I’ve somehow escaped thinking about this. Not purposefully, but completely by accident. My adolescence is coming to an end and the teen title will fall off the edge of my age but it seems to not have happened in my head yet. I’ve been subconsciously dodged the idea of becoming a true, no-two-ways-about-it adult. Busy at work, busy at home. My mind’s just been occupied by a bunch of other things that I haven’t realised.

I’m turning TWENTY!

In an hour and a half I’ll clock forwards from a One to a Two. I’ve only done this once before, ten years old and coincidentally with a booking at 10:30 am too - except this time it’s for my driving theory, since the police decided I wasn’t allowed a licence anymore. Fuck you guys. And then I’ll be going to eat at the sister restaurant to the one I ate at in 2016. God, I’m just a record on repeat aren’t I?

Whilst I’ve not been directly thinking about leaving the teenage domain, I have caught myself wondering what people notice about me now. It’s seeing who ID’s me when I want a 4 pack, or to get club entry, drink double whiskies or have happy hour margaritas. I think about it when an older person looks me up and down, do they see that I’m about to transition out of being a teenager - or do we all just act as the same hivemind teenage identity to them?

I think about the first time I was referred to as a man, sat on the back of a National Express when I handed a kid back his toy he dropped and his mother said to say “thank you to the kind man”. What do people see me as now, boy, or man? It’s starting to dawn on me a little now. I’m actually getting older. As we all do. But now it’s happening to me. I’m not the young little teenager now. Well, I am, but in about an hours time I won’t. When you read this, I’ll be definitely 20, maybe much older.

Living in a shared university house has probably helped to curb these ‘getting older’ thoughts. Everyone was older than me there, as has been a consistent theme throughout my, August babes staying youthful whilst the rest all get to drive, drink and vote quicker than us, and now at University, the cycle repeats. My best friend here was born four years before me, which I love to remind him of. If age was an alcohol then it’s quite sobering to remind all your 20, 21, 22, 23 and 24 year old friends that you’re still a tenager, but now I haven’t seen them for awhile, I’ve moved back home, and time’s working as a liquor once again.

My friends have all gone through this exact moment, it’s hard to imagine what they all did in their final few hours of teenagehood. My mother’s texting me, a melancholy countdown as I become a bonafide adult. I’m moving out of home (again) in a few weeks, my own place for the first time, shared with my love rather than 5 others occupying the same university as me. That’s sort of been in my head the most, moving to a view of the sea, the sand, and where the whole space is mine and mine alone, the fridge untouched, chosen and managed by me. I say me, I mean us, but y’know, it feels like one.

I’m currently crafting my girlfriend’s birthday gift (which is in 2 days, oh how she feels I can’t imagine), sat on my sofa surrounded by gifts, mess, cables and glue. I’ve been watching Anthony Bourdain all day, seemingly a micro-obsession I’ve begun in the last few weeks, and watching a man now dead by his own hands live so honestly and selfishly has made me think about his mortality - it’s been a sort of guide to me. Travel, as far as you can, as much as you can, across rivers and seas and eat. Eat a lot, eat with the people you know and the people you don’t. Try foods you wouldn’t dream of; eyeballs, livers, hearts, whole insects.

I’ll take this advice, literally and metaphorically, because a man who has nothing to lose probably only tells the truth to you.

All my life I’ve never been one to obsess over age. I never considered aging up much except when I first entered this world of teenagerdom. I remember not wanting to, more than anything, because of Kevin and Perry (if you parents didn’t show you the skit, go and watch it, you’ll understand why I didn’t want to turn 13). I wanted to go back down, run away from it. I’ve never felt like that since. Not even now. Even when I was little, birthday’s weren’t really about getting older, but more about a midsummer’s event, bright sun, gifts and people around.

I remember wanting my 16th to be special because of Heather Hill’s sweet 16 in Diary of a Wimpy Kid. My actual 16th birthday was spent at Boomtown. A little different than you Heather.

Since that birthday I’ve spent my time writing a lot down, my thoughts, my imaginations, a bunch of stuff. This year so far I’ve also managed to keep an almost daily diary. I never realised how close those two words were in spelling. You know what I’m actually excited for right now? The Wordle on m birthday. I hope it’s a good word. Anyways, writing has kinda become the thing I do and love and such, and now I’m typing away and realising these will be the last words I speak as a teenager, and I think about everything I’ve ever said to anyone, and I wonder how that reflects on me now. It’ll get written off as me as a teenager, but now that excuse is gone. I’m a big boy now; as that mother said, I’m a man.

‘Man’. Scary word that is, much more than ‘Twenty’. I can handle ‘Twenty’ fine and dandy but being a ‘Man’ has so much around it that I don’t even want to contemplate that. I’m not scared of this big 20, I’m just a little daunted. I stood and looked at myself in the mirror before I got in the shower this morning fully naked and just looked at everything. I took a proper look at my face and imagined 19 turn to 20 like those old flip clocks. Did I reflect the number 20? Did it suit me? I have no idea. But I got big PANG when I watched it turn to 20 in my head. I got in the shower quite quickly after.

Does it suit me? I’m about to find out! Isn’t that exciting. I think it is. I think there’s so much potential to 20 and beyond. It’s very promising, and I don’t intend to waste it. This is so much bigger than a New Year’s Resolution, this is my own personal new decade, private to me, and Magic Johnson. Happy Birthday to you too Magic.

What did the Drop Nineteens say about being Nineteen? “How serious can it all be?” I kinda forgot to keep that mentality this last year, I’ve been very serious and worried and thinking I’m not on track to what I want, but really, I have all the time in the world. I’ve visited countries with just my friends, I’ve moved out, I’ve found a signature cocktail (Hi Johnny Silverhand) and I’ve gotten a tattoo. Everything has been unserious really, I just gotta remember.

I started to discover who I am, properly, being nineteen. Who I am when I’m with people, who I am at work, who I am alone and what it is that I do. I’ve been more vulnerable, more scared, more open and more loose for the first time in my life. I turned nineteen with a Guinness in my hand, and through the year I’ve been a drunk wreck and a sober rock, I’ve let myself relax and I’ve held myself up stone-faced. I’ve been trying to learn what it’s like to be an adult. Saddle up and take some responsibility. It’s a whole lot of learning when you’re 19.

What I’m getting at is that these last words of being nineteen… they mean a lot to me. I think this is the best I’ve ever felt in my life being nineteen, and now it’s going to go before I’m quite ready to say goodbye. I’m cramming in everything I’m thinking and wanting to say but I can’t get it all out. That’s just what it’s about though, things leave us before we’re ready, so we have to be happy with what we’ve done, happy with what we’ve said.

I’m happy. I’m very happy. I’ll welcome twenty the same way I’ve welcomed the rest of my life. But it’s the first time I feel like I have to truly say goodbye to something too. I’ve never felt grief before, whether that’s lucky or not I don’t know, but these final 10 minutes are ticking away now and I feel like I’m ready to mourn.

It’s midnight. Goodbye Nineteen. I loved you a lot.

Each year, I like to become more familiar with music. That sounds quite regular and normal but what I mean is that, I like to set myself little side quests to explore during my free time. Life’s always better when you treat it like a video game. In the world of songs and music I set myself ‘Musical Quests’ and these are artists, bands and genres I want to (hopefully) learn and be familiar with by the end of the year.

Whether it be an artist I’m seeing live, a musical act I’ve only just discovered, or a musician I want to know inside and out, these quests are designed for me to choose how much I want to listen to them. Sometimes, I’ll do their whole discography like I did for Elliott Smith and Coldplay, other times, its just greatest hits, like I did for Curtis Mayfield, George Benson and Mazzy Star.

Looking back at last year, the big ol’ 25, my main quests were quite small, and basically included Lana Del Rey (I was seeing her live), Jason Molina, The Sundays and Alanis Morissette. I didn’t complete all of these because I got very distracted with CDs, Cassettes and my car, so I fell into the world of making custom playlists and listening to whatever was in my car. By the end of the year, all four of those had gone out the window and I was instead delving down the rabbit hole of Johnny Cash and the music taste of Dean Winchester.

For 2026, I’ve changed my overall goals and how I plan to go about completing and minmaxxing my side quests. I compiled a list of a few artists I want to become generally familiar with, but I also have a lot of albums I want to listen to, which is a much bigger, daily added mess.

This curriculum I’ve set for myself is listed below. I wanted to make this article primarily as a way for myself to remember what each album/artist means, why I want to listen to them, and to give others a bit of inspiration to create their own sidequests.

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Artists:

1. Madonna

   

What hasn’t been said about Madonna? I already think she’s pop’s greatest singer and all round genius. Madonna is my girlfriend’s favourite artists, and so I’ve learnt about her and her music through osmosis, but I want to engage with her music more this year. Most likely I will listen to all of her ‘greatest’ albums, and perhaps expand to her entire discography too.

2. Prince

After watching Purple Rain this year at my local cinema as part of their 35mm retro-screenings, I have become fascinated by his presence. He made me want to throw out my entire wardrobe and get a signature haircut by the end of the film, but rather than do that… I think I’ll just listen to some of his songs.

3. Iron Maiden

Say thank you Rob. Since the explosion of the Village Revival Records sitcom on social media, Rob’s endless promotion of Iron Maiden has sold me. I’ve listened to a few of their hits, but I want to get more. My dad said he used to love them, and painted their logo on friend’s bags for cash back in the early 80s. Thus, I’ve gotta do this one.

4. Buddy Guy, Muddy Waters, B.B King

Ever since I first got into Jazz a few years ago, I quickly learnt how much music from the 20s-50s that southern Black Americans have made which is buried in the modern consciousness. Then, from the Mafia 3 soundtrack set in New Orleans, I decided the blues was my next stop, also helped by the exposure that the blues got in Sinners. Buddy Guy’s role as the elderly Sammie made me seek out his music, and in an interview about the film, he gave some anecdotes and mentioned other musicians, and thus, I’ve got to take a trip down the Blues Lane.

5. The Rolling Stones

See, I just don’t know anything about the Stones, and I feel like that my fault, and I’ve got to learn. I already don’t care much for the Beatles, so I feel like I have to at least learn about the Stones as a band to make up for that. I’ve been listening to a handful of their music through my girlfriend, and that’s set me up to listen to more of their music at some point.

6. John Coltrane

   

This ties back into my jazz/blues commentary above, I have a handful of his records and I enjoy a lot of his music, I just want to delve deeper.

7. Alanis Morissette

She’s back! This is because I didn’t get through much of her music last year, and I’d love to go and see her live on her tour this year in the summer. I became a massive Jagged Little Pill listener last year, and that’s got to continue.

8. Led Zeppelin

This came from watching Supernatural. Apparently, they’re Dean’s favourite band, and lots of people seem to love Zeppelin, so this is kind of Iron Maiden/Rolling Stones adjacent to learn.

9. David Bowie

My mother’s always liked Bowie, and I feel like I hear every artist refer to him as an inspiration today. I don’t know enough about him and the whole musical journey he went on, so that’ll be a fun discovery for me.

10. Masayoshi Takanaka, Himiko Kikuchi, Junko Yagami

    

I started to really enjoy Takanaka in 2023, and now I have tickets to his show, I gotta become an expert. This also then ties into Himiko and Junko, who are fellow City Pop icons. Basically, this is an exploration into the City pop genre.

Albums

With my list of artists out the way, now comes a much more obscure and convoluted list of albums. I don’t actually know/remember why some of these are on my list, so I’m going to try to figure it out as I go along to help me remember, so I can actually listen with intent.

• I Want To Forget Everything Bad That Ever Happened, Ever - The Merchant Ships

  Analphabetapolothology - Cap’n Jazz
  The Power of Failing - Mineral
  Collected Recordings 1994-1998 - Strictly Ballroom
  Do You Know Who You Are? - Texas Is The Reason
  - Supposed to be midwest emo classics

• I Was Walking Through The Woods - Buddy Guy
  Feels Like Rain - Buddy Guy
  King Of The Electric Blues - Muddy Waters
  Completely Well - B.B. King
  Deuces Wild - B.B. King
  Queen Of The Blues - Memphis Minnie

  - Fairly self explanatory by the titles, these are part of my interest in blues!

