welcome to strong feelings! Essays by writers we love, in which they share their most impassioned opinions on a given subject. In today’s strong feelings, writer AJ Mason unpacks the Omegaverse,

Do y’all think Shane Hollander is an Omega, or Ilya? While fanfiction of the Heated Rivalry (HR) book series already existed, the TV show’s success has added an exorbitant amount of new fiction to its repertoire. And with this boom has come the Omegaverse adaptations, where authors are already dedicating pages to what it would be like to be an Omega in the hypermasculine world of professional hockey. Take ‘Heated Secret’ — a 12,000 word fic with almost 9,000 reads — for example, where Alphas are primed to play sports like hockey and Omegas are unheard of on the ice. Shane’s only hope for becoming a star player as an Omega is hiding his secondary gender from the very start…and falling for Ilya (an Alpha) can only complicate things for him. While the Omegaverse is complex — and I promise to explain every bit — there’s much more socio-cultural nuance and inherent inclusivity to it than meets the eye.

For those of you who haven’t been lulled to sleep with a nightly fanfic bedtime story for the past 15 years, I’ll give you some context to the Omegaverse. The Omegaverse – also known as A/B/O (alpha/beta/omega) – is a genre of erotic fiction that plays with ideas of systemic domination and oppression by employing the pack organizational structure of wolves and applying it to humans. Each person is assigned a “primary gender,” one that mirrors the gender structure we’re familiar with in our own world. But they are also assigned a “secondary gender”: Alpha, Beta, or Omega.

Alphas are the privileged class, blessed with power, physical prowess, and often seen as societally – and sometimes sexually – dominant. Betas sit in a neutral second position, while Omegas are typically the most oppressed class, often lacking the same civil rights as Alphas or Betas. Generally speaking, all Alphas can impregnate and all Omegas can be impregnated regardless of their primary gender — this is where the genres of “mpreg” or “male pregnancy” come into play, (which, by the way, have almost 120,000 tagged works on Archive of Our Own [colloquially called AO3]). Famously, Omegas also go through “heat” and Alphas go into “rut” which are biological cycles for each group that make their desire to mate and procreate with the other almost irresistible.

For years, the Omegaverse was an “if you know, you know” phenomenon, but recently, references to A/B/O dynamics have hit the mainstream: There are almost 250,000 works tagged with Alpha/Beta/Omega dynamics on AO3 and thousands of Omegaverse videos on TikTok. The Heated Rivalry actors Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams even discussed the Omegaverse during their viral press tour last month.

While some are adamant about Shane’s Omega status, others — like internet personality Anania — claim the opposite. Personally, I think both suggestions are wrong. The boys, in my opinion, are obviously in an Alpha/Alpha relationship, with Shane coming to terms with being a submissive Alpha. Shane’s feelings of shame surrounding his gay identity in a hypermasculine sport parallels the fics that explore Alpha/Alpha dynamics, as one Alpha will always have to occupy the role of “recipient”. Regardless of one’s conclusion though, the prevalence of this conversation perfectly illustrates an irrefutable fact: the power and strength of the Omegaverse in the fanfiction community is undeniable. If fanfiction had a golden child, a champion, a winner, it would undoubtedly be the Omegaverse. If a piece of media garners an intense fan response, Omega and Alpha speculations (and stories) are sure to follow.

The thing is, the Omegaverse has grown exponentially in the past 15 years since its purported inception, and it’s done so because of the worldbuilding endemic to the universe. While many are skeptical of the genre due to the prevalence of dubious consent (more on this later), it’s ultimately so compelling because it allows both authors and readers to explore the gendered power dynamics and social structures that exist in our own world, but in new bodies and in new forms. Many works also unpack notions of gender, sexuality, and consent under oppression, illustrate and critique systemic inequality, and imagine worlds with fundamentally new understandings of queerness.

In every iteration of Omegaverse fiction, the world is just like our own: a caste system, justified by the so-called “innate” biological aspects of certain bodies and the roles we are told they must embody. While the concept of secondary gender erases the concept of primary gender oppression in this universe, it introduces an entirely new form of bioessentialism, say researchers Xiaoyan Yang and Frederico Pianzola in their paper on the gender power difference in the Omegaverse*. This structure gives authors room to discuss gender-based oppression in unique ways, often pulling apart and isolating distinct aspects of how this oppression manifests and doing so in such an exaggerated way such that it’s impossible to ignore.

