TN2 Issue 3, 21/22

2021-22 TN2 ISSUE 3 SPRING TN2MAGAZINE.IE

ART/FASHION/FILM/FOOD/GAMES/LITERATURE/MUSIC/SEX/THEATRE/TV/PLACES/GAEILGE/ALT.

TN2 ISSUE 3 ART TEAM

Cover Artist Eve Smith Featured Illustrators Meghan Flood, Linde Vergeylen, Ellecia Vaughan, Emily Stevenson, Christian Keogh Featured Photographers Eadaoin Fagan, Megan O’ Rourke, Hilary Mullen & Ria Walls

Eadaoin Fagan

Editor-in-Chief Ciara Connolly Deputy Editors Robert Gibbons, Alice Payne Social Media Manager Kate Byrne Art Kate Byrne Ella Sloane Fashion Gelsey Beavers-Damron Millie Brennan Film Savvy Hanna Cathal Eustace Food Molly Guy Lambton Lauren McKenna Games Robert Gibbons Ryan O’ Connor, Gelsey Beavers-Damron Literature Róisín Ní Riain, Brídín Ní Fhearraigh-Joyce Meg Melvin Music Hannah Quearney Gale Aitken Sex Alice Payne Shannon Connolly, Karla Higgins Theatre Gráinne Mahon Leah Downey TV Gillian Doyle Adam Balchin Places Hilary Mullen Gabriela Grzywacz Gaeilge Yu Hua Chaomhánach Nina Nic Mhánais ALT. Sophie Furlong Tighe, David Wolfe Head of Illustrations Emily Stevenson Head of Photography Megan O’ Rourke Layout Ciara Connolly, Robert Gibbons, Hilary Mullen, Meghan Flood, Róisín Ní Riain, Gale Aitken

CONTENTS Letter From The Editor

Art & Design The Relationship Between Music and Visual Art The Tortured Artist Trope

Fashion

Dickie Greenleaf: a Character Costume Study Arts Block Party: The Revival of Indie Sleaze

Film

Paris on The Big Screen Growing Up and Growing Down: Liberal Arts

Food

The Best Animated Cuisine

Gaeilge

M’oibseisiún le Saothráin Bheo: Kimchi

Games

Games Editorial Retrospective 2021 Tn2 Games Of The Year Awards: 2021 Tn2’s Games To Watch In 2022

Literature

Tolka: Making Room for the “Formally Promiscuous” An Interview with Elizabeth Reapy

Music

TN2 Music’s Class of 2021 Ants From Up There by Black Country, New Road // Review

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Sex

‘Why Are All of My Sex Toys Purple?’

The Best Day The Monetisation of Love

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Theatre

Are Fiction Podcasts The Modern Iteration of Radio Plays?

One Brief Shining Moment: Camelot, Flaw and Idealism at the London Palladium

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TV

Dropout: The Future of Streaming?

In Defence of Emily in Paris

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Places

Cities Across the Sea: A Comparison Between Dublin and New York Ski Trip 2022: The Trinners’ Trek to Avoriaz Why Erasmus is not What I Expected it to be The Last Chapter: The Closure of Chapters Bookstore

ALT.

The ‘Bee Bricks’ Philosophy “Dear Diary…” and The Pursuit of Happiness

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EARTH & INK

PHOTOS BY MEGAN O’ROURKE

Letter From The Editor I feel it would be impossible to write this letter without addressing the ongoing invasion in Ukraine. We at TN2 stand in solidarity with the Ukrainian people, particularly those within our college community. At a time when freedom has never felt more precious, we are privileged to share the creative expressions of our writers, illustrators and photographers with you in our Spring Issue.

For our first issue of the year, we pay tribute to the year just past, celebrating the most memorable songs and video games of 2021, while acknowledging some difficult feelings many may relate to in our current times, such as the interrelationship between grief and art and the sadness of saying goodbye to a beloved bookshop. Our cover displays the peaceful image of a rabbit, often associated with good fortune, a blessing that I hope is bestowed upon our readers for the rest of the semester.

I’d once again like to thank our hardworking TN2 staff, in addition to our contributing writers, illustrators and photographers, for all their help in putting this issue together.

I hope that reading this issue brings you a much-needed reprieve from the tragedy of the news cycle, even for a little while.

Best Wishes and Warmest Regards,

ART BY LINDE VERGEYLEN

Ciara x

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ART AND DESIGN

Sound and Vision: The Relationship Between Music and Visual Art The English art critic Walter Pater once said, “all art constantly aspires to the condition of music”. Pater believed that music, unlike all other art forms, is superior in that there is no distinction between subject and form. He said that the condition of music is its ability to communicate a message in a truly abstract way, since its form is not representational or referential as other art forms are but is in fact impossible to distinguish from its subject matter.

Over the 20th century, this difference in how music and art are created and perceived grew more noticeable. Music became more accessible and easier to engage with than ever before, while the world of visual art became increasingly elitist and remote.

One relatively well-known way by which music and art converge is the perceptual phenomenon synesthesia, a sort of ‘crossing of the senses’ where information meant only to be perceived by one of the senses is instead perceived by two or sometimes even more. One way in which synesthesia can manifest is the ability to ‘hear’ colour, or see colour in one’s mind upon listening to music. One of the most wellknown synesthetes in popular culture was the Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky. Often referred to as the ‘father of abstraction’, Kandinsky believed that abstract art could depict the unconscious and that music was the most abstract art form of all, meaning a piece of music can have a profound impact upon a person regardless of if they are aware of the piece’s subject matter, if there even is one. He once said that “music has been for some centuries the art which has devoted itself not to the reproduction of natural phenomena, but rather to the expression of the artist’s soul, in musical sound”. In short, Kandinsky believed that music had achieved a freedom of expression that visual art had not yet reached, and it was his goal to correct that.

Kandinsky’s painting ‘Impression III (Konzert)’ (1911) is a visual description of what he experienced when he

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attended a concert of Arnold Schoenberg’s, who was his friend and contemporary. The painting is abstract - there are no definite recognisable objects in the painting, only impressions of what might be. It is an attempt to create a full sensory experience using only the visual; to stir up an emotional response to the painting in those who viewed it even though they would not be able to make out any distinct objects in it, or to deduce the painting’s subject matter - to make them respond to the painting in the same way that they would to a piece of music, such as that of, say, Debussy. Kandinsky’s synesthesia informed many of the artistic choices made in creating this painting - for example, the bold swipe of brilliant yellow that curls around the sides and bottom of the painting is how Kandinsky saw the sound of the trumpets, while the oval shaped in the centre and toward the left of the piece could be interpreted as the audience, engulfed by the sound of the trumpet as Kandinsky may have felt.

Since Kandinsky, many more artists have produced works inspired by music, though they vary greatly in their inspirations. Most were not quite of the same opinion as Kandinsky in considering music a truer and more abstract expression of art and freedom, but rather wished to simply reflect the music that they enjoyed, or a facet of music they felt distinct to that art form, through their art.

Georgia O’Keeffe believed in “the idea that music could be translated into something for the eye”, an idea which she made a reality in her 1921 piece “Blue and Green Music”.

Jazz informed the work of the Cubist Stuart Davis and the Abstract Expressionist painter Jackson Pollock greatly, while the Pop artist Andy Warhol was impacted hugely by the music of the Velvet Underground, an impact he recompensed by becoming their manager in 1965.

This exchange works the other way around too; there are a myriad of composers and musicians who have been influenced by visual art in their creative process. The

American composer Morton Feldman greatly admired abstract art, and counted many visual artists including Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock among his friends. In 1972, Feldman produced an album entitled ‘Rothko Chapel’ following the artist’s death, taking its name from the octagonal chapel in Houston,Texas that houses 14 of Rothko’s paintings, and in which the album was premiered. Feldman attempted to reflect facets of Rothko’s painting style through his music - in describing one way in which he did this, he said “Rothko’s imagery goes right to the edge of his canvas, and I wanted the same effect with the music - that it should permeate the whole octagonal room and not be heard from a certain distance.”

WORDS BY KATE BYRNE

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The Tortured Artist Trope

“I feel ever so strongly that an artist must be nourished by his passions and his despairs” - Francis Bacon The stereotype of the tortured artist is deeply embedded into pop culture.

Whilst I am of the opinion that this is a harmful trope, the issues of pain and loss as major influences in many renowned artists’ work cannot be ignored. Instead of romanticising this grief inflicted by debilitating illness and death, we should, as consumers of art, allow it to inform our understanding of the very real physical impact it can have on the work of many artists and how it manifests itself in this work.

Cuban born artist Felix Gonzalez Torres transforms the mundane into profound meditations on loss and love, inspired by his partner’s diagnosis of AIDs and finally his death in 1991. Gonzalez Torres channelled their mutual suffering into his art installations, creating intriguing pieces whose message remains seared into the minds of its viewers. One of his most thought provoking installations ‘Untitled’ (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) is an allegorical representation of his partner, Ross Laycock. At first glance the installation is merely a pile of wrapped sweets, however this is granted significance by its weight - precisely 175 pounds - Ross’ body weight prior to his diagnosis.

The interactive element of Gonzalez Torres’ art is just one of the things that makes it so unique. Viewers are encouraged to take a sweet, causing the pile to gradually diminish, just as Ross’ illness caused him to deteriorate before Gonzalez Torres’ eyes. The final gut-wrenching addition to the installation derives from the artist’s intention for the pile’s continuous replenishment- granting Ross eternal life through his re-embodiment in art. Another installation which I greatly admire is Gonzalez-Torres’ ‘Perfect Lovers’- yet another reminder of the transience of life and the pain inflicted on so many during the AIDs epidemic. The installation is understated, two identical clocks ticking in perfect synchrony - mechanical hearts- but tragically destined to fall out of sync with each other.

Felix Gonzalez Torres died at the age of 38 just 5 years after Ross from AIDS-related causes.

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Frida Kahlo’s art is undeniably characterised by pain, unrelenting chronic pain, a harsh reality with which she had to live from a very young age. This inevitably manifested itself in a great many of her most famous paintings including ‘The Broken Column’, ‘The Wounded Deer’ and ‘Henry Ford Hospital’. Many researchers believe Kahlo suffered from a condition called spina bifida which affected her spinal column’s development at an early age and exemplified later health complications drastically. At only 18 years old, Kahlo was in a bus crash which caused almost fatal injuries and left her bed bound for months. During this time, Kahlo developed a passion for painting, encouraged as a distraction from her pain. ‘The Broken Column’ was created in the aftermath of one of many surgeries Kahlo endured in her lifetime. In this self-portrait, the artist’s face is covered in tears and she stares defiantly back at the viewer. A cracked, barren landscape surrounds her and her spinal ‘column’ appears similarly cracked - her body is held together by a strapped corset-like device.

Nails penetrate Kahlo’s body. ‘The Wounded Deer’, a chilling image of a young deer with Kahlo’s face and arrows piercing its skin, similarly portrays the artist’s agonising bodily trauma. Kahlo’s art also touches on other taboo subject matter such as miscarraige, strikingly portrayed in her painting entitled ‘Henry Ford Hospital’.

Most known for his universally recognisable painting ‘The Scream’, Edvard Munch’s art is permeated by heavy topics such as grief, which he was exposed to throughout his childhood and beyond. Munch’s work was largely informed by the mental health issues he developed as a result of a traumatic pattern of familial death. He was at the forefront of the expressionist movement, pouring his emotions onto the vibrant colour-infused canvas. Entries in Munch’s diary reveal that ‘The Scream’ is autobiographical, inspired by a real moment in the artist’s life which he describes almost as vividly in words. “I was walking along the street with two friends – the sun was going down – I felt a touch of melancholy. Suddenly the colour of the sky changed to blood red. I stopped walking and leaned against a fence feeling tired to death – I saw the flaming clouds like bloodstained swords – the blue-black fjord and the city – my friends went on walking – I stood there trembling with fear – and I felt how a long unending scream was going through the whole of nature.”

These three artists, Gonzalez-Torres, Kahlo and Munch, are just a select few of the masses who have left a lasting global impact due to their striking portrayal of human suffering. Issues of both physical and mental illness, loss and the overwhelming grief that follows are just a snapshot of what these artists managed to embody through visual art in their lifetimes.

Undoubtedly, the subject matter portrayed in their work is both incredibly gritty and thought-provoking and will continue to evoke a profound emotional response in art consumers for years to come.

WORDS BY ELLA SLOANE ART BY EMILY STEVENSON

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FASHION

Dickie Greenleaf: a Character Costume Study “I don’t want to repeat my innocence. I want the pleasure of losing it again.”

– F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise

It almost seems like director Anthony Minghella pulled the character of Dickie Greenleaf right out of a Fitzgerald book. Played by the gorgeous Jude Law, Greenleaf is the second lead in the British filmmaker’s 1999 adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s novel, The Talented Mr. Ripley. Dickie is the personage Matt Damon’s Tom Ripley aspires to. In this film, clothes are not simply costumes, but the very skins of the characters and the literal fabrics of society.

I find it interesting that Dickie first appears in a mere swimsuit. This scantily attired figure is then clothed by the film and firmly established in terms of his personality, moral outlooks and social context. Ultimately, it is Tom Ripley who will be dressed in these very clothes. Ripley and Greenleaf ’s wardrobes are built in antithesis to each other. Scattered throughout the film are moments where Tom wears Dickie’s clothes in an attempt to become him.

In the narrative, Dickie is incessantly tethered to his attire, so much so that it is through his knitted shirt that Tom remembers him.

Designers Ann Roth and Gary Jones carefully tailored Dickie Greenleaf ’s ensembles for the film. For them, it was not only about an authentic representation of the 50s, but also an acute distinction between American and European styles. Dickie’s portion of the film is set entirely in Italy, with a big chunk of it being in the fictitious town of Mongibello on the Amalfi Coast. Combining the zeitgeist of the times with the geographical context, while distilling the essence of his character, Roth and Jones stitched each and every detail to absolute perfection.

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Dickie dawns on Riviera chic with a nonchalance characteristic of old money. “Just wear some of my things. Wear anything you want. Most of it’s ancient,” he tells Tom. His clothes are comfortable and carefree, but do not compromise on style and quality. Easy but wellfitted, baby pink shorts and beige polos with Italian collars make frequent appearances. His relaxed demeanour is reflected in his often-cuffed white linen pants and knitted shirts that he leaves mostly unbuttoned. At the Jazz club in Naples, he is seen in a cream coloured jacket with a bold tie. These patterned ties are to become a signature of his ensembles. The minutiae of his costume lie in the accessories – a gold ring on the middle finger of the right hand and a green signet ring on the little finger of the left, his steel watch, the iconic porkpie hat and a brown Gucci belt. Albeit little things, they throw light on his upper-class upbringing, maintain the tone of his opulence and balance his blasé attitude with tailored charm.

It is in Rome that this charm reaches heights of sophistication. Rome gives Dickie the opportunity to shine in suits of sartorial excellence. He retains the hat and Gucci belt, wearing them with an elegant navy dupioni silk jacket and a white shirt with double French cuffs and gold cufflinks. An all-time favourite fashion and cinematic moment of mine is his dark monochromatic suit. In a scape of solid Prussian blue - polo, jacket and pants – with the gold-buckled brown Gucci belt and black hat, he is the epitome of a debonair rake.

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At the time of his murder, his final scene in the film, Dickie is dressed in black, as is his culprit, Tom. Roth and Jones yet again bring in their subtle genius by giving the two black shirts different textures. It is this attention to the small, seemingly unimportant details that gives their costumes such character. Dickie’s style is suave and flattering but also easy and casual.

He repeatedly sports a pair of dirty white loafers and cannot be bothered to wear socks. Moreover, matching his unbuttoned shirts, he hastily pushes his feet into these shoes, bending and folding their backs, revealing his bare heels. Minghella, Roth and Jones, gave as much thought to what is clothed as to what is not.

From Dickie’s first appearance in a swimsuit, to the chess game played naked in the bathtub, his nudity was a garment in itself.

A combination of Amory Blaine and the tragic Jay Gatsby (especially given his prominent green ring), Dickie exudes confidence in his wide-cut suits, unbuttoned polos, and audacious prints and textures (one of his shorts has maroon fish all over it). A briefly worn black and gold bathrobe is the peak of his luxury.

His approach to clothes is the perfect blend of flair and leisure, resulting in irresistible charm. He is certainly one of the best and most intelligently dressed characters in cinematic history.

WORDS BY KHUSHI JAIN ART BY MEGHAN FLOOD

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Arts Block Party: The Revival of Indie Sleaze It truly is drama and boredom that drives the Indie Sleaze scene into 2022 in all of its crude and unadulterated glory.