• Parade - Prince
  Prince - Prince
  [Love Symbol] - Prince
  - Waned to watch the movie that Parade was from and the rest are parts of the overall Prince goal, really like a few singles off these albums so I want to listen to them fully

  

• Tell Me About The Long Dark Path Home - Newfound Interest in Connecticut
  - I listened to part of this a few years back and wanted to continue!

  

• 5’ll Getcha Ten - Cowboy
  - I stumbled across this 70s album and really loved a few of the songsm wanted to finish it

• Dreamboat Annie - Heart
  The Cars - The Cars
  The Kick Inside - Kate Bush
  Death Of A Ladies’ Man - Leonard Cohen
  - A handful of 70s classics to know, I’ve heard singles off each of these, and just want to see if there’s any more I love! My girlfriend know each of these too, so I’d like to join in

• Robbie Dupree - Robbie Dupree
  Ambrosia - Ambrosia
  Heavy Days Are Here Again - Frank Vandenkloot
  Christopher Cross - Christopher Cross

  - Yacht Rock recommendations I found online, wanted to broaden my horizons

  

• The Doors - The Doors
  - One of my mother’s favourite albums, never got through it back in 2021 when she first recommended it to me, so I wanted to go again. My girlfriend loves Jim, so it’s also worth it for that. There’s a few common themes here isn’t there?

  

• Rage Against The Machine - Rage Against The Machine
  - Have wanted to get into RATM before and now I’ll do it in 2026. I wanted to get into whatever genre you describe this as too, so this seems a good introduction.

• Riding The Storm Out - REO Speedwagon
  REO Speedwagon - REO Speedwagon
  You Can Tune a Piano, But You Can’t Tuna Fish - REO Speedwagon
  - I’ve been loving REO Speedwagon this year, so I wanted to go further into their discography

Conclusion

This is pretty much the jist of my music this year. Of course, this album list will probably increase by 50 something albums by the end of the year, so I wanted to benchmark it now so I have some direction. If you’ve stuck this far through the article then thank you because this really is more of a personal reminder and documentation than anything to tell people. More of an online journal entry so I don’t have to carry my book around with me to remember the point of my music.

I also wanted to write this to inspire others to be intentional with music. I love music in all forms and genres from a lot of different countries, and hopefully this can give you some ideas on how to gamify your life through music. Little quests are great fun, and I highly recommend this method, I’ve been doing it for a few years and have enjoyed it thoroughly.

Anyways, pop any recommendations in the comments, say hello, let me know what you think about my choices, and more!

Out of nowhere, it seems 2016 has made a revival in the hearts and minds of Gen Z. People seem to yearn for what was a simpler time; the end of the Obama administration, Instagram at it’s peak, the time before every YouTuber was a business and was still a person like us, the time that what’s cringe today was celebrated then. A handful of my favourite Instagram pages have been posting photo-dumps of their 2016, captioned with stories and reminiscing upon who they were a decade ago. I felt like a small piece of writing was necessary.

Whilst I’m young, heading on my way to 20 year old, I remember 2016 well. It was a decade ago that I turned a decade old. I turned 10 years old in August of 2016, and was surprised by my dad with a trip to New York (he’s a pilot, so he could do that sort of thing). This wasn’t some random trip with no purpose though, this was my biggest moment, this was to see WWE’s annual SummerSlam, that year in Brooklyn in the Barclays Arena. I’ve never forgotten a single moment. I’ve been a wrestling fan almost as long as I can remember, spurred on by cousins who loved the fact I was small enough and light enough to be thrown around in any which way and that because my body was still in it’s youthful prime, injury was almost impossible to occur. 2016 was my year, a year where almost everything was a dream for me, something to look forward to around every bend.

2016 was the year I first drank milk from a cardboard carton. Sat waiting for a flight in an airport I’d never been to, I was faced by a carton. We don’t have those over here in England, this was the prop of legends in film and Diary of a Wimpy Kid, which, for me, was the pinnacle of reading just behind Minecraft fiction books. A milk carton. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I just had to have one, and so my awkward little self took selfies with the carton, a moment I had to remember. And yes, I have remembered.

My parents divorced in 2016. I think? They never told me when it happened, the date or the month or whatever. I hadn’t lived with my dad since he had an accident, led to a stroke-esque illness and then, after a wheelbarrow of other events, my parents divorce. It never hit me as a kid, and it still, to be honest, hasn’t affected me greatly. My mum tells me that the day they got divorced was the same day she took me to a local wrestling show in my own town. Whilst my dad could fly me halfway across the earth to a 16,000 seater arena for a WWE show, my mum could drive me 8 minutes down the road to a little 1,000 person local concert hall. To 10 year old me, these almost felt practically the same. To my mother, she expected to hate it, had a few glasses of wine to try to sit through 4/5 hours of sweaty men and women wrestle, but turned out to enjoy it thoroughly and hasn’t said no to an invitation since.

2016 was the start of my last year in primary school. I wasn’t really getting on well. I was academic and smart as a button but the school didn’t fit me at all. I had food issues, refusing to eat what they served me at lunch to the point of concern. Luckily this never actualised itself into a full blown eating disorder, instead quite the opposite, it was used as evidence in my autism diagnosis because I reported the issues to be based on the texture and taste, not my own body image. School was a weird place, a very small place, somewhere I’d outgrown and was also mutually waiting for me to leave. I caused problems, didn’t listen to teachers and swore at the headmistresses daughter. The management didn’t like me much, and I can understand why, but to be honest, I was 10. Couldn’t you just… be the bigger person. I guess not.

I remember smiling a lot in that year. I didn’t drink much coke in 2016 and that was mainly because my mother told me it was bad for me, but I remember having a glass bottle, maybe for the first time, at a family dinner in the middle of summer, back when I made sure that all lemons were placed many metres away from my glass. I like lemons now. Funny how taste changes. I also wore New Balance, like everywhere. I thought Adidas and Nike were for sporty cool kids, kids not like me, and my mum steered me towards the NB shoes that I wouldn’t be parted from. I had this turquoise pair, looked so stupid with some of my clothes, but man I loved those shoes. Same with this neon yellow, red and blue pair. I miss those shoes.

A lot happened in 2016 that I learnt about later on in life. Things I missed that I wish I was older for. Kenny Omega’s G1 run (a wrestling thing), the Golden State Warriors/LeBron James, Music (I literally didn’t listen to music aside from what me and my mum would jam in the car on the drive to school). There’s so many things I would’ve gone back and done if I was older. But I wasn’t. I was 10.

Happy 2026 everybody, I hope you all have a great pondering on what’s gone on in the last ten years, and I hope they’ve been good to you all.

In

- essaywriting
- volunteering
- voicemail (call your friends!!)
- pocketwatches
- kalimotxos
- nakedness (embrace it alone)
- flickr
- getting your grandparents to write about their life
- walkmans
- finishing your scripts
- boots on men
- not rushing a tattoo decision
- doing your dailies
- mubi
- photo cleanse (you need the storage)
- cyanotypes
- pottery makin n’ paintin
- structurally changing the way we measure and live in time and personalise your own calendars so we are no longer bound to the ‘new year’ not being in the newest part of the year and making the 13 month calendar a reality

Out

- nylon blends
- not being lighthearted (i’ll learn)
- the mould in my uni house
- performing being ‘niche’ (for the love of god find your own interests)
- netflix
- bad period piece films
- shaved almonds (i cant hack it)
- hot yoga (why are you sweating that much?)
- university not challenging you
- cheap beer
- flooded showers
- unmotivated blackout drinking (savour the feeling)
- middle aged brits in sports attire
- mothers wearing those puffers down to their knees
- movies with no shadows
- steak and eggs
- sportsbooks and polymarket
- MAGA (for the 10th year running) + AI (a new mainstay)

Hope the new year treats all of you amazingly - this list is condensed, i could go on a while <3

Låt den rätte komma in (Let the Right One in) is a Swedish horror story not built on the traditional foundations of a vampire story that we’ve come to accept in the modern day. Within this film, there lacks the senseless violence, gore and terror that we find in typical, contemporary vampire media, and instead find a film based on the opposite principles, that vampires are lonely. This film represents vampires as suffering creatures, and it does this by opting to choose a different perspective on vampirism – that of a child.

What must it be like for a child to be afflicted with the curse of having to survive as a killing machine? This is the story of Eli, a girl with the appearance of a twelve year old but a mind much older. What does one do when in their young years they fall ill to a sickness that makes them immortal in the most draining way possible? That is what LTROI asks us as viewers – how do we feel watching a child cry as they eat the only food they can survive off?

Each murder is a transaction, viewed as a simple, miserable murder, rather than hunting. Eli lives in almost complete desolation, her flat is empty, basic, and almost completely lacking in furniture, and she lives with a man we never really get to understand, Håkan. Eli is bedridden most days, and Håkan does the work for her to keep her alive. Murder. He ventures out in the black abyss of the snowy Swedish landscape to find somebody to drain the blood from, corrupting his soul and his existence to provide for this child who can’t even get up without his help. It’s not a hunt like we find to be increasingly common, it feels plainly illegal.

I have never seen Vampirism displayed like this before, where it’s so debilitating and weakening that a mortal must go out and get the food for the vampire. Vampirism is constantly glorified in modern media, and none more so than in Twilight, which was released in the same year as this film, a film which took this centuries old theme and watered it down to glowing, day-walking superhumans that play baseball. Let the Right One focuses the camera using a different lens, it focuses on the children, the ones who ‘aren’t supposed to be vampires’.

We follow two protagonists, the twelve year old bullying victim Oskar, a sweet kid with a platinum blonde haircut and an anxiety around him that makes us feel like you want to whisk him away to live in the worlds happiest place. He’s living in a dysfunctional household and almost on the verge of a mental break when he meets Eli. The two become close friends, and then even closer still. He does not initially know what she is, and she loves him for that.

This film takes almost a complete inversion of Nosferatu (2024), which reignited my interest in the vampire medium. Nosferatu’s remarkable use of vampirism as a metaphor for sexuality and domination couldn’t be more different than what LTROI does. Whereas Ellen Hutter could never be free from the grips of Count Orlok’s conquest, could never escape his voice and his infection, Eli is completely and truly alone. She immediately tells Oskar that they cannot be friends, in a frank and unemotional way. She has placed a wall around herself, a wall designed to not hurt anybody but her, and she refuses to become friends, become close to anyone, knowing in however long she’s been alive that everyone ends up alone, betrayed, dead.

Set in the town of Blackeburg, It’s hard not to feel lonely, especially in winter. As per its northern placement, the hours of sunlight are limited, yet at night the light still always seems to be around, reflections of lamps, streetlight, moonlight, always gleaming off the thick snow that never disappears. Almost like a place designed for a vampire to live in, yet, it’s not. The setting seems to increase the intense loneliness, isolation and depression that vampirism really is.

This is classed as a horror film, but it only remains like this on the surface. In reality, this films balances the horror elements with that of a budding love story. A hopeless, tragic telling of love, a superbly powerful rendition of the true pain that supernaturality brings to not just the beast, but the ones that surround them – Eli does not even believe she's a girl, whether that's from her vampiric tendencies or from how detached she's become from humanity, now stuck forever as a 12 year old- she seems to despise herself. Oskar plays into this by being the companion she needs, the boy who loves her for being ‘Eli’ and not being afraid of the vampire within. He never once fears her, and she slowly gives him the strength to fight against the physical oppression he receives at school.