The biological imperative to mate opens up questions around consent and the subordination of Omega bodies, which is a core aspect of the genre. (Take for example Destined For Heat, a workplace Omegaverse manga where Omegas are in constant fear of Alphas going into terrifying ruts around them when they are in heat.) Similarly, the “mpreg” feature fundamentally reimagines cis bodies and ascribes a traditionally gendered oppression onto those we don’t typically associate it with by allowing all Omegas to give birth. This, then, often highlights the connection between birth-giving and societal subordination. What roles are forced upon the body that bears the child, what are the societal expectations, and how do these characters navigate them? In our current political climate filled with attacks on reproductive justice, what better time to read a fanfic about Omega Shane Hollander’s decision to get an abortion due to his deep love for hockey?

There are countless Omegaverse stories where the characters themselves are critical of the world around them. These stories are erotic, yes, but they’re also romantic, and hone in on the specific ways characters navigate oppression interpersonally. For many marginalized people, it’s impossible to remove our relationships from the structural context in which we exist. At its core, the Omegaverse explores the habits we form and survival tactics we employ when negotiating consent and love from unequal playing fields. How do we create meaningful relationships in a society with a perpetual imbalance of power? From stories that reference Omega equality movements and the invention of suppressants that help Omegas navigate their ‘heats’ more safely, to new laws passed that criminalize Omega assaults or kidnappings, or allow Omegas to work or own property, I’d argue that many of these stories actually explore the legacies left by activists and the impact that ongoing power struggle has on our main characters’ day-to-day lives.

Brit, known as The Buff Fujoshi on TikTok, is a content creator whose page is dedicated to Boys Love (BL) manga. BL manga embraced the Omegaverse as early as 2015 with numerous stories set in the universe, like Megumi & Tsugumi, Kouguu no Omega, and Kozure Omega to Boukun Yakuza. Brit explained that they were initially hesitant to read Omegaverse manga because of the oppressive world and its exploration of violent topics, but that in getting to know the genre they found a commonality between themself as a Black person and Omega characters trying to navigate a world built against them. On the flip side, Brit had a surprising realization when first getting into Omegaverse fiction: Though they strongly resonate with characters trying to fight against stereotypes, they expressed that the Omegaverse has also given them more empathy for characters who choose to keep their heads down — who grin and bear it in hopes of surviving.

Another common framework we see in the Omegaverse is that many characters try to build a relationship that successfully combats the dominant system imposed on them by society and their biology. Many of us attempt dating despite systemic power imbalances in real life, too, whether that be across gender lines or across other axes of power like race or disability. Seeing characters attempt to negotiate similar issues in their relationships and still create loving connections can be particularly powerful. Brit discusses reading the BL manga No God in Eden, which follows Takai and Nishio as they navigate the realization that they are the world’s first Alpha and Omega, as Nishio is enraptured by a surprise heat and consequently, the need to reproduce. The story illustrates the struggle the characters face when trying to form a real romantic connection despite the power dynamics that are thrust upon them.

There is inherently queer storytelling in the Omegaverse, too, from stories that feature Omegas who would do anything in their power to hide the fact that they are Omega – a concept that is sometimes given a trans reading — t0 fics that center stories that divest from dating Alphas entirely (shoutout to all the feminist Omegas #decentering-alpha-romance). There are also many stories that feature two Omegas or two Alphas dating. The latter relationships, in particular, often have a similar trajectory to queer relationships in our current world, being seen canonically as “taboo” in the Omegaverse. Since same-sex relationships of one’s primary gender are generally normalized in the Omegaverse, and queer sex is a codified cultural norm, it allows us to play with an entirely new and reimagined form of queerness focused on secondary gender. For example, two Omegas together are often seen as “wasting their wombs” and their divestment from centering Alphas as a societal affront, which is a sentiment I’m all too familiar with as a queer woman in the real world. Yet, these stories show the often characters persevering, shunting societal expectations and finding genuine romance.

Nonetheless, it’s also impossible to discuss the Omegaverse without noting the rampant oppression and culture of non-consent. The more intense stories within the genre may include aspects like enslaved, kidnapped, or brutalized Omegas, and the biological essentialism used to justify this violence should be rightfully questioned – these fictions are certainly capable of making light of problematic dynamics. However, depiction and validation are not synonymous either; to explore does not require one to condone. Facing the intersections between our fantasies, fears, lived experiences, and sexual desires is often complex, and this medium is perfectly positioned to help us explore those nuances – even if those circumstances are imperfect or uncomfortable.