For those seemingly unfamiliar with Indie Sleaze, you may be more modish than you first may think, as it takes the ugliest and most unspeakable elements of every style to create something so unlikeable that it actually works.

Indie Sleaze is the love child of the garish Y2K/Juicy Couture bling and the sultry edge of the Arctic Monkeys fan pages that dominated early Tumblr. It was born somewhere between MySpace and Skins, a violent clash of cultures culminating in the most popular club-trend of the mid 2000s - and of The Perch, apparently.

The clothes of true Indie Sleaze were not unlike the garments you’d see currently sitting around the coveted Arts Block picnic tables, fags hanging lazily from mouths, some philosopher bragging about come downs and ket over hangover Kaph concoctions. These people are in

constant states of inebriation or headache, and their clothes match this cyclical ritual. Indie Sleaze blurs the lines between day and night, pairing cheap sweatshop ‘out-out’ clothes with accessories worn to protect the hands and heart from cold smoking areas where the best tunes would inevitably be played. We are yet again seeing knitted hand warmers and thin scarves pulled choker-like to expose the low cut of unflattering 2000s blouses, with any length of skirt being married with any form of tights the more ripped and sleazy, the better.

The men of Indie Sleaze are harder to pinpoint. As with any subculture, the male participants usually fall flat, sporting instead a more...unintentional style. Although with Indie Sleaze, this haphazardness beautifully encompasses the true essence of the style, with cardigans, graphic and terrible t-shirts, waistcoat vests, and tawdry sunglasses at the forefront.

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Not only were the clothes - as mismatched, layered, and clashing as they were - the soul of Indie Sleaze, but its real draw was in the performance of it. You were not in it if you were not showing it off through vulgar flash photos from darkened bar booths and clogging every Instagram feed of 2012. The style reeks of day-old cider soaked into polyester and sequins, and it probably hasn’t been washed since the first time it did coke in the bathrooms of The George, but every line and can of it is documented through the medium of a digital or film camera. Every flash is another ‘unforgettable’ night ending in a taxi back to Howth or Dartry or wherever the after party lies in wait to bore you with another ski trip anecdote. The shots are raunchy and unfiltered, and they show just enough pore and smudge to look effortless and just little enough to make the bathroom cubicles graffiti look mysterious and seedy - DUDJ, eat your heart out.

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These new-age hipsters wear solely large, awkward headphones with enough wire to actually reach the charging ports in the business building, and can usually be seen listening to the newest Fontaines track or the oldest Radiohead one. They reminisce about the days of Bloc Party and The White Stripes, and of Azealia Banks before she became a racist. The riffs are still as grimy 10 years on, and the lyrics still as questionable, a true testament to the timelessness of the Indie scene when it frankly just hasn’t developed in 15 years.

The Indie Sleaze fanatics spend weekends or free classes in charity shops that they call ‘thrift’ haunts, where middle-aged women behind the counter question why they’re still selling rhinestone belts and graphic jackets to people over the age of 14. But that is exactly what brought Indie Sleaze back. It is accessible, it is ugly, it is frowned upon by those not in it.

It represents a time when people frankly didn’t care, and culturally it pissed off everyone who came into contact with it- just like anyone who occupies the Arts Block with a tote bag and an ego. It is raiding your parents’ closet and being disappointed when all you found was Benetton and Polo. It is knowing everything about fashion but nothing about class. It is Ethics at 2pm and Chaplins at 8pm. Is it stylish? No. Is it meant to be? Absolutely not. Is it ruining fashion?

Completely and utterly. But is it saving it? Well, that’s for you to decide.

WORDS BY DAISY DROHAN PHOTO BY MEGAN O’ ROURKE ART BY ELLECIA VAUGHAN AND CHRISTIAN KEOGH

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FILM

Paris on The Big Screen

My name is Eve and I was looking forward to season two of Emily in Paris. There. I said it. The first season came out when I was in the hospital and I thought “for what this is: this is okay”. Their slick Paris set filled with good bread, hot chefs and a bank account not teetering on the minuses, felt like a world where nothing could go wrong. By the time I was back home, the Parisians had already descended with their pitchforks. It was tasteless, ignorant, Americana. The return of Darren Star’s stellar series makes for comforting TV, but churns up a lot of questions about making an uninformed cartoon out of a culture. For those craving the buttery comfort of Paris without the exoticised filling: I’ve got you covered.

Eden (2014)

In this film, director Mia Hansen-Love asks “what happens once everyone has gone home from the party?”

As she tracks the parallel early rise of Daft Punk and her DJ brother, Paul (Felix de Givry) the film steams up with the immersive heat of summertime Paris as the sticky sweetness of too many untethered nights rubs off.

The film follows the highs of Paul’s pursuit of musical success, as well as the love he let fall away as a result. His spending catches up with him as his audience shrinks and he comes to terms with a once acceptable but now untenable coke habit. One to watch if you want to get in your feels to the tune of some late 2000s raving bops.

Breathless (1960)

Typical of Jean-Luc Godard, Breathless is a sexually charged will-they won’t-they tale of no-good JeanPaul Belmondo’s Michel and his vigorous pursuit of an American reporter named Patricia (Jean Seberg). Michel is on the run and the two roam the streets of Paris as he tries to convince Patricia to come with him. For a film that opens with a police chase, Breathless’s tension in large part comes from the two characters’ professional-level back and forth teasing. It remains dynamic and engaging, and finds time to touch on systematic sexism in the arts industry.

Gagarine (2020)

A dreamlike magical realist tale, Gagarine tells the story of the explosive impact when councils refuse to sustain their community’s housing. After falling out with friends and his mum refusing to let him live with her, Youri (Alseni Bathily) hides out alone in his childhood, soon-to-be-demolished apartment. From such a sad premise comes a burst of creativity by Youri, who, based on extensive research, turns the crumbling place into an outer space, self-sustaining oasis. Along the way comes a touching romance with a Romani girl, Diana (Lyna Khoudri) who is also being corralled out of her home, and the humour of a harmless drug dealer who has nowhere else to go. The film recounts the finding of hope when you’ve been dealt an absolutely rubbish hand.

120bpm (2019)

It is clear from the sheer smorgasbord of characters that director Robin Campillo is qualified to tell the story of 120bpm. The film recounts the work of Parisian AIDS activists campaigning around the time of the 1991 hospital-infected blood scandal. As the sexism and hierarchy of power within the community is fleshed out; humour and power are found in a time of justifiably deep anger and darkness. The spectre of the declining T-cell count in the AIDS positive characters looms larger as the film goes on, reaching a climax as deaths start to snowball. The wilting spirit of Sean (Nahuel Perez Biscayart) falling into sickness hammers home the magnitude of losing even one person to a disease that’s been systematically ignored.

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Diva (1981)

A young mail carrier, Jules (Frederic Andrei), becomes embroiled in a sinister plot by corrupt cops after a compromising tape accidentally falls into his hands in this indulgent tale. He becomes obsessed with American singer Cynthia (Wilhelmenia Fernandez) and follows her around like a lost puppy. The film can drag at times, not helped by the minimal musical score and the especially feeble motivations of the female characters, but there’s something equally calming about watching a character narrowly escape death again and again, particularly at the hands of cartoon-like villains. Watch for twilight-lit real estate of times past, impeccable 80s overcoats and a remarkably skilled moped-chase down the steps of the Parisian Metro.

Water Lilies (2007)

Water Lillies navigates awkward teenage desire and sex-shaming through the story of gangly Marie (Pauline Acquart), who, attending her friend’s thrashed-out version of synchronised swimming, finds her eye wandering to the elegant leader of the older team: Floriane (Adele Haenel). Like many of Sciamma’s films, Water Lilies contains flashes of the metro, but we never see the characters get above ground in the city; suburbia seems to perpetually suck them back. Although most of the film takes place in the functional architecture of a municipal swimming pool, Water Lilies elevates the everyday life of French teenagers into the electric through Adele Haenel’s magnetic performance.

3 days in Paris (2007)

Created along the lines of her break-out success in Richard Linklater’s ‘Before’ trilogy, Julie Delpy brings us a Parisian romance all grown up. Summer butterflies are traded in for grappling with what it takes to find common ground in a long-term relationship. Quietly brilliant, it fits the bill of a cosy tourist film as the couple wander the beautiful streets. Native Parisian Delpy brings to the fore France’s cultural quirks as well as jostling over the country’s endemic problem with race in one of the film’s most giggle-inducing scenes.

Boy meets Girl (1984)

Boy meets Girl opens with freshly jilted hopeful filmmaker Alex (Dennis Lavant) trying to strangle his best friend on the bank of the Seine and apart from, as the title suggests, his meeting and becoming obsessed with the equally miserable Mireille (Mireille Perrier), the plot wavers thereafter. Revelling in hormonedriven emotions; the film pulls on the optimism of romance. Come for Leo Carax’s unexpectedly refined early style and stay for the charismatic black and white Parisian streets and Elfin-faced Alex’s compelling character.

L’Ami de Mon Amie (1987)

Set in the Brutalist post-war builds of a recently constructed suburb of Paris, L’Amie de mon Amie carries the vague summer air of having nowhere you need to be. Charismatic Lea (Sophie Renoir) befriends frumpy Blanche (Emmanuelle Chaulet) and the pair traverse summer love in this 1987 classic. The most likeable storyline is Blanche’s, as she stumbles into understanding that she is worth being loved. Director Éric Rohmer took artistic direction from painter Nicolas de Stail which manifests itself as engaging and chromatically-pleasing frames. If you can stand action man Alexandre (Francois-Eric Gendron)’s sick smirk and Blanche’s squirming smooches, this is a film to make you smile.

All Hands on Deck (2020)

Guillaume Brac’s engaging, summer-soaked film charts the escapades of two young guys following the seasonal exodus of Parisians out of the city. The film opens with Felix (Eric Nantchouang)’s flirty encounter with Alma (Asma Messaoudene) at sunrise on the bank of the Seine. She soon takes off to her cushy second home on the Cote d’Azur and things go awry when the guys follow suit to surprise her. The tone stays light without frivolity and touches on the intersecting but often undiscussed issues in France of class, race and sexism. Romantic conflict is masterfully handled and lets us know that ultimately, everything turns out alright in the end.

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Growing Up and Growing Down: Liberal Arts The whole idea of ‘adulthood’ is very 21st century. The use of the term is so much in vogue that it has diffused into cinema, book titles, memes and even the conjugated verb: ‘adulting’. Adulting is less about being an adult and more about not wanting to become one. Young people worldwide have developed an aversion to adulthood and growing old. In the age where we clutch our youths to our hearts and refuse to grow up, college years are sold as the prime of life; this is what Liberal Arts is about. The 2012 film, written, starring and directed by Josh Radnor, received a lukewarm response from many critics.. Liberal Arts took on the mammoth themes of happiness and contentment, placing them on the timeline of life spans, or at least it tried to. By no way was the execution impressive, however the film definitely made an effort at exposing, understanding and resolving these very postmodern anxieties. At times funny but mostly dull, the philosophical explorations (and Elizabeth Olsen and Allison Janney’s performances) ensured that the film leaves you with something to think about.

Liberal Arts focuses on three crucial stages of life - youth, middle age and old age. Zibby (Elizabeth Olsen) is a 19-yearold college student, Jesse (Josh Radnor) is a middle-aged admissions officer for a New York university, and Peter Hoberg (Richard Jenkins) and Judith Fairfield (Allison Janney) are two literature professors. College is intelligently employed as the fulcrum of these lives. None of these four people are happy. Dissatisfied with their present (all except Professor Fairfield), are craving meaning and seeking refuge in the past and future.

Fisher is introduced interviewing an eclectic mix of students and dozing off on the last question, “Where do you see things going after college?” For Jesse himself, college is akin to an ex-girlfriend, the one that got away. He believes college to be this magical place where “you get to sit around and read books all day, have really great conversations about ideas.”

The hopes of tomorrow’s endless possibilities, the “anything could happen” attitude that college imbues its students with, is what Jesse is nostalgic for, in his stale, lonely, empty life. A return to his alma mater excites him. Although his English and History degree made sure that he was fully unemployable (his own words), he longs to be back at college. Perhaps he never left. It is subtly put across that Jesse made a mess on his graduation day and blamed his parents for college ending. So, while Jesse lives and works in New York, the 35-year-old is still tethered to his college and the life it offered.

It is impossible, for him, to imagine fulfilment post-college. It is all downhill from there because “life happens you know.

Decisions get made. And then all those many choices you had in front of you, are no longer really there.” Back on campus, Jesse is also desperate to be reunited with the nostalgic era he sees without faults.

“Well don’t you think you’re romanticising youth a bit much? You know, cause it’s just as hard and annoying to be young as it is to be old, I am assuming.” Enter Elizabeth, or Zibby, the 19-year-old drama major with a passion for classical music and Twilight books. Zibby is exactly what Jesse wants. But Zibby’s experiences are far removed from the ideal dreamland Jesse imagines; she is equally unhappy. Fed up with the hook-up culture, she seeks maturity and calls herself old fashioned. It is only a matter of time before Jesse and Zibby become a couple. While he finds the fervour and hope of the past in her, she finds the depth and sagacity of the future in him.

Jesse scribbles 19 and 35 on a yellow ruled sheet, doing the maths of the age-difference between him and Zibby. Youth and middle age clash. The impulses and energies of college are confronted with the inertia of the workplace, each feeling inadequate. US Senator Ben Sasse attempts to explain these insufficiencies in ‘The Vanishing American Adult.’ He uses the two very interesting terms; ‘adultified children’ and ‘infantalised adults’ to refer to the Zibbys and Jesses created as a consequence of the overwhelming presence of information. Although Sasse’s controversial solution is a return to the old ways of life, his sociological interventions are worth a read. He believes that television, the internet, social media, etc. submerge kids in a deluge of mature information, as a result of which, they were never properly allowed to be children. These have become the Peter Pan generations, refusing to grow up. Neither fully children nor wholly adults, they remain stranded in what was only supposed to be a phase. This state of being in a perpetual transition means that they are always in search of meaning while never actually managing to reach it. Zibby and Jesse are trying to be something they are not. Zibby talks about rushing the process of becoming the older wiser version of herself from the “19-year-old rough draft who’s full of all this potential but has to live more to catch up with that other self somehow.” In this tussle, both Zibby and Jesse miss out on what they really have – their presents.

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Then we have two characters who are in the third phase of life: old age. Professor Hoberg is ending a 37-year-old career and it is for his retirement dinner that Jesse returns to college. Hoberg is a sardonic leftist with a thing for printed shirts.

At first optimistic, he slowly starts to fear his retirement. After a muddled speech at the big dinner, he proceeds to beg for his job back. Failing to get rehired, he has no choice but to accept moving on.. Then there is Judith Fairfield. Fairfield has built herself into a dry and unfeeling British Romantic literature professor. Her advice to Jesse is – “put some armour around that gooey little heart of yours.”

Two other figures of importance in Jesse’s life are Nat (Zac Efron) and Dean (John Magaro). Nat is ‘that’ perpetually high kid spewing life lessons in casual conversations while Dean is a bipolar David Foster Wallace fan who can’t think of anything worse than college. In a dramatic factual utterance about caterpillars, Nat introduces the concept of ‘imaginal’ cells. Imaginal cells are responsible for the transformation of a larva into a butterfly. Caterpillars feel attacked by these cells and fight them. The cells reign victorious and thus begin the caterpillars’ metamorphoses. The lesson to be learnt here is that there will be things and situations that seem hostile and dreadful but most of the time, they are simply the human version of imaginal cells. We need them to metamorphose into better beings, “and that is why there is no reason to be afraid because everything is okay.”

For Dean, Jesse is akin to a mentor. Jesse understands Dean and sees a piece of himself in him. After gulping down an assortment of pills, Dean is admitted into the hospital. Jesse comes to visit and tells him: this right now, all this stuff you’re feeling, this is a footnote, okay? You’re gonna graduate and you’re gonna get out in the world and stumble into something like contentment. When Dean asks if it has been this way for Jesse, he says, “Hell no. But some days are alright. Some days are like a gift and some days suck. But all of that’s okay.”

And it’s true. It is okay. Growing up and growing down and all the imaginal cells that lie in between these two are parts of life. “I think getting old’s going to be okay. It’s just the getting there that kicks your ass,” Jesse says in the final movement of the film. “You’re gonna be a great old guy … I think getting old could be really nice,” responds Ana, a woman he meets at the book shop. Closer to Jesse in the age-department, Ana has all these ideas – almost prospects – about getting old, and Jesse is pleasantly surprised to hear them, for he is no longer lingering in the shadows of yesterday. He is rejoicing in being 35 and embracing the coming of old age. Zibby has understood that things move at their own pace and there is no point in being hasty about life. Professor Hoberg “tried to turn the clock back. Here’s a tip: Doesn’t work.” So, he will carry on, whatever follows. And Judith Fairfield? She will continue teaching enchanting classes on the Romantics and will not cuddle just because she recited Wordsworth to you.