Her violence, until Oskar, came out of necessity, out of survival. However, when the bond between them forms, we see that violence we have come to expect, yet it’s not senseless. When Oskar is almost taken from her, she retaliates with the most vicious attacks of the entire film. The bullies of Oskar half-drown the boy after he retaliated on a school trip, with an older brother of his main bully being the perpetrator of the violence. This pool scene is quite frankly the biggest horror of the whole film, because of the way these bullies demean and make this boy truly fear for his life. Yet they are the ones who must fear, because these are the boys who will end up losing theirs. The attack is vicious, beheadings and limb removals from a 12 year old girl.

It is horrifying to see what this “visually-innocent” girl is truly capable of, and here is when we get a glimpse into the parts of vampirism we usually see highlighted, but reside in the subtext of this film. Rarely did we see direct violence from Eli, but this scene is what reminds us that she isn’t human (despite her flight out of the hospital that Håkan is in after his acid attack). She is not a girl, she does not go to school. She is a vampire, and Oskar is ‘lucky’ to have her to protect him, because in any other scenario, these bullies would have made him dead meat.

Oskar is the supposed protagonist of this story, but to me, he is just a side to the tale of Eli. AS he slowly falls for her through the turmoil of his family life, he must take on the burden of being her second, someone who is tasked with the care and love of a being that will forever outlast him- a curse just as much as never being able to walk in the sunshine. However, this film doesn’t ignore the true tropes and traditions of vampirism, and this is most notable in the scene where Oskar doesn’t invite Eli into his home, jokingly/teasing by saying "What happens if I don't invite you in?". Eli simply slowly steps into his flat and begins bleeding from her eyes and ears, a horrific visual that feels even more terrifying from the blank eyes of a twelve year old girl.

Let the Right One In is, as one review puts it, an “almost existentialist coming of age drama that explores the limits of friendship, family and love”, and part of that is it comes to the conclusion is that there are no limits. No limits to what Oskar would help her with, no limits to what Håkan would sacrifice, no limits to what bullies will pull apart, and no limits to what vampires can do, especially when those that treat them as the humans they once were, are threatened.

You rarely feel sympathy for a character designed around evil, murder and superstition. This film is the exception. Whilst we watch a vampire kill children, a middle aged man pour acid over himself to hide his identity, a family ignore their poor, bullied 12 year old boy, Let the Right One in shows that despite what the horrors and violence that a vampire is capable of, the worst ones are still the humans.

I hope you enjoy

i want to turn into you, desire -
to take on the shape of the glimmer
the fire that will never become dimmer
curl and burn up and swallowed on the pyre
with an essence of light and colour
all extracted and pulled from my innards,
through the skin, a knife aiming inwards
without an incision at all, nothing rougher
and my form stays and lays intact and untouched

floating as an orb of feeling and craving
an iridescent bubble shining whilst containing
such power and longing left clutched
by hands unowned by a body
the physical turned invisible
morphed and transmissable
and sent across to the lobby
where the mind sits in wait for its new host

as it turns into desire and finally becomes a reflection
of whatever selection of items that holds its affections
to see what the spirit yearns and squirms for the most
the breaking and peeling and aching won’t stop
the horror as bones snap and blood vibrates
muscles tear and the flesh dehydrates
drained and strained, the body simply drops

and up rises the orb of desire staring at the mirror,
to turn into you is so wonderful, so beautiful, so cruel
desire is excruciating and still, desire is the fuel
yet the reflection in that mirror is no clearer
its murky and its blurred, scratched and dull
the orb so bright cannot be seen, only felt
the power that it brings is a hand dealt
onboard a ship but now with no hull

How did we get here though? Well I’d already been worn down creatively from a variety of reasons - but when the break hit and I’d submitted my poetry assignment, my critical piece, my prose assignment and my self-reflection? It all got zapped away.

You know when you finally get free time after so long waiting for it just to sit and do nothing? Yeah, that was me. The time I had off was what finished me off. A shovel planted in the ground and my body lowered into a premature grave. No last words on my gravestone, I hadn’t written them it seemed.

But I had a good Easter. It was fantastic in many a way. It was most definitely joyous. It was quality time spent with my love, my friends, and my family. All it wasn’t… was creative.

This response is normal from a uni student after working hard throughout the term, and whilst ‘burnout’ seems to be on everyone’s tongue these days… I really don’t think I fit that moniker.

I don’t struggle with motivation, I struggle with discipline. I find myself increasingly susceptible to distraction rather than using that opportunity I’m given. I’m full of ideas and ready to start writing, but then a distraction comes along and… *poof* I’m 4 hours deep into my game.

This exact thing plagued my revision system at GCSE and then reared its head again during A-Levels. However, each of those times I wasn’t distracted by a gaming console but rather… creation. My writing was how I coped, spending my time writing 50,000 words of a novel when I couldn’t be bothered to study biology and history.

But this easter my distraction was no longer art, instead my distractions turned their back and betrayed my creative ways, and thus my writing began to suffer. The victim of my focus was not academia anymore but the very words I used to distract myself with.

There’s an ease to looking towards my bedside table and grabbing the white controller that always catches my eye. It’s so much more simple then taking my laptop out, charging it, reading what I’ve written and continuing on with rhyme schemes I struggled with and characters I don’t believe in yet. That is what my Easter Break contained. My controller getting the better of me.

Yet University? Well. That’s how I recover.

Institutions have always kept me afloat, stimulating both focus and determination to complete the goals and projects I set myself. The third space theory seems to ring true; I push out industrial amounts of words per minute and poems that roll off the tongue in that place. Whether its the Arts Bar, the Library or the Classroom, my university extracts every piece of artistic energy I have and puts it into good use.

These areas are designed to stimulate us as students, to get the work and extract that productivity out of us. In fact, I’m writing this article outside in the sunshine of my university as people walk past, all students coming and going from classes. This place was made to get us to work, to create, to design, to draw and paint, to stitch and sew, to write and perform. Thus, that is what I’m doing.

Easter break was filled with distraction from my PS5 and a combination of work, socialising and trips away. My friends all trickled back home from across England and my girlfriend and I got to spend so many hours together. In the free time I did find myself having, My PlayStation was just the easiest thing to do. I hadn’t got the effort I was used to having at university, where I had my friends admiring the volume of work I put out whilst writing one of my six projects in every second free that I had.

I felt deeply disappointed in myself. It upset me that I hadn’t written a word, not a single plot advancement or finally finishing the experimental poem buried in my portfolio, Each project I’d started sat undone, unfinished, uncared for. I didn’t really know what to do, where to turn or how to process it. I just told myself I would eventually - and then I didn’t.

With me being back at university, I’m writing again. This article is proof of that. I have different goals now, I like to write and I like to read and I need to let my mind and body do that, I need to appreciate what I love. This is what I’ve chosen to do. So why wasn’t I before? I’m not certain, but it’s back now, and I’m going to try my hardest to ignore that white controller, and pick up the silver keyboard.

Burnout is an interesting thing to look into. Many people get crushed by the weight of work and expectations, along with the issue of working as hard as they can and then their brains must cool and rest. Yet I never found myself burnt out creatively before. I’ve felt it many-a-time in academics, but creation has been a consistent thing in my life. University is what keeps my brain disciplined, and with an institution set up to learn, to grow and to progress, it works exactly in my favour.

I cannot be the type to work from home, to write in my bedroom. The Institution of University stimulates me more than anything, and now you’ll be subjected to its influence on my Substack.

The Girl Next Door: the early 2000s ‘raunchy teenage comedy’ classic loved by so many. In reality, it’s a thinly veiled exposition of the benefits men get from exploiting women.

In this multi-part written piece entitled “Pornstar Girlfriend”, I want to delve into my thoughts about this teen comedy. Weaving both the narration of the film with my own insight, I’ll aim to show my qualms and issues with the film, and in each part, reach a conclusion at the end to go deeper into my thoughts.

Part 2: Pornography and Exploitation: The Expected Climax

At the end of the first part of this series, I mentioned how because of Matthew’s actions, Danielle is dragged right back into the world of shame, exploitation and objectification that she tried to escape.

The world of Pornography.

We as the audience know that Danielle is an ex-pornstar, that’s the whole premise of this film. But Matthew does not, and Danielle makes this choice purposefully. She wants to change.

Matthew does find out. Not by scrolling whatever the 2004 version of pornhub was, not by going to an adult film store and scrolling through all the racks of VHS, not through peeling the sticky pages of all of his porn magazines, but instead from his buddies.

Eli, the even hornier one than Matthew. found out first. In fact, he’s got a VHS tape of one of her films, and he watches it himself. Another addition to the list of undermined perverted events of this film, a friend jerking off to his friend’s girlfriend.

The porn clip itself isn’t shown in detail in the film and they make the whole ordeal seem to be unappealing and comedic. The ‘plot’ to this porno is that Danielle is the final test for a karate student to proceed, saying that he’ll need “stronger wood” to deal with this challenge. She strips naked in the dojo and we see close ups of her back and hands holding her. The whole clip is treated as a joke - but the turn of events is what fucks this entire film’s premise. Literally.

Matthew freaks out, he’s angry, he’s hurt. He says he’s never going to see her again, he genuinely crashes out over this. Matthew’s overreaction to his new girlfriend’s old job says more about him than her. He sees her differently every time she’s on screen. Matthew now imagines every pornographic scenario imaginable, like giving his dad a blowjob, or playing with his mother. It’s supposed to be comedic but it’s just fucking weird, a clip Sigmund Freud would have a field day with.

Eli: Matt, she's a porn star! Okay? Take her to a motel room and bang her like a beast!

Matthew: Eli, I like this girl.

Eli: And you can still like her with your penis inside her. Matthew, I tell you that you're going to regret this.

[pause during scene change]

Eli: Goddammit Matt! I swear to God if you don't fuck her, I'll kill myself! Matt! Please! Please, Matt! Fuck her for me! For me!

Why does he think like this? Because she's an ex-pornstar. Therefore in both these two pubescent male minds, she has no thoughts but fuck, fuck, FUCK!! And what's the advice for being in relations with this woman? Yes!!! Get her drunk and always touch her! Such dear advice from sex symbol Eli. Oh wait, no, he’s just a porn addict whose jerked off to her already.

Take her to a motel! Fuck her! Because she definitely wants that! Because a woman who was a pornstar definitely only wants that and nothing else! That's why she quit porn... to fuck YOU Matthew!

The Motel Scene and ‘D’s return

Danielle knows Matthew has found out. He acts differently, talks differently, and wants to take her to a ‘cheap motel’ for a reason he doesn’t specify. She gets it, she knows the drill. She knows the drill so well that she just goes along with it - He’s still awkward, naïve, unsure, but she’s confident, she’s ready. Already taken her jacket off, laid on the bed and snapped into her persona - the one she wished he never knew about.

Danielle: “Do you wanna fuck me?”

With this one action, Matthew has brought back so much she wanted to leave behind. The innocence she had regained now tainted by her past, her blank expression as she utters words she’s said so many times and never meant. The rehearsed lip bite and seductive movements, slow undressing and arching of her back - he is shocked.

In her facial expressions, she flicks between looking both seductive and conflicted, like she’s trying to make sense of it all. Of what happened to the boy she thought was going to give her a second chance, not labelling her with all the stereotypes of a pornstar.

In the end, she accepts what is happening, I guess she just thinks “this is who I am” and succumbs to the pressure.

Danielle: “How do you want me?”

With that line, its sealed. She’s talking like she would to a director, on a set in front of the camera. He has taken the genuine ‘Girl Next Door’ and transformed her into the ‘Girl Next Door’ of a porno title draped in skimpy lingerie and a fictitious libido. Without knowing, he dragged her back into being the pornstar she didn’t want to be.

Danielle: “Isn’t this what you want? To fuck a pornstar in a cheap motel room?”