Ultimately, erotica of any kind is not new to facing derision because genres that center desire often show us at our most debased; the dirt under our nails we’d much prefer to hide. Regardless, the Omegaverse has solidified its place in the digital zeitgeist. When it comes to media that depicts the complexity of desire, it can be much more interesting and impactful to explore it from a less judgemental and “morally pure” standpoint and instead to approach it with a desire to understand human nature. The persistence of the genre is proof of how compelling it is and the power that it has to help us understand one another more deeply while challenging the world around us, if we choose to do so.

*Yang, Xiaoyan and Pianzola, Federico (2024). Exploring the Evolution of Gender Power Difference through the Omegaverse Trope on AO3 Fanfiction, Centre for Language and Cognition, University of Groningen, The Netherlands.

AJ Mason (@ajvstheeworld) is a writer and creative, based in Brooklyn, NY. AJ’s writing attempts to contextualize smaller moments within our larger culture, weaving connections between history, art and politics. Alongside writing for publications like Them and Autostraddle, AJ is either putting their philosophy degree to use (finally!) in essays on their Substack or conducting deep dives into their favorite animated shows on TikTok!

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welcome to strong feelings! Essays by writers we love, in which they share their most impassioned opinions on a given subject. In today’s strong feelings, writer Malavika Kannan shares everything she learned from her first year as an out lesbian.

Being queer is about possibility. It is an active refusal of systems and practices that do not serve us; it is an open question, an invitation to choose something new. I understood these things theoretically when I came out as a lesbian one year ago. But I didn’t understand what that would look like in practice. It didn’t help that I had few role models in my life of lesbian relationships that mirror what I might want for myself.

In 2025, I had a goal: make those possibilities real. In my body, not just my mind. This year I fucked around and found out a lot. I experienced how it feels to actually date as an adult lesbian, to slide into DMs, sit across from people at bars, climb the interminable walk-up stairs to their apartments, and have multi-act, tearful decouplings on long walks in the park.

I made this Dating Wrapped to share my experiences from my first full year on the lesbian market. I have always loved a good Dating Wrapped from a stranger online, mostly because I am nosy, but also because I’m hoping to reclaim it as the latest installment in a long feminist tradition of consciousness-raising.

Generations of feminist progress was built on this practice: the idea that when women publicly share the experiences that we’ve long been taught to keep private, including in our romantic and sex lives, we come to learn that individual experiences are actually shared political realities. I’ve seen so many young women held back from queer dating by the fact that they can’t imagine what it looks like.

Girl, let me tell you.

Here is my 2025 Lesbian Dating Wrapped. Out of respect and care for the people I’ve dated, it is entirely anonymous and data-driven. (As Lil Wayne once said: “I could say these hoes’ names/but then I would be snitching.”) If you are somebody I’ve dated, I promise that I see you as an entire, full person and not a number or a funny story and — with a few exceptions — I am grateful for the time we shared. Please don’t unionize against me.

A little about me: My name is Malavika, I’m 24, an Aquarius, and a lesbian. My careers and contributions to society include being a writer (of novels, essays, and journalism!), internet girl, and socialite. My entire existence is concerned with identity, kinship, love, and community for young women coming of age in apocalyptic, unprecedented times.

This year, I kissed 14 people with intention. I define this as: I knew their name and we had a whole conversation before or after. My data team made the difficult decision to exclude Dance Floor Makeouts (DFMOs) for this reason, although I believe those are a dying queer art and their lack is a recession indicator. I went on 11 first dates. I also contracted BV three times, which is not an STI, but is actually my body’s handy signal, as I’ve learned, that a partner is not right for me!

In 2125, anthropologists might be curious to understand Gen Z homosexual courtship rituals. I am here to provide some context. The majority of people I dated I met while out and about. I think there is a genuine fatigue among my generation with dating apps, and as life has heated up again post-pandemic, I’ve found great joy in meeting people at parties, functions, or through friends.

That being said, the second most common way I met people was via social media. For a certain Creative Class of Queer Women of Color, Instagram and TikTok are functionally dating apps. (I am convinced that the love of my life is a creative who has at least 70 mutuals with me on Instagram.) I learned an entire new ritual of flirtation, from story-liking and replying, to being added to someone’s “close friends” story, (the modern-day green light that once drew Gatsby, my friends have joked).

