#julia from 1984

[chaiichait]

Yall I just read the hunger games. I think I am just destined to love women stressed in deadly situations they have to delicately navigate.

[yashahimewasamistake]

I'm reading "1984, Julia" and I'm not enjoying it. I'm dreading turning on the next page and seeing how her romance with the male guy will play out.

[autumna1]

i really feel that i would’ve enjoyed learning english literature in school a lot more if i’d simply done it when i was older and not a teenager with hardly a sense of self yet. It is so much easier to form an opinion on things when you’ve cultivated your own world view and morals to back it up

[opencommunion]

recommended resources on Lebanese resistance and its context

this has been in my drafts for a long time bc I wanted to find more audio resources but in light of recent events I'm posting as is, and will add more later. pdfs for texts without links can be found on libgen ⭐ = start with these 📺 = video resource 🎧 = audio resource Hizballah ⭐ Lara Deeb, "Hizballah and Its Civilian Constituencies," in The War on Lebanon: A Reader, eds. Nubar Hovsepian and Rashid Khalidi (2007)

⭐🎧 Electronic Intifada Podcast with Rania Khalek, "Why Hizballah would deal Israel a deadly blow" (2024)

⭐🎧 Electronic Intifada Podcast with Amal Saad, "How Hizballah Aims to Deter Israel" (2024)

📺 Rania Khalek, Interview with Hezbollah's Second-in-Command Sheikh Naim Qassem (2023)

🎧 Rania Khalek and Julia Kassem, "The Hybrid War on Lebanon is All About Weakening Hezbollah" (2022)

Hassan Nasrallah, "Voice of Hezbollah: The Statements of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah," ed. Nicholas Noe (2007)

Judith Harik, "Hizballah's Public and Social Services and Iran," in Distant Relations: Iran and Lebanon in the last 500 years (2006) Sarah Marusek, Faith and Resistance: The Politics of Love and War in Lebanon (2018)

Abed T. Kanaaneh, Understanding Hezbollah: The Hegemony of Resistance (2021)

Karim Makdisi, "The Oct. 8 War: Lebanon's Southern Front" (2024) Political theory ⭐ Ussama Makdisi, "Understanding Sectarianism," in The War on Lebanon: A Reader, eds. Nubar Hovsepian and Rashid Khalidi (2007)

⭐ Rula Juri Abisaab and Malek Abisaab, The Shi'ites of Lebanon: Modernism, Communism, and Hizbullah's Islamists (2014)

Ilham Khuri-Makdisi, The Eastern Mediterranean and the Making of Global Radicalism, 1860-1914 (2010) Tareq Y. Ismael and Jacqueline S. Ismael, The Communist Movement in Syria and Lebanon (1998) 2006 war ⭐ Gilbert Achcar and Michel Warschawski, The 33-Day War: Israel's War on Hezbollah in Lebanon and Its Consequences (2007)

The Electronic Intifada with Dahr Jamail, "The world just sat by" (2006)

The Electronic Intifada with Bilal El-Amine, "Lebanon in Context" (2006) The War on Lebanon: A Reader, eds. Nubar Hovsepian and Rashid Khalidi (2007)

Civil war and 1982 invasion ⭐📺 Up to the South, dir. Jayce Salloum and Walid Ra'ad (1993)

⭐📺 Wild Flowers: Women of South Lebanon, dir. Mai Masri and Jean Khalil Chamoun (1987)

⭐ Souha Bechara, Resistance: My Life for Lebanon (2003)

Jean Said Makdisi, Beirut Fragments: A War Memoir (1990)

Bayan Nuwayhed al-Hout, Sabra and Shatila, September 1982 (2004) Ottoman era Charles Al-Hayek, "How, then, did you try to rebel?"

Lebanon Unsettled, "Lebanon's Popular Uprisings"

Axel Havemann, "The Impact of Peasant Resistance on Nineteenth Century Mount Lebanon," in Peasants and Politics in the Modern Middle East (1991) Ussama Makdisi, The Culture of Sectarianism: Community, History, and Violence in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Lebanon (2000)

Peter Hill, "How Global was the Age of Revolutions? The Case of Mount Lebanon, 1821" (2020) Mark Farha, "From Anti-imperial Dissent to National Consent: the First World War and the Formation of a Trans-sectarian National Consciousness in Lebanon" (2015) French mandate era ⭐ Kais Firro, Inventing Lebanon: Nationalism and the State Under the Mandate (2002) Sana Tannoury-Karam, "Founding the Lebanese Left: From Colonial Rule to Independence" (2021) Idir Ouahes, Syria and Lebanon Under the French Mandate: Cultural Imperialism and the Workings of Empire (2018)

Malek Abisaab, Militant Women of a Fragile Nation (2009) Misc ⭐📺 Leila and the Wolves, dir. Heiny Srour and Sabah Jabbour (1984)

⭐ Fawwaz Traboulsi, A History of Modern Lebanon (2007)

Karim Makdisi, "Lebanon's October 2019 Uprising" (2021)

[kaydensb]

100% Legally Sourced Media (Google Drive)

Here is a link for a whole bunch of movies, tv shows and more -

Hopefully all the prior issues with getting things to open or show up have been fixed, but if not let me know specifically what isn't working and I will try to re-upload it.

below is a list of the things currently on my google drive, I may add more and keep updating this list periodically as things get put on the drive.

Audiobooks and Audio Dramas

Fiction

1984 By George Orwell

A Tale of Two Cities By Charles Dickens

Animal Farm By George Orwell

Bleak House By Charles Dickens

Bridgerton Series By Julia Quinn

Chemistry By Rachael Sommers

Daisy Jones and the Six By Taylor Jenkins Reid

David Copperfield By Charles Dickens

Do Not Disturb By Freida McFadden

Dracula By Bram Stoker

Eve of Man Series By Tom Fletcher & Giovanna Fletcher

Fellow Travelers By Thomas Mallon

Frankenstein By Mary Shelley

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe By Fanny Flagg

Friends of Dorothy By Sandi Toksvig

Gone Girl By Gillian Flynn

Gothic Tales By Arthur Conan Doyle

Great Expectations By Charles Dickens

H.G. Wells The Science Fiction Collection By H.G Wells

It By Stephen King

Jurassic Park By Michael Crichton

Les Misérables By Victor Hugo

Little Women By Louisa May Alcott

Mansfield Park By Jane Austen

Me Before You By Jojo Moyes

Neon Roses By Rachel Dawson

No One I knew By A. J. McDine

Oliver Twist By Charles Dickens

Pride and Prejudice By Jane Austen

Red, White & Royal Blue By Casey McQuiston

Sense and Sensibility By Jane Austen

Should Have Known Better By A J McDine

Stranger in the Woods By Anni Taylor

The Complete Sherlock Holmes Collection By Arthur Conan Doyle

The Exorcist By William Peter Blatty

The Forgetting By Hannah Beckerman

The Girl on the Train By Paula Hawkins

The Glitch By Leeanne Slade

The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Honey Witch By Sydney J. Shields

