal and while the pacing and editing has its issues, there is nonetheless much to enjoy in the ways of Gothic mise-en-scene and tone, cinematography and performance.

Having left the cinema feeling somewhat bamboozled by the excess of all that Gyllenhaal attempts to cram into the runtime, I also felt mildly forlorn at all the potential that The Bride! struggles to meet; a strange mix of feeling too full and yet with room left for a dessert that never arrives.

Emerald Fennell has a vibe about her that reminds me of the kinds of girls at school who would make up a story about getting fingered by a boy on their family holiday just so they could bask in the attention of being sexually active while being surrounded by virgins.

Fennell took this vibe and poured it into her 2023 ‘eat the rich but make it horny’ Saltburn, which melted stunning visuals and rich use of colour with a slightly cringe attempt at poking fun at rich people while being a rich person herself.

People were either delighted or horrified at seeing Barry Keoghan shag a freshly dug grave but I can’t say that I didn’t really enjoy the film itself. I thought it was fun, Jacob Elordi is entirely charming to watch and I thought Fennell had a talented for making the screen look as delicious as possible.

Therefore, it was with an open mind that I went into “Wuthering Heights”, despite my love of the book and the relatively scathing discourse that has littered by Substack feed.

Bronte’s original text is a cautionary tale. It’s a ghost story that has its legs wrapped around a romance novel, squeezing the life out of it with prejudice, racism, elitism and bitter spite, and that is exactly what makes it so good.

Bronte’s Wuthering Heights is meaty and substantial but Fennell did not go into making her “Wuthering Heights” with the aim to mirror the source material, and lovers of the book, myself included, will have to make peace with that if they are to enjoy any aspect of Fennell’s work.

That being said, let’s get down to it.

The Good

Looking at Fennell’s catalogue of work as a filmmaker, it has always been easy for me to find things to like or even love, and while I have found it more difficult to identify enjoyable moments within “Wuthering Heights”, it really isn’t all so bad.

I really enjoyed Charlie xcx’s soundtrack and I’ve been listening to it all morning, morbidly repeating ‘I think I’m going to die in this house’ while hoping my neighbours don’t assume I am in a crisis.

Tracks like Wall of Sound and Chains of Love are particular highlights and I think Charlie probably has a better grasp of the tragedy between Heathcliff and Catherine than Fennell does.

Martin Clunes as grey-skinned gambler Mr. Earnshaw was one of my favourite things about the film. He is both wickedly funny and fairly disgusting in equal measure and helps to give us a glimpse of the lonely and harsh reality that both Catherine and Heathcliff faced growing up at Wuthering Heights.

Just as much fun is Alison Oliver as Isabella. I need to see Oliver in a central role (not Conversations With Friends) because she is just so enigmatic on-screen and radiates such strong performance in every scene she appears in.

The Bad

Let’s talk about the script.

While I am forgiving of those that stray far from source material, believing that it is the creator’s prerogative as to how faithful they remain, it did feel almost as if Fennell merely smelt the pages of Wuthering Heights and then decided to make an adaptation.

Fennell has hacked away at the most interesting elements of Bronte’s novel and only left herself with a juvenile reading of the relationship between Cathy and Heathcliff to play with.

The script reads as fanfiction and she merely dips her toes in the tragic waters of Cathy and Heathcliff’s mutual demise. I could almost imagine Fennell’s writing process involved grabbing a Barbie and Ken doll, roughing them up a bit and then smacking their heads together so that they could kiss.

She made so many changes that it does seem strange that she’s bothered with writing a Wuthering Heights adaptation at all. The characters that she does bother to keep within the story a stripped down to one dimensional versions of themselves, serving as nothing more than vehicles for mildly kinky erotica.

Perhaps if she had written an original screenplay, a tragic period drama, then “Wuthering Heights” wouldn’t appear so vapid a story.

Unfortunately, Fennell is a style over substance storyteller and I just needed more. There were some lovely visuals, interesting set design choices and pretty costumes but they’re beautiful distractions, aren’t they?

Without the weight of interesting, challenging substance then they appear as little more than pantomime props. I fear that these big budgeted, household-named films have become a navel-gazing experience for those involved.

You may have picked up on this if you saw any of the Elordi and Robbie press tour. They have very clearly loved making this film with Fennell, and that’s great for them, but while they were busy making shrines of each others characters and running across the moors in-between takes, was nobody asking whether they should have fleshed out the characters a bit more?

The Horny

Look, I’m a mortal woman and I am not above the cheap thrill of watching Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie ravish each other in the rain. As Fennell’s versions of Heathcliff and Cathy, both do a good job at lusting after one another and I wish we had been afforded more time to languish in the details of their intimacy over montages of them shagging in various locations.