I had a brief dating app phase but found it unsatisfactory. Lastly, in 2025 I made the mistake of dating a close friend one (1) time. I think this is a rite-of-passage for queer women, but it was an embarrassing strike two for me, because I have already been through this and even saw fit to write an entire forthcoming novel about the phenomenon. Never again.

This was a multi-act, sleepless saga and hands-down the most romantic first date I have been on in my life. It ended only because this person had a cross-country flight to catch.

Six people I’ve dated have asked to read my novel early, and writers know there are few intimacies greater than having your work seen and understood by somebody you care about. I often feel extremely vulnerable handing the manuscript off, because it feels like I am physically handing over my heart, but it is also a great sign for me if somebody finishes and likes my book, because that is the equivalent of hanging out with me for ten hours and still wanting more.

Sometimes it’s like that.

And one beloved childhood dog. I was bitten by one person’s cat, though, awoop.

Gender played a much larger role in my dating experiences than I’d imagined; people’s gender presentation, I learned, is often intimately connected with how they move interpersonally and romantically. Sometimes I wish this was not the case — I believe, fundamentally, that gender roles prevent us from seeing one another fully as people, and, what’s more, are entirely fake. (Unless we are playing into them sometimes for fun because they are hot, which is an entirely different story.)

In dating this year, I got to experience the grand pageant of humanity and an entire spectrum of gender presentations, some of which were genuinely brilliant works of art. (I love the queer body as a DIY project of infinitely inspiring potential.) Still, when I plotted the data points (unscientifically) I was amused to see that I got lowkey out-masced by the majority of people that I dated.

Now this one is just to stir the pot. You’ll see that I ranked no person at a 0 on the Y-axis (totally innocent) because I believe that all gay people are guilty until proven otherwise. I experienced some unthinkably evil behavior while dating this year, but most of the people, thankfully, were relatively normal and kind.

I was very outside this year. As much as I love a classic dinner and/or drinks, I was blown away by some of the girlies’ creativity. In my friendships, and in life, I am often a planner, so I am always extremely grateful — and touched — when somebody plans a thoughtful date for me.

My lesbian powers evolved throughout the year. Please walk with me for a quarterly breakdown of what was shaping my swag and sense of self:

Q1: The beginning of the year saw me at middling lesbian powers. I was not my wealthiest because I had just left a job, and I was chastened to discover that lesbian dating does take out an entire line-item in your budget. In fact, I think that if you are broke, you should just be respectful to women and take yourself off the streets until you get your money back up. (Just kidding. I actually have nuanced and extensive thoughts on how queer relationships can push back against patriarchal financial norms and be generous and reparative, but that’s another essay.) I was also seasonally depressed from my first-ever winter (I’m from Florida) and felt something akin to gender dysphoria when I had to walk around dressed like a sleeping bag and not a human woman.

Q2: I was chugging along — I stepped back from some romantic options that weren’t right for me, and hit my groove with new friendships, as well as my writing career. Things were looking up! My quarter two peak was June: Pride Month. I got to shake ass at innumerable parties and functions. I came out publicly as a lesbian, which went viral, and while I did get in hot water in multiple comments sections (including earning the ire of TERFs on Reddit and YouTube), a lot of hot people read and resonated with the piece and gave me vulnerable, deeply-felt feedback. I did feel very brave to have come out as lesbian the same month that one of the few men that could hold me to bisexuality won New York’s mayoral primary, but what can I say – woke was back, new pronouns were due, and we all were libbing out.

Q3: Unfortunately, the post-Pride Month crash hit hard. I hit rock bottom in July after a series of truly cursed and devastating romantic encounters that had me questioning whether something was profoundly wrong with me. I felt homophobic and could not believe I had risked it all as a public advocate for lesbianism. I even called my parents and mentors for advice and they helpfully reminded me that I am only twenty-four years old and figuring things out, but I also learned a lot of valuable lessons about how to protect my heart, listen to my body, and move with dignity in this life.