Our concept of ‘adulthood’ followed the idea of ‘life,’ the very Modernist objectification of existence. ‘Adulthood’ eventually took over ‘life’, turning us into personifications of a perpetual conflict between these two. I think the lesson of Liberal Arts is that not every moment needs to be a struggle. We don’t need to be incessantly striving and straining.

We don’t need to be in a constant search for another thing, another time or another place. Sometimes, we just need to be where we are. Sometimes, we just need to be.

WORDS BY KHUSHI JAIN

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FOOD

The Best Animated Cuisine While real food is undoubtedly the best food there is, given that one can actually eat it, the imagination is a worthy competitor. So, “tie your napkin ‘round your neck, cherie,” while TN2 presents a selection of animated dishes that would give ‘real’ food a run for its money

The ‘Be Our Guest’ Banquet, Beauty and the Beast If the cheesy quote above wasn’t indication enough, this list was initially inspired by the decadent spread featured in the Disney animated classic Beauty and the Beast. French cuisine has long been praised as the highest quality food in the world, and it seems the menu on offer at the Beast’s Castle is no exception. Sentient candelabra-turnedmaitre-d’ Lumiere delivers a cornucopia of fancy courses, from soup du jour and cheese soufflé to the infamous ‘grey stuff ’. The quality of this imaginary dinner is so exemplary that it inspired a real restaurant based in Walt Disney World, aptly named Be Our Guest, which is as close to Michelin star approval as fictional food can get. This onscreen feast not only engages the taste buds, but also the eyes and ears, as Belle is serenaded by the cutlery and dishware in a true display of five star service. After all, who doesn’t love dinner and a show?

An Array of Food, Studio Ghibli Films While the Hayao Miyazaki-led Japanese animation studio is acclaimed for their masterful storytelling and complex themes, it is important that the food designed by Studio Ghibli does not go unnoticed. The breakfast produced by Sophie, Howl and his resident fire demon Calcifer in Howl’s Moving Castle looks mouth-wateringly delicious, with the image of the bacon and eggs sizzling on the pan no doubt seared into the mind of any viewer with a rumbling stomach. In Spirited Away, the variety of cooked meat dishes are so tasty that they literally turn those who consume them into pigs, unable to stop engorging themselves. This theme of greed and gluttony remains throughout the film, but does little to make the food presented any less inviting.

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WORDS BY CIARA CONNOLLY

Ratatouille, Ratatouille The titular dish prepared for the climax of the Pixar film Ratatouille is a humble meal, consisting of onions, courgettes, tomatoes, aubergines, and peppers, fried and stewed in oil. While most children typically find vegetables unappealing, the array of colours and the satisfying preparation montage of the dish make it desirable to even the staunchest of veggie-phobes. The meal is also shown to be powerful enough to transport the grumpy food critic back in time after only one bite, stirring the long-buried joyous childhood memories within him, suggesting it may even have some hidden magical, or at least hallucinogenic, qualities among the simple ingredients. The texture and appearance of the food looks so appetising that one could almost overlook the fact that it was made by a rat. Almost.

The Krabby Patty, Spongebob Squarepants Made by The Krusty Krab, the finest eatery under the sea, the Krabby Patty could be seen as just your typical burger, topped with lettuce, cheese, onions, tomatoes, ketchup, mustard and pickles. However, its true appeal lies in this simplicity, along with the notorious secret formula used to make them superior to the offerings of rival restaurant The Chum Bucket. Throughout the series there are also many variations on the iconic Patty, from the adorable miniature Pipsqueak Patty, to the colourful Pretty Patties, the latter of which come with a fun side effect of turning one or more body parts the same colour as the Patty. Besides, in what other restaurant could you get a burger topped with intriguingly-purple jellyfish jelly?

Food Weather, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs The assortment of foods falling from the sky in this sci-fi animated adventure is truly the stuff of dreams. A world where donuts, spaghetti, ice-cream with hot fudge and whatever other delicacy your heart desires are all available for free the moment you step outside? Sign me up. While the quality of food produced from a water vapour powered machine in the sky is highly dubious and may be even be hazardous according to some scientists, much like a reallife all you can eat buffet, the value of quantity over quality is key.

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GAEILGE

M’oibseisiún le Saothráin Bheo: Kimchi Is minic a chloisim ó mo chairde gur hipeacoindreach mé, agus an bhfuil an ceart acu…b’fhéidir. Ní hipeacoindreach i ndáiríre mé ach ní féidir liom a shéanadh go bhfuil sé de nós agam mo chuid siomptóim a fhéachaint suas ar ‘WebMD’, cás-tuairiscí a ghrinnléamh tar éis cógais nua a ghlacadh agus ansin cuir ina luí orm féin go bhfuil aicíd mharfach orm!

Nuair a bhuail an coróinvíreas ní raibh eagla orm roimhe ach ar feadh míosa anuraidh cheap mé go raibh gach galar faoin ngrian orm. Ar chúis ait éigin chuir mé ina luí orm féin go raibh córas imdhíonachta fíor lag agam fiú nach raibh fianaise ar bith ann go mbeadh sé sin fíor. Ansin b’shin an áit a thosaigh an ‘oibseisiún’ le saothráin bheo. Déarfainn gur ith mé kimchi jjigae gach lá ar feadh seachtaine.

Is stobhach é kimchi jiggae, déanta, dar ndóigh, as kimchi. Bhain mé triail as go leor brandaí difriúla agus an ceann atá éasca le teacht ar ach atá go deas freisin ná an kimchi de chuid ‘Jaru’ atá ar fáil in Supervalu. Seo é an oideas don kimchi jjigae a chuir leigheas orm!

Oideas Cómhabhair Leath oinniún 1 spbh ola olóige 90g kimchi Canna túna in ola ¼ cupán sú kimchi 1 tsp gochugaru nó púdar sillí 1 tsp gochujang Clóbh gairleoige, brúite Paicéad tófú ‘silken’, ciúbaithe go mór Scailliúin, sliste

1. Gearr suas an oinniún i bpíosaí móra agus cuir i sáspan te é leis an ola olóige chomh maith leis an kimchi. Frioch ar feadh cúpla nóiméad é.

2. Cuir an tuna leis chomh maith le píosa beag den ola agus frioch arís é ar feadh nóiméid.

3. Cuir uisce fiuchta leis go dtí go bhfuil gach rud clúdaithe. Cuir an sú kimchi, gochugaru/sillí, gochujang, gairleog agus an tófú leis. Lig do fiuchadh go héadrom ar feadh 10-15 nóiméad.

4. Riar le rís úr agus cuir na scailliúin ar barr. Is féidir an jjigae a chur thar núdail chomh maith.

FOCAIL LE YU HUA CHAOMHÁNACH 18

GAMES EDITORIAL RETROSPECTIVE 2021

GAMES

Best Experience Buying Tetris Effect There’s not much to say about this, so I’ll keep it brief. Tetris rules. It is literally the best game we have ever created. Tetris Effect is the best Tetris game. I would highly, highly recommend coming home from a night out, booting up the online game shop of your choosing, and buying Tetris Effect when drunk. One of the best experiences you could hope for and, instead of waking up with the Fear, you wake up with a little present for yourself!

Most Intense Experience Playing No Thing

No Thing is a game that I’m 90% sure doesn’t exist. I can’t imagine the person (or people) who created it. I think that it just sort of happened one day. It appeared on systems (because it’s on practically every system) one day fully formed - the decision to put it there was made by no one. It’s a first person game where the only options are to turn left and turn right.

You move forward at a pace undictated by yourself as you are surrounded by seemingly meaningless shapes and icons and a colour scheme that changes every minute or so. There is a vaporwave soundtrack and, over that, a robotic monologue that speaks in platitudes, none of which made clear sense to me. It is as if David Lynch had a baby with the elevator music from your nightmares. Even just watching gameplay now gives me a minor headache and anxiety. The three hours of this that I played were played alone, in a dark living room, as I waited until 2am when the Women’s Skateboarding at the 2020 Olympics would start, in the year 2021. Nothing is real.

Best Replay

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Recently, my girlfriend has gone on Erasmus to Prague and, as a sort of parting gift, we did a bit of a game swap, each of us giving each other a copy of our favourite games. I lent her my old copy of Professor Layton and the Unwound Future (one of the greatest games of all time, and top of my list for games to port to Switch) and she lent me a copy of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. It’s a very lovely thing which I would highly recommend to anyone in a relationship with someone else who loves video games. There is something about having an experience that you know meant a lot to your partner and getting to call them and tell them what part you are at, sharing an experience across time. I played Breath of the Wild a long, long time ago, in 2017 when it first came out on the WiiU. Not a lot of people realise that it released on both consoles, but it did. I’ll always associate the cover art with that iconic WiiU Blue Band. My WiiU broke at some stage and so I have been unable to dive back into the world of Hyrule for the past few years, until now. Playing it now, about 5 years after it came out, I am struck by how my entire approach to the game has changed utterly. When I first played it, I was a man on a mission. I was getting every single tower, collecting the Divine Beasts ceaselessly, scoping out shrines from great heights. I was placing so many markers that, if you removed all other identifying features, I’d still be able to navigate Hyrule with ease. Yet, now, it’s different. I play for an hour or two max at the end of every day, and I spend most of my time running around, looking for memories. I never cared about the memories on my previous runs.

In fact, I think I didn’t collect any, and yet, this time I am drawn to them. Running around Hyrule has become a form of meditation and escapism for me. It is an unexpectedly emotional experience. It makes me feel closer to my partner, and helps me to reflect on how I’ve changed in the last 5 years. 5 years ago, I was just preparing to start college and Breath of the Wild has shown me just how utterly unrecognisable the fresher is from the graduate. Playing Breath of the Wild in 2022 has had a bigger impact on me than any game I’ve ever replay. It has helped me to bridge the gap in a long distance relationship, escape from the pressures of my final year of college, and enter a dialogue with my past self. It is that very special gaming experience which, every time I put down my Switch, makes me feel like I know myself a little bit better.

WORDS BY ROBERT GIBBONS 19

TN2 GAMES OF THE YEAR AWARDS: 2021 Best Multiplayer: Hazelight Studios’ It Takes Two is perhaps the most surprising hit found in the catalogue of 2021 video game releases. The game is a fantastic adventure through a multitude of genres brought to life by beautiful visuals, incredible level design, and gameplay that is simply fun. Playing through It Takes Two feels like taking a journey back in time to the simplicity of early 2000s platforming games like Ratchet & Clank and Jak & Daxter. It is undoubtedly a passion project built by developers who hold the same love for our childhood favourites as we do. Keeping this in mind makes It Takes Two’s most innovative and impressive feature an even greater achievement; it is built to be played in co-op. The game was made to be played with friends or family and it serves as the perfect entry-point for anybody unfamiliar with video games. The simplicity and consistent flow of the gameplay as the players are transported from genre to genre - from a platformer, to a third-person shooter, to a 2D fighter and more - introduces at a base level those same essential game concepts that we learned in the early days of Ratchet or Jak. It Takes Two is our best multiplayer game of 2021 not just because of its impressive and nostalgia-awakening design and visuals, but because of its accessibility - this is one of those rare few games in which everyone really can join the fun.

Best Single Player: We are currently living in an era where Metroidvania games are in abundance, but Metroid games are thin on the ground. A new, must-play Metroidvania comes out every week;, from Hollow Knight to Ori and the Will of the Wisps to Guacamelee to Blasphemous no matter what artstyle, tone, or difficulty you like, there is a Metroidvania made just for you.

On the other hand, if you’re a Metroid fan, there hasn’t been a game since Metroid: Other M in 2010 (unless you count Metroid Prime: Federation Force, which this publication emphatically does not.) It was coming to a stage where it felt like the market was so saturated that the Metroidvania students had to be better than any attempt for Samus to return. And then Nintendo announced Metroid Dread; less than four months later, it was on our consoles, demonstrating that, after all this time, they are still the masters of the genre. It was the type of game that would hook you in for 8 hours without your noticing, always feeding you more and more breadcrumbs of where to go next without being too telegraphed. It also gave enough of a challenge that if anyone so much as breathed during certain boss fights, it would throw off your game entirely. After Metroid Dread’s blast onto the Nintendo Switch, any fears fans had about the death of the Metroid franchise have been put to rest; the new Metroid Prime 4 is fast becoming one of our most anticipated upcoming releases.

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Best Re-Make / Re-Release: Those who were dedicated enough to invest in the WiiU during its run were treated to a few gems: The Wonderful 101, Mario Kart 8, Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze, and, yes, Super Mario 3D World. It was all the fun, energetic platforming you would expect from a 2D Mario but pushed to a 3D platformer that was absolutely brimming with ideas. I maintain that the double cherry is one of the best Mario power-ups since the ice flower in New Super Mario Bros Wii. Not only were we gifted this gorgeous remake of a classic many missed out on, but it was updated with Bowser’s Fury, which feels like it’s something between 3D World and Odyssey, but make it cat. It’s the tight platforming from 3D World with the imaginative world design from Odyssey leading to something that is as delightful to play as Mario has ever been. The fact that Nintendo not only re-released one of their best platformers, but added a whole extra 6 hour game on top of it is what really pushes it a step above the typical re-releases we are used to.

Game of the Year: With titles such as Resogun and Alienation under its belt, developer Housemarque had already earned itself an impressive reputation, causing many players to wonder what such a talented studio could do with a bit of money behind it. That question was answered in the spring of 2021, with the release of Housemarque’s new Playstation 5 exclusive title Returnal.

Returnal is a roguelite game - this means that, with every death, the player is sent back to the beginning of the game having lost almost all of the progress that they made over the course of their last ‘run’. If this sounds repetitive and frustrating, that’s because in many games, it often can be. However, Returnal rarely falls victim to this trap of repetivity.

With stunning environments filled with exotic flora and fauna, a diverse variety of enemy types, and a gameplay loop that feels like it was designed to prevent you from ever putting your controller down again, everything that the game does is built upon a very solid core. What really makes Returnal our Game of the Year, however, is just how effectively the game utilises the next-generation hardware found in the Playstation 5. The combat feels smooth and natural at sixty frames per second, and the dedication Housemarque had to utilising the haptic feedback and adaptive triggers available with the console’s controller turned the game into an experience like no other. On top of this, the sound design is perhaps the best we have seen in a video game to date. As I progressed through the game, I realised just how effectively I could use audio and sound to pinpoint exactly where enemies stood, and what attacks I should anticipate from them. I grew to rely less on sight and more on hearing to navigate combat situations; this provided a sense of immersion that I have not experienced in any other game. With fun and addictive gameplay at its core, stunning visuals, and incredible use of next-generation hardware in creating one of the most immersive gaming experiences on the market, Returnal is undoubtedly our Game of the Year for 2021.

WORDS BY ROBERT GIBBONS AND RYAN O CONNOR 21

TN2’S GAMES TO WATCH IN 2022 Now that we’ve reflected on our 2021 in video games, it comes time to look forward to all of the new ideas and projects that 2022 promises to deliver. While the past couple of years have been characterised by long delays as a result of the global panna cotta, the coming few months will undoubtedly leave us with a lot of catching-up to do. These are the games that we are most excited to play in 2022.

FromSoftware’s Elden Ring is one of the most anticipated games in gaming history; it promises to develop on the core elements loved by fans of the Dark Souls and Bloodborne series (otherwise known as Soulsborne) with the addition of an open world. Judging by past FromSoftware games, we can expect Elden Ring to present us with nightmarish environments, frustratingly difficult bosses, and a plot that is entirely incomprehensible unless you read the descriptions of every item you pick up in the game. The game’s fantasy setting was created by A Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin in an incredible effort to procrastinate finishing his iconic book series.

While Elden Ring promises to maintain the same action-packed combat beloved by fans of FromSoftware’s previous games, players can expect to find some notable deviations from their classic world design. Elden Ring will be open-world, as opposed to the small, often linear worlds of previous Soulsborne titles. Players can expect to find bosses roaming the open lands, with hostile knights defending open plains and terrifying dragons stalking the mountainous regions they call home. The lack of map-markers, usually expected in open world games, is expected to add to the sense of exploration in the game, marking a welcome change from the repetitive formulas of recent titles such as Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and Far Cry 6. The promise of an open-world Soulsborne-style game, if executed correctly, is likely to refresh both the Soulsborne genre and the tired and beaten openworld formula, making Elden Ring one of our most anticipated titles of 2022.