The Invite By A. J. McDine

The Murder Game By Tom Hindle

The Picture of Dorian Gray By Oscar Wilde

The Promise You Made By A. J. McDine

The Woman in Black By Susan hill

The Wonder Boy of Whistle Stop By Fannie Flagg

The Wrong Sister By Claire Douglas

Think Again By Jacqueline Wilson

Torchwood

We Play Games by Sarah A. Denzil

When You Least Expect It By Haley Cass

Non Fiction

A Billion Years My Escape from a Life in the Highest Ranks of Scientology By Mike Rinder

All I Know Now By Carrie Hope Fletcher

Apparently There Were Complaints By Sharon Gless

Bad Gays A Homosexual History By Huw Lemmey & Ben Miller

Barnum's Own Story By P T Barnum

Best Foot Forward By Adam Hills

Between the Stops By Sandi Toksvig

Beyond Belief By Jenna Miscavige

Black Mass By Gerrard O’Niell & Dick Lehr

Blown for Good - Behind the Iron Curtain of Scientology By Marc Headley

Boy From the Valleys By Luke Evans

Che Guevara By Jon Lee Anderson

Church of Lies By Flora Jessop & Paul T. Brown

Coming Up for Air By Tom Daley

Dare to Dream By Izzy Judd

David Bowie Made Me Gay - 100 Years of LGBT Music By Darryl W Bullock

Deaf Utopia By Nyle DiMarco

Escaping the Kingdom of God By J. Andrew Robinson

Fahrenheit-182 By Mark Hoppus

Fathomless Riches By Rev Richard Coles

Freddie Mercury The Definitive Biography By Lesley-Ann Jones

Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing By Matthew Perry

From Here to the Great Unknown A Memoir By Lisa Marie Presley & Riley Keough

Help I S*xted My Boss By William Hanson & Jordan North

Karma By Boy George

Letters on Motherhood by Giovanna Fletcher

Mama’s Boy By Dustin Lance Black

Notorious by Raphael Rowe

Once upon a Tyne By Ant & Dec

Our Story By Reg and Ron Kray

Over Our Dead Bodies By Todd Harra & Kenneth McKenzie

Rainbow History Class By Hanna McElhinney

Scientology: Abuse at the Top By Amy Scobee

Sh**ged. Married. Annoyed By Chris Ramsey & Rosie Ramsey

The Church of Fear by John Sweeney

The Doomsday Mother By John Glatt

The House of My Mother By Shari Franke

The Hundred Years' War on Palestine By Rashid Khalidi

The Mayor of Castro Street By Randy Shilts

The Peer and the Gangster By Daniel Smith

The Phantom Prince By Elizabeth Kendall

Under the Banner of Heaven By Jon Krakauer

Under the Bridge By Rebecca Godfrey

Documentaries and Docudramas

A Lion Called Christian

A Very British Sex Scandal

Abused By My Girlfriend

Accused - The Hampstead Paedophile Hoax

Aids - The Unheard Tapes

Alex Brooker: Disability and Me

Bad Influence: The Dark Side of Kidfluencing

Bad Influencer - The Great Insta Con

Bowie - The Man Who Changed The World

Boyzone: No Matter What

Children of the Underground

Dancing for the Devil - The 7M TikTok Cult

Daughters of the Cult

Desperately Seeking Soulmate - Escaping Twin Flames Universe

Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke

Dinosaurs - The Final Day with David Attenborough

Dirty Pop - The Boy Band Scam

Driven - The Billy Monger Story

Escaping Polygamy

Escaping Twin Flames

Freddie Mercury - The Great Pretender

Frozen Planet

Frozen Planet II

Good Grief with Reverend Richard Coles

Hatton Garden - The Inside Story

Hell Camp - Teen Nightmare

I Am Not A Rapist

I Cut Off His Penis - The Truth Behind The Headlines

Ireland's Mother and Baby Scandal

Killing Patient Zero

Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath

Lewis Capaldi - How I'm Feeling Now

Liar: The Fake Grooming Scandal

Living Every Second: The Kris Hallenga Story

Lord Montagu

Mama's Boy

Matt Willis: Fighting Addiction

Murdaugh Murders - A Southern Scandal

Murder Among the Mormons

My Wife My Abuser - Captured On Camera

Pennywise - The Story of It

Planet Earth

Planet Earth II

Queen - Days Of Our Lives

Sacred Soil - The Piney Woods School Story

Sarah Everard: The Search for Justice

Scientology: Going Clear - The Prison of Belief

Soham: The Murder of Holly & Jessica

Stolen Youth - Inside the Cult at Sarah Lawrence

Strike - An Uncivil War

Strike! The Women Who Fought Back

Striking with Pride: United at the Coalface

Surviving Amber Heard

Take Care of Maya

The Bambers : Murder at the Farm

The Boys - The Sherman Brothers' Story

The Exorcist Untold

The Family

The Krays - The Mafia Connection

The Menendez Brothers

The Millennium Dome Heist With Ross Kemp

The Movies That Made Us

The Pembrokeshire Murders - Catching the Gameshow Killer

The Program - Cons, Cults and Kidnapping

The Settlers

The Times of Harvey Milk

Tom Daley 1.6 Seconds

Uprising

Waco - American Apocalypse

Warren Jeffs: Prophet of Evil

Wonders of the World I Can't See

Films

A Haunting in Venice

About a Boy

All of Us Strangers

American Psycho

Armageddon

Bad Tidings

Basic Instinct

Beautiful Boy

Beautiful Thing

Beetlejuice

Boy Erased

Boys Don’t Cry

But I'm a Cheerleader

Chicago

Child's Play

Chocolat

City of Lies

Clue

Contagion

Cool Runnings

Corpse Bride

Dallas Buyers Club

Dawn of the Dead

Death on the Nile

Deck the Halls

Die Hard

Dirty Dancing

Donnie Brasco

Downton Abbey

Edward Scissorhands

Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind

Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Four Weddings and a Funeral

Fried Green Tomatoes

From Hell

Gone Girl

Gremlins

Hairspray

Handsome Devil

Heathers

Heathers - The Musical

Home Alone

Hot Fuzz

How the Grinch Stole Christmas

How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days

IT

Jaws

Jingle All The Way

Jumanji

Jurassic Park

Kill Your Darlings

Kindergarten Cop

Kinky Boots

Labyrinth

Legally Blonde

Legend

Les Misérables

Les Misérables: The Staged Concert

Little Shop of Horrors

Little Women

Love Actually

Mean Girls

Midsommar

Milk

Minamata

Miracle on 34th Street

Moulin Rouge!

Murder on the Orient Express

Murdered for Being Different

Newsies

Oliver!