The recurrent cause of my homophobia is my belief that LGBTQ people are our own worst enemies. Even as everyone seems to agree that dating is cooked, few people are willing to take the brave leaps of committing to a relationship, to compromising, to potentially surrendering some of their comfort in order to be in partnership with another person. I sometimes feel like because gay people spend so much time being told we are unworthy of love, or even life, it can feel difficult to actualize either for ourselves, even with no oppressors in the room. I was recently very moved to see new data from Hinge showing that 73 percent of Gen Z LGBTQ daters are worried about asking deep questions early into dating because they don’t want to seem too intense. As someone who has always loved deeply, and with an existential sense of stakes, I have never forgotten that queerness is a marginalized identity: This shit is hard.

Q4: I experimented with what I jokingly called a “pussy fast,” but was actually a period of intentional celibacy for me. To me, celibacy is not just about avoiding sex, but also stepping aside from the chaos of dating, flirtation, and the pursuit that leads up to it. The experience of being out and about as a single person is something I call the hoe-llercoaster: a period of unimaginable thrill, excitement, and danger. I believe it has a similar physiological effect on your body of doing hard drugs. You can get addicted, or at least attached to, the highs of being hit on, seeing who likes your story, entertaining flirtations with people, even if they lead nowhere.

I was inspired by Melissa Febos’ memoir The Dry Season about her own year of abstaining from queer intimacy. I was curious to learn what new things might grow in my heart when I de-centered romance; while the obliterating rush of queer desire has been the number one driver of my artistic energy for my early adulthood, I wanted to tap into something sustainable, measured, intentional. I also simply had to quiet the voice in my head, perhaps awakened during the pandemic, that was saying life was too short to afford to be discerning. I achieved unprecedented levels of lesbian powers and peace during those three months. But that’s not to say that I had no fun – I wrestled at Lesbian Oil Wrestling, which added at least a hundred years to my lifespan.

Now, at the time of writing, I’m pleased to report that I am at peak lesbian powers. My pussy fast yielded really great results, such as selling another book, finding a job I cared about, and moving into my first studio apartment. I still have a heart full of love, mouth full of opinions, and not a single straight bone in my body. Going into 2026, I want to find a relationship with queerness that is not contingent on partnership, on an idealized happily ever after, but on the wide and deep oceans of queer platonic love and the many friends who have cared for me — whose love enables my own. I am crossing my fingers and toes and hoping that it is all uphill from here.

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Every year, mixed feelings corrals our team and our most delightfully chaotic friends to bring you the Unhinged Gift Guide — a roundup of presents no sane person would ask for, but everyone secretly wants. This isn’t your run-of-the-mill lineup of gifts for your best friend, or even advice on what to get your estranged aunt. It’s a spectrum of hinged-to-unhinged selects curated by the most whimsical people we know. Consider it a sliding scale of items you didn’t know you needed but now simply cannot live without. From spicy fan art to decorative blades and custom dolls, some of these picks are “normal,” sure, but many are handpicked from the silliest depths of the internet.

Let us know your unhinged picks in the comments below. We are desperate for more.

Enjoy 😈

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Important Flowers Planner by Sofia Coppola. I needed this so badly I pre-ordered it. It’s the Important Flowers planner published by Sofia Coppola. I love the aesthetic. I had one for 2025, too, that I added jewelry stickers to. I am so happy that the 2026 planner is blue. Last year’s was purple and it will be so cute to have a couple of them from different years lined up on my bookshelf. I like writing things down, but eventually all my to-dos and reminders become a giant mush of porridge. To have pages printed with lines, dates, weeks, and months help me quite a bit. I can also write down places or thoughts on the extra pages in this planner. I just love to stay organized and make my dreams come true < 3333 — Alice Longyu Gao, musician & performance artist

Caraway Home Glass Container Set. And this is why I steal because, oh my god, why the F*CK is this set $250? Anyway… Candidly, I like to bake and I found myself wanting to make my kitchen look like a grown woman’s kitchen. Give me a cookie jar, some canisters for flour and sugar, and a hidden/lofted microwave, I’m there. I’m ready for the ever-gracious allure of the mediocre white woman’s kitchen. That or get me some lube with over 5% lidocaine. There’s something I gotta take care of. — Anania, host of Gaydar

Alessi Salif Juicer. Okay tell me why this Salif juicer — or what I like to call “octopus juicer” — is the most unhinged gift you could give someone. Like it’s literally a spiky little alien that you juice lemons on. Does it work? Eh...Does it look insane on your counter? Absolutely. And that’s kinda why I love it… it’s giving “I don’t know what this is but I’m obsessed anyway.” Perfect for that one friend who has everything and also nothing at the same time. — Loi Doan, interior designer