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Sony Interactive Entertainment pulled off a miraculous turn for the God of War series with their 2016 reboot of the same name. It ripped the series’ protagonist Kratos, a vengeful God that makes John Wick look like friendly, out of his homeworld in Greek mythology and into the world of the Norse gods, The series, known previously for its ridiculously fast-paced and combo-oriented combat, was transformed into a slower-paced adventure focusing on the relationship between Kratos and his son, Atreus, and found itself becoming one of the most renowned story-driven experiences in video-game history. God of War: Ragnarök is the upcoming sequel to this 2016 hit; players are hoping that it will deliver an equally impressive story, developing on Atreus’ journey of self-discovery and his relationship with the world he finds himself a part of. The sequel’s title, Ragnarök, suggests that our protagonists will find themselves in the middle of the world-ending events so famed in Norse mythology, meaning that we can expect to see many more of the spectacular action set-pieces that the God of War series has become so renowned for. Our expectations for an incredible story accompanied by fun yet challenging combat and an engaging gameplay loop means that we are incredibly excited to play God of War: Ragnarok when it releases on Playstation consoles later in 2022.

THE BEST OF THE REST Other games to watch over the coming year include Kirby and the Forgotten Land, a classic 3D Nintendo experience where, this time, our favourite pink bouncy-ball has gained the ability to turn into a full-on automobile; Nintendo somehow missed the opportunity to call this creation Carby but we’ve got to respect the ridiculous title of “Mouthful Mode”. In a completely different experience, survival horror Sons of the Forest is slated for release this May, promising an even more terrifying experience than its predecessor, meaning I’ll be playing it with the lights on and never after 8pm - seriously, google some of the creatures from that game, they’re nightmare-inducing. Gran Turismo 7 is a must-watch for any fans of the racing genre, offering ray-tracing on next-generation consoles and PC, while Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League seems set to bring high-octane action in both single-player and four-player multiplayer co-op campaigns.

No matter your taste, 2022 is bound to deliver some gaming experiences that you’ll want to sink into for weeks and months on end.

WORDS BY RYAN O CONNOR ART BY MEGHAN FLOOD

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LITERATURE

Tolka: Making Room for the “Formally Promiscuous” Tolka is one of Ireland’s newest literary journals, with Issue One hitting shelves just last May. It stands out in the bustling literary magazine scene for its dedication to non-fiction and its focus on “formally promiscuous” writing. More on that later. Issue Two arrived in December and features an intriguing mix of non-fiction curiosities from well-known and emerging writers.

Niamh Campbell’s remembrance of a strange childhood encounter spins out into reflections on family history, writing, and how others perceive us. Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe takes the controversy in Ennistymon over Aidan Harte’s púca statue as a jumping-off point for a meditation on the grotesque. Roisin Kiberd imagines the thoughts of Jeff Bezos as he blasts off into space.

I met up with Catherine Hearn of Tolka on a blustery Saturday in early February. After having no luck in Shoe Lane on Tara Street (seating area closed due to staff shortages) or Metro Café (jam-packed, with a queue), we finally settled in over lattes in Clement & Pekoe to chat more about setting up a literary journal in the middle of the pandemic, Tolka’s mission, and Ireland’s thriving literary culture.

Hearn is one-third of Tolka’s triumvirate of founding editors, along with Liam Harrison and Seán Hayes. As Hearn describes it, each of them brings relevant skills to the table. Hearn has experience in fundraising and public relations from her work in a music non-profit.

As a commissioning editor at Gill, Hayes knows the publishing industry. Harrison is currently wrapping up a PhD at the University of Birmingham in early modernist legacies in contemporary literature. His breadth of reading has been invaluable in identifying writers who might be interested in contributing to Tolka. All three are, of course, passionate about literature.

Tolka was a lockdown baby. When Hearn lived with Hayes in 2017, they enthused about Dublin’s literary journal scene, but a lack of time and experience meant they participated only as eager readers. Hayes met Harrison while both were working at Gill and they connected over the same interest.

Then, in the summer of 2020, Hearn and Hayes were once

again scheming and dreaming, this time over the phone. The outbreak of Covid had prompted Hearn to return to Ireland from New York. She was living at home with her mother in Waterford, restless and up for a challenge. She suggested they just go for it and set up their own journal. In Hearn’s words, things “coalesced” from there. Taking advantage of bolstered funding aimed at supporting arts during the pandemic, the trio sought and secured a Literature Bursary Award from the Arts Council.

The choice of “Tolka” as a title had a personal dimension.

When Hearn and Hayes were housemates back in 2017, they lived on the banks of the River Tolka. The word’s resonances also fit the journal’s mission. Hearn suggests its fusion of the local and the international, as a river flowing into the sea, reflects the journal’s interest in both Irish and international literature. She furthermore points out that “Tolka” derives from the Irish word “tolga”, meaning to overflow, which corresponds neatly with Tolka’s aspirations to capture some of the genre-bending “overflow” of Irish writing.

How did the interest in “formally promiscuous” writing come about? Hearn reflects that all three founding editors have a strong interest in “formally weird” literature. She’s quite into poetry, Hayes loves essays, and Harrison reads just about anything. While brainstorming a tagline, “something [for people] to grasp”, Harrison suggested “formally promiscuous” as a knowingly pretentious joke – “I think he just said it in a Whatsapp message.” However, Hearn acknowledges that, pretentiousness aside, it does encompass Below: Catherine Hearn, founding editor of Tolka

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the kind of writing they are after – writing that doesn’t fit neatly into any one category and might struggle to find a suitable home elsewhere.

Hearn does stress, however, that rather than being interested in formal experimentation as an end in itself, they “have no strict parameters” and are instead interested in how form can be twisted to meet its content in fresh, interesting ways.

She points to “Conception” by Brenda Romero, one of Issue Two’s standout contributions, as a perfect example: a piece about the strains and vagaries of undergoing IVF that also happens to be a functional board game. (For her reading at the Issue Two launch, Romero played a portion of the game, with attendees calling dice rolls in the Zoom meeting chat.)

Tolka has also carved out a niche for itself with its focus on non-fiction. Hearn points out that while several magazines and journals publish non-fiction, Tolka’s exclusive focus on non-fiction and openness to non-fiction of any kind gives the journal its unique selling point. It’s a focus that’s in lockstep with certain trends in recent Irish literature.

Hearn mentions her admiration for the non-fictional or autofictional work of Doireann Ní Ghríofa, Mark O’Connell, Roisin Kiberd, Claire-Louise Bennett, Emma Dabiri, Sinéad Gleeson, and Rob Doyle. Doyle proved an early supporter of Tolka’s project when the founding editors reached out to him on the basis of their admiration for his autofictional memoir Threshold. Enthusiastic about the prospect of a literary journal specifically for non-fiction, he put his money where his mouth was as a contributor to Issue One. Hearn paints a positive, heartening picture of Ireland’s literary journal scene. She tells me it’s “such a supportive community”.

If she has a question, she can reach out to her fellow editors at The Stinging Fly, gorse, Banshee, or elsewhere. The emphasis is on collaboration, not competition. Enthusiastic support for new and emerging writers has, she suggests, borne fruit in the current strength of Irish literature. The wide range of journals makes publishing more accessible for those trying to break in. And for anyone with their own dreams of setting up a journal, Hearn’s main advice is to take advantage of the money that’s available and “tell people” – get in touch with writers and editors to share your plans and seek support, advice or contributions. Fellow literary types across the water in Britain have expressed their envy at the health of the Irish literary scene – it’s “just brilliant”.

Above: Liam Harrison and Seán Hayes

Society opening up again has posed its own challenges.

Running a journal was simpler when the only other thing everyone had going on was work. The return of other commitments has necessitated a rejigging of responsibilities. Hearn also confesses to fears of second album syndrome after all the hype and enthusiasm around Issue One. However, she’s “really proud” of how Issue Two turned out.

Hearn did her undergraduate degree in English and German at Trinity while Harrison did the M. Phil in Irish Writing. When I ask her thoughts on the strong presence of Trinity alumni in writing and publishing, she very modestly points out that Hayes, who studied English in UCD, is their publishing high-flyer. She does acknowledge the prominent success of female Trinity graduates in writing in the last few years and points to the quality of the teaching of Irish literature at Trinity.

The lively society and publications scene can’t hurt either – Hearn herself was travel editor at Trinity Frontier during her time in college.

With Issue Two out in the world, the attention of the team at Tolka has now turned to Issue Three. They are currently reviewing submissions. Without naming names, Hearn confirms a Trinity professor is in the lineup, so watch this space. Covid-willing, they might even manage a much-deserved in-person launch this time.

The third issue, due in May, is one to watch out for.

There have, of course, been challenges along the way. While the pandemic provided the impetus for starting the journal, it also consigned the launches of Issues One and Two to Zoom. Better than nothing, but after all the hard work, Hearn admits not getting a chance to celebrate in person was “a bit depressing”. Covid restrictions also meant that, incredibly enough, Hearn only met Harrison in person in late January – after founding and editing two issues of a literary journal together.

WORDS BY RÓISÍN NÍ RIAIN 25

An Interview with Elizabeth Reapy Your work seems defined by journeys of self-discovery. In Skin, your protagonist travels abroad and hates herself. In Red Dirt, the four protagonists have a very debauched and isolating experience. Why did you choose to subvert the idea of travel being idyllic?

I was trying to portray my own experience of travel. When I travelled I thought it was going to be amazing, but I found that there were very sad and lonely and great times too. I was trying to put a more real, authentic experience to this topic. Especially with Skin. This vision of solo smooth back packing was definitely not my experience. As well as that, my confrontation with privilege when I was travelling was something I was interested in.

The inequality in the novel wasn’t really resolved. I found it quite jarring.

I wanted to make it real. I just wanted to follow a thread of someone getting to a place with tangents along the way. I’ve been told that it’s fragmented by other people. The novel was picked up on an early draft. If I had more time, I don’t think I would’ve changed the episodic nature of the novel. Maybe I would’ve added fancier writing.

I really liked that feature. The protagonist’s story isn’t linear. She makes the same mistakes again and again. I found the idea of healing and the psychotherapeutic influences sprinkled through the novel really compelling. I’m still thinking of the line “what matters is not the event but how you interpret it” at the end of Red Dirt. I’m wondering how much of that was important in your development of the narrative? As well, I felt like the line was its own lovely gift to the reader.

I feel like it’s trying to do all of those things. Epiphanies are the biggest ideas in the novel. That line came from Hopper, who is kind of a seer in the novel. The idea of mindfulness and coming down out of your own thinking is important to the characters. It’s funny because I’m a therapist now myself .

When I was writing Red Dirt I was travelling to the places that feature in Skin. I was burnt out from writing Red Dirt and being on that publicity train but I was still writing ideas down every day. And then I thought I could write a story around it. Skin came from wanting to move away from beauty standards. It’s about self-love. And learning to like yourself. And stepping away from all the bullshit and finding your own purpose.

I liked how her journey to self-love was a constant struggle for her. It didn’t feel sentimental. I liked how it was a very slow process. The novel came out at a time when body positivity was gaining traction in popular culture. Do you think that influenced the novel at all?

I actually had to Google the body positivity movement when I read your questions! Those themes were something I was very interested in when I was younger. I quit smoking and I put on weight and I didn’t understand what was going on. I thought I’d learn about health like I had to learn about writing. So I got really into health and fitness as well as the standards around beauty ideals. I found confidence the more I started working out. I guess in that way Skin would be more autobiographical than Red Dirt. I guess the body positivity thing… I’m not so sure about it. The negativity has to be explored too. Otherwise it’s just avoidance.

I love the holistic idea of self-love being a long process. Usually the simplified urges to just “love yourself ” are there to sell you things.

Before you love yourself, it can be useful to figure out why you might hate yourself. And to explore who made that decision and was it even you. It usually isn’t you. It’s all social constructs and bombardments and traps. It’s very insidious, especially for women. It can be for men too.

But to be conscious of these standards is important.

And you can know that you buy into some of it but it’s important to know where the line is and where you stand on it. At the time, I didn’t know where I stood.

I was really impressed with your writing style and how lyrical it was.

I wouldn’t consider it lyrical. My writing style is trusting and intuitive. Trusting my voice and then the craft comes after. Checking if the page makes sense, if there’s emotional resonance, if the plot is working – it all comes after.

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Your style is so punchy. I read Skin in the space of a day. Your prose style is so fast.

When I was in Queen’s University Belfast doing my Masters, I had no comma button on my computer. So if I wanted to use one I’d have to copy and paste it. Then I was praised for short sentences. I like being pulled into a story and have sentences be clean but deep. So I try to emulate that.

Your sentences are so readable.

I guess an influence I could trace that to would be Roddy Doyle. When I was fifteen, I read the Barrytown trilogy. This opened up Irish writing for me.

Before him it was all lyricism and misery. But with Doyle it was humour and accents and movement and people. I still remember being in the library of my school reading The Commitments and being in awe. So I suppose that might be why my sentences are like that.

Would you consider anyone else as having an influence on your writing?

I loved Dick K. Smith, Enid Blyton and Roald Dahl as a child. They say those stick with you. They’re the most important writers because they’re the ones that get you into books. When I was backpacking I had fourteen books in my bag. Alice Munro’s selected stories were always my go-to.

Then when I was writing Red Dirt, Denis Johnson was a big influence. I was in Australia and I was listening to all these podcasts on craft and writing. I heard “Emergency” on the New Yorker fiction podcast. At the time I was in Australia working eleven hours six days a week in an orange factory. “Two Men” was also read on that podcast. In the story, the narrator lets you down. I wanted to play around with that device. I did that with the character of Murph. He was giving signs throughout the novel. The red flags were all there.

Murph’s turn around at the end felt like such a punch. I found it interesting how Fiona chooses to follow Murph despite all the warning signs. She goes on to make the same mistakes as she has done in the past. An unreliable and scary man still appeals to her after leaving an abusive relationship. The patterns of behaviour haunt her.

Catching these patterns is the book’s turning point. I think it’s both a psychological and spiritual thing.

Can you tell me about your screenwriting work?

Red Dirt was almost going to be a movie. When I was seventeen, I wanted to write movies. When I was twenty-seven, I sold my first short. Now, I’m thirty-seven and I’m screenwriting again. It’s funny how you go back to where you started. A lot of outlining and planning is involved because so many people are involved in the process. The alarming thing is that a film you’re working on might not be made. I hope it is made. It’s set in the Gaeltacht in Connemara. I think it’ll be really surreal seeing everyone working on the set of something I imagined.

Do you have any plans for returning to novel writing?

I have two novellas that I’ve outlined. One I wrote a few years ago. I talked about it all the time and I lost interest in it. But now I’m going to be writing it in an Irish context. One of them is pre-colonial and the other is post-colonial in a way, so maybe they’ll work together.

I found those ideas about race in your novels interesting. I was wondering how you feel about approaching that subject?

It’s something that has interested me for a long time. The Irish and British dynamic has always been totally fascinating to me. In one way, it was terrible – the brutality that happened. But at the same time, the New World voyages must have been so exciting. The sense of them discovering a whole new world has interested me since I was a child. Of course, the new world already existed for those who were indigenous to those places and unfortunately, those journeys were solely to conquer and rule and extract.

Thanks so much for talking to me. Is there anything you’re working on that you’d like to share with TN2’s readers?

I was Mayo Writer-in-Residence last year and I made a podcast that I’d love to share with your readers. It’s called The Note Waves and you can find all the segments on www.writing.ie. I go into topics such as the creative process and self-care along with numerous writers from County Mayo.

WORDS BY BRÍ JOYCE 27

MUSIC

TN2 Music’s Class of 2021 TN2 Music brings you the only objective ‘Best Songs of 2021’ list.

Tired of scrolling through endless ‘Best Songs of 2021’ in order to seem beautiful ga ia n, n a d interesting, n a d om dern? eW ll, fear no om re. Your search is over. Never ga ia n shall you feel sonically inadeu q ta e whilst ta temtp ing to imrp ess some rA t’s-Block rollie-som king boy. TN2 Music rp esents you with the denitive, objective, entirely correct n a d extremely highly researched ‘Best Songs of 2021’ list. iG ve a rwa m ew lcome to the Clsa s of 2021.