Philadelphia

Pirates of the Caribbean

Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Prayers For Bobby

Pride

Pride and Prejudice

Red, White and Royal Blue

Rent

Scarface

Scream

Scrooged

Secret Window

Shaun of the Dead

Shelter

Sister Act

Sleepy Hollow

Star Wars

Sweeney Todd - The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

The Addams Family

The Amityville Horror

The Blair Witch Project

The Conjuring

The Craft

The Crow

The Exorcist

The Full Monty

The Greatest Showman

The imitation Game

The Muppet Christmas Carol

The Nightmare Before Christmas

The Santa Clause

The Shawshank Redemption

The Sixth Sense

The Sound of Music

The Tourist

The Woman in Black

Three Men and a Baby

Three Men and a Little Lady

Titanic

Transcendence

Twister

Uncle Buck

Unicorns

West Side Story

What We Did on Our Holiday

White Christmas

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

Zola

Stand Up Comedy

Adam Hills

Chris McCausland

Chris Ramsey

Daniel Howell

Daniel Sloss

Dara O'Briain

Ed Byrne

Fern Brady

Greg Davies

John Bishop

Rhod Gilbert

Sarah Millican

Sean Lock

TV Shows

90210

Agatha All Along

Alan Davies: As Yet Untitled

Apple Cider Vinager

Being Human

Big Night of Musicals

Bridgerton

Celebrity Race Across the World

Code of Silence

Criminal Minds

Cuckoo

Daisy Jones and the Six

Deadwater Fell

Desperate Housewives

Doctor Who

Downton Abbey

Dynasty

Eyewitness

Fellow Travelers

Fire Country

Friends

Good Girls

Good Omens

Good Trouble

Heartstopper

I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here!

Interview with the Vampire

It's A Sin

Killing Eve

Looking

Mary & George

Mid-Century Modern

Midnight Mass

Missing You

My Family

My Wife and Kids

Nevermind the Buzzcocks

One Tree Hill

Parenthood

QI 

Queer as Folk

Shameless

Sky Med

Sleepy Hollow

Switched at Birth

Taskmaster

The Alienist

The Artful Dodger

The Clearing

The Couple Next Door

The Fosters

The Haunting of Bly Manor

The Haunting of Hill House

The Jetty

The Midnight Club

The Misinvestigations of Romesh Ranganathan

The Pembrokeshire Murders

The Perfect Couple

The Society

The Stranger

The Unofficial Science Of…

The Watcher

Torchwood

Toxic Town

Under the Banner of Heaven

Under the Bridge

Virgin River

WandaVision

White Collar

White House Farm

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Sandra Newman’s “Julia”

The first chapter of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four has a fantastic joke that nearly everyone misses: when Julia, Winston Smith's love interest, is introduced, she has oily hands and a giant wrench, which she uses in her "mechanical job on one of the novel-writing machines":

https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt

That line just kills me every time I re-read the book – Orwell, a novelist, writing a dystopian future in which novels are written by giant, clanking mechanisms. Later on, when Winston and Julia begin their illicit affair, we get more detail:

She could describe the whole process of composing a novel, from the general directive issued by the Planning Committee down to the final touching-up by the Rewrite Squad. But she was not interested in the finished product. She 'didn't much care for reading,' she said. Books were just a commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces.

I always assumed Orwell was subtweeting his publishers and editors here, and you can only imagine that the editor who asked Orwell to tweak the 1984 manuscript must have felt an uncomfortable parallel between their requests and the notional Planning Committee and Rewrite Squad at the Ministry of Truth.

I first read 1984 in the early winter of, well, 1984, when I was thirteen years old. I was on a family trip that included as visit to my relatives in Leningrad, and the novel made a significant impact on me. I immediately connected it to the canon of dystopian science fiction that I was already avidly consuming, and to the geopolitics of a world that seemed on the brink of nuclear devastation. I also connected it to my own hopes for the nascent field of personal computing, which I'd gotten an early start on, when my father – then a computer science student – started bringing home dumb terminals and acoustic couplers from his university in the mid-1970s. Orwell crystallized my nascent horror at the oppressive uses of technology (such as the automated Mutually Assured Destruction nuclear systems that haunted my nightmares) and my dreams of the better worlds we could have with computers.

It's not an overstatement to say that the rest of my life has been about this tension. It's no coincidence that I wrote a series of "Little Brother" novels whose protagonist calls himself w1n5t0n:

https://craphound.com/littlebrother/Cory_Doctorow_-_Little_Brother.htm

I didn't stop with Orwell, of course. I wrote a whole series of widely read, award-winning stories with the same titles as famous sf tales, starting with "Anda's Game" ("Ender's Game"):

https://www.salon.com/2004/11/15/andas_game/

And "I, Robot":

https://craphound.com/overclocked/Cory_Doctorow_-_Overclocked_-_I_Robot.html

"The Martian Chronicles":

https://escapepod.org/2019/10/03/escape-pod-700-martian-chronicles-part-1/

"True Names":

https://archive.org/details/TrueNames

"The Man Who Sold the Moon":

https://memex.craphound.com/2015/05/22/the-man-who-sold-the-moon/

and "The Brave Little Toaster":

https://archive.org/details/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_212

Writing stories about other stories that you hate or love or just can't get out of your head is a very old and important literary tradition. As EL Doctorow (no relation) writes in his essay "Genesis," the Hebrews stole their Genesis story from the Babylonians, rewriting it to their specifications:

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/41520/creationists-by-e-l-doctorow/

As my "famous title" stories and Little Brother books show, this work needn't be confined to antiquity. Modern copyright may be draconian, but it contains exceptions ("fair use" in the US, "fair dealing" in many other places) that allow for this kind of creative reworking. One of the most important fair use cases concerns The Wind Done Gone, Alice Randall's 2001 retelling of Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind from the perspective of the enslaved characters, which was judged to be fair use after Mitchell's heirs tried to censor the book:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suntrust_Bank_v._Houghton_Mifflin_Co.

In ruling for Randall, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals emphasized that she had "fully employed those conscripted elements from Gone With the Wind to make war against it." Randall used several of Mitchell's most famous lines, "but vest[ed] them with a completely new significance":

https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F3/268/1257/608446/

The Wind Done Gone is an excellent book, and both its text and its legal controversy kept springing to mind as I read Sandra Newman's wonderful novel Julia, which retells 1984 from the perspective of Julia, she of the oily hands the novel-writing machine:

https://www.harpercollins.com/products/julia-sandra-newman?variant=41467936636962

Julia is the kind of fanfic that I love, in the tradition of both Wind Done gone and Rosenkrantz and Gildenstern Are Dead, in which a follow-on author takes on the original author's throwaway world-building with deadly seriousness, elucidating the weird implications and buried subtexts of all the stuff and people moving around in the wings and background of the original.

For Newman, the starting point here is Julia, an enigmatic lover who comes to Winston with all kinds of rebellious secrets – tradecraft for planning and executing dirty little assignations and acquiring black market goods. Julia embodies a common contradiction in the depiction of young women (she is some twenty years younger than Winston): on the one hand, she is a "native" of the world, while Winston is a late arrival, carrying around all his "oldthink" baggage that leaves him perennially baffled, terrified and angry; on the other hand, she's a naive "girl," who "doesn't much care for reading," and lacks the intellectual curiosity that propels Winston through the text.