She finally has a brief moment of character that has been so lacking from the film so far. A moment of real humanity, where the woman who wants to escape porn comes out and finally fights what she’s been facing. The motel scene was a perfect opportunity to show that the woman was not just a name on the front of a VHS,

She showed the hurt perfectly. It wasn’t angry, it wasn’t fury, it was a look of being tired. Drained. Exhausted. Because the only man who had shown her reality, shown her love, let her be a girl, let her have her innocence, let her down because of a societal expectation that she could just be someone to fuck whenever he wanted and however he wanted!

A really great moment of character shown in such a small amount of time. That three minute scene and the 30 seconds of dialogue told so much about her character. She trusted him, but when she realised he knew, she didn’t fight it. She let it all happen, because really she knew that despite everything, the motel, the pool, the window, all of his behaviour stemmed from the very same lust that paid her to be in porn.

Matthew: Why didn't you just tell me?

Danielle: Because I didn't want to, okay? Because I loved the way you looked at me. God, do you have any idea how hard...

[walks away]

Matthew: Hold on!

Danielle: [shouts] Fuck you.

This entire sequence was a near-perfect way to approach the looming topic. The kid who doesn’t know what he’s doing, and the woman who knows all too well. This lapse of judgement sends her spiralling, and leads her right back to how she began in that world he had only just discovered.

Goodbye Danielle, and welcome back to ‘D’

Enter Kelly:

Following Matthew’s horny antics - we’re introduced to another man in Danielle’s life: Kelly. Some time after their motel trip, Matthew went to see Danielle, knocked on her door and barged in, apologising profusely and saying all he could. He’s aware of his actions, and he’s aware of how he’s made her feel. He’s a good kid- he just fails to consider that another man might be there.

The tatted up, wife-beater wearing, bad-boy attractive, mysterious associate of Danielle's. He takes an immediate liking to Matthew, a suspicious liking.

This is a very key point in the film. Kelly ushers in the complete switch of theme, plot and characters. With Kelly, the presence of nudity, scandals, pornography and exploitation increase in the film, and this increase is also exponential in Danielle’s life too.

Kelly is her former porn producer, the guy that got her where she was before she left L.A. Before she wanted to change, before she thought she could start new, “maybe go to college”. He’s clearly the antagonist of the film, yet also many of the audience’s favourite character. A weird line here, a man who exploits everyone he can becoming the fan-favourite. Fitting.

He represents a rift for Danielle. To him, she’s D, a quick abbreviation designed to keep her anonymity, reduce her to a concept rather than a woman. There’s now conflicted interests, and the position they play within her house shows this too. Matthew has just come through the door, he’s new, he’s fresh, he doesn’t know the way round. Kelly comes from within, he’s been in the house longer, he’s situated. This representation even within Danielle’s temporary home reflects so much-

Her soul is divided between the past and the future, from within the rooms of her house to just coming through the door inside. Porn, exploitation and objectification have it’s home already within her, but there’s something new, something healthy. Despite my own issues with Matthew and his peeping, it’s undeniable that he’s a good kid, with a good family and a positive future ahead. He represents goodness, innocence, youthfulness. There’s a battle between these two in Danielle, and right now Matthew’s losing.

He takes her and an increasingly naïve and out of his depth Matthew to a strip club- the scene felt incredibly useless to me, an introduction of the weirdest sorts, where Kelly, in his own element of nudity and advertised sexuality, gets to know Matthew. This scene shows how Kelly undermines Danielle’s own autonomy once again, she barely even speaks.

All is undone by Kelly - “Do you have any idea how hard it is", the feelings that a scantily clad Danielle brought up to Matthew in the carpark of a cheap motel- all undermined by him, his presence, his motives. In the film, this is the part he plays, someone who takes what you think and manipulates that feeling.

The song choice in the strip club feels very intentional, now that Matthew has put her in the same position that every man before him had, she feels used. She needs him, but she says nothing, she’s gone back to Kelly now. It’s very fitting for both the character and conflicts there.

We were on the cusp of Danielle’s character actually being built with her thoughts and personality prioritised. We only saw a glimpse of her emotional range so far, brought out by Matthew both positively and negatively. It would be nice for her to actually be fleshed out, her emotions shown. We almost had an opportunity for the film to focus on the actual girl next door, rather than pivot to a male-gaze fantasy. She could have had feelings and thoughts of her own! That'd be nice.

What Happens in Vegas stays in Vegas

Kelly did very well in his role as a porn producer, but I hated him for it. The film had an opportunity to structure itself completely differently, show Matthew working it out with Danielle, make it work between the two of them. I find it doubtful that after trying hard to hide this part of her, she’d call Kelly up and go back to the world she felt robbed her. But that’s the way they took it, they didn’t make this a romance, it became a rescue-the-fallen-girl scenario, a male saviour for a damsel in distress.

They didn’t want the character of Danielle to be her own person, fight her own battles and accomplish things alone. They wanted her to be a pornstar, and be saved by the good kid. Nothing more.

Kelly serves his purpose very well, and did exactly what he should be. He was a perverted director fixed on exploiting young women for his own financial gain. He gets his way around Danielle, reaches his claws back around her life and then the "D" from Danielle leaves - back to where she's 'supposed to be' in his eyes, where she is 'who she is'.

[Upon observing the cheerleaders and football players]

Kelly: Man, there is some talent here. You get those girls together with those assbags right there and shoot 'em humping at, like, a football game or at a prom, that video would sell - Fuck, I'm good! How do I get these ideas? It's like a gift, you know? It's like I can't control it

This bit of dialogue itself shocked me to my core when watching the film. It reveals a lot about Kelly, and gives a strong allusion as to how Danielle started porn herself. Kelly is a charismatic character, he’s the charm of receptionists, middle-aged mothers and… teen girls. He attempts to recruit a few from Matthews school, and some of them admit they’re not even 18 yet.

There it is! That’s the kicker! Not even 18. The film leaves it there but it makes us wonder - is this why Danielle never got a prom, wanted her youth back? Because she was groomed underaged, exploited for her naivety and now is left as a shell of who she used to be? She’s clearly damaged by the industry that thrives and profits off of women’s backs whilst they get left on the wayside. Its clear, she was violated. And who by? Kelly.

Because of Matthew's actions, she believes her abusive director, the guy that “went out with her” - and so what does Kelly do with her trust? Take her to Vegas for a porn convention. Make money off her.

Well, Matthew, Eli and Klitz, let's go to the porn convention to save her!

A sex-filled ‘paradise’

When the three boys arrive, it is like nothing they’ve ever seen. A sex-filled ‘paradise’ of lingerie clad, promiscuous, semi-naked or fully nude women. It feels so objectifying, so unreal, so exploitative, so money hungry, but the film almost starts to feel like a commentary on the misogyny and objectification of pornstars and the adult film industry.

Everything is bright and glitzy and colourful and extravagant and so insanely sexual at every level that its comedic, because remember, this is a teen comedy!

We find Danielle, known here only by ‘Athena’, and it really shows the difference in character between who Kelly’s D is and who Matthew’s Danielle is - from the hair change to the outfit change to the behavioural change and even the name change. There's a strict difference between the two, and we see why she'd tried to leave this behind-

Now she's been forced back because of this capitalistic greed by Kelly and new character Hugo Posh- both between Hugo and Kelly, Danielle is a pawn in a man’s game where women are expendable objects useful for a buck and a fuck.

We see the discomfort it brings her to see her life as Danielle brought to her life as Athena, but it's not explored once, just paved over. Let the men talk.

Matthew: I just wanna let you know, I know who you really are, and you're better than this.

Matthew originally struggled to grab her attention, the hundreds of men lusting over her in her shiny choker, black lingerie and bare flesh. This is not his world, he wants to bring her back to his own of youth and innocence. He calls for her, she barely registers him. Eye contact and she moves. He’s struggling to reach her. Until he throws a bit of scrunched up paper, and she catches it, opens it. Inside, her picture. And with that, she can’t stay on stage.

Matthew’s own cheapening of Danielle made her run back to this, run back to the violent greed of Kelly, who acts like friends until he fights him because it loses him money. It's all a violent mental shift for Matthew, changing from being scared to leave his friends at the beach to telling his friends to leave if things go bad in this unknown sexual 'paradise' whilst he chases her down - it highlights the dirtiness of the industry, all laced with comedy because that’s what this film is supposed to be, funny.

They can't take themselves seriously, they have to make it 'funny'. When Eli and Klitz sit backstage, they talk to a pornstar, and Klitz snaps into a character. He literally said “I get freaky” followed by “baby I’ll do things to you I wouldn’t do to a farm animal” - it's a 'funny' scene that takes the hypermasculine, objectification of porn, the laughably bad scripts of pornographers and the dehumanisation of the women, and plays it to be funny.

We get back into the pitfalls of the film, where Matthew speaks for Danielle rather than letting her have her own thoughts and opinions, her own character dynamics and her own choices. "He knows what's best" because he's the smart kid who fell for the pretty girl and DIDNT know she was a pornstar. Yippee! Such moral fiber man! They make him seem saintly even though it was his own actions which caused her to go back to the character of being D, go and force her into sexual exploitation. Whilst I do like that it's his actions which bring her out of it again, bringing the Danielle back, we cannot ignore the fact he caused it. This is not a redemption, just lazy storytelling. They don't even have her speak, let alone argue, let alone give her own interpretation of events.

It's not funny though, that's the thing, it's a terrible truth. It almost plays like a satire of it all, showing the issues with everything without actually saying they’re issues. The entire film always dances around the fact it could explore more, could be critical, could actually turn feminist if it had a different director. Of course, it doesn’t, it stays exactly the same and makes a comedy rather than a satire.

It just all has to be funny, not serious. This is a "raunchy teen comedy" - lets just get some cleavage on screen, that’ll be funny, right guys? Let’s not think about what we’re showing kids is ‘moral fiber’ and what the film misses completely about how school doesn’t define you, but your actions instead. He doesn’t save Danielle, he actively made her life worse and then fixed it, a problem and a solution.

This film is nothing but a cheap, entertaining exposition of porn and teenagers colliding, making it funny, but completely ignoring the damage its doing in terms of reinforcing stereotypes, pushing misogyny, and not highlighting the issues they are a centimetre away from exposing.

If you haven’t read Part 1, go back and have a read!

Thank you so much for reading. I hope you enjoyed, and let me know your thoughts in the comments!

The Girl Next Door: the early 2000s ‘raunchy teenage comedy’ classic loved by so many. In reality, it’s a thinly veiled exposition of the benefits men get from exploiting women.

In this multi-part written piece entitled “Pornstar Girlfriend”, I want to delve into my thoughts about this teen comedy. Weaving both the narration of the film with my own insight, I’ll aim to show my qualms and issues with the film, and in each part, reach a conclusion at the end to go deeper into my thoughts.

How it will work:

This part focuses on the opening of the film, where we see the Peeping Tom be rewarded for his violation of privacy, get exactly what he wants whilst his woman is left as a second thought, discarded.

I hope you enjoy part one, and go and checkout the other too! Join me as I explore my various thoughts on this controversial sex-comedy

1. The Peeping Tom's Reward - ‘Pornstar Girlfriend’: Pt 1

2. Exploitation and Pornography - ‘Pornstar Girlfriend’: Pt 2

Part 1: Peeping Tom and the Violation of Privacy

At 11pm on a Tuesday night I found myself scrolling Netflix. I wanted a lighter film to watch in bed after working all day, and I chuckled at the tagline for this film. A classic hook to get you into watching it:

A straitlaced high school senior rethinks his notions of love and friendship when he starts crushing on a former adult film star - Netflix

A completely intriguing plotline. What do you get when you cross the high-school president with an ex-pornstar?

I was intrigued. I hadn’t seen a film like this before, and I thought to myself it would be a funny, adult comedy to watch before bed. I did not expect this film to produce within me the content for an essay on the glorification of exploitation, objectification, pornography and lust.

Whether people love this film for actress Elisha Cuthbert and her getting undressed on the cover for films, trailers and posters; or instead for the larger-than-life plot that a nerd could actually bag a hot chick- many find this film a classic.