MostLikelytoPullYouontotheDancefloorWhenYou’reontheVergeofPassing ‘SecrecyOut: Is IncrediblyImportanttotheBothofThem’,YvesTumor oH“ w can I miss you?ou’re /Y so familiar”, sa ks the slightly u m ed voice of vY es Tumor, oH“ w can I miss you?f/I you ow n’t go ywa .?” Tumor n a d their u m sic exists within a constant kaleidoscope of identities n a d emotions. ey ra e constantly referring to y“ ou”, imlp icating the listener in this shiing haze, drga ging us along. e 80s-inspired instrumental n a d distorted guitar ris eamk the TN2 Music Section wish they ew re currently experiencing catharsis in a rda k, crapem d room full of sweta y bodies. TN2 Music’s entirely u q alied opinion is, forget that boy. oF rget your sa signments. e tpRa ure saH Coem . Go listen to vY es Tumor.

Most Likely to Make You ehmntlV y Hate a Man You Never Actually Dated: Tie betwn ‘All Too elW l (10 Minute ersV ion) (Taylor’s ersV ion)’, Taylor Swift, and the entier of Olivia Rodrigo’s SOUR

Most in Need of Therapy: ‘Kill Me’, Indigo De Souza

MostLikelytoConvertYourChildtoaLifeofHomosexuality: ‘MONTERO(CallMeByYourName)’,LilNasX vE eryone knows that sexuality is not a choice, yet neither is it n a inherent u q ality one is born with. tI is, in fact, a condition that develops once the individual has been exposed to the hypnotic beats, blash p emous lyrics n a d satn a ic lan p-da cing n a tics of one Montero rLam iH ll, alias ‘Lil Nas ’X . (Our experts have speculated that the ‘X’ is indicative of iH ll’s ‘X-rta ed’ sodomitic lifestyle.) is song inltrated the radio vwa es of good, honest, god-fearing folks in March 2021, n a d since then the irresistible hooks n a d catchy chorus have corrupted countless vulnerable children, brainwsa hing them into u p rsuing a life of hedonism n a d sin. is song reached number one in the singles charts of over 20 countries, yet the only position it truly vad ocates is that of “bottoming” for Satn a .

Bigest Red Flag if They Say This is Their Favourite Song on a First Date: ‘Teh Only Heaeartb ker’, Mitski Most Likely to Make You aW nt to Kill Your Friend’s Father: ‘Thumbs’, Lucy Dacus 28

MostLikelytoHaveBeenPlayedinaGentri¿e Couee Shop Where the Baristas Have Mulle butthePlaylistisGood: ‘BeSZeet’,JapaneseBreakfast Most Likely to Make You Fall in Love with the Next Person Who Shows You Any Atenion: ou ‘Y Could Be’, Anz ft. George Riley

MostLikelytoFeaturean Abuser Who Will Never Get Held Accountable and Who Will Continue to Live in Comfort, Their Life Pretty Much Unchanged: ‘Jail pt. 2’, Kanye West (featuring DaBaby and MarilynManson)

MostLikelytoMakeYouDetransition: ‘BunnyisaRider’,CarolinePolachek In the release statement for this single, Polachek announced that ‘anyone can be bunny, at least for three minutes and seventeen seconds.’ fie author of this article may be a transmasculine individual, but when this song begins to play, he is ‘so non-physical’.

He does ‘feel like the lady’. fie backing track for ‘Bunny is a Rider’ contains a looped recording of coproducer Danny L Harle’s baby daughter’s giggling, and is accompanied by a fieseus and the Minotaur inspired music video in which Polachek transports around a warehouse full of cardboard boxes. fiese unconventional choices are a staple of the Polachek agenda, the aim of which is to confuse and baffie, of course. TN2 Music proposes treating your gender as Polachek treats her songs; with playful irreverence.

Most Likely to Drunkenly Hype You Up in the Line to the Women’s Toilets at a Club: ‘Get Into It (Yuh)’, Doja Cat

Most Seductive but in a Whisper-y Way: ‘Lavender’, Biig Piig

Best Ally Award:‘Trans People are My Friends (Transphobes Not Welcome)’, Craic Boi Mental

Why are these people still being given a fucking platform?? I’m about to go insane I hate the music industry I could honestly just-

Most Likely to Try and Get You to Join Their Pyramid Scheme:‘Mood Ring’, Lorde fie TN2 Music section would like to reiterate that it is an entirely unbiased and objective voice in the opinion-riddled world of music journalism. With that established, we inform our readers that Solar Power, the third album of Ella Yelich-O’Connor (stage name, Lorde), was a “ffiop” (in large part due to the lacklustre production of one Jack Antonoft.)

However, with ‘Mood Ring’, Yelich-O’Connor makes an astute critique of crystal-hoarding horoscope girls who refuse to acknowledge the origins of their beloved traditions. ‘Mood Ring’ was written affer the singer-songwriter’s “realisation” that “many wellness practises [sic] adopted by white women have rough consequences for indigenous peoples”. It doesn’t quite carry the impact YelichO’Connor hoped it would as an exposé of cultural appropriation, but it does perfectly epitomise the feeling one gets when opening one’s Instagram direct messages to Thnd the plaintive appeal, “Hey girlie! It’s been so long! I’ve got a great opportunity for you! xxx”

BestinClass(NoMoreJokes,JustGenuinelyWhatIBelieveto BetheBestSongof201): ‘RollinStone’,LittleSimz If this was a ‘Best Albums of 2021’ list, the title would’ve gone to Little Simz’s Sometimes I Might Be Introvert with no competition. It was a struggle to choose one song ofi of the album to include in this list. Simz ffiits seamlessly between genres, and covers a multitude of topics including complicated relations to absent fathers (‘I Love You, I Hate You’), self-conftdence and female empowerment (‘Speed’), having unabashed pride in being black in a world still seething with racism (‘Standing Ovation’), and the vitality found in prioritising yourself and your alone time (‘Protect My Energy’). ‘Rollin Stone’ combines all these themes and emerges as a nebulous, incandescent anthem of deserved (yet humble) bravado. “Where do I begin?” asks Ajikawo. “You might just ftnd out real soon.”

WORDS BY GALE AITKEN

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Ants From Up There by Black Country, New Road // Review Black Country, New Road’s second record Ants From Up There is a difficult album to review. I started by looking at each track, noting what was interesting about them, and then attempted to come to a general conclusion. I then listened to it again and again and always found something new and exciting. As I write, only a few days after it’s release, and after about ten full listens, I’m still surprised by it.

That’s not to say it’s just a fog of pretension and inscrutable lyrics, there are moments of true visceral immediacy in the album. After a short introduction, we get the album’s first single ‘Chaos Space Marine,’ a multi-movement art pop number that fulfills the band’s promise of writing three and a half minute pop songs. The tune begins with a jaunty and irreverent motif, leading into tightly wound verses propelled by repeated staccato piano chords and the band’s signature interweaving violin and saxophone counter melodies, before an explosive and anthemic chorus..

It grabs and shakes you with lyrics of incorporeal escape: “So I’m leaving this body / And I’m nevеr coming home again, yeah / I’ll bury the axе here / Between the window and the kingdom of men.”

Later in the record, the nine minute, post-rock epic, ‘Snow Globes’ reaches a deafening crescendo as the free-jazz drumming of Charlie Wayne almost drowns out singer Isaac Wood’s repeated homeric incantations: “Oh, god of weather, Henry knows / Snow globes don’t shake on their own”. From the immediate impact of these moments, more subtle elements arise after successive listens. Musical motifs are shared between songs, as well as certain lyrical ideas. The idea of the Concorde is used as an extensive metaphor throughout the record for example, most extensively dealt with in the track, aptly titled ‘Concorde.’ This is an indie folk ballad with a deceptively simple chord progression, decorated by instrumental counter melodies and riffs which are stretched across bar lengths. This gives the listener a sense of pleasant disorientation, as if gently rotating in a zero gravity chamber.

Later on, a descending bass line in 4/4 time beautifully contrasts with the rest of the instrumentation and vocals in waltz time. The ‘Concorde’ is presented as a distant object of Wood’s fascination in one of the most beautiful lyrical passages of the album: “And you, like Concorde / I came, a gentle hill racer / I was breathless / Up on every mountain / Just to look for your light / But for less than a moment / We’d share the same sky / And then Isaac will suffer / Concorde will fly.”

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Also across the record are repeated allusions to bread, the Atkins diet, dug up holes and Billie Eilish — the further I listen, the more connections emerge. This leads me to believe that Ants From Up There is a concept album, not a rock opera such as Quadrophenia or The Wall but a more abstract collection of songs that complement the album as a single work, think Pet Sounds or To Pimp a Butterfly. However, right now, I’ve only a loose idea of what it’s about and a general feeling about it that’s difficult to describe. What I do know though is that this record, like all great records, still contains secrets to be revealed with time.

This album’s electric range of influences also make it a truly invigorating listen. As well as the post punk, post rock, jazz, and klezmer of their debut record, there is a definite presence of indie folk here and most interestingly, the repetitive phrasing, pulses and drones of minimalism.

The music that the American contemporary classical composers such as Philip Glass, Steve Reich, and Terry Riley pioneered in the 60s and 70s. The aesthetic influence of their typical arrangements is heard in ‘Haldern’ where the repeated eight note patterns on violin is contrasted with similar but slightly different saxophone and piano motifs.

More interestingly, one of the broader philosophies of minimalism which Reich employed on ‘Music For 18 Musicians’ and Riley on ‘In C’, where the individual musicians choose when to begin playing as opposed to on a scored cue, was used in Black Country, New Road’s ‘Bread Song’. This song begins with just vocals and fingerstyle guitar. However as it progresses, the other six band members join in according to their own musical intuition creating a very organic and novel arrangement for a piece of popular music.

It needs to be said that in writing this review, I have neglected to begin with what seems to be the most natural way, with the fact that just a matter of days before the album’s release, singer Isaac Wood announced his departure from the band writing in a statement: “Together we have been writing songs and then performing them, which at times has been an incredible doing, but more now everything happens that I am feeling not so great and it means from now I won’t be a member of the group anymore.”

WORDS BY CIARAN DROHAN

Like the concorde, the band as we knew it has had to fold. However, this incarnation of Black Country, New Road has left a concise but wonderful body of work. While I write, I still however find myself struggling with evaluating the overall significance of Ants From Up There and overcoming any recency bias. It is true though that my instinct tells me that this record is truly generational, in a similar way to Pet Sounds and To Pimp a Butterfly. It succeeds in achieving seemingly opposite effects without infringing on either; it is intimate and monumental, rough hewn and precise and technical, personal and universal, gentle, and deafening. It is an astonishing album.

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SEX

‘Why Are All of My Sex Toys Purple?’ and Other Important Questions

Just imagine it; you’re several drinks in with the girls from college on your semester abroad and the topic shifts to missing your boyfriends. The wonders of modern technology make communicating with our long distance significant others a cinch - texting, video calls, that feature on Spotify that lets you both listen to the same song at the same time. All in all, romance lives to see another day.

The only true victim of distance is our sex lives. One friend bemoans making do with ‘solo play’, when another notices a lot of sex toys come in the colour purple. “Oh yeah,” you say out loud, “all of mine are purple.”

The awkward silence is mercifully short before the table erupts in laughter and the embarrassment fades a little.

Although, admittedly, I sometimes still cringe at this moment looking back. What I really should have said is “all three of mine are purple”. There’s something about the “all” just hanging out there by itself that makes you imagine a much, much bigger number. But yes, I do own sex toys, and yes, they are all purple. For years, I was mortified and intimidated by the idea of sex toys. I avoided their presence both in real life and online, so much so that for years I didn’t know the difference between a dildo and a vibrator.

So how did I become the owner of not one, not two, but three sex toys? Well, two things happened within a few months of each other: lockdown and my first kiss.

Lockdown meant riding the waves of boredom and anxiety as they came and went. Cut off from other people, I felt less intimidated by sex and masturbation. Maybe I was just getting older and wiser, or maybe spending so much time alone made me come to terms with who I am. Who I am being an adult with a sex drive. As for the kiss, well … let’s just say it sparked some new feelings within. Emboldened by a pretty f*cking great kiss, I waited until the cloak of darkness to open up an incognito browser window. What followed was a crash course in ‘intimate items’. In my naïvety, I had no idea how many different kinds of toys there are. It seemed like there was an item for her, him, them, everyone. So how did I choose what to buy and from where? Honestly my wallet had a big influence over this decision. Some of these products can be pretty expensive, so I found myself a well-reviewed cheap and cheerful lil’ vibrator and hoped for the best. Assured by the website that their packaging was discreet, I took the plunge and bought my first ever, purple sex toy.

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WORDS BY ANONYMOUS

True to Lovehoney’s word, my secret purchase arrived in a plain brown box, sans incriminating logos. Unfortunately that’s where my sex toy stayed for several days, waiting as its owner worked up the nerve to plug it in and actually use it. As soon as I did though, I was not disappointed…

As with any kind of masturbation, it takes a bit of practice to find your rhythm when using a sex toy. Unlike mastering ‘Ó Ró Sé Do Bheatha Bhaile’ on the tin whistle though, this kind of practice is very, very fun. You can play around with pressure, speed, lube and tempo to discover the very best way to give yourself an orgasm . For me, at least, my initiation into the world of sex toys came before my initiation to sex with someone else. This gave me the chance to discover exactly what I like and what I don’t in the safety and comfort of my own company. Masturbation unlocked a new method of exploration, and I was just getting started.

The reason sex toys come in many different shapes and sizes is because they all create different sensations for different parts of your body. For example, some toys are for external stimulation (like a fleshlight or a bullet) and some are for internal stimulation (like a dildo or a butt plug). Each toy serves its own unique purpose, and this is why I started adding to my collection, and why I’ll most likely be adding a few more in the future.

The question I’m sure you’re now asking is, will all of my new sex toys be purple? The truth is, I have absolutely no idea, and I’m not sure it matters! At the end of the day, if a toy gets me off, I’m happy - regardless of the colour. So, go forth and try a sex toy! You may love it, you may feel completely indifferent towards it, the only way to know is to give it a go.

The Best Day

One of my greatest blessings is my relationship with my mom. She epitomises grace through her service to others and purposefully makes her love for those she cares about known—she’s the first to bring dinner to a friend who is sick, and I am convinced she’s a mind-reader, knowing exactly what to say when I come home with tear-stained cheeks.

Anyone who has met me knows that I have a serious attachment to Taylor Swift; I never broke from the phase, and loving her is likely in my top three-character traits if one was asked to describe me. One song on her Fearless album is called “The Best Day,” which Swift wrote about her mom and their loving relationship as it has evolved over time. There are countless “best days” I have experienced alongside my mom, whether going for a walk at Shelby Farms, buying way more than we were supposed to at Target, sitting in doctor’s offices where mom starts laughing at me as I try to explain my incessant cough while the doctor tries to understand my man-like voice, or, upon my return home for the holidays, when mom runs to hug me and kisses my forehead in the morning. Each lyric in Swift’s song depicts the naive young girl growing up in awe of, and indebted to, her mother, remarking on the “best days” we often take for granted.

This past Christmas, I took out old photo albums and looked through my parents’ wedding day pictures—she’s one of those women whose mere presence makes it feel like everything is going to be okay; then she calls you “Sugar” as a nickname and all of your feelings of warmth are confirmed. The line at the end of Swift’s song that reads “…you’re the prettiest lady in the whole wide world…” could not be more true of my mom. The concluding chorus includes the line “…and I love you for giving me your eyes…,” which has a clear double meaning. I love sharing physical qualities with my mom – things that once I saw as insecurities, she shares with me and embraces within me, but my mom also gives me the vision of how I perceive the world. Her dedication to living a life through grace, peace, and patience makes the world a better place, and I pray I continue to learn these traits.

It is the core chorus of the song which brings tears to my eyes every single time I hear it and reminds me of my mom.

It goes: “I don’t know who//I’m gonna talk to now at school//But I know I’m laughing//In the car ride home with you// Don’t know how long it’s gonna take//To feel okay//But I know I had the best day with you today” .

Since I moved to Dublin, there have been hundreds of days when I wish I could throw my mom the keys and go for a drive and just forget. When I was in high school, I remember the day a few girls I was friends with chose the cool football guys over me, or the night I broke up with my then-boyfriend in a teary conversation. My mom was there, ready to drive and forget the world. When my older brother accidentally back-swung a metal baseball bat into my face and broke my nose, when Davis proposed to me in 1st grade, she was there. When my world felt heavy and I didn’t see the end, she was right there, gifting me what I now treasure as some of the best memories.

It is difficult to be in any type of relationship with others; it puts us in a vulnerable position requiring trust and understanding. Sometimes people don’t know the consequences of their actions and you lose friends. Sometimes you learn how to set boundaries and others don’t know how to adjust to them and you wind up lonely. Sometimes you ask people to show up 50% for you, and they don’t, and you have to toughen up.