This contradiction is the cleavage line that Newman drives her chisel into, fracturing Orwell's world in useful, fascinating, engrossing ways. For Winston, the world of 1984 is totalitarian: the Party knows all, controls all and misses nothing. To merely think a disloyal thought is to be doomed, because the omnipotent, omniscient, and omnicompetent Party will sense the thought and mark you for torture and "vaporization."

Orwell's readers experience all of 1984 through Winston's eyes and are encouraged to trust his assessment of his situation. But Newman brings in a second point of view, that of Julia, who is indeed far more worldly than Winston. But that's not because she's younger than him – it's because she's more provincial. Julia, we learn, grew up outside of the Home Counties, where the revolution was incomplete and where dissidents – like her parents – were sent into exile. Julia has experienced the periphery of the Party's power, the places where it is frayed and incomplete. For Julia, the Party may be ruthless and powerful, but it's hardly omnicompetent. Indeed, it's rather fumbling.

Which makes sense. After all, if we take Winston at his word and assume that every disloyal citizen of Oceania is arrested, tortured and murdered, where would that leave Oceania? Even Kim Jong Un can't murder everyone who hates him, or he'd get awfully lonely, and then awfully hungry.

Through Julia's eyes, we experience Oceania as a paranoid autocracy, corrupt and twitchy. We witness the obvious corollary of a culture of denunciation and arrest: the ruling Party of such an institution must be riddled with internecine struggle and backstabbing, to the point of paralyzed dysfunction. The Orwellian trick of switching from being at war with Eastasia to Eurasia and back again is actually driven by real military setbacks – not just faked battles designed to stir up patriotic fervor. The Party doesn't merely claim to be under assault from internal and external enemies – it actually is.

Julia is also perfectly positioned to uncover the vast blank spots in Winston's supposed intellectual curiosity, all the questions he doesn't ask – about her, about the Party, and about the world. I love this trope and used it myself, in Attack Surface, the third "Little Brother" book, which is told from the point of view of Marcus's frenemy Masha:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250757531/attacksurface

Through Julia, we come to understand the seemingly omniscient, omnipotent Party as fumbling sadists. The Thought Police are like MI5, an Island of Misfit Toys where the paranoid, the stupid, the vicious and the thuggish come together to ruin the lives of thousands, in such a chaotic and pointless manner that their victims find themselves spinning devastatingly clever explanations for their behavior:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/3662a707-0af9-3149-963f-47bea720b460

And, as with Nineteen Eighty-Four, Julia is a first-rate novel, expertly plotted, with fantastic, nail-biting suspense and many smart turns and clever phrases. Newman is doing Orwell, and, at times, outdoing him. In her hands, Orwell – like Winston – is revealed as a kind of overly credulous romantic who can't believe that anyone as obviously stupid and deranged as the state's representatives could be kicking his ass so very thoroughly.

This was, in many ways, the defining trauma and problem of Orwell's life, from his origin story, in which he is shot through the throat by a fascist: sniper during the Spanish Civil War:

https://www.rjgeib.com/thoughts/soldiers/george-orwell-shot.html

To his final days, when he developed a foolish crush on a British state spy and tried to impress her by turning his erstwhile comrades in to her:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orwell%27s_list

Newman's feminist retelling of Orwell is as much about puncturing the myth of male competence as it is about revealing the inner life, agency, and personhood of swooning love-interests. As someone who loves Orwell – but not unconditionally – I was moved, impressed, and delighted by Julia.

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/28/novel-writing-machines/#fanfic

[seaglasswrites]

I see a lot of people advocate for the use of AI/AMs in writing as a tool for when writers are stuck; The main selling point for these people seems to be that, when facing writers’ block, a writer can just plug their story into one of these tools and get “help”.

It’s a similar idea to a lot of writing posts I’ve seen on here, complaining about the “in-between” - “I’ve got this wonderful beginning and this heart-wrenching ending, but no idea what to put in the middle! Writing sucks!”

These people don’t seem to realize, though, that without the author figuring that out for themselves, there is no story.

Sure, you can have a basic idea for a plot; Let’s use 1984 as an example: A man lives in a hyper-surveillance society under an authoritarian dictatorship, and rebels against it by joining a secret society that turns out to have been the government all along.

That’s a great plot idea - and it’s sure to do great with both publishers and readers alike! But it’s not 1984. It’s a plot summary of 1984.

If George Orwell had plugged that prompt into ChatGPT and asked it to do the rest for him, we would probably still have Winston Smith (or someone like him), but we might not have Julia, or O’Brien, or the scene with the rats, or the melancholy ending at the café, or a whole host of other important characters and plot points.

Why? Because here’s the thing - Orwell came up with those ideas because he actually thought about the premise he had imagined. What would people act like in such a society? What kind of torture methods would their government use?

Even the ending scene where Winston sits at the café can have a million different things said about it when it comes to Orwell’s thought process when he wrote it. What would this government do with its victims once they were done torturing them? How would they make a public example of the power it had, without actively televising said torture? How would “normal” citizens treat these victims? What would their short remaining lives be like?

If you put the basic details into ChatGPT, though - “dystopian government, surveillance, torture, betrayal” - It wouldn’t give you the same result.

Every decision you see in a book, movie, or other piece of media that you love is there because the author got stumped at one point and had to think their way out of it.

Ask any famous author about their writing process. Read or watch any interview. There will always be a point where they had no idea where to take the story next, and some of the parts about those stories that are the best are the ones that came about from writer’s block.

Writing is all about getting stumped, and confused, and not knowing where to go next. It’s okay to not always know what you’re doing. But you do actually have to think your way out of it. Otherwise, you’re not writing.

[splinkyzop]

1984 fanarts from last month . just rewatched the moviey and i am thinking about them again smileeees

julia design inspired by the awesome @ kitschyfemme's Btw ☝️felt as though i should mention