To me, I find this story has one message that shouts over them all.

If you want to do well in life as a man - violate a woman.

The Peeping Tom’s Reward

My first exposure to this film was not actually the film itself, but a 2022 video essay titled ‘The Ethics of Looking And The “Harmless” Peeping Tom’ by Pop Culture Detective. This essay uses a scene from The Girl Next Door, where our protagonist Matthew Kidman spies on his neighbour, Danielle, getting undressed in her bedroom.

The film opens as a classic teen comedy/coming-of-age story. High school class president Matthew cannot think of a yearbook quote, and feels incredibly gloomy in his graduation. He has been left out from being popular, he’s just the nerd who presents the boring details in class assembly, the butt of jokes, with his only friends being his two other, even more nerdy friends, Eli and Kitz.

Matthew’s smart, he’s a good kid. He gets straight As, he’s going to get a scholarship to Georgetown. He’s going to live a good life. But he imagines a life where he wasn’t there, where he did something more, broke a few rules, got the pretty girl he wanted.

That’s exactly what this film is. Doing more. Breaking Rules. Getting the Girl.

Matthew: “Moral fiber. So, what is moral fiber? It's funny, I used to think it was always telling the truth, doing good deeds, basically”

You see, he’s a typical kid though, he sits in his bedroom with his porno magazines, he jerks off too! This is the films first exposition of sexuality and pornography, showing us that whilst we do have this seemingly perfect student kid, he’s just like any other teen boy. Across from his window, he spots the exact type of girl he jerks off to just across the window, the conventionally attractive blonde 19-year-old who just moved next door, and what is the boy to do but stop and stare.

Put down those magazines and look at some real-life tits Matthew! That’s what we’re supposed to think, especially with the way they direct her getting undressed. It’s almost if it’s softcore pornography, and it’s unsettling. Laura Mulvey goes into this topic in her ‘Visual Pleasure’ essay, stating that “women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact”, from “pin-ups to strip-tease” to connote the properties of “to-be-looked-at-ness”.

We’re invited to join him because of this, and it’s the voyeuristic aspect of male-gaze cinema which brings this whole notion that it’s okay to stop and stare because of the way she’s dressed and how she acts much like the way men shift the blame of rape on women’s outfit choices.

She catches him staring and stomps to his house yet she does not tell his parents. Instead, Danielle introduces herself to his parents, and their stern tone is just a setup to build tension and nothing more. There’s a lack of actual development here, simply a way to make us feel relived when Matthew gets away with his violation.

There is no punishment. Her aunt’s away for two weeks, and so she’s housesitting for her. He faces no consequences from anyone here. He’s gotten away with it. He knows it was wrong of him to do, but he got to look at her and reap the rewards without his parents punishment. The audience is supposed to be… happy?

She saw him. She knows, but she said nothing. To Matthew, she's hot, heavenly, and home alone for the next 2 weeks seemingly interested in him. So what is a guy to do? He gets invited for a ride out with her. Of course he’s going to accept!

Thus immediately, Matthew is rewarded for his violation of her privacy. The viewing of her body without consent is left as a mere ‘boyish act’. Danielle punishes Matthew for spying on her by making him run around the neighbourhood naked at night. She embarrasses him gently, not enough for his actual violation. They both get on well immediately after, and now the barrier of nudity has been broken down. There’s no true punishment.

This ‘public’ (only two people see him) embarrassment is his only true punishment for this violation he commits - he gets barely publicly shamed. The scene is there to sort the audience’s mind out. To us, he’s been punished. He had to be naked in the street! How terrible!

But has he really been punished? No.

“So what’s the craziest thing you’ve done lately” - The Reclaiming of Stolen Youth

Matthew’s innocence appeals to Danielle, and so she forgives him for staring at her. That’s the whole storyline wrapped up. She doesn’t mention it once after that scene. Usually, a man peeping through your window would result in a police call, but she’s a different woman you see… she used to be a pornstar, so she’s different about it.

He’s rewarded further for this violation of her consent by the fact she actually starts to fall for him. He’s “looked at her in a way she’s never been looked at before” (ironic) and thus we can imagine her makes her feel like the innocence she’s lost from being a pornstar is coming back. She gets to live her youth again.

We get the sense that Danielle didn’t have much of a youth, but we’re never explicitly told. It could be read that she doesn’t want us to know, a part of her mystique, but really it’s a lack of development by the director.

For the audience, Danielle is already perceived as innocent and young in her actress. Elisha Cuthbert as an actress looks like a typical pornstar in the way that Brad Pitt looks like a typical discord moderator - he doesn’t. Thus all of the labels and the notion of guilt that pornstars are often plagued by and the stereotypes they’re given do not fit with her (i’ll go into this more in part 2).

Matthew echoes this type of appearance. The director stated in an interview that “If we didn’t get Emile (Matthew), I probably wouldn’t have made the movie.” His choice of a conventionally attractive man is a purposeful choice, because he suits her, because he looks innocent. Thus, he gets away with this violation because he looks innocent. I wonder how many times that’s been the case for a man getting off with similar violations in the actual world.

In many ways these two characters are alike, both in their type of appearance and in the sense that both didn’t spend her teenage years the way they wanted. It’s suggested later that Danielle was groomed when she underage, and therefore her innocence and youth were taken from her. Now, she sees a redemption through Matthew, she’s found a boy who likes her because she’s a girl. Not because she was on the front cover of Flesh-World Magazine.

The two go on ‘date’ to the diner and he finds out she’s single. There’s a bit of glee in his eyes and hers too and they build romantic tensions as Danielle draws a picture of herself whilst teasing him, telling him he needs to find a girl and describing herself physically and emotionally before pushing the drawing towards him, a hint he doesn’t grasp until later.

For the audience, they’re a teen couple falling in love. Despite the fact they’re brought together under dubious perverted circumstances, I do like this part of the film. The brief moment that Danielle is given her own character in the diner, one of her very scarce moments of dialogue and characterisation.

This moment of personality is undermined however, as I am reminded this film is one to support the male-gaze and not an actual story. Danielle jumps into a stranger’s pool at night and a worried Matthew doesn’t wish to follow, but once again, the sight of her flesh made him change his mind. He immediately stripped too, and jumped in the pool to join her. Not for her, but for him and his lustful eye. He might be a good kid, but it’s his sexuality which pushes him to do things.

In a reflection of earlier, they both get caught and escape to her car, driving to Eli’s house. By the time the two arrive, they’ve got dressed. Matthew fully clothed, dried and ready to enter someone’s home. But how do they address this scene? Does Matthew knock on their door, introduce her to them? No.

This is where the film takes a violent turn for me. This scene makes the film less about the romance and character, and back to the porn. Her wet hair, wet skin, wet clothes, tied up shirt, bra on show, low rise trousers - it’s like some sort of start to a threesome porno.

As Laura pointed out in her ‘Visual Pleasure’ essay, “visual presence tends to work against the development of a storyline”. Danielle is used fully for the purpose of the male-gaze here, even in her jest before she starts giggling and Matthew joins them all. They play it all as a joke.

The presentation of Danielle, where she talks seductively, flirting with them, asking if she can come in - its all a “joke” on porn, but its actually reinforcing it rather than criticising it. Matthew’s friends ogle her the exact way Matthew did originally, she’s the object to stare at. The prize girl that Matthew claimed for himself by looking at her first.

The audience becomes Matthew. Danielle is put in this position to be ogled at and she’s just “eye-candy” as the reviews put it. Laura Mulvey brings this up in her essay too, and introduces the notion that women in film can be displayed on two levels, either as an “erotic object for the characters” or an “erotic object for the spectators”.

When combined into a character like Danielle, we fuse these two notions together to share her sexualised objectivity. Laura mentions this with the characters Marilyn Monroe played, often playing a showgirl, and Danielle plays this part too, a pornstar to be looked at, to be sexualised by both sets of men.

Aside from a few small scenes in this film her story is left entirely untold and just inferred. Instead of her, we focus on following these three boys on a journey through the world of porn, trouble, and making a yearbook quote. We are brought back to reality. This is a teen comedy movie. It’s a scripted film and within that script they sexualise Danielle/Elisha Cuthbert for comedic and erotic purposes.

She’s just an object to them. A girl to show off.

The Reward of his Transgression:
The Ex-Pornstar Girlfriend

Danielle is used as a way to rank Matthew’s social credit up. She’s Matthew’s Royal Flush - Everywhere he goes with her, he wins the game of masculinity, possessing the best woman of them all - and the audience shares this possession with him through us assuming his character’s relatability.

In the story, Matthew is totally in love because Danielle represents the life he’s never lived, the hot ‘Girl Next Door’ who solves all the problems he’s faced writing a yearbook quote, all his problems of never having lived. Between the two, there’s not much physical going on between them, which is surprising for the way Danielle is represented.

They’re cute, but Matthew is clueless and naïve and it’s only when he’s being kicked out of theparty that Danielle got them into, and watching her being flirted with by other guys that he finally acts. Their first kiss at his first party. A final show that all it took Matthew to be who he wanted was a little push from a girl whose been there all before.

Wholesome? Sure! But it’s only because his girlfriend, the girl he gets to benefit off having on his arm, who turns the head of his friends and all around to look up and down her body - that’s when he claims his kiss. Of course, she’s fine about it. She loves him too. He’s different than all the rest.

Perversion and it’s reward:

In popular culture, the ‘Peeping Tom’ trope is found in almost every single piece of media since it began. Films, TV Shows, Games, Books - everything. It is a mainstay of so much of media, that it has become normalised by shows and films to participate in violating women’s bodies and consent by having scenes such as the one found here in ‘The Girl Next Door’.

In PopCulture Detective’s video essay - he edits together almost half an hour worth of short clips of this trope happening as B-Roll for his video. That is an astonishing amount of examples of sexual harassment and shows how it’s so shockingly normalised.

Most of the time in media, the men who peek do not get punished, and this pattern is clearly observed here too. There are rarely any consequences for violating women’s privacy, and in fact his transgression is likely to be rewarded.

The real issues with the “Harmless” Peeping Tom trope stems from the lack of consent between the characters in the story and how those violations are framed as “no big deal.” - PopCulture Detective

In this film, it's implied that Matthew shouldn't be staring by the fact Danielle stomps to his house, speaks to his parents, and they do not sound pleased. He gets caught, an audio cue plays, and immediately he drops to the floor and hides - he knows that this was a violation, he was just trying to get away with it. He knows he was wrong.

If the Peeping Tom role is gender reversed, if it becomes a Peeping Tilly, then it is portrayed as violating and uncomfortable for the guy. Take the scene in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, where Moaning Myrtle watches Harry get naked and enter the bath, diving under and watching him. We the audience aren't being directed to leer at Harry, we're expected to understand how uncomfortable he feels about it. We know its violating,

In romance media, this violation by men is often presented as a sign that the is man attracted to the woman in question - this is explicitly shown here, and during the duration of this article, we see how Matthew reaps the benefits of his peeping in the fact he gained a girlfriend. In reality though, if a man demonstrates this disregard for consent, it is more than a red flag, it can even be criminal.

I’m not saying that it’s always intentional, but this trope in media actively encourages this behaviour in men to spy and peep in on women. Whether they’re middle aged, in their thirties, young women, or even underaged, this behaviour has been shown before and will be shown again, without punishment, and instead is seen to contribute to both the comedy and the romance of a story.