And sometimes we get it wrong. I am a messy person. I fall, sometimes on ice. I don’t know how to accept compliments and when I do I think about it for two whole days, wondering if I sounded conceited. I don’t follow recipes but just throw things together that seem to make proportional sense. I say the wrong things at the wrong times or make jokes when someone is trying to be real with me.. My version of flirting is asking about home décor preferences. I am messy—we all are. There are not many people who will accept and love you unconditionally, but for me, the one person who always will, is my mom.

At the end of “The Best Day,” Swift writes, “I know you were on my side, even when I was wrong.” I am so grateful to my mom for having my back, even when I am wildly undeserving of it. If I can become half the woman you are, I know I will have done right.

WORDS BY SAMANTHA TANCREDI

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The Monetisation Of Love I have to admit, I love bad television. So, when I saw that season 3 of Too Hot to Handle (THTH) had been added to Netflix, I couldn’t resist. After all, I had already watched the two previous series in their entirety. For those that don’t know, Too Hot to Handle is essentially a global version of Love Island, but with a twist. A group of ten singles from across the world, with a phobia for commitment, are placed in a luxurious villa together for four weeks while being monitored by a virtual assistant: Lana. The group participates in different activities aimed at establishing and improving any emotional connections forged between the couples. The more successful the couples are at engaging in these activities, the better their chances are at getting their hands on the $100,000 prize fund. The catch to the whole show is that the rules forbid sexual contact of any kind. Any time a rule is broken, the prize fund is reduced. A peck on the lips typically costs up to $3,000.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that THTH, Love Island (and their kind) all follow a similar script. Whether it is Love is Blind, a new addition to Netflix in which contestants engage in a blind speed dating process, or Married at First Sight, where contestants meet each other for the first time at the altar, the aim of the game is finding ‘love’ in the twentyfirst century. One particular couple will steal the public’s heart and emerge as the bookie’s favourites to win while a ‘bad boy’ character, be it male or female, will test the boundaries by causing as much drama as possible. The viewers become engrossed in the development of the relationships when suddenly the producers will decide to throw a curveball in to increase ratings. In Love Island, that curve ball is the infamous Casa Amor while in THTH, new contestants are added to the mix at different points during the retreat to spice things up. Heads begin to turn and the foundations of the most stable couples in the retreat begin to shake. Will love win out or are the men of the show really as shallow as the team of producers at ITV are setting them out to be? Blah. Blah. Blah.

Halfway through season 3 of THTH, I found myself physically cringing at my laptop screen - cringing for the contestants and the god-awful spiel they give about how they magically emotionally mature in the space of five days. But also, for myself. Why, despite being served the same bland script year in, year out, was I still so invested in the storyline when I already know the ending? The lucky couple ride off into the sunset with their respective cash prizes, advertise the latest teeth whitening technology or protein supplement in a desperate effort to remain relevant, only to release a statement about four months later about how life on the outside took too much of a toll on their relationship, but that they wish the other ‘nothing but love and happiness’. The logical part of my brain is pleading with me to make sense of what I am witnessing. I understand that these reality TV experiences can be very immersive for those involved, but you cannot unlearn all of your trauma and simultaneously become an amazing partner over the course of 72 hours! Am I just a hopeless romantic who believes in the power of love - Those closest to me can attest that this is not the case - ,or, is there some sort of psychological pull behind these shows that keeps us wanting more? I have some ideas…

When I talk about the psychology behind shows like THTH and Love Island, I am alluding to the human fascination with observing how other people interact. The ‘human-experiment fascination’ if you will. Our fixation with this particular brand of show is perhaps our subconscious endeavour to try to understand other humans, our own species, even ourselves.

Look at the success of shows like Big Brother and I’m a Celebrity Get me Out Of Here. We really are a voyeuristic species. I think people tune in time and time again in the hope of witnessing some sort of human evolution. With all due respect to the contestants, because it’s not their fault, I don’t necessarily think this brand of television is the best place to look. The structure of these shows doesn’t allow for this evolution because they merely provide sound-bite glimpses of reality. The contestants are stuck in confined quarters for prolonged periods of time and are then abruptly thrown back into the real world. The structure of these shows is not reflective of what actually occurs in day-to-day life. While the baseline purpose is ‘to find meaningful connections and love,’ ultimately the actual goal of the majority of the contestants is exposure, and fame. The contestants seize the opportunity to grow their platforms quickly.

WORDS BY OLIVIA DORE ART BY MEGHAN FLOOD 34

Creating a brand has become the aim of the game, not finding love.

In a recent interview with Steven Bartlett, founder of the ‘Diary of a CEO’ podcast, 2019 Love Island runner-up turned Pretty Little Thing Creative Director Molly-Mae Hague admitted that applying to Love Island was largely a career move.

People will argue that there are exceptions to the rule. Take 2016 Love Island runners-up Alex and Olivia Bowen, for example. The couple are now married and expecting their first child - traditionally all signs of a successful love story in most people’s books. However, one could also argue that their relationship is the foundation of their brand. Their brand’s success is largely dependent on the trajectory of their relationship. This isn’t an argument against mixing business and pleasure. What I wish to point out is the fact that in today’s world, love is monetised and commercialised. The longer we as humans expose ourselves to these different versions of ‘love,’ the more acceptable they become. This is evident from the levels of interest that these shows accumulate. In 2021, ITV received over 100,000 Love Island applications. In its first season, THTH received 3,000 applications for 14 available positions. That was before anyone knew about the scale of the show. People pretend to turn their noses up at these shows, or tune in and call it ‘research’. The above would suggest that interest in reality dating series is much more than people innocently sending in these applications out of sheer boredom. Love conquers all, they say. But does it trump career progression, wealth and fame?

I am not trying to disparage people who find love on reality TV shows. In this day and age, there are limitless ways of meeting people and forging connections. As previously mentioned, shows like Love Island and THTH are incredibly intense and immersive experiences for those involved which probably explains why the relationships we see on air develop at such a fast pace. It is also a possible explanation as to why these same relationships struggle once the show ends and they return to normality. Going from zero to one hundred in such a short time frame is surely overwhelming. It can be argued that they lack a certain organic reality. I understand it is everyone’s choice to apply and that finding love is not one-size fits-all, but I don’t think that such emotionally-exhausting and high-pressure methods of finding love should be encouraged.

I also want to point out that this isn’t a new revelation. I am certainly not reinventing the wheel here. People have been commercialising their daily lives and finding new means of making money or scaling the social ladder since the industrial age. People often seek out income streams outside of their career via ‘side hustles’. No aspect of life is sacred. If money can be made, even in pursuit of love, people will go for it. Back in the early noughties, I vividly remember tuning into Take me Out on what was once TV3 before the latest round of X-Factor. While there wasn’t the obvious enticement of prize money, the notoriety and exposure associated with appearing on a show like Take Me Out had its social benefits. Since the beginning of time humans have been fascinated with accumulating wealth and associating this with the conquest of love. One needs to look no further than F Scott Fitzgerald’s classic, The Great Gatsby. While fiction, Gatsby pursues wealth and an extravagant lifestyle in the hope that it would aid him in his quest for heiress Daisy Buchanan. Money isn’t everything. It certainly cannot buy you happiness. So explain to me why parallels can still be drawn between portrayals of ‘love’ in 1920’s prohibition-America and the modern day? To me, the answer is that love has become a by-product of the pursuit of ‘more’. More wealth, more social standing, more money in the bank. If in one’s mission to add more zeros to the bank account balance you happen to stumble upon love, happy days. But love is certainly no longer the only priority.

The opportunity to come upon love ‘naturally’ is becoming much less frequent. In this day and age, love is going to cost you.

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THEATRE

Are Fiction Podcasts The Modern Iteration of Radio Plays?

A conversation with Roisin Finnegan, creator of Her Waking Hours With the immense growth of the podcast industry in the past decade, the cultural grip radio once held has diminished. This isn’t to say that radio is obsolete - I’m personally involved in Trinity’s radio scene and simply have yet to find a podcast that I prefer over live broadcasting. However, it is no surprise that radio has fallen from grace. Mainstream stations within Dublin have an over-reliance on playing ‘safe’ music, cycling between Ed Sheeran’s discography and whatever song is trending on TikTok. Additionally, the instant satisfaction gained by opening Spotify and having immediate access to whatever music you crave, at any time, has taken away the magic of tuning in to your favourite station with the anticipation of hearing your favourite songs.

This increase in streaming has led to a decline in the production and distribution of traditional radio plays. The artistic medium that had once been crucial for the careers of literary greats, such as Samuel Beckett, Orson Welles and Irwin Shaw, has failed to adapt to the changing patterns of media consumption. However, the exponential growth of the podcast industry has both filled the niche left by broadcasting, and fostered what could be considered as a new iteration of the radio play.

One of Trinity’s own students has recently begun producing a fictional podcast series, Her Waking Hours. The creator, Róisín Finnegan, is in her third year of English Studies. When talking about her work, she describes how she views its categorisation as fluid. “I would consider it a fiction podcast, but had it come out at a different time, say 10 or 20 years ago, it would have been a radio play that aired in different instalments”. Noting the lack of distinctions between the mediums, she remarks that, on paper, it resembles a play more than anything else, loaded with what are essentially stage directions. Speaking more generally about the genre, Finnegan notes her particular inspirations as The Magnus Archives and Hello From The Magic Tavern.

The podcast focuses on the single character of Shóna, who awakens one morning in an empty room with no memories and entirely alone. The podcast consists of five episodes, each representing a found tape. Shóna claims to have a rare illness that means she doesn’t need sleep or food. In the first episode, she receives a letter from the outside world that states because of her illness she has been put in this isolated room, lined only with books, paper, pens, and the tape recorder. The people of the outside world believe that due to her condition she must be fated to do something great.

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Reflecting on her own work, Finnegan notes the importance of technology in creative pursuits. “I think it’s interesting that people have been experimenting with what they can do. You have long-running radio shows or famous plays like War of the Worlds, which was a fictional experiment that people believed was real because it was on the radio”. Her choice to work in the medium of podcasting, rather than broadcasting, stemmed from the popularity and accessibility it provided. “Before, performing a radio play took a team, it was a proper show. For me, I have done this all myself with no previous experience. Without the sound effects and technology, I would have had no way to do this.”

In terms of the writing and recording process, Finnegan composed all episodes before she began recording. Because she writes and voices the sole character, she needs to work in the auditory elements around the story’s dramatic progression. “There are a few big twists that happen, and as a writer and creator I had to be aware of how I’m building the story from the beginning. My main thought when writing it was about how I was going to be using sound”. From the sound of footsteps or tapes running in the background, down to the change in Shóna’s voice as she moves around her room, Finnegan’s attention to detail creates a dynamic backdrop that listeners are submersed into. Finnegan uses sound as a storytelling method, noting the importance of having external stimuli to prevent an over-reliance on the narrator. “The sounds clue listeners into what is happening to the character before she realises herself. It’s these small details that I wouldn’t have ever thought of before, but that are so important when you’re creating a universe based on sound as opposed to visuals”.

The exclusion of a visual element altered the characterisation of the play’s sole protagonist, Shóna.

“Because I had to work in the confines of a solely auditory environment, I needed to portray someone who was wholly unsuited to her isolated surroundings. She’s someone who needs socialisation, both to progress the plot but also to make the format viable. I wanted Shóna to be someone who wouldn’t be satisfied with what small information she was given, and to have a desire to talk to other people.

Otherwise, the story doesn’t make sense”. Had this been an onstage production, Finnegan could have used visual elements to convey the loneliness and desolation contained within the podcast.

The publication of a fictional podcast doesn’t allow for immediate feedback, especially in the case of small creators like Finnegan. However, the hosting website, PodBean, offers a somewhat invasive tracking of her listeners. She explains that whilst she can’t peek out from behind a curtain to see her audience’s reactions, she can see what country her listeners are from, what time of day they’re more likely to listen and the gender breakdown, creating an almost perversely intimate relationship between creatives and consumers.

Finally, we ask: are fictional podcasts the new radio plays? Finnegan believes that, “in a way, they are.

Theatre is a confusing and malleable thing”. While there is definitely room to argue for and against such an idea, the processes are extremely similar. Both require script-writing, sound design and voice acting, simply shared across a different medium. Perhaps the idea that podcasts are not a component of a new generation of theatre relates more to our preconceived notions of what art can and cannot be. While podcasts may not be on stage, nor broadcast across a country’s airwaves, they are a massive cultural movement within the arts. As Róisín Finnegan’s statistics have shown, her podcast of 100 listeners can reach across the globe, creating an immersive experience that transcends the physical restrictions of small productions. Ultimately, the fictional podcast functions in a creative space that takes full advantage of technological developments, whilst paying homage to the tradition they stem from.

Her Waking Hours is available to stream on Spotify.

WORDS BY LEAH DOWNEY 37

One Brief Shining Moment: Camelot, Flaw and Idealism at the London Palladium

I must confess upright that this is by no means an unbiased review, nor is it, in truth, really a review at all. I’d like to consider this article as something akin to dinner party conversation –– you’ve had some wine, and I approach with madness in my eyes, ready to corner you for the rest of the evening in fervent, impassioned chatter you’re really trying to avoid. Maybe they even told you not to bring it up, but you did anyway; you foolish, curious thing.“How was Camelot, Helen?” you ask politely, and everyone collectively groans.

Two weeks ago, I had the pleasure of catching the concert production of Lerner and Lowe’s Camelot at the London Palladium, a one-night-only performance that I’d bought tickets for all the way back in July. For some context, I’ve got a bit of a thing for Camelot, which just might be the understatement of the year. My early years were defined by far too many days spent watching and re-watching the glorious 1967 film — three hours of Richard Harris being wretched and brooding, as Vanessa Redgrave and Franco Nero agonise over their tumultuous love affair. It’s maddeningly delightful, if something of a late-60s fever dream. And, of course, a seminal part of my entire personality. So, naturally, tears were shed, and I left the theatre with a bittersweet hollowness in my heart, such as time tends to bring.

There have always been moments where I pondered what attracted me to Camelot; as a kid, I thought it was the fantasy of it all. As an adolescent, the romance and the melodrama. As an adult, the question becomes more complex, wrapped in the carefully cultivated layers of self which are not easily unwound. And like all things one loves, it strikes a painful chord when such a question is answered. I think that at the heart of it, Camelot disguises itself well, perhaps as I do. Ultimately, it is not a romantic tale of tragic, passionate love, but rather a painfully sorrowful ode to human flaw and the burden of idealism, the despondency of grief not just for people, but for dreams made real. Camelot is cautionary, heartbreaking, and altogether entirely devastating. And that is why I love it so very dearly, for it shows a depth and scope of feeling that even tragic love is overshadowed by.

The most enduring, yet anguished, motif of Lerner and Lowe’s Camelot is the notion that everything, even love and idealism, must reach an end. There are no games here, no loopholes or twists around what fate inevitably brings. One watches Arthur and Guenevere build a dream and a destiny together, bringing love and legend to life until she and Lancelot succumb to the err of their heartstrings and suffer for it. Mordred incites the knights against Arthur, and Camelot burns and splinters as Guenevere is sentenced to death. Lancelot saves her, but the guilt of what they have done fragments whatever love was once there, leaving Guenevere in a convent and Lancelot and Arthur at war with one another. Whatever Camelot was meant to be, whatever it was, is gone, ruined by the infectious plague of human flaw and the calamity it brings. And so, the dream dies, as do men with it.

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Even still, Arthur hopes, and dreams, and loves as if there is no end — soliloquising through a flaw so bitterly charming it maddens and breaks the very soul. Lancelot and Guenevere might be the symbols of what the catastrophe of love can bring, but is it not Arthur at the end of it all who is left with the true weight of tragedy?

Camelot lies in ruin, the Round Table is cracked in two, and those who were the best of him have brought nothing but war and death in the wake of their love. And there Arthur sits, mourning on a battlefield, as everything he has created crumbles, his destiny in tatters and his dreams dead and dying. The penultimate song, ‘Guenevere’, I think has always done this moment justice — “In that dawn, in that gloom/ More than love met its doom/ In the dying candle’s gleam/ Came the sundown of a dream.” After all, there is little more tragic than the sundown of a dream, if not the hope and memory that remain.

There is a line in the ‘Finale Ultimo’, the final song, which has always spoken to me of this, the mark of Arthur’s idealism and the longing for what is gone — “don’t let it be forgot that once there was a spot, for one brief, shining moment that was known as Camelot.” Sometimes, I like to think (as if I don’t already know) that this is where I find myself in Arthur, in the bittersweet, wonderful trap of reminiscence for the things that are gone.