[thyme-in-a-bubble]

a list of some autumnal movies/series 🍂

i am nothing if not an organised little goblin who can not stop themself from making a good list. this is just in case you want something with that fall vibe but can't think of any. just close your eyes and point somewhere on this little list, or even put the numbers in a generator and go with whatever the result is ♡

winter | spring | summer

🥧 ‧₊˚ ⋅ movies ⋅˚₊‧

nosferatu (1922) 

sabrina (1954)

the creature from the black lagoon (1954)

psycho (1960)

rosemary’s baby (1968)

the rocky horror picture show (1975)

halloween franchise (1978-)

friday the 13th franchise (1980-)

an american werewolf in london (1981)

dark crystal (1982)

a nightmare on elm street (1984)

ghostbusters (1984-)

ronja rövardotter (1984)

clue (1985)

princess bride (1987)

the witches of eastwick (1987)

elvira mistress of the dark (1988)

dead poets society (1989)

when harry met sally (1989)

ghost (1990)

the witches (1990)

death becomes her (1992)

hocus pocus (1993)

addams family values (1993)

interview with a vampie (1994)

the craft (1996)

the first wifes club (1996)

the scream franchise (1996-)

halloweentown (1998)

practical magic (1998)

you’ve got mail (1998)

the blair witch project (1999)

sleepy hollow (1999)

chocolat (2000)

amelie (2001)

the lord of the rings franchise (2001-2003)

scooby doo (2002)

school of rock (2003)

mona lisa smile (2003)

peter pan (2003)

pirates of the caribbean franchise (2003-2017)

north & south (2004)

pride and prejudice (2005)

the descent (2005)

just like heaven (2005)

the devil wears prada (2006)

the lake house (2006)

penelope (2006)

el orfanato (2007)

juno (2007)

ratatouille (2007)

bridge to terabithia (2007)

the edge of love (2008)

twilight (2008)

the curious case of benjamin button (2008)

julie & julia (2009)

jennifer’s body (2009)

dorian gray (2009)

coraline (2009)

true grit (2010)

the cabin in the woods (2011)

jane eyre (2011)

wuthering heights (2011)

perks of being a wallflower (2012)

the odd life of timothy green (2012)

hotel transylvania (2012-)

the conjuring franchise (2013-)

what we do in the shadows (2014)

the riot club (2014)

as above so below (2014)

john wick (2014-)

the age of adaline (2015)

the witch (2015)

far from the madding crowd (2015)

the edge of seventeen (2016)

paterson (2016)

20th century woman (2016)

the love witch (2016)

mary shelly (2017)

murder on the orient express (2017)

get out (2017)

a quiet place (2018 + 2020)

the guernsey literary and potato peel pie society (2018)

on the basis of sex (2018)

knives out (2019)

ready or not (2019)

the lighthouse (2019)

little women (2019)

the gentlemen (2019)

emma (2020)

ammonite (2020)

the dig (2021)

fear street trilogy (2021)

good luck to you, leo grande (2022)

the batman (2022)

fresh (2022)

bodies bodies bodies (2022)

mr malcom's list (2022)

totally killer (2023)

slay (2024)

🧦 ‧₊˚ ⋅ series ⋅˚₊‧

moomin (1990-1992)

twin peaks (1990-1991)

x files (1993-2018)

buffy the vampire slayer (1997-2003)

gilmore girls (2000-2007)

supernatural (2005-2020)

vampire diaries (2009-2017) / the originals (2013-2018) / legacies (2018-2022)

downton abbey (2010-2015)

the walking dead (2010-2022)

once upon a time (2011-2018)

american horror story (2011-)

teen wolf (2011-2017)

peaky blinders (2013-2022)

outlander (2014-)

how to get away with murder (2014-2020)

the magicians (2015-2020)

izombie (2015-2019)

poldark (2015-2019)

critical role (2015-)

stranger things (2016-)

ghost files / buzzfeed unsolved (2016-)

lucifer (2016-2021)

shadowhunters (2016-2019)

anne with an e (2017-2019)

the good fight (2017-2022)

riverdale (2017-2023)

manifest (2018-2023)

killing eve (2018-2022)

succession (2018-2023)

you (2018-)

a discovery of witches (2018-2022)

the chilling adventures of sabrina (2018-2020)

dickinson (2019-2021)

virgin river (2019-)

carnival row (2019-2023)

the witcher (2019-)

the umbrella academy (2019-2024)

sanditon (2019-2023)

good omens (2019-2025)

the haunting of bly manor (2020)

i’ll be gone in the dark (2020)

queens gambit (2020)

the great (2020-2023)

shadow and bone (2021-2023)

the nevers (2021-2023)

wednesday (2022-)

interview with the vampire (2022-)

vikings valhalla (2022-2024)

lessons in chemistry (2023)

my lady jane (2024-)

[tom-at-the-farm]

I've been made! He looks appropriately outraged by his discovery of the panopticon

I got one of those cheap baby/pet/creepy spy indoor cameras for Charlie (read: for myself so I can look at Charlie while I'm away toiling in the coal mines) and the app sends you notifications when it spots motion and records, and it classifies the motion as either "pet" or "human" and today I got a bunch of "pet"s and one "human," which is inherently slightly ominous considering that I live alone. But I figured probably Charlie just triggered it in some big way. But then I watched the video and there was literally nothing there. Just empty living room. So we're thinking ghost, right?

[somehow-a-human]

Whose POV is it anyway?

An Introduction

DO NOT ASK NEIL ABOUT FAN THEORY

Cracking down on the storytelling of Good Omens season 2 through the lens of a changing narrator.

If you haven't read this interview with Good Omens cinematographer Gavin Finney, and you're interested in the fantastic dedication and detail that went into this TV show, definitely give it a read. Not only is it lovely, but Neil also posted the article with a caption mentioning that it's got so many secrets in it. Obviously that made me take a closer look.

I have already gone into a fair bit of detail about the different Lens Filters that Finney mentions in the article in a separate post and I will be referring to them quite a bit so if you aren't familiar with them I would suggest reading that first!

This first post is going to cover the basics of changing narrator/POV's and I'll be writing additional posts for separate episodes/minisodes/scenes since there's obviously way too much to cover in a single go. So shall we take our first look?

It's no secret that something's a *bit weird* with season two, and there are SO many theories about it. I love to read speculation, metas, theories, and opinions, it's definitely fun but my personal ideas align more with the idea that we're simply being shown the events of season 2 through the memories of multiple narrators, different POV's, and it slightly skews the story, sometimes within one continuous scene.

I am also a sucker for a good multiple timeline theory but that isn't this post.

Lens Filters

As I stated above, I wrote a post about each of these individual filters earlier. What I didn't go into in that post was speculation about the filters. While I think they're pretty straightforward, especially the filter for hell (Black Pro-Mist ((BPM)), I think the other two have a bit more room for speculation.

Bronze Glimmer Glass

BGG was described by Finney as being used for 'bookshop scenes', but after S2 back numerous times and paying as much attention as I could to the lighting and colouring of the scenes, I think this is generally true but not always true. There are times when bookshop scenes seem to use a different filter, and other locations also seem to be shot with the BGG filter as well. I think BGG aligns with Aziraphale's POV. Or if Not Aziraphale, an outside-of-Crowley narrator? Based on the scenes (which we'll specifically get into in other posts) which BGG seems to be used, context clues, character behavior, etc, I think BGG clues us in that we're seeing, if you will, through Aziraphale's eyes.

Black Diffusion FX

BDFX was described as being used for 'Crowley's present day storyline' and fuck me, that's not ominous or weirdly phrased at all Mr. Finney! This filter definitely aligns with Crowley. Most of the time he's separate from Aziraphale it seems that this is the filter being used, and certain scenes switch filters mid-scene when he begins to go off on snarky Crowley-centric commentary.