"Because men's sexual attention is always supposed to be flattering. Regardless whether or not those feelings are reciprocated." - Popculture Detective

Perversion wins laughs, perversion gets sympathy, because in the audience’s mind, the film begs the question: “Wouldn’t you look too?” The audience members definitely agree, they would. For real women, women not in movies, this behaviour, this crime, causes lasting damage. It loses trust, it builds feelings of vulnerability, it is violating. PopCulture Detective puts it best:

“Now don’t get me wrong, sexual curiosity is completely normal. However, nonconsensual behavior should never be confused with healthy sexual exploration. The default should always be an expectation of privacy.” - PopCulture Detective

And yet, ‘The Girl Next Door’ rewards this nonconsensual curiosity! They even take a step further in my opinion and play on the usual victim. They use a young woman getting undressed, and add subtext that, because she was pornstar (which the audience is aware of) then it’s suddenly more okay? She’s had her naked body out there before, she’s been fucked by people before, you can go and look at her nudes in the magazine right next to you! It’s fine!

No, this is not the truth. You wouldn’t get your girlfriend or your wife naked whenever you wanted “just because you’d seen it before”. Consent is not eternal, it is given and it is taken back. The British way of putting this is the classic cup of tea analogy. Just because you’ve seen someone drink tea before, doesn’t mean they want it now. Swap tea for consent (not literally).

Just because Danielle used to drink tea for a living, doesn’t mean she wants a teenage boy to watch her drink tea in the privacy of her own home without her knowing. Her body is hers to choose what she wishes to do with it, and that exact thing is explored in this film itself.

She quit her job as a pornstar, she expressed a desire to change, she seemed shameful of it.

Yet because of Matthew’s very actions, because he peeped and got rewarded by Danielle becoming his girlfriend, having his first kiss, building up his reputation, having a prize to show off because she fell for him in a weird set of movie script choices-

-That leads to him finding out she’s a pornstar, and because of that very notion, those stereotypes of consent being blurred because of the label that porn created, he wants to take advantage of her sexually (explored in Part 2).

That action undermines their whole relationship, and drags her right back into that world of shame, a world of exploitation and objectification.

It drags her back to being violated- back to Pornography.

And that is the topic for the next article.

‘Pornstar Girlfriend’ Part 2: Exploitation and Pornography

The inaugural prayer service in Washington DC. The National Cathedral. One Episcopal bishop delivers her service to the President, Vice President, and hundreds more. The first woman to lead the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, and the first to deliver this prayer service.

It is safe to say the service will not be forgotten.

“Let me make one final plea, Mr. President. Millions have put their trust in you and, as you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now. There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican, and Independent families, some who fear for their lives. The people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings; who labor in poultry farms and meat packing plants; who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals. They…may not be citizens or have the proper documentation. But the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes and are good neighbors. They are faithful members of our churches and mosques, synagogues, gurudwaras and temples. I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away. And that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here. Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were all once strangers in this land. May God grant us the strength and courage to honor the dignity of every human being, to speak the truth to one another in love and walk humbly with each other and our God for the good of all people. Good of all people in this nation and the world. Amen”

Mariann Budde - The National Service

These were the words the Right Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde spoke directly to President Trump and Vice-President Vance on Tuesday. Potent words. Words that the world will not forget easily.

Yet the President did not acknowledge her as she walked past. He thought she was a “nasty… Radical Left hard line Trump Hater.”

Following the service President Trump was interviewed, upon being asked his thoughts on the service, he responded “They can do, they can do much better.” Since that comment, he has officially demanded an apology online, a very livid response to a service which meant to provide nothing but comfort, nothing but a plea for mercy. It's a very aggressive, stubborn mindset to a pure plea for mercy.

Budde has restated the fact she is not advocating aggressively against Trump. She said she “wasn’t necessarily calling the president out,” but rather making a plea “because of the fear” she has seen among immigrants and LGBTQ+ communities. Using her voice, her position, her power, to speak up.

She is embodying true Christian values. The Episcopal Church representative stated she spoke true of the “Christian values of mercy and compassion,” and Progressive Christian activist and author Shane Claiborne wrote about Budde on Twitter, saying “This is what it looks like to speak the truth in love.”

Budde is advocating for the protection of those who face persecution, advocating for peace. She did not accuse, she did not berate or disapprove, in fact every word was apolitical, yet people continue to claim otherwise. Budde wants Trump to be “mindful of the people who are scared,” and added she “was trying to say: The country has been entrusted to you…And one of the qualities of a leader is mercy.” Yet, the only leader showing mercy, mindfulness, and love - is Budde.

“I was trying to counter the narrative that is so so divisive and polarizing, and in which people, real people, are being are being harmed.”

Mariann Budde - The View on Wednesday morning

Her words have been recognised by many as hope for the nation. True, solid words spoken at a man who is forbidden to interrupt her, a calling card of his. He looked visibly displeased, uncomfortable - like a child forced to sit and listen when he’s behaved badly. He had no place to stand, to speak or to argue with her. He was forced to sit and listen as she spoke words that America, and the world, has wanted him to hear since his execution of the many diabolical executive orders he’s signed since taking office.

Yet, this is not her first run in with the 47th President. She expressed her outrage previously with the man following Trump’s appearance in front of St John’s Episcopal church in Washington DC in June 2020, where she was strongly against his action of holding up a Bible for a photo after the police forcefully beat and removed peaceful protestors. Once again, a woman speaking up for those put down by the powerful.

Budde wrote that Trump had “used sacred symbols to cloak himself in the mantle of spiritual authority, while espousing positions antithetical to the Bible that he held in his hands”. Further on, she said that “We need leadership that will lead us in the ways that this country deserves.” America deserves a leader that will lead in peace, and put the citizens at heart, not beat and deport. Not belittle and silence. Not insult and whine.

A leader who is clear. A leader who advocated for all, not the few.

It is clear in Budde’s words that she uses her power and position wisely, carefully, and to speak strongly against a regime against free speech and unity, despite the President being so vocally in favour of that sacred First Amendment.

And she does it all as a woman. Deemed “nasty”, deemed “woke”, deemed “inappropriate” for using words that, if a man would say, would not get the same reaction.

That very reaction to her words, is what appalled me the most.

The Fallout

Whilst we heard the President demand an apology from Budde, many of his followers, supporters and allies have echoed his words. The Georgia representative Mike Collins added online that Budde “should be added to the deportation list”, whilst the Fox News host Sean Hannity referred to her a “so-called Bishop” who turned the service into a “woke tirade” and described her prayer “disgraceful” and filled with “fearmongering and division”.

The Telegraph has called her out and dragged her through the mud with their headline the morning after, describing her service as a “toe-curling lecture” and describing her words as “liberal grandstanding”, a “pathetic attack”, and an “ambush”. Acting as if she’d thrown a pie at his face and stamped on him - yet she never once said a single against the man.

In a very lengthy post online, Trump called Budde a “Radical Left hard line Trump hater” and continued on by saying that “she brought her church into the World of politics in a very ungracious way” and criticized her tone as “nasty”.

Using her platform as a way to express not just her concerns, but speak for those who are growing in anxiety and are being silenced by those above. Many commentators on the side of Trump found her words to be unnecessary and brining in “woke” attributes.

It seems the influential men in society feel threatened by this 65 year old man. Her apolitical words rooted in care for others deemed an attack.

To me it screams fragile egos, weak minds, fragile spirits, weak men.

The Reverend is simply acting out of her duty to serve others and all under God, praying for peace and mercy on those who have done no harm. She spoke about afraid children, those who cannot protect themselves and may be forced into an identity they do not align with, or may find their parents taken from them. A real problem, a real life-altering problem children face.

She spoke for the immigrants who built America on their backs, clean America, feed America, all who act more citizenly than those who steal from America and rob America of it’s money, safety and culture. She spoke about how “the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals.” despite not having proper documentation, that despite their legal status, they are all people under God. People who deserve freedom too. People who deserve the so-long-gone American Dream.

Yet as a woman too, she has been ridiculed, she has been attacked and she has been met with the very vitriol she had spoken against, the very vocal violence she was trying to plea to stop. It seems the men won’t listen to even a word she says.

This act of hers was selfless. Nobody asked her to do this, she chose to because, as a servant and representative of Christ, she felt it was necessary to use what she has as a plea for the country.

She is an American symbol. She is hope, and she is the type of woman this country needs to listen to.

“As I was pondering what are the foundations of unity, I wanted to emphasize respecting the honor and dignity of every human being, basic honesty and humility.”

Mariann Budde - The View on Wednesday morning

And yet, even following Trump’s response to her sermon, she refuses to be an enemy to him. “I believe we can disagree respectfully and put our ideas out there and continue to stand for the convictions we’ve been given without resorting to violence of speech,” she said to the Associated Press.

Even in face of such anger, such disgusting attacks and words against her she remains calm and collected. She does not let it phase her, she uses it to push her message further. She does not attack back, she turns the other cheek and pleas once more. It takes a strong person to face that level of hatred, and she is nothing short of admirable for doing so.

Budde stated that she thought phrasing her words to the president as a plea for mercy rather than attacking his policies “was a very gentle way to do it” because she was “acknowledging his authority and his power.”

“I guess I had that wrong,” she said.

Emily Dickinson’s “Hope” is the thing with feathers”

This service, and Mariann Budde’s previous history of retaliation against injustice, reminded me of Emily Dickinson’s poem: “Hope” is the thing with feathers”.

This poems shows how hope, anthropomorphised here as “the thing with feathers” - or simply, a bird - does not leave in times of peril. The poem highlights what hope truly is. Even in gales, storms and times of danger which could “abash the little Bird”, it keeps on singing. The songbird does not stop inspiring those, warming those, keeping the hope alive.

We could describe America today as that “chillest land”, a place where uncertainties reign supreme and fear seems to grow on the daily in communities affected by the policies of the 47th President. Yet - that bird keeps on singing, they hear it in that chillest land and “on the strangest Sea” (perhaps the new Gulf of America.)

Despite the storms of anger, the gales of hatred and all adversity which try to pluck the feathers from the bird. Hope is the thing with feathers. And that thing with feathers is what this prayer stood for. Hope. A plea for mercy. Hope for mercy.

The bird doesn’t demand a crumb. It takes nothing to hear the hopebird sing, there is no risk to its song, only reward.

I feel, quite plainly, that The Right Rev. Mariann Budde is that hope bird. She is not demanding a crumb from anyone, not those she speaks for- nor those she speaks to. She merely pleas for mercy. She does not belittle, she does not take, she simply sings the graces of which she is taught, and that hope bird does the same.

The bird “perches in the soul” much like many claim God, Jesus or whatever religious form a believer takes to be in their soul- to be a part of their soul. This bird feels like symbolism for religion in this context. The bird’s song keeps so many warm, much like many find comfort, home, hope in religion, hope in the words Budde said.

Even in the worst conditions, this bird, this prayer service, flies and sings, stands and prays. There is hope with both of them, and reminds us in gales which we fear may sink our ships, in storms we feel may make us capsize. There is hope. Hope to make it to shore. Hope to keep the boat afloat.

“Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were all once strangers in this land.”

Mariann Budde. What she represents as a woman, as a religious figure, and in her speech, not only its content but its presentation, its symbolism of carrying forward those voice that call to her, is hopeful for America.

That bird of hope. The American Hope, Mariann Budde.

Vampirism is inherently sexual. Yet some still despise a mention of it.

At 9pm on a Tuesday night with my girlfriend, I found myself scared in the cinema watching Robert Egger’s Nosferatu, and as I walked out of the cinema close to midnight, to the bus and walking home in the fog, cold, dark and eerie night, I wrote a very long review over on my letterboxd. This film was brilliant.

Yet, as I was doomscrolling on IG reels the next day, I came across a common thread in regards to the sacrificial scene of the Virgin on the back of the white horse. The creator was knowledgeable on the topic and was trying to educate the audience as to the reasoning and folklore history behind that scene, she knew what she was talking about.

However, there were still a section of people in the comments who found that the placement of such a scene was completely unnecessary and dirty, disregarding the Slavic/Balkan history of why they did such a thing. Plunging a stake into the heart of a vampire corpse whilst symbols of purity and cleanliness were brought to it is a common protective ritual - yet apparently it was ‘exploiting young women’s bodies’.