For what else is Arthur singing of than the secret all us idealistic nostalgics keep, the quiet, panicked fear of forgetting it was ever there at all? That is, perhaps, the irony of all our idealistic loves — even in the end, one still loves it so, and the memory of it becomes more precious than life. Arthur is flawed, as am I, but I think we’re both getting better at letting things go, even if it is for just one, brief, shining moment. And that’s the beauty of it.

WORDS BY HELEN JENKS

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TV

Dropout: The Future of Streaming?

If you have spent much time on the internet, you have probably seen a CollegeHumor video. Focusing on sketch comedy ever since graduating from humorous text and image-based miscellany when it was bought by multi-media conglomerate IAC in 2006, CollegeHumor has had to adapt to the constantly changing landscape of online content production, including Facebook’s faked native video viewer figures, and numerous changes to the YouTube algorithm. One such adaptation was the introduction of Dropout, the company’s own streaming service. Fans were able to access ad-free sketches earlier than YouTube viewers, and more tantalisingly, longform content not available anywhere else. The company was open about the difficulties in attracting brands due to the adult nature of their content, and with the popularity of audience donation platforms like Patreon, Dropout was a logical next step. If you search for the company’s YouTube channel today, you’ll see the last sketch was published eight months ago (at time of publication). But CollegeHumor lives on, thanks to Dropout. The service has become the main focus of the company since January 2020, after IAC pulled its funding and nearly a hundred people were laid off. Chief Creative Officer Sam Reich was able to buy the company with six months of programming already recorded, and continues to steer the company through the pandemic, and hopefully into the future. Outlasting much larger similar services such as NBC’s Seeso and the ill-fated Quibi, Dropout is a fascinating case study of an ‘indie’ streaming service.

Obviously, the site has nowhere near the variety of the bigger streaming services such as Netflix and Disney+, yet their prices are no less competitive, with a month’s subscription being less than a euro cheaper than streaming giant Amazon Prime. Early content on the site initially attempted to tap into millennial nostalgia, with scripted shows focusing on parodying Miss Frizzle, Star Wars, and Power Rangers. However, IAC pulling out meant that the vast majority of their shows had to be cancelled, leaving the service with only four main properties; Um, Actually, Game Changer, Breaking News and Dimension 20.

Um, Actually is a nerdy quiz show that asks contestants to pick out factual errors in descriptions of the objects of their obsession, whether that be Marvel lore or Broadway trivia. There is no prize, just bragging rights sought after enough that it’s spawned its own board game. Game Changer, also a game show, takes rules, the core of any show in the genre, and does away with them, cycling through a different game every episode and asking contestants to figure it out as they go. Hosted by Reich himself, whose enjoyment of the chaos is both palpable and infectious, Game Changer’s success hinges on its contestants, who are for the most part trained in improv.

All of the effort and creativity put into developing the various games would be for nothing if guests were anxious about looking foolish or rendered inactive by confusion, which is thankfully not a problem for the experienced contestants.

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The game show Breaking News casts players as news reporters tasked with reading off a prompter without laughing. This bite-size show has also recently begun to employ improv, asking guests to name their top 25 holidays or describe the plot of The Drew Carey Show from memory. Dimension 20 is without question the service’s most popular property. The only fiction show of the bunch, it is a D&D roleplay anthology show covering murder-mystery, sci-fi and fantasy with over 140 episodes to its name. Episodes are generally between two and three hours long, an impossible length for a comedy TV on a traditional network that thrives on this experimental platform. These four shows are enough to keep CollegeHumor afloat. Which of course begs the question: how?

Although CollegeHumor started Dropout after having first built up years of goodwill with their audience, not every company could turn such goodwill into cash. Many streaming services that have gone bust seem to have had the same problem as online content production companies that shared this fate - the people with the money weren’t knowledgeable about the area. Cracked, another millennial comedy site that attempted a paid subscription, was bought by E. W. Scripps, a conglomerate that has dabbled in newspapers, radio and eventually television when each medium was most popular, for $39 million back in 2016. Before two years were up, $36 million of that money was written off, and the majority of the staff were fired. The company’s YouTube channel still posts original content, with four of its five most recent videos not even reaching twenty thousand views. Investors in Quibi, a short-form streaming service founded by Jeffrey Katzenberg, accumulated over a billion dollars to fund shows, but ultimately it died the same year it was launched. The people in charge were less interested in the content they were producing than the money that could be milked from subscribers. This isn’t just railing at the establishment, but the acknowledgement that consumers can tell the difference between funny and not, between programming someone was passionate about and programming that exists to justify a subscription price. In my eyes, the difference between Dropout and less successful services is evident in owner Sam Reich. On top of hosting Game Changer, he’s also directed for television, co-written a song with Weird-Al Yankovic, and appeared in numerous CollegeHumor sketches over the years. Reich is funny, he knows what’s funny, and he cares about putting more funny out into the world. He’s invested in the output of the company as its own entity, separate from its ability to bring in revenue.

In an interview conducted by Forbes in 2016, Reich said of the streaming wars “I think the winners are those who are going to be able to stay in the game the longest, and are going to be the most reactive to their audience, who is telling them how to adapt.” It might be that staying in the game can be less about the money, and more about the drive.

WORDS BY GILLIAN DOYLE

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In Defence of

For better or worse, some TV shows, with the help of viral tweets and think pieces, are catapulted into the general cultural consciousness. Emily in Paris is one of those shows. When the first season was released by Netflix in 2020, rather ominously mere months before the pandemic took hold, the vast majority of critics and serial binge-watchers likened Emily to the Antichrist himself. Such staunch hatred for a series right off the bat is enough to dissuade even the most devout rom-com fans from watching such a monstrosity, but with the arrival of the second season in December 2021, I gave into temptation and watched both seasons in the space of four days. While many of the critiques the series has received are indeed valid, to my dismay, I find myself on the opposite side of the fence in the great Emily in Paris debate, filled with a curious appreciation of the satirical world surrounding this misunderstood femme fatale.

For those unacquainted, Emily in Paris revolves around the privileged life of young American Emily Cooper (Lily Collins), who, despite not speaking a single word of French, is handed the opportunity to move to Paris and essentially micro-manage Savoir, a successful French marketing firm. This simple premise is one of the biggest gripes viewers have had with the show, lamenting the sheer audacity of this American woman to waltz around the City of Love blatantly speaking English at unsuspecting Parisians with glee and chastising her colleagues for speaking in their native language.

While on the surface this behaviour can appear highly ignorant, it is worth noting that it was not Emily who was supposed to take the job at Savoir, but her boss Madeline (Kate Walsh). However, due to her unexpected pregnancy, Emily was forced to step in, French dictionary in tow. It is hard to deny that there is at least a grain of truth in this exaggerated depiction of an American’s first visit to Europe, therefore I would argue that it is Emily who is the intended butt of this joke, and not the nation of France she insults in her wake. She does make slow progress in season two by joining a beginner’s language class, which she ends up having to repeat due to her lack of practice, but unfortunately, that still makes her inability to even say “bonjour” to shopkeepers in season one no less audacious.

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Similar to her lack of French fluency, viewers have also criticised Emily for failing to immerse herself in French culture during her time in Paris. She baulks at the idea of eating rare meat, starting work at mid-morning instead of the crack of dawn and the general concept of masculine and feminine nouns. Sure, declaring that the word vagina being a grammatically masculine noun in French (le vagin) is inherently sexist could be seen as an oversimplification of a language she can’t even understand, but she is a big fan of pains au chocolat, so she is not a complete Francophobe. One could even go as far as to say that her hesitancy in embracing the stereotypes of French culture presented in the show, such as substituting food for cigarettes, may be down to an inner pang of homesickness for her beloved Chicago. While she seldom speaks of her American roots, some things might simply be too painful to say out loud, therefore some subtextual reading between the lines could be necessary in order to see her true intentions, perhaps through a rewatch à la Pulp Fiction or Interstellar.

While the problematic story-related aspects of the show that lie beneath the surface are easy to defend, a challenge presents itself when discussing Emily’s unique fashion sense. It demands to be noticed, often for all the wrong reasons. Her garish outfits, paired with impractical heels, off-putting hats and far too many different pairs of fingerless leather gloves, are reminiscent of an early 2000’s Disney Channel starlet’s wardrobe. Many suggest these fashion faux pas are a tone-deaf mockery of the local chic French style, but as the saying goes, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Emily is not maliciously attempting to portray a caricature of French people; she is simply trying to channel her inner Coco Chanel or Brigitte Bardot. It is just an unfortunate tragedy for our eyes that her grandiose vision manifests as the Kidz Bop version of Parisian fashion.

Stripping away these superficial elements of the show, the root cause of the global Emily in Paris hatred seems to be Emily as a person. Pitchforks were raised and torches were lit all across the internet when Emily repeatedly kissed, and slept with, her neighbour Gabriel (Lucas Bravo), local chef and boyfriend of her dear friend Camille (Camille Razat). Moreover, she chose to keep this betrayal from Camille until her secret was forcefully revealed midway through season two. Every character has their flaws, and this whole situation was clearly a low point for Emily, but in the chaos of the hate mob, the true villain of the story has been overlooked: Gabriel. He was the one who kept the fact that he had a girlfriend from Emily in the first place, while shamelessly flirting with her, and continued to relentlessly pursue her despite being in a seemingly committed relationship. He was consistently ready to dump Camille at the drop of a (notably garish) hat if Emily would have him, a proposal which she repeatedly rejected, and instead of ending his relationship due to the fact that he is in love with someone else, he cruelly and resentfully stays with Camille due to a sense of moral obligation at Emily’s request.

This in no way diminishes Emily’s wrongdoings throughout the series, but shows that she was led down this path of deception by manipulative forces beyond her control. Honestly, both women deserve better than this wolf in chef ’s clothing.

Emily Cooper is certainly a complicated woman, monolingual, insular, adulterous and just a little bit tacky.

However, those around her choose to tolerate her pastel-coloured nonsense, a choice that is their burden to live with, but not ours to judge. She is also a young adult living far from home in a strange foreign city trying to find love and success, a sentiment I am sure even the loudest members of her hate mob could relate to. The series as a whole begins to make sense if it is appreciated as satire rather than a true realistic drama, from the French stereotypes and fashion right down to the American woman on a European odyssey of self-discovery.

Emily and the world she lives in are, as the French would say, avant-garde. Judging from the backlash the series has received, it is apparent that many viewers don’t share this perspective, but that will not stop Netflix from producing many more seasons to allow the chaos of Emily in Paris to continue to thrive, as if out of pure spite.

C’est la vie.

WORDS BY CIARA CONNOLLY

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PLACES

Cities Across the Sea: A Comparison Between Dublin and New York

One of the hardest things about being an international student is the sheer amount of new things to discover, whether in your studies or your social life. Starting at Trinity College Dublin was exciting, but I was slightly apprehensive as well.

This was partially due to New York City, a place full of a claustrophobic busyness, setting my standard for cities. One of my first memories is being upset on the New York subway mostly because of the fact that I was on a subway full of people in a city full of people. I myself am not a city-dweller, having grown up in various flavours of suburb, but family ties meant I was in New York often. Since New York was so mind-boggling, I expected all of this to be multiplied in a new place. I was nervous about dealing with the pandemonium of Dublin, a new city, far away from familiarity.

Due to lockdown, it’s safe to say that my expectations were overthrown in my first year. Dublin was a distant place to scurry to when getting books for class or somewhere to roam on the rare meetup with coursemates. The only aspect I became familiar with was the tram – or Luas – that I took to campus. There’s something entertaining about a subway overground. Plus, there were no finicky turnstiles, just a tap at one of the many loading points. The timely purple snake of the city beats the slightly ominous underground subways of New York. Or maybe I’m biased because subways traumatised me when I was younger. Regardless, the Luas made this unexplored city wildly accessible, which I’ve come to appreciate this year as restrictions have lifted and I get to explore Dublin the way it should be.

With this new freedom, I expected to finally experience a chaotic atmosphere. There were a lot of new things to take in, from the cobblestones to the fantastical pedestrian arch of the Ha’penny Bridge on the horizon. The crowds on campus and the constant flow of people in all directions on O’Connell Street are undeniable. Yet, the chaos never came.

Moving around Dublin simply feels better. It’s many things New York is not, and open is one of them. O’Connell Street is the widest street I’ve ever seen that isn’t a motorway and it gives me breathing room as a pedestrian. Plus, there’s something fun about crossing the expanse of the Liffey each morning on the walk to college and seeing the guiding star of the Spire against all the light pollution. On that note, I marvelled at the fact that I could actually look over the roofs of the low buildings from the street and see the sky without putting my head at a ninety degree angle. It really is the little things. New York is a seemingly endless concrete city, whereas Dublin has places of all shapes and sizes and nothing is too colossal.

I do have a bias for the low key. To be fair to New York, the constant closeness and movement in the human hub of activity can be energising. Nothing is more refreshing than stepping out of that hustle and bustle into any number of museums and friend’s apartments. Even stepping out again has its charms, since everyone has moved so much as to make a new landscape while maintaining some familiarity: the same lines of small trees or garbage bins along the grey-brown sidewalk and the same buildings coddling the neighbourhood street.

On Dublin’s flip side, I’ve heard all the jokes about the Liffey and Spire that I praised earlier. People here talk about the buses the same way I talk about the subways. Dublin is a literary hub and New York is the city of dreams and they both have irritating transport and people to complain about it. A city is always full of people who see its virtues and flaws and react accordingly. Dublin wasn’t entirely strange after all.

Without Dublin, I never would have been able to see that there was familiarity and comfort in knowing the flaws of a city. After all, there’s something a little nostalgic about having to weave through a crowd of people on a gum covered sidewalk underneath great skyscrapers like the Empire State Building. And I’ll even admit that I occasionally miss staring at the black wall beyond the window of the subway. Being placed somewhere new as an international student made it all the easier to appreciate New York. Many Irish people have travelled to New York over the centuries. I’m glad I travelled the other way towards the Emerald Isle and have discovered that all Dublin has to offer can be just as brilliant as the Big Apple.

WORDS BY MAXINE BOUDWAY

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Ski Trip 2022: The Trinners’ Trek to Avoriaz The borders are now open, and so are the pubs. With no better time than the present, this January saw over 600 Trinity students voyage to the Alps for what some would describe as being the best seven days of their lives.

I haven’t been out of Ireland since the beginning of the pandemic, so the anticipation for the holiday was both exciting and nerve-wracking as we prayed for negative antigen tests pre-flight. As we all lugged our suitcases about the airport and chatted eagerly about the upcoming week, it reminded me of old school trips. There was an air of uncertainty about the flexibility of the borders between Ireland and France due to Covid, but thankfully we all made it into the country with no problems, despite my flatmate forgetting she needed to get a visa to travel on a New Zealand passport.

With a lot of drinking, and not so much skiing, Trinity took over Avoriaz. We spent the mornings beating the hangovers by waking up early, continuing to drink and braving it down the slopes. It was a recipe for disaster. For myself, it was a very humbling experience to realise that I am an awful skier; while many were tackling reds and blacks I was launching myself down greens in the classic snow plough. It was a great bonding experience to have to be constantly pulled off my bum as I lay helplessly in the snow. I’ve only been skiing once before, so the initial thought of going on the ski trip held a lot of uncertainty, as I knew many people going who had been skiing since they could walk, but I couldn’t recommend it enough to anyone who may be on the fence about it. I had thought I wouldn’t end up skiing much, but we surprised ourselves at how much time we actually did spend on the slopes. My highlight was probably the feeling of sheer fear and dread as I stood at the top of a scary slope (that was definitely only a blue) and realised that my only option was to go down it, which resulted in several wipe-outs. I don’t think my skills improved once over the course of the week, but I relish in my inability to ski well.

Over in France restrictions didn’t appear to exist; we took over apres - the after skiing activities - every day, making the place our own to the point of having a St.Paddy’s themed event. Packed in a tight crowd of drinking 20-year olds is a feeling we haven’t felt in a while, but with the clubs reopening (again), it’s one that we will all soon be used to, and it’s exactly what apres was like. To make matters more exciting, the scramble to find the correct skis and lug them back to your room was a task that is difficult sober, nevermind after seven Aperol spritzes. Let’s not get into the amount of skis that went missing or got swapped… However, the clubs got busy at around 6pm, and if you didn’t want to queue in the cold for two hours, you had to go straight from apres to the nightclub. This is a great idea if you want to blackout.

Unfortunately, we didn’t make it to many clubs due to this reason, but for me the highlight of each day was definitely the apres.