Catch-22 & Herzog

The books on Gabriels bookshelf, great books obviously, but I think books that are also meant to give us context about the story. Pride and Prejudice is a love story about making snap judgements on someone's character, and coming to recognize somebody might be good despite their title or appearance. The Crow Road is a story about life, death, love, morality, mystery, and God. 1984 details the tragedy of Julia and Winston's attempt at falling in love while living under in a police state. You see my point?

That's why I wanted to touch a bit more on Catch-22 and Herzog specifically when talking about the possibility of changing narrators/POV's in Good Omens 2.

Catch-22 frequently switches narrator and the events described are often not necessarily sequential. This way you're getting information about previous scenes as the story continues, so while you're reading the book you're forming a more complete image of the events as the story continues from different characters POV's and iterations of the story. Sound relevant?

Herzog is the other book I wanted to talk about. To be fair I haven't read Herzog in full like I have Catch-22 but I pulled out my copy to reference and flip through a bit to remind myself. Herzog unlike Catch-22 doesn't switch narrators but the narration by the main character, Herzog himself, switches between first and third person throughout. When he is narrating through his letters, you get a deeper look at his thought processes and emotions. It also relies on flashbacks to bring context to the life of Herzog.

While these books touch on other elements that are relevant to the Good Omens story, namely Yossarian's relationship and views of God in Catch-22, the way these stories are told intrigued me for this context.

Crowley's Hair

Yeah I'm gonna mention the hair, because I think the hair is linked. Crowley's shorter sideburns, trimmed mutton chops in the 1827 flashback, and shorter Job wig seem to be clearly aligned with the BDFX filter/Crowley's POV as far as I can tell. I don't know if this means it's just another way to denote POV, but it seems way too consistent not to mention it. The longer sideburns, fuller mutton chops, and longer Job wig all match up with Aziraphale's POV or the BGG filter. My thoughts here are that his hair is another hint of who may be relaying the information to us, AKA is it internal or external. I am making my best guesses though and there are still some situations that I feel less sure about. For example, when Aziraphale takes the Bentley to Edinburgh and Crowley is in the Bookshop with Jim his sideburns are long, is it because he's remembering these scenes unreliably? Is Aziraphale imagining the events? Is it because Jim is present? A brief fluttering thought I toy with from time to time is the fact that in the before-the-beginning scene they are long, and what that means in context of the rest of the season.

S2 Promo Posters

Finally this set of season 2 promo posters showing the characters thoughtfully considering scenes in their heads just gives me a lot of these POV vibes.

I'm planning on doing individual posts for specific scenes, episodes, and minisodes that require detailed breakdowns. I'll update this list with links as the posts are finished!

POV "Your 'Something's Wrong' Voice"

POV a Trip to Hell and a 25 Lazarii Miracle

POV a Companion to Owls

POV The Dirty Donkey & I think I Found a *Clue*!

POV Bodysnatchers & Cosplaying a bookseller

POV 1941

POV The Ball

POV The End?

Whose POV is it Anyway - a Conclusion

[applysome]

Telling you a random story because you’re a muse enjoyer but my dad literally primed me for rpf in my youth bc he would always go on about how it was obvious that Matt Bellamy was singing about being gay in like every muse song 😭 I was 10 years old like you know what he has a point

Hello! I love Muse, random stories, and random facts so you came to the right place!

As far as I know, Matt, Dom, or Chris have never commented publicly on their sexuality (someone please correct me if I’m wrong!)

That being said, there’s been discussions and various interpretations of lyrics over the years such as:

“I have played in every toilet” - Muscle Museum. Explained as the band playing in tiny venues before they hit the big time. This could be interpreted as casual sex in public bathrooms.

“Come in my cave / And I’ll burn your heart away” - Cave. A song about men retreating into a metaphorical cave when they’re in a bad mood. This could also be interpreted in a… ahem. Fairly self explanatory way. Further context from Matt - “it’s a song about a friend. We’re not friends anymore.” I’ll leave that there.

“Why can’t we see / That when we bleed we bleed the same” - Map of the Problematique. A desperate song about loneliness and not being good enough for the object of your affection. Could also be interpreted as feeling unable to confide in anyone regarding your sexuality (or any other perceived difference) when at our core, we’re all just people with feelings.

Resistance. Obviously inspired by Winston and Julia’s love story from Orwell’s 1984. Could also be interpreted as referring to a different kind of forbidden (in some places love). Also to note when Muse played in Malaysia, where sadly LGBTQ people do not have sufficient rights, Muse were forced to remove We Are Fucking Fucked from the setlist and made a point of playing this song instead. When asked, Dom said on Instagram, “a more poignant message given the circumstances.” A class act. Still giving their fans in Malaysia a chance to watch them live rather than throwing a fit and getting banned (looking at you Matty Healy). Whilst giving a subtle middle finger to the Malaysian government and a positive message to the fans.

I’m sure there are many many more lyrics I’ve forgotten that can be interpreted in various ways. Regardless of their sexuality (which is of course their own private business unless they choose to comment), have some bonus content just for fun.

Dom

Lots of jokes have been made by Matt towards Dom over the years including his rainbow of “gay” trousers, love of leopard print and outlandish outfits, being “gay” for his huge ���faff bag” of products (which in hindsight, was probably moisturiser and lip balm) which Matt proclaimed was so big, Dom needed his own tour bus, and of course Dom liking Brie which according to Zane Lowe, is a “gay” cheese.

Further examples include when they experienced bad turbulence on a flight and they thought the plane might crash, Matt and Chris joked in an interview they thought Dom would tell them he was gay just before they died. Another interview included a part where Matt volunteered to suck venom out of Dom’s arse if he got bitten by a spider or a snake. When Dom asked what would happen if it bit him on the nob, Matt answered “I’d let you die.”

It’s important to note that the early to mid 2000s were a very different time, and of course these kind of jokes are no longer acceptable. But from my observations, everything said was always in a jokey, friendly way and was always taken in good humour. As far as I know, the band have made no more jokes along these lines for many many years.

Bonus bonus

I loved the interview where the interviewer, I think due to a language barrier (but more likely how closely they were sat, let’s be honest) mistook Matt and Dom for a couple, and Matt said with a cheeky smile, “what us? No, we’re more like brothers.”

I have also witnessed Matt unzip Dom’s onesie on stage with my own eyes, as well as slap his arse numerous times walking past. And don’t even get me started on the drum straddling. But to be fair, who wouldn’t want to touch Dom at every opportunity.

In conclusion, I think Matt, Dom, and Chris are allies of the LGBT community and certainly wouldn’t mind a queer reading of any of their lyrics / comments over the years.

Not sure if this is what you wanted lovely anon but it was fun to ramble about Muse / Belldom for a little while! I’ll leave you with this…

[mayalikesliterature]

RIP Julia from 1984 you would have loved Sabrina Carpenter

[floralcavern]

Rating some MCs in classic literature 

Winston Smith (1984): 3/10. Sorry, but the fact that his first thought upon meeting Julia was his desire to rape and kill her is not a good way to make me root for this guy. Idk, he’s kind of.. eh. I like his thoughts of rebellion, I guess

Ralph (Lord of the Flies): 6/10. He’s interesting and I like his leadership. However, he’s kind of a milquetoast protagonist. There are way more interesting characters in the book. But I do love his arc!