In regards to these comments specifically, I do not understand where they think young women’s bodies were exploited. As far as I remember, there were 2/3 scenes with a naked woman, one of which being a presentation of the aforementioned tradition dating centuries back. The other two scenes are a sex scene, and the opener to the film where Ellen is naked and unconscious in the garden following her sexual assault by Count Orlok.

I will not comment on the necrophilia aspect of Nosferatu, other than that, it was just yet another effect of the all-encompassing trance and madness that Count Orlok brought in his plague of the town. This essay is on Ellen and Orlok, and perhaps I'll go into necrophilia in another essay… what joyful topics I write about !

This film is about this topic of Ellen's domination by Orlok. The exploitation of him. This is necessary. Egger’s Nosferatu is about Count Orlok stopping at nothing to own a woman. It is sexual conquest, it is not a light topic, it is a tough one. The film begins with Ellen’s cry out for a celestial God, anything magic or spiritual to comfort her, and what she did was wake a creature who would trap her for life, leave her unconscious in the garden after playing with her flesh and assaulting her whilst she was a girl.

The film is not erotic, in fact I think it rejects that outright. By no means was any of this film supporting, in my opinion, ‘the male gaze’. Using nudity does not mean it is sexualising an actress for the men in the crowd, Lily Rose-Depp has been naked in film before and I doubt this will be the last time too, as an actress she seems comfortable with roles that involve sexuality to some extent - this film was not about showing sexuality to be beautiful, sensual and intimate - it was about devouring a woman sexually, total domination.

Ellen is tormented by her assault, dealing with nightmares, seizures, bouts of depression, and screaming fits for the rest of her life, only for the men around her to claim she’s crazy, rather than tortured and afraid. She is owned psychologically by a creature of another realm who took advantage of her loneliness following her mother’s death and father’s disagreeable nature. She felt alone, she called out for God but what met her was Orlok’s sexual deviance.

From then on she could never be alone, even if she wished to be. No matter where she went, he could find her. To the point where she cried out in pain to her husband, the one who rid her from Orlok’s grasp and played (how typical) a male saviour role, despite his failure to save her in the end. This creature reached her in dreams, in the night and called to her.

Yet, there was something intensely beautiful and vulgar about this film. The most striking quote to me was when Ellen said "you cannot love" to Orlok, in the flesh, she was unafraid of him. A plaguing demon who will bring nothing but wreckage, turmoil, anger, chaos, blood and death to all and any that he pleases is simply vanquished by one woman willingly ‘loving’ him and willingly giving herself to him, despite the beastly inability to love, and full capability to dominate- it's sacrificially beautiful, her surrender to the abuser - it was horrifying, but beautiful nonetheless.

This woman was non-consensually bound to a demon, but also simultaneously chained to a godless land, with crosses painted on doors, placed before the vampires home and everywhere in the film, a false god who protected them from nothing - Ellen was left tied to Orlok, tied because of her father's mistakes, his lack of care and love. The woman became plagued by demons yet all who knew her claimed she was just troubled, and needed God, yet she knew she was tormented by a forced lover who controlled her in her pain, until a real, true lover came to her. Thomas.

Her father's mistakes were partially absolved by Thomas and Ellen’s marriage but all came flooding back in the name of a capitalistic greed for more money and more treasure to "improve" their lives, Thomas in the end led Count Orlok right back to Ellen, the same way her father forced her to him in the first place.

Yet the comments still say complain that the film was exploiting young women’s bodies.

The film did all of this storytelling, displayed all of this torment, presented all of this horror and anguish and pain and disgust and inescapable terror with just three scenes involving nudity which were not even fully necessary and were simply choices made to further immersion.

Nosferatu did not exploit women’s bodies, it showed what exploitation does to a human, how it drives someone into such anguish that they are left with no choice but to die.

There is no romance inherent to Ellen’s demise with Orlok, instead, it is a relationship built on the vampires desire to conquest and own her, shaped by Ellen’s fear, Orlok’s manipulation and his toxic, violent town-plaguing and killing obsession with the lonely girl he claimed when she was desperate for love.

But I don't think these comments care as much as I do, maybe I'm thinking too much.

Sexuality in other vampirical media

These sorts of comments fascinated me greatly, and that’s because within Nosferatu, I think they approached the topic of sexuality in a very tasteful fashion. Vampires are inherently physical creatures, biting someone and sucking them dry of blood is a strongly sexual encounter, and that theme is present in vampirical literature, films, TV shows and all forms of media. In fact, its glorified and encouraged in some very popular vampirical media, think ‘The Vampire Diaries’, ‘Twilight’, and ‘The Vampire Chronicles’ - each of these use vampirism as a sexual metaphor, for many different ends.

Vampires have a trait between them they all share, using coercion, whether that be in some form of psychological trickery or plain charisma to get what they want from humans: blood, sex, or perhaps both.

Therefore, looking at these comments, I did not understand where they were coming from, especially in regards to a direct retelling of Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’, arguably the most recognisable and famous vampire story. Looking at the historical context of the book, Christian ideals were the norm in England, and acts of a sexual nature were strictly private and must be lawfully between a man and a woman.

Stoker’s Dracula, and particularly the film by Francis Ford Coppola of the same name, have erotic elements to them that Egger’s Nosferatu doesn't have. Particularly in the film too, is Mina actually giving her consent to Dracula in Bram Stoker’s Dracula or is she just under his spells and charm? There's a lot of mysticism in vampire media, and it leaves a lot to be question about vampires as sexual creatures.

Vampirism continuously challenges gender norms, with acts of sucking blood, close intimacy and charismatic charm of vampires preying on both men and women. This whole pretence is essential for vampires; because in all human contexts closeness, intimacy and biting is not socially acceptable in public, with strangers and in close relationship contexts. The only context this is suited to are ones of romantic and sexual nature.

Because of this, we saw vampires demonised and villainised because of their sexual nature. In early works, vampires were often depicted as sexual predators who violated people's privacy, especially girls and women, and were folktales designed to keep women safe at night, away from the ‘vampires'‘. They were sexual creatures as a folkish way of keeping safe.

Similarly, in the context of Bram Stoker in the 19th century, when sex was still strongly taboo, vampires were depicted as sexual beings to frighten people. The fear that came from forced sex, rape, and intimacy was designed to scare people since sex a forbidden subject and deemed a shameful thing, an act to fear. Thus a creature whose charm and premise was inherently sexual, that made it fearful - alongside the obvious death element too.

Vampire stories often explore sexual ambiguity, and some canonically queer vampires have appeared as early as the 19th century. This whole element of vampirism being a way to explore gender, and especially bisexuality is incredibly interesting and important to tellings of the creatures.

Some media like vampires to be very sexual with just women, like how Damon keeps a news reporter he finds attractive as a way to feed in ‘The Vampire Diaries’, yet other media uses vampires to be openly bisexual, and prey on gay men just as much as straight women in other media.

Even Bram Stoker’s Dracula was deeply queer. Bram writing a story which has aspects of his own self inserted into the book, as many scholars do believe Stoker was a closeted gay man, and that's shown in the homoerotic elements found in Dracula, and his praise of both Oscar Wilde and Walt Whitman, openly gay/queer men at the time.

Victorian-era stereotypes of gay men are also found in Dracula, including the vampires focus on beauty, charm, and a predatory nature towards other men. This wasn't unusual in the genre at the time… enter Carmilla. The lead character of Carmilla is the true first example of the lesbian vampire, where ‘Carmilla’ the vampire clearly showed her romantic desires toward the protagonist, another woman.

Tying this back to Dracula- with it being the most influential piece of vampire media of all time, it allowed Stoker to display homosexuality without facing so much religious shade and discrimination, as he used it in an already sinful character, an anti-christian vampire.

So, when we talk about Vampirism, we are not just talking about bloodsuckers who prey on their food. We are talking about representations for authors repressed sexuality, we are talking about eternal living beings exploring their sexuality and their love, we are looking at perhaps the strongest sexual metaphor in all of literature.

Because really, don't we all like to bite our partners sometimes?

You know the situation I mean. When you have something to drink, usually water, and you didn’t carefully place that cup on your mouth so it comes out the side and some goes down your cheeks. If you’re particularly messy like I find myself to be on too often an occasion it even gets to your shirt and i fucking love it.

It’s like why I love being in the shower naked and sat on the floor, it’s a sensory experience second to none, I can be messy and do all the things that would usually give me nightmares but instead its swapped out for free bliss. Where else could I buy a coffee in a can and pour it over my head and spill it all down my chest and feel great? Sure I could do it in clothes, but future me would want to choke spilling-coffee-me for staining clothes and then being soggy all day.

Shower-me does not have such earthly restraints, there is nothing to wash in the shower which isn’t already happening, I can get my fingers sticky with honey and oranges and lemon zest and… it comes off. right away. I can be messy and unclean and dirty and stain my skin but there is NO problems arising.

That is why I love spilling water down my cheek, water does not stain, and I can blame it so simply on the rain or on my mistakes, especially if someone sees. Oopsie! I laugh. but it was pleasurable, I liked that liquid drop, I liked it all I like it so much and I like being a little bit messed up in my appearance but in a way which does not discolour and does not smell.

I cut my finger in the shower when I was about nine when I ran my finger down my mums leg razor and shredded my fingertip because “I wanted to know what a razor felt like” not understanding how a razor worked. There was no longer water but gushing blood everywhere and I ran out the shower in fear and my finger shoved in a white towel and bleeding, bleeding, red stains and blood.

When I returned, my mother having calmed me, there was not a drop of evidence. The shower washed away all signs, like a friend who didn’t wish for me to be upset after a party cleaning away cups and dirt and rearranged furniture. I got back in, the warmth was nice and the blood flowed again but that time I just watched it. I was not scared, I don’t remember what I thought but I remember not being scared.

Messiness is apart of my life I don’t like to let in, I like to be clean, organised, tidy to the point of miniature obsession and unnecessary worrying, yet in moments where it doesn’t show, where it doesn’t matter, I love to be messy.

why does it always have to matter - why can I not drip an orange over my face in bed or throw coffee on someone in public, why do I have to feel unclean when its so fun to not be?

I’d never tried it before, and she was more than excited to watch me try some. I asked her if I could and she said “of course!” Therefore, I went out to go and get it.

This poem is my recount of what followed:

I’d never seen a dead mouse before. We get them all the time at home and we make it a whole premise that we

Do. Not. Kill. The Little Miceys.

They live under the herb garden, getting seasoned and marinating in basil and oregano. Occasionally they run to the kitchen, lost, for they cannot find their wooden log of human garnishings.

The dead mouse was not found by the herbs though, I was stumbling in the dark of my grandma’s garage, wearing her oh so tight slippers because i couldnt be bothered to lace up some shoes for a minute since I was oh so tipsy and I wanted to try some of grandma’s old brandy.

Key clicked and door swings open, folding wide, long and heavy enough to take off a man’s head if placed wrong. I didnt turn the light on when i entered because i knew where napoleon was. His little frame on the bottle, next to the appletiser.

Warm brandy, cold christmas – good combination. And such walking in, ducking the door and going to grab the bottle, i turn, take it, and feel a bump under my foot.

With the oh so tight slipper lifted, the floor no longer uneven, I see what such bump was. A small, cold, dead, mouse.

I wish I did not search for this brandy, I do not crave the warmth down my throat anymore. Now my throat closes a little, it dries and shrivels and i feel my eyes sour- I wanted to cry. This poor little thing, dead in my grandmas garage, curled up.

Now I’m imagining it scared, it not knowing what’s happening, so afraid before it wouldn’t breathe again. The last breaths of its small body, small skeleton, small lung with its small, final breaths. The warmth disappears – it joins the rest of the cold garage.

It’s last moment spent in fetal position, exactly how it entered life was excatly how it exited, from a warm womb to cold concrete. Fetal.