All in all, as many of us spent the week afterwards recovering our minds, bodies and souls, reflecting upon the trip made me realise how amazing it is to go travelling. The views of the snow-covered mountains is a picture I could only dream of waking up to every day. It definitely cured the morning headaches stepping onto the balcony and taking in our surroundings. If there is one thing I am happy to see return in 2022, it is the return of people exploring new places.

WORDS BY RIA WALLS

PHOTOS BY RIA WALLS

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Why Erasmus is not What I Expected it to be – and Why it Might be Even Better Life when you’re 20 is an absolute rollercoaster. It’s all about constant change, flux, newness. Discovering boundaries, dreams, plans of changing the world, and eventually – hopefully – figuring out your place in the mess that is existence. Most plans go wrong, the way you initially imagine your life and future does not pan out, and most importantly, you can’t predict any of what’s to come.

The past three years, riddled with pandemic uncertainty and gradual change in my own personal life, have taught me a lot.

I’ve realised that everyone is lost and confused, and trying to answer some of life’s most difficult questions: what exactly are we doing here? What makes life worth living? Will we ever be at peace with who we are and the choices we’ve made?

One thing that the whole Covid mess has made me realise is how much I’ve changed since going to Trinity – and not in the ways I expected to. The funny thing with expectations is that they almost never pan out. Instead, we are very often surprised by the way life goes, look back retrospectively and laugh at who we were before. “If only younger me could see where I am now” is a sentence I’ve heard so many times. See what I’ve become, see what I’ve gone through, and how every disappointment, difficult time and problem has led me to where I am now. How everything, in hindsight, makes sense .

With all of this in mind, I feel like I should have been more prepared for the changes that were going to be brought to my life by the experience of Erasmus. I figured that if I could move to Dublin and live on my own there, how difficult could moving to Spain be? Once again, the expectations weighed on me. There’s such a cliché when it comes to Erasmus – endless partying, little studying, making so many friends… and most importantly, one last year without too many responsibilities before reality slaps you in the face in 4th year.

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However, I’d argue that, if viewed through a slightly different angle, Erasmus can be an even richer experience than it’s laid out to be. Sure, enjoying the adventure, making memories and revelling in our youth is a cornerstone of the whole concept. But it can also lead to a high level of introspection and change your view on life, relationships, and most importantly, it helps set boundaries in your own life. Erasmus actually is quite a bubble. You arrive in a foreign country, where most people don’t know you or who you are back home – it’s a chance to reinvent yourself. A chance to take all the change you’ve achieved over the past two years in college and present it with the rest of your personality as one completed ‘product’. This leads to a reflection on how much you have indeed changed over that time, and put what you’ve learned about yourself into practice.

Truth is, Erasmus is more challenging than it’s made out to be. Not only do you have to deal with admin, classes and daily life in another language, but also the fact that everything you build while in that other country is very short lived. One thing I hadn’t expected was how temporary this whole year would feel.

A lot of people are only here for a semester, and by the end of the year, everyone will head back to their respective countries – meaning that there’s a low chance you’ll see each other again. This means that a lot of the friendships and relationships you make can appear to be very superficial – almost shallow. When friendship has a time limit before becoming long distance, it’s understandable people don’t put themselves forward too much.

The flip side of that argument though, is that the friendships that do make it past the point of superficiality can be very profound. You meet so many interesting people, who bring different perspectives to your life.

This can lead to DMCs in the smoking area of a club or on a coffee run, and those conversations, as cliché as it sounds, have the power to change the way you view the world.

Another thing I’ve noticed here is that, far from the cliché of everyone on Erasmus being single and living their best life, most people I’ve met have more complicated relationships than they let on. A lot of people are single, sure, but in love with (or at the very least with complicated feelings for) someone far away, back home. This leads to this free lifestyle many people embrace: random hook-ups, not as much as a source of fun but more as an attempted distraction. Those short lived relationships, like the friendships, can be very devoid of meaning - but not necessarily for the reasons I expected.

After a few weeks home for Christmas and a chance to reassess everything that’s been going on, I’ve realised that the start of semester two will not be the same as the beginning of classes in September. I do not have the same goals as when I arrived, and feel like a very different person already. This is a time to focus on myself, leave many aspects of the past behind, and embrace change. Accept who I’ve become and look forward to who I’m going to be by the time the end of the year rolls around. And to be quite honest, that’s a pretty exciting prospect.

WORDS BY ALIX PHILOUZE

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The Last Chapter: The Closure of Chapters Bookstore When I was younger and had an opportunity to go into Dublin for the day, it was rare for me to pass by Parnell Street, home to Chapters, Ireland’s best independent book shop, without stepping inside. Inside these doors you would be greeted by a two-floored multicoloured landscape of literature. If you named any book, Chapters most definitely had it somewhere within their shelves.

You would find your bestsellers at the front of the shop, with the children’s books hidden in the back, but the best part about one of my favourite places in Dublin was the second-hand section upstairs accompanied by a cosy seating area.

There is something so satisfying about seeing a book you have wanted for ages being sold for only a few euros. I would regularly come out of there with a pile of books about half of my height, much to the demise of my bank balance. Who needs to go to the gym to lift weights when you can walk across Dublin carrying a book lover’s fresh supply of books?

I remember I was holding a book pile so large, I had to put some books back as I could barely carry them all. As I was putting some of these books back on the shelves, a customer came up to me and assumed that I worked there. I said to him that I did not actually work there but I wished I did. Even as it is closing its doors for good, I still wished I worked there.

The day before the announcement was made that they were closing shop in the new year, I had visited just for a quick browse before my lectures. There are little pros to commuting to college, but one of the few perks was that my bus stop was a five minute walk from Chapters, the perfect place to walk around if I needed to kill time. I had no idea that in 24 hours time my literary world would change forever. That week was the first time I felt truly heartbroken.

Like many local businesses during the pandemic, they struggled, while Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos was adding more and more money to his billionaire mountain, even having songs named after him. After 39 years in business, Covid-19 was Chapters’ downfall.

I regularly visited Chapters after this announcement and made the most of the time I had left between the shelves.

The weekend the announcement was made we had to queue up to access entry to buy books the way we had to queue up outside Tesco for food in the early days of the pandemic. People were carrying baskets, and, like I did when I was younger, piles of books in their hands, as if these words were these people’s precious lifelines of survival.

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It was like The Hunger Games at one point, if you put a book down deciding not to buy it, you were never going to see that book again. Tough luck if you changed your mind about a book, someone had already taken it at that stage. People wanted to get as many books from their favourite book shop as possible. It also helped that all of the books were now half price. I have gotten some great bargains these last few months. If my bookshelf was not full before the closure announcement, it is definitely full now. Then again, in my opinion, you can never have too many books.

I was there on the last day, the last minute, the last time going through that looking glass. I managed to get inside within the last fifteen minutes of the shops closing for good and people were still browsing, looking around, refusing to leave twenty minutes after closing time. They played every ‘goodbye’ themed song in the background you can think of. I first thought I was hearing things when I started listening to ‘So long, Farewell’ from The Sound of Music. They also played some sad noughties love songs, and ironically as I walked towards the till and out the door … ‘Hit the Road Jack’ by Ray Charles. They really made sure the emotions were felt as people were walking through their doors for the last time.

Rather poetically , one of the last books I bought from Chapters that day was called The French Art of Letting Go and after finding it hard to accept the possibility of never entering one of my favourite places again, I am ready to let Chapters go.

When I was a teenager, I would go to different university open days in Dublin (including Trinity), with my family.

We would always stop by Chapters and get lost in our shared favourite place. Things seem bittersweet now that I am a student here at Trinity and Chapters is reaching its last few pages. Chapters was my childhood, a significant part of my adolescence. It is behind some of the happiest memories I had as a teenager, particularly some of the happiest memories I have with my father. I will always remember this book shop fondly, and it will be difficult to find a worthy replacement.

Dublin, to me, will no longer be the same without my favourite place.

WORDS BY HILARY MULLEN PHOTOS BY HILARY MULLEN ILLUSTRATION BY EMILY STEVENSON

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ALT.

The ‘bee bricks’ philosophy “String figures are like stories; they propose and enact patterns for participants to inhabit, somehow, on a vulnerable and wounded earth… In the face of unrelenting historically specific surplus suffering in companion species knottings, I am not interested in reconciliation or restoration, but I am deeply committed to the more modest possibilities of partial recuperation and getting on together. Call that staying with the trouble. ” Green&Blue is a sustainable design firm that began in a garden shed on the coast of Cornwall. It was founded by Kate and Gavin Christman, a married couple, who, in 2005, left their jobs at an electronic company in order to devote their time entirely to designing habitations and feeders for wildlife. They began with the Birdball, a ceramic birdhouse designed to keep out predators, but have since developed feeders, baths, bat roosts, and “bee bricks’’; a type of construction brick that replicates the cavities of a solitary bee’s natural nest, providing the insects with dwellings in urban areas that lack alternative roosting sites.

Earlier this month, the city of Brighton and Hove passed a planning law that requires all new buildings over five metres tall to include these bee bricks, alongside nesting boxes suitable for swifts. The law comes as part of a broader movement to encourage biodiversity. Brighton’s council aims to twine human spaces with those of animals and critters, currently developing an eco-friendly housing estate that will feature a ground source heat pump system, solar panels, bee bricks, bird boxes, and a communal wildflower garden. These initiatives reflect a growing but inconsistent trend in architectural practices across the globe. In Ireland, for example, sustainable architecture has recently turned its focus to the process of “adaptive reuse”, where buildings in a state of dereliction and disuse are re-purposed and returned to functionality. Irish firms such as Ecocem and Cygnum work towards efficient and sustainable material usage, producing low-carbon alternatives to cement, with Cygnum winning the famous RIBA Stirling Prize in 2019. Despite this, last year, the Built Environment Summit deemed architects across the globe to be “enablers of business as usual” through their complicity in the maintenance of environmentally damaging practices.

In light of this, the bee brick signals a small but important development. Whilst bees are generally able to nest in the crumbling mortar and brickwork of older constructions, the precision of modern building is such that all cavities are blocked. The new brick is important both for its ability to counter this loss through its replication of the bees’ natural habitats, and for its conscious attempt to provide dwelling sites in urbanised landscapes. Nevertheless, the design is not without criticism. Concerns have arisen over the possibility that mites could colonize the spaces and spread diseases, that the brick does not do enough for the environment in isolation, and that the product risks being used as “greenwash” by architects and developers; an environmental “quick fix” promoted at the expense of more impactful and sustainable changes.

WORDS BY CAITLIN KAWALEK ART BY LINDE VERGEYLEN

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Donna Haraway is a scholar at the University of California, Santa Cruz, whose work spans the realms of feminism, philosophy, and ecocriticism. Her seminal book Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene advocates for multispecies collaboration and cohabitation, working against anthropocentric ideas about individualism to highlight the plant-animal-human entwinements and co-dependencies that make living possible. Importantly, Haraway dedicates herself to actuality, preferring to address the issues of the present as opposed to projecting ahead to environmental futures. She advocates for art-science activisms that creatively address ecological issues and emphasizes both the beauty and importance of the more modest and partial forms of recuperation.

These ideas vindicate the bee brick. Despite its criticisms and the continued need to implement a wider variety of sustainable construction practices, Haraway’s thinking suggests that the design signals a small but important step towards planetary recuperation; a station on the path to multispecies resurgence. Scientific opinions have already emerged that reflect Haraway’s line. Francis Gilbert, an ecology professor at the University of Nottingham, believes that some microbes in the bricks’ cavities would rather be beneficial to the bees’ habitat, whilst Lars Chittka, a professor at Queen Mary University, claims that the insects themselves would allay any disease-related issues, counterbalancing the risks that come with the bee brick. The brick’s ecosystem embodies a complexity inherent within the world at large. It constitutes processes of dwelling and non-dwelling, disease and rejuvenation, decline and survival.

Haraway’s ideas can be taken further. Her discussions of ecological processes, actuality, and species entanglement emulate the language of David Bohm, a philosophical physicist whose ideas, though uncommonly taught, are crucial to an understanding of existence. Aiming to unite classical with quantum physics, Bohm discovered a new physical order. He called this “the implicate order” and described it as a level of reality that both lies beneath and gives rise to “the explicate order” of the life and society that we know and perceive. Most simply, the implicate order presupposes absolute holism. It is the locus of connection between every aspect of existence and forms part of a continuous, flowing process of undivided wholeness. Because of this order, Bohm believed that we are fundamentally inseparable from every aspect of the environment; entangled not only with other species, but with the trees, grasses, and flowers, etc. To illustrate this, he cited the movement of breath wherein oxygen produced by plants enters the human body and leaves as CO2 which is again absorbed by the plants in a reciprocal process. Like Haraway, Bohm believed in the necessity of focusing on planetary actuality, of working carefully to offer solutions and suggestions to the problems of the present day.

The point about the bee brick then is that it is generative. It is a chance to look at the world anew with small initiatives that will generate positive potential. Its usage will allow for human-bee cohabitation and the reintroduction of the insects into urban areas. These changes will combine to embody the possibility of modest environmental recuperation.

The bee brick will necessarily have to work alongside other developments of both a small and larger scale. These might include the planting of nearby wildflower gardens, a reduction in the use of pesticides, the development of sustainable building materials, and an increase in the practice of adaptive reuse. According to Haraway, we will never achieve planetary recovery – just a situation that might be considerably better than the one we are in. We both live, and will continue to live, in a time of environmental precarity. It is crucial to address actuality, to acknowledge our entanglements and co-dependencies with nature, and to counter the fact that every construction has its foundations in dispossession; if not human, then animal, vegetational, or biospherical.

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“Dear Diary…” and The Pursuit of Happiness Before there were ‘finstas’ and close friends stories, or Twitter accounts cum personal diaries, there were actual diaries. At around the age of 8, although my days were composed mostly of hopscotch and I reckoned that the inner workings of my life were interesting enough to document. My diary has taken many forms since: from a butterffiyshaped spiral-bound notebook, to a royal blue A4 with an embroidered peacock on the front, all serving essentially the same purpose.

I have always relied on my diary much in the same way I would a counsellor, except diaries aren’t loaded with the expectation of reform or groundbreaking revelation. One of the chief benefits of keeping a diary is the space it ofters us to simply . Yes, it’s just lines on a page, but within those 6x8.25 inches lies prime real estate. Affer all, where else can we carve out room for such unabashed self-exploration?

Arguably, your diary is best utilised as a litmus test for how awful a person you are, so why not take advantage of the opportunity to be wholly incoherent, to whine or confess or to be the bad guy in the story?

Though you might ofter your avid fans a peek at your morning routine via your Snapchat vlog, or divulge to TikTok, in excruciating detail, the first date that ended with a trip to Blanchardstown Hospital, it isn’t an unfiltered version of yourself. Rather, it is simply another manifestation of the fact that ours is a world which demands we perform; critically analyse, debate, hurl out ‘hot takes’ rapid fire. Rather than performing in front of your iPhone - and it is performing, despite how oft-the-cuft and casual it may seem - committing your thoughts to pen and paper presses pause on the performance, lending breathing room to explore an unedited version of yourself.

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In our world of constant oversharing, I think it has become all the more important to reserve private spaces for ourselves. To this day, I refuse to scrawl my name or address on the front page of my diary - it is something that feels inherently personal, precious in its banality. fiis commitment to privacy has resulted in most of my diaries becoming completely illegible, composed of scribbled out paragraphs, torn pages and cryptic names initialled in glittery silver ink. I know that at the time, it all seemed so signifficant: the English test in two days, the piano exam I was sure to fail, the party I was going to skip. Spats that got resolved in a matter of minutes were transformed into mini-sagas, playing out over ffive pages. Everything and nothing was happening, important enough to be documented at the time but so insignifficant in the grand scheme of things that, in looking back over my teenage diaries, I wonder why I thought it had to be recorded. fiat said, I am eternally grateful that it was. When we lost my older brother in 2020, I remember fervently rifting through all of my old diaries. I was searching for his name, any little snippet of our lives I decided to record - some of it so crazy it read as ffiction, most of it mundane and heart wrenching in its mundanity. From uneventful to insane, those old diary entries are my very own coming-of-age script. fiey offer a snapshot of the person I used to be and the growing pains of becoming the person I am now. I can bookmark my girlhood, divide it into chapters which, as it turns out, are worth the read - scanning over the now yellowing pages serves as a reminder that it does get better. In documenting the minutiae of the everyday in such a pared back way, without ffilters or effects, we gain perspective on the geography of our lives, each entry connecting the dots to shape the contours of the self.

WORDS BY ZOE TIMMONS PHOTO BY MEGAN O’ROURKE

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RED, RED, RED

PHOTOS BY MEGAN O’ROURKE

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