Scout Finch (To Kill A Mockingbird): 10/10. I may not really care for TKAMB that much as a book, but boy oh boy do I love the characters. Scout is incredible, she is a perfect unreliable narrator and the perfectly written child POV. She’s so silly! I love her!

George Milton (Of Mice and Men): 10/10. I LOVE OF MICE AND MEN! This book never fails to make me cry. George is amazing. He’s such a good friend. I love characters that come off as jerks who actually care the most. And boy, does he care about Lennie. He cares so much and it breaks my heart 

Napoleon (Animal Farm): 9/10. Technically, there isn’t one sole main character of Animal Farm, but when I looked up ‘Animal Farm main character’ he was the first search result. Anyways, I LOVE THIS BOOK! I LOVE HOW IT SHOWS THE DANGERS OF COMMUNISM! I LOVE HOW IT SHOWS HOW DICTATORSHIPS HAPPEN! Napoleon is such a good villain, I just AGHHHH!

Nick Carraway (The Great Gatsby) 1/10. I literally had to look up this mofos name, and I just read the book last year. He is so fucking boring. Not a single interesting quality to name about him. He’s just.. bland. 

Victor Frankenstein (Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus): 7/10. Look, I know technically Robert Walton is the narrator of the book, but I have.. literally nothing to say about him, ok? At least with Nick Carraway people actually somewhat remember his existence. Shut up. Anywhoooo.. Oh, he’s such an awful person. He’s so fucking pathetic. He’s terrible, he’s a loser, he’s a bad dad. But I loved watching his downfall. 

Romeo and Juliet: 4/10. They’re.. boring. And stupid. So fucking stupid. 

Ponyboy Curtis (The Outsiders): 6/10. Yall, I’ll admit that it’s been a LONG time since I’ve read The Outsiders. I do remember liking it! And from what I remember about Ponyboy, he was a great protag, just a sweet, genuinely good kid. But, like with Ralph, there were more interesting characters in the book that stand out to me more, even with my vague memories. 

[couldtransitionsaveher]

WINSTON SMITH from 1984

JUSTIFICATION:

"It's true George Orwell told me so

The whole story works really well as a queer metaphor, love and identity and nonconformity being ruthlessly rooted out and destroyed by society. She and Julia's doomed lesbian romance was everything to me in highschool" - Anonymous

Reminder: Submissions are always open! Submit here!

Did you make your daily click today?

[kaydensb]

Here is a link for a whole bunch of movies, TV shows and more.

Apparently on my other post about the google drive there were some issues with not being able to get the link to work. So I am making another post in the hopes this one has no issues with the link not working.

Hopefully all the prior issues with getting things to open or show up have been fixed, but if not let me know specifically what isn't working and I will try to re-upload it.

Below is a list of the things currently on my google drive, I will add more and keep updating this list periodically as things get put on the drive.

Audiobooks and Audio Dramas

Fiction

1984 By George Orwell

A Tale of Two Cities By Charles Dickens

Animal Farm By George Orwell

Bleak House By Charles Dickens

Bridgerton Series By Julia Quinn

Chemistry By Rachael Sommers

Daisy Jones and the Six By Taylor Jenkins Reid

David Copperfield By Charles Dickens

Do Not Disturb By Freida McFadden

Dracula By Bram Stoker

Eve of Man Series By Tom Fletcher & Giovanna Fletcher

Fellow Travelers By Thomas Mallon

Frankenstein By Mary Shelley

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe By Fanny Flagg

Friends of Dorothy By Sandi Toksvig

Gone Girl By Gillian Flynn

Gothic Tales By Arthur Conan Doyle

Great Expectations By Charles Dickens

H.G. Wells The Science Fiction Collection By H.G Wells

It By Stephen King

Jurassic Park By Michael Crichton

Les Misérables By Victor Hugo

Little Women By Louisa May Alcott

Mansfield Park By Jane Austen

Me Before You By Jojo Moyes

Neon Roses By Rachel Dawson

No One I Knew By A. J. McDine

Oliver Twist By Charles Dickens

Pride and Prejudice By Jane Austen

Red, White & Royal Blue By Casey McQuiston

Sense and Sensibility By Jane Austen

Should Have Known Better By A J McDine

Stranger in the Woods By Anni Taylor

The Complete Sherlock Holmes Collection By Arthur Conan Doyle

The Exorcist By William Peter Blatty

The Forgetting By Hannah Beckerman

The Girl on the Train By Paula Hawkins

The Glitch By Leeanne Slade

The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Honey Witch By Sydney J. Shields

The Invite By A. J. McDine

The Murder Game By Tom Hindle

The Picture of Dorian Gray By Oscar Wilde

The Promise You Made By A. J. McDine

The Woman in Black By Susan hill

The Wonder Boy of Whistle Stop By Fannie Flagg

The Wrong Sister By Claire Douglas

Think Again By Jacqueline Wilson

Torchwood

We Play Games by Sarah A. Denzil

When You Least Expect It By Haley Cass

Non Fiction

A Billion Years My Escape from a Life in the Highest Ranks of Scientology By Mike Rinder