I hope I don’t die like that. Afraid, hyperventilating, worried, fearful of never seeing day again and not knowing, so oblivious, so ignorant, before i curl up and die on cold concrete. Fetal.

Little mouse, corpse stepped on by a man so much larger, so much bigger, and will live for so much longer. Yet one day i will share the same feelings the mouse did as it was dying. That man now turned remorseful for a creature he’d never seen alive, guilty for wanting some warm brandy when all he found was something long turned cold.

• COWBOYS, COWBOYS AND COWBOYS

• Making extravagant entrances

• Making art over work

• Videogames in the night

• Bleeding out in the snow

• Making your own Chai

• Men in flared jeans

• Midwest Emo

• Eyebrow Threading

• Comedy Shows and the theatre

• Pirating (boats and movies)

• DMing people without warning even if you haven't spoken for years

• Soju (but not grape or apple)

• All men getting helix piercings

• Independent learning

• Other pubs than spoons

• Metalworking

• Big motorcycles and tasteful cars

• Margaritas

Outs:

• Overcoats which stop above the knee

• Franza Kafka

• Tequila shots in the club (ask me what I want)

• Taylor Swift (I've overdosed from her I need a one year break)

• Leg slit dresses

• Chinos and light blue shirts

• The Cinema

• Being scared to talk to your friends parents

• Not posting online

• Hating jazz

• Espresso Martinis

• Not finding the clit

• Diamonds

• Balayage

• Ginger shots

• Brainrot

• I'm just a girl/boy

• Mullet + Mustache combo (straight men)

• Burnouts in shitty cars

• Colleen hoover and "fill me up daddy" smut

Thank you for reading.

Tears in my eyes start to well up
as im looking into yours.
You always had very human eyes,
something people always mentioned because
you’re so photogenic in pictures that I take.
God why do I talk like you’re already gone,
you’re not, you just layed down next to me on the bench
by the side of me writing.

Happy birthday I sang to you this morning,
repeated it again and again.
Birthday treat, birthday sausage, birthday walk.
All for everyone’s favourite birthday boy.
December 9th, I could never remember when I was younger
if it was the 7th or the 9th,
same way I did with Max.

Funny how two very important things in my life I don’t remember
yet I seem to have knowledge on everything much less crucial
I kissed you on your forehead and I felt the tears start to form again
I’ve made sure to take pictures with you today,
recorded a video on the floor with you as I
welled up in tears again but it’s all
so I never do forget the look on your little face
on your thirteenth birthday with me.

You, me and Pablo.
your little adopted brother by your side.
Us three boys today.
Sharing a little slice of life.
My first doggy whom I love so dearly
and feel so heartbroken to look at
knowing this will be the first time I lose
someone I love in my life.

A poem I wrote in the first and only session of my unis writing society

The time that fall hits, stores stock up Pumpkin outside, gingerbread inside. It’s harvest season, the stalls pop up. Warmness floats in the airs around Seeds and nuts, vegetables and crops, markets filled with every type of person walking through scents carried by a breeze. Ground nutmeg, hazelnut chocolate, cinammon sticks, spiced lattes and the milky chais being made for each, noses red from cold, warmed by steam brought close. Trees shed themselves onto the floor now walked upon, with each step and crack the leaves are crushed more their minty, sharp smell much more prominent than before. The boots and the shoes stamp through, leathers mix with sap. Different perfumes and colognes dot around, swapping the sweet summer scents for the deeper, toastier fall, those autumnal fragrances of amber, patchouli and sandalwood. People want to be warmer in this cooler season, their smell follows that same desire, matching to their outfits. Autumn brings a coldness with it, a prelude to winter. That coldness seeps within us, and we want to warm up inside. Every person, every place and every plant all warming themselves in their own ways. Every smell telling us that we’re all the same Preparing for the frost, the shivers and the ice.

• 1 Mini Prose Piece

• 2 Poems

Under the Surface

This is a short piece I wrote for the prompt of ‘Under the Surface’ a few months back. I hope you enjoy it because I’m quite proud of what I wrote here. There is a more edited and revised version, and I think I may post that on my instagram at some point!

Here you are:

Photographs of life and locations underwater are often grouped into a few categories. Most of these people could tell you, or guess what they are. Found in magazines, shop walls and calendars. Perhaps a YouTube video or a blog you read, you’ll know what I mean.

These can be the shipwrecks of broken boats, old and new, metal and wooden. Sitting dormant at the bottom of the ocean. Pretty simple and standard by all accounts. The loss of life is sad, yes, and the world feels cold. History never truly captured and retained, ever below our vision and out of reach.

Then you get the next category, the sea life photographs. These can have more spirit about them, deeper and brighter colours, scenes of hunger, happiness, panic or calm. All depending on the type of fish or creature, you get a certain feel from it. In this category sits the shark subcategory. You get those sorts of terror photographs of sharks aggressively pursuing shoals of fish, or the more sly and sleek tracking shots of one of these sharp-toothed animals ready for its next meal. It’s all made for the media, all the same stuff, repeated over and again.

Then there’s the last category. Coral Reefs. I think it’s most popular, because of the film-like beauty under the sea. Vibrance and dopamine reign supreme in these, designed to make you feel good about the seas, cosy, and like you want to just dive down and into the colours of the ocean. Exploring life and the cracks which open up new worlds to those living above.

Welcome to the world of Sea Photography! The most dull style you could ever think of.

These categories bore me to utter tears. I want to just cry because oh why would anybody want to take these, keep these, feel proud of these? They mean simply nothing. It’s bland, it’s regular, it’s basic. We know these pictures, we can conceive of them in our minds like you can conceive of waking up. Most people have seen Jaws, have seen Finding Nemo, know the Titanic and know about the Mary Rose. Ask about the Great Barrier Reef or Amazon Reef and you’ll get the “Oh isn’t it so sad about the bleaching”. It’s all just common knowledge, this 'mystifying’ genre of underwater photographs.

The truth to being Under the Surface is none of these. Nothing you’ve seen before in a photo or a film will ever compare to the reality of being down. The descent, the rising back up. Being under is a mentality, a concept, a truth. It’s unble to be photographed because it’s nothing physical, it all resides within. You tell me how it feels to swim. Can you photograph it? You can take a photo of somebody swimming, but never the true raw emotion of traversing through the waters.

It's exactly the same for beneath them.

Beneath the water, it’s not like the “foamy waves” and “crashing above” that inexperienced poets will tell you. The only thing I think that could compare is the way astronauts train to go to space. They use water. They go Under the Surface. Fully suited, they practice their manoeuvres. It’s the only real comparison between the depths of water and the effect on the body and mind. Space and Astronauts, Water and People. However, they’re as far above the surface as possible. Strange how two opposites are so alike, isn’t it?

Let me now tell exactly what it’s like Under the Surface. It’s hope. It’s freeing. It’s true liberty. You want to take yourself somewhere where ‘freedom’ truly exists? It’s not a state, nor a country. There are literally no laws down below, physically or theoretically. All those physics lessons you took mean nothing now. You let go of something and gravity isn’t there to drop it for you. Your body weighs so much more and so much less. It true freedom defined.

Your life is in your hands for every second of the time in that water. Drowning with no chance of oxygen, becoming trapped and losing all the light you can see, your blood pressure getting higher to the point it pops.

The other side of it’s there too. Your life has never felt so in your control. You can float, you’re never grounded or restricted the way that the land forces upon you. Twisting and turning and floating in ways your body wished it could do, but couldn’t dream of when trapped in the realms of physical limitations up above. Under the Surface rids that from you.

Being Under the Surface is about being freed, about experiencing actual human potential. We can live just as well as we can above. There’s a reason we have myths surrounding ancient cities Under the Surface, humanoid creatures evolved to be able to utilise all the tools the ocean gives you. That’s because it’s the true final purpose of mankind, submersion. Muscles ache more, bones crack more from pressure and new movements, but with time – we all adapt.

Under the Surface is a different reality, one free of true limitations. Be free, come below.

It may be scary, but the best things in life are. Are they not? – It’s time to descend.

Submerge yourself. Find Freedom. Welcome below.

The Tragedy of a Conscientious Coward

This is a history themed poem I wrote in January, whilst I was doing Napoleon as a topic at school. This is a silly poem really, but I still hope you enjoy it because it’s a different piece than my usual.

Here you are:

1799 – Nantes

It seems that I’ve been forsaken, no blade wants to kiss my neck.

I am unwanted,

left and forgotten on the side roads of an empty country, no horse walks past.

The season is high and mighty, the directors called all to action. No reply was penned by my fingers, a movement couldn’t be found from my legs. We remained steadfast in the dirt.

The others now fall to the west whilst I lay in this pasture, looking upwards as they stare down,

my eyes clean and their eyes red, my spit clear but they don’t spit at all,

soil learns the grooves of both of our nails nonetheless.

Movement is medicine and I am sick, but their movement is a plague and I hold their remedy in these fields, waiting for them.

I expected more to be put against me, but the speed of which men must cooperate leaves me not a mention, not a word. Others crumbled with no message, their bones shattered and heads severed, rolling.

I wasn’t noticed. There wasn’t a basket out for me. My visitor was a squirrel.

It’s as if my life has been the one forfeited, looking round the corners I have turned and leaving marks into the walls, marking my last path into the soft ground.

Their path must not be marked, their lives are at stake still, and it’s a valuable game now.

I was the one who didn’t want to die, but it seems I am the only one who has.

You know who you are

This is a poem I wrote at 3am, good old early morning writing that we all do. It was a couple weeks ago, maybe a few months, and I was thinking back on a couple things after I’d come home late to walk in the woods that are by my house (and you may recognise in my instagram reels!!)

Here you are:

The first place I go is the woods

If I need some privacy, some time alone

It's with the trees, among the leaves,

and though it's a public place it's more private than my locked home

Each time I start to think,

and for each time j start to cry

a walk in those trees is where I go

and thought it's a path beaten by feet and by stone

it feels like I'm the only one whose walked it, the only one who has memories with each step

to the left is the stream, where I kissed her for the last time

ahead is the bridge, where she asked me the question

behind me is the mud, where he told me to calm down

and to my right is the hill, where nobody has spoken

these woods mean a lot to me, a lot more than I know

and for each person I meet, each one knows them differently

for these woods are mine and mine alone, and my steps will be etched

but those trees have seen more than just me, and they know more than I know

for each person has their tree, their branch and their bush

the one that they look at, and bring a memory forward

forwarded from another time, but stood in the same place

and these woods they do beckon,

for I come back all the time

to remind myself of me

and for each thing that happens and for each person I know

a new tree gains meaning, and becomes mine alone

The first place I go is the woods

If I need some privacy, some time to reflect

It's with the trees, among the leaves,

where I feel most alone

and though it's a public place it's more private than my locked home

Each time I start to think,

and for each time I want to cry

a walk in those trees is where I go,

though it's a path beaten by feet and by stone,

it feels like I'm the singular one whose walked it,

the only one who for every step has a memory that flows

to the left is the stream, where I kissed her for the last time

ahead is the bridge, where she asked me that question

behind me is the mud, where he told me to calm down

and to my right is the hill, where yet nobody has spoken

these woods mean a lot to me, a lot more than I know

and for each person I meet, a new one starts to green

for these woods are mine and mine alone, and my steps will be etched

but those trees have seen more than just me, and they know more than I know

every person has their tree, their branch and their bush

the one that they look at,

which bring them a time

forwarded from another day, but stood in the same place

and these woods they do beckon,

for i come back all the time

to remind myself of me, myself and my own

and for each thing that happens

and for each person I know

a new tree gains meaning,

and becomes mine alone

these trees they will stand, and outlive who I am

but for all my life they'll watch, and my memories stay with them

so take a look at my tree, my branch and my bush

tell me what you see? is it me?

or is it you?

and the things you have done?

because these trees are not just mine,

not mine alone

they're all of ours,

and us?

well, they know.

Thank you for reading.