There is a lot that I am not sure Fennell gets right about erotica or the sexual interests of her audience, again I am brought back to the idea of misplaced adolescent bragging over things you have no real knowledge about, but she does write her Heathcliff with the right balance of tender and cruel.

I think what we can take away from “Wuthering Heights”, audience reactions and online discourse is that there is a desperate need for more romance in our stories and our lives.

It did make me questions why a man has never breathlessly raced across the countryside on horseback to declare his love for me nor been so poetic as to shout “Be with me always—take any form—drive me mad. Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!” - don’t we all deserve to feel so insanely loved just once?

Yearning is horny, ladies and gentlemen. This shouldn’t be shocking news by now but Christ, where is the yearning in todays dating climate? Are we all too busy being petrified to fucking feel anything or be witness to feelings that we’ve forgotten how sexy it is to yearn and be yearned for?

At least Heathcliff, for all his fucked-up faults, openly desires Cathy above all else and is vocal about the ways in which he is devoted. That is why Elordi’s Heathcliff is so attractive. A character doesn’t have to be morally sound to be desirable and this is something Fennell does understand.

Also, it goes without saying that Margot Robbie is utterly stunning, she is radiant on screen and just beautiful to look at but she is a much better actress than this film suggests, but you cannot deny the delight that is being witness to her.

It’s all just a bit disappointing isn’t it?

I can understand how appealing this film might be for those that haven’t read the book and are looking for a tragic love story, I get it, but it is so wildly different from the source material that it almost feels disrespectful? I find it hard to believe Fennell even liked the book that much, and audiences are so much smarter than what the film is betting on.

She could have weaved some of those meatier, important themes, alongside her own style of hyper curated beauty, and made something both visually pleasing but intellectually interesting but, alas, I fear too many people told her this was a great idea because they wanted to be a part of it, rather than wanting to tell a better story.

What a shame.

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‘Wait - is this fucking play about us?’

I have only ever read one other book that mentions c-PTSD and so when within the first few pages of Overspill c-PTSD is established as a core theme, I burst into tears.

Luckily, I was reading from my own warm bed and so I allowed myself quite some time to cry over my own relationship with a c-PTSD diagnosis, experiencing every unpleasant symptom that otherwise lies beneath the surface of my somewhat-put-together-person costume. It felt as if someone was frantically clicking the refresh button attached to my trauma.

Despite this initial reaction, I was thrilled to see another book navigating the murky waters of c-PTSD. I hadn’t annotated a book for a while but I couldn’t not note down every time something within Overspill spoke to me in a way that was both confronting and comforting.

Truthfully, I could have highlighted something on every page, a specific line or piece of dialogue or prose that made me feel as if the second skin I wear to protect myself was being peeled back by a gentle hand.

It felt strange to be reading about a woman whose story is in ways similar to mine, and to recognise the kinds of thoughts, emotions and actions that have plagued my entire life.

Strange, yes, but nonetheless validating. Another reminder that even when you feel as if you’re unmoored in a very large, squally ocean, there are others frantically kicking their feet to keep from drowning too, those who might also appreciate knowing you’re not too far across the water.

Overspill

Written by , Overspill is a story about Sara, a woman coming to terms with a potential c-PTSD diagnosis, who is also attempting to date while navigating vaginismus. After a traumatic break up and five years of being single, Sara meets Miles and finally feels the spark of want back in her life.

Sara’s mind is a cacophony of contradictions. She wants Miles to kiss her but she’s terrified that he’ll try. She hopes he’ll touch her and yet she’s sick at the thought of the potential. Miles is just as confused but, at the risk of running back to commitment-phobe territory, he’s trying to understand and agrees to taking things very slowly.

However, the trouble with c-PTSD is in the name - it’s complex. It’s messy and non-linear, and relentless, and sneaky in the way its symptoms sometimes don’t even make much sense in relationship to the trauma you’ve experienced, and so nothing is simple for Sara and Miles.

Yearning For Intimacy

The way that Paradise writes about intimacy often left me with a lump in my throat and, while the world’s over-use of the word ‘triggered’ makes me sometimes feel uncomfortable when using it about myself, I found myself physically reacting to a lot of what Sara goes through.

Where Sara struggles to be physically intimate, I found that the way she talks about it felt so similar to the ways in which my c-PTSD has made it difficult for me to be emotionally vulnerable with others and therefore it was interesting to find myself often relating to both her and Miles, and in the way his own upbringing (none of us come out unscathed) effects his emotional availability.

When you spend your life knowing that there is something different about you, something you feel in the very marrow of your being, but have learnt to hide it all for fear of judgement or for all your shame to start showing, it becomes almost impossible to imagine that there is a reality where somebody will love the truest version of yourself.