All I Know Now By Carrie Hope Fletcher

Apparently There Were Complaints By Sharon Gless

Bad Gays A Homosexual History By Huw Lemmey & Ben Miller

Barnum's Own Story By P T Barnum

Best Foot Forward By Adam Hills

Between the Stops By Sandi Toksvig

Beyond Belief By Jenna Miscavige

Black Mass By Gerrard O’Niell & Dick Lehr

Blown for Good - Behind the Iron Curtain of Scientology By Marc Headley

Boy From the Valleys By Luke Evans

Che Guevara By Jon Lee Anderson

Church of Lies By Flora Jessop & Paul T. Brown

Coming Up for Air By Tom Daley

Dare to Dream By Izzy Judd

David Bowie Made Me Gay - 100 Years of LGBT Music By Darryl W Bullock

Deaf Utopia By Nyle DiMarco

Escaping the Kingdom of God By J. Andrew Robinson

Fahrenheit-182 By Mark Hoppus

Fathomless Riches By Rev Richard Coles

Freddie Mercury The Definitive Biography By Lesley-Ann Jones

Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing By Matthew Perry

From Here to the Great Unknown A Memoir By Lisa Marie Presley & Riley Keough

Help I S*xted My Boss By William Hanson & Jordan North

Karma By Boy George

Letters on Love By Giovanna Fletcher

Mama’s Boy By Dustin Lance Black

Notorious by Raphael Rowe

Once upon a Tyne By Ant & Dec

Our Story By Reg and Ron Kray

Over Our Dead Bodies By Todd Harra & Kenneth McKenzie

Rainbow History Class By Hanna McElhinney

Scientology: Abuse at the Top By Amy Scobee

Sh**ged. Married. Annoyed By Chris Ramsey & Rosie Ramsey

The Church of Fear by John Sweeney

The Doomsday Mother By John Glatt

The House of My Mother By Shari Franke

The Hundred Years' War on Palestine By Rashid Khalidi

The Mayor of Castro Street By Randy Shilts

The Peer and the Gangster By Daniel Smith

The Phantom Prince By Elizabeth Kendall

Under the Banner of Heaven By Jon Krakauer

Under the Bridge By Rebecca Godfrey

Documentaries and Docudramas

A Lion Called Christian

A Very British Sex Scandal

Abused By My Girlfriend

Accused - The Hampstead Paedophile Hoax

Aids - The Unheard Tapes

Alex Brooker: Disability and Me

Bad Influence: The Dark Side of Kidfluencing

Bad Influencer - The Great Insta Con

Bowie - The Man Who Changed The World

Boyzone: No Matter What

Children of the Underground

Dancing for the Devil - The 7M TikTok Cult

Daughters of the Cult

Desperately Seeking Soulmate - Escaping Twin Flames Universe

Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke

Dinosaurs - The Final Day with David Attenborough

Dirty Pop - The Boy Band Scam

Driven - The Billy Monger Story

Escaping Polygamy

Escaping Twin Flames

Freddie Mercury - The Great Pretender

Frozen Planet

Frozen Planet II

Good Grief with Reverend Richard Coles

Hatton Garden - The Inside Story

Hell Camp - Teen Nightmare

I Am Not A Rapist

I Cut Off His Penis - The Truth Behind The Headlines

Ireland's Mother and Baby Scandal

Killing Patient Zero

Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath

Lewis Capaldi - How I'm Feeling Now

Liar: The Fake Grooming Scandal

Living Every Second: The Kris Hallenga Story

Lord Montagu

Mama's Boy

Matt Willis: Fighting Addiction

Murdaugh Murders - A Southern Scandal

Murder Among the Mormons

My Wife My Abuser - Captured On Camera

Pennywise - The Story of It

Planet Earth

Planet Earth II

Queen - Days Of Our Lives

Sacred Soil - The Piney Woods School Story

Sarah Everard: The Search for Justice

Scientology: Going Clear - The Prison of Belief

Soham: The Murder of Holly & Jessica

Stolen Youth - Inside the Cult at Sarah Lawrence

Strike - An Uncivil War

Strike! The Women Who Fought Back

Striking with Pride: United at the Coalface

Surviving Amber Heard

Take Care of Maya

The Bambers : Murder at the Farm

The Boys - The Sherman Brothers' Story

The Exorcist Untold

The Family

The Krays - The Mafia Connection

The Menendez Brothers

The Millennium Dome Heist With Ross Kemp

The Movies That Made Us

The Pembrokeshire Murders - Catching the Gameshow Killer

The Program - Cons, Cults and Kidnapping

The Settlers

The Times of Harvey Milk

Tom Daley 1.6 Seconds

Uprising

Waco - American Apocalypse

Warren Jeffs: Prophet of Evil

Wonders of the World I Can't See

Films

A Haunting in Venice

About a Boy

All of Us Strangers

American Psycho

Armageddon

Bad Tidings

Basic Instinct

Beautiful Boy

Beautiful Thing

Beetlejuice

Boy Erased

Boys Don’t Cry

But I'm a Cheerleader

Chicago

Child's Play

Chocolat

City of Lies

Clue

Contagion

Cool Runnings

Corpse Bride

Dallas Buyers Club

Dawn of the Dead

Death on the Nile

Deck the Halls

Die Hard

Dirty Dancing

Donnie Brasco

Downton Abbey

Edward Scissorhands

Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind

Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Four Weddings and a Funeral

Fried Green Tomatoes

From Hell

Gone Girl

Gremlins

Hairspray

Handsome Devil

Heathers

Heathers - The Musical

Home Alone

Hot Fuzz

How the Grinch Stole Christmas

How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days

IT

Jaws

Jingle All The Way

Jumanji

Jurassic Park

Kill Your Darlings

Kindergarten Cop

Kinky Boots

Labyrinth

Legally Blonde

Legend

Les Misérables

Les Misérables: The Staged Concert

Little Shop of Horrors

Little Women

Love Actually

Mean Girls

Midsommar

Milk

Minamata

Miracle on 34th Street

Moulin Rouge!

Murder on the Orient Express

Murdered for Being Different

Newsies

Oliver!

Philadelphia

Pirates of the Caribbean

Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Prayers For Bobby

Pride

Pride and Prejudice

Red, White and Royal Blue

Rent

Scarface

Scream

Scrooged

Secret Window

Shaun of the Dead

Shelter

Sister Act

Sleepy Hollow

Star Wars

Sweeney Todd - The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

The Addams Family

The Amityville Horror

The Blair Witch Project

The Conjuring

The Craft

The Crow

The Exorcist

The Full Monty

The Greatest Showman

The imitation Game

The Muppet Christmas Carol

The Nightmare Before Christmas

The Santa Clause

The Shawshank Redemption

The Sixth Sense

The Sound of Music

The Tourist

The Woman in Black

Three Men and a Baby

Three Men and a Little Lady

Titanic

Transcendence

Twister

Uncle Buck

Unicorns

West Side Story

What We Did on Our Holiday

White Christmas

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

Zola

Stand Up Comedy

Adam Hills

Chris McCausland

Chris Ramsey

Daniel Howell

Daniel Sloss

Dara O'Briain

Ed Byrne

Fern Brady

Greg Davies

John Bishop

Rhod Gilbert

Sarah Millican

Sean Lock

TV Shows

90210

Agatha All Along

Alan Davies: As Yet Untitled

Apple Cider Vinager

Being Human

Big Night of Musicals

Bridgerton

Celebrity Race Across the World

Code of Silence

Criminal Minds

Cuckoo

Daisy Jones and the Six

Deadwater Fell

Desperate Housewives

Doctor Who

Downton Abbey

Dynasty

Eyewitness

Fellow Travelers

Fire Country

Friends

Good Girls

Good Omens

Good Trouble

Heartstopper

I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here!

Interview with the Vampire

It's A Sin

Killing Eve

Looking

Mary & George

Mid-Century Modern

Midnight Mass

Missing You

My Family

My Wife and Kids

Nevermind the Buzzcocks

One Tree Hill

Parenthood

QI 

Queer as Folk

Shameless

Sky Med

Sleepy Hollow

Switched at Birth

Taskmaster

The Alienist

The Artful Dodger

The Clearing

The Couple Next Door

The Fosters

The Haunting of Bly Manor

The Haunting of Hill House

The Jetty

The Midnight Club

The Misinvestigations of Romesh Ranganathan

The Pembrokeshire Murders

The Perfect Couple

The Society

The Stranger

The Unofficial Science Of…

The Watcher

Torchwood

Toxic Town

Under the Banner of Heaven

Under the Bridge

Virgin River

WandaVision

White Collar

White House Farm