As I read, I could feel this exact experience vibrating off everything Sara said or thought, and I couldn’t help but think about all the times I have been on dates or when I’ve met new people and it has felt as if I am watching myself from above, thinking things like:

This isn’t the real you. You’re not actually like this. Don’t bring up the weird things you like. Don’t let them know you’re mental. I said don’t bring up the weird documentaries you watch! You don’t actually laugh like that. Do you think they can smell the different on you? You can’t keep this up. You’re being false. What did I fucking say about the documentaries! Congrats, you’re going to die alone.

Paradise manages to capture the soul crushing exhaustion of trying to constantly keep it all together and the bliss of finding someone you at least want to be yourself around. Sara wants to try with Miles. She wants to be a normal person who does normal things and I felt that in my bones.

I find it really hard to make romantic connections, I have to really like someone to want to flash them the soft and gooey but scared shitless side of me. I’ve only ever really felt that way once as an adult and when you lose that, when things don’t work out, it’s especially hard to keep putting yourself back out there.

Paradise taps into this fear through Sara with such clarity. Sara has so much fear that things aren’t going to work out with Miles, that she might never be able to be vulnerable with him, that its hard for her to see a way in which she might find happiness with herself, let alone with anyone else.

The Loneliness of Being Traumatised

Despite the differences between Sara’s story and my own issues, so much of how her c-PTSD presented itself was incredibly familiar to me and I don’t think I’ve ever read anything so akin to the real experience of trauma, how it shows up every day in ways that become your twisted version of normal, and the many ways in which it can leave you feeling very much alone.

Now that ‘therapy-speak’ is so ingrained in our every day vernacular, having diagnosed trauma can make you feel a little ridiculous. You start to think that if everybody has been through trauma, then why has mine completely derailed my life, my upbringing and continues to be a risk to my future?

You read a lot about people trying to regulate their nervous systems now but when you have c-PTSD, when trauma in your childhood has altered the way your brain was supposed to develop, regulating your nervous system sounds like something entirely unattainable and that is a lonely place to be.

Not only do you feel like a weaker version of the people around you, it can also make you feel like a terrible friend, especially on those day where keeping your shit together is really about keeping yourself alive.

You can’t really relate to your friend’s problems because theirs are normal. They’re no less important than your own, of course. You know this, it makes you hate yourself to think any other way, but it can be hard not to feel like your trauma is the elephant in the room when you’re trying to support your friends.

Sara doesn’t want her friends to feel as if they can’t come to her for support just because she’s carrying around this enormous pain but, at the same time, she doesn’t want to include them in her hurt because they can’t understand. It’s a lose/lose situation.

This felt especially significant to me and certainly applies to romantic relationships, and you can see this in the way Sara dances around her trauma when trying to communicate with Miles.

She is constantly anticipating the moment when he realises that she isn’t worth all the trouble, that he is better off finding a normal woman who isn’t carrying around so much emotional baggage and that maybe she is just better off calling it before he has a chance to disappoint her.

I will never forget hearing an ex-boyfriend say that he didn’t think he could live the kind of life he wanted with me because of the way that my mind worked.

I remember thinking how I had hardly shown him even the shallow waters of all my mess, my trauma, and if what he had seen was enough to send him running then how was I ever meant to be properly vulnerable? How could I feel safe enough to let all my tightly wound pretense slowly unwind? How could I even want to after that?

The thing is, he was probably right, you know? Things would have taken longer, he’d have had to be patient with me and let me be brave in my own time, things would have probably looked different to traditonal relationships, and I suppose not everyone is equipped to do that.

That can be true and sometimes that can be understandable, despite it hurting, but it doesn’t make living a life with c-PTSD any less lonely. More than one thing or feeling can be true at once.

Without giving too much away, by the end of Overspill, it felt like Sara was coming to terms with living with c-PTSD, even if she was still in the thick of understanding and recgonising all the ways it effects her, and I appreciated how open-ended that was.

Living with substantial trauma doesn’t just go away. It’s a really hard part for other people to wrap their heads around, that it exists alongside you all of the time. Some days are better than others, sometimes it is a lighter load and sometimes you feel crushed under the weight of it.

Books like Overspill, writers like Paradise, are reminders for me as to why I want to write books and why I haven’t given up on my own manuscript yet. Writing feels like the only way I can allow myself to be emotionally slutty without having to rip open my wounds to the world face to face.

I don’t have to fall back on unhealthy coping mechanisms or masking how I really feel when I write. I can be as vulnerable as I hope to be with another person one day without that overwhelming fear of rejection.

That is what makes stories so special, isn’t it?