Shinsakuto Made-To-Order Katana. We want matching katanas because not only does it come with a cute holster and look chic, but we all know the streets of New York can be spooky at night. Pepper spray simply isn’t enough, we need the ops to know the battle is over before it begins. — The Dupont Twins, Jake (model & makeup artist) & Josie (model & creator)

John Pork Autographed Picture. My pick is a $500 signed photograph (or postcard, or soggy napkin, it’s hard to tell) of my favorite porcine celebrity John Pork. This random eBay seller must have gone to unbelievable lengths to procure the signature, since pigs are known to be unable to write in cursive, and John Pork isn’t even real. If one of my reply guys bought this for me I would cherish it forever. — Kieran Press-Reynolds, writer & columnist at Pitchfork

Cameo from Marcus the Worm. I don’t know when or why I first encountered Marcus the Worm on TikTok, but I did. And once the train left the station, there was no hope left for me. It’s too much for me to explain the full lore, but I love his strange body, his deep monotone, and when he gets extremely close to the camera to share that a rock is pissing him off or he laundered $17K through a locally-owned Greek restaurant. This holiday season I would like a cater-made cameo from Marcus just for me, ideally engineered to include roast material or other errant, original thoughts of his own. — Amalie MacGowan, editorial director at mixed feelings

Premium Tier Patreon Membership. Listen, I spend a normal amount of money on Patreon. Like…under $30 a month. I just love exclusive nerd content, what can I say? But if we’re talking unhinged, then I wouldn’t say no to being gifted premium-tier memberships for some artists who draw nsfw fanfic. I’m deeply invested in depictions of the SuperBat ship by @umikochannart on Instagram. You’re telling me you DON’T want to see Superman and Batman kiss? Ok, sure. And we’re being specific, so please find artists that feature queer ships of all genders. Because I’m an ART ENJOYER, not a pervert. (Mostly.) — Logan Tsugita, art director at mixed feelings

Custom Rat Jerky Doll. I bought one of these “rat jerky dolls” (or “laoshugan” in Chinese) at Comic Con this fall: A slender and flexible tribute to Beomgyu from TXT. Since then, I’ve had lots of fun posing my Beomgyu doll on shoulders, hugging other trinkets, and hanging off door handles. People in China love these ugly-cute dolls and have been purchasing customized versions of them (often of their friends or favorite real-life or fictional characters) and I need a custom set of my own, ideally in the form of Ryuk from Deathnote and myself so we can be together 👉👈. — Mi-Anne Chan, founding editor at mixed feelings

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welcome to strong feelings! Essays by writers we love, in which they share their most impassioned opinions on a given subject. In today’s strong feelings, writer and editor Kieran Press-Reynolds explores the high-stim world of Roblox “TV:” the multi-million viewed long-form videos using the aesthetics and engines of the video game.

Lia hits rock bottom — first she’s forced to use all her family’s money on her stroke-stricken mother’s hospital bills, then she loses her coffee shop job and can no longer pay for high school. Destitute, the 17-year-old works as live-in maid for master of the manor Zane, who also goes to her former school. But as if in some rags-to-riches fairytale, Zane falls for the lowly but lovely Lia and ditches his upper-class fiancée Lexi.

This isn’t a Parasite sequel or the subplot of a Jane Austen-era teen drama. It’s a two-part YouTube series by user “Sweet Berry” called “I Became The Maid Of The Most Handsome Guy In School,” which was posted two months ago and has already accrued over 1.3M views. It’s one of hundreds of dizzyingly elaborate soap operas staged in the sandbox universe Roblox, where avatars look like LEGO characters and kids roleplay as everything imaginable. Spoiler alert: In 22 minutes, Lia escapes from armed goons; Lexi gets jilted at the altar; characters abuse each other to tears; Lia gets struck by a car after pushing Zane out of the way.

These Roblox videos, which take the form of 20-30-minute episodic releases or “movies” that can stretch beyond two hours, have devoured a specific corner of the internet while remaining completely unknown and impenetrable to anyone outside the scene. It makes twisted sense that a generation breastfed on the game, (39% of Roblox users are 13 and under), who spends nearly every waking hour simulating physical-world experiences on Roblox roleplay (RP) servers, would prefer seeing movies and TV shows set in this pixelated patina to flesh and dirt. This is a game where people form church groups with weekly Sunday Services, meet best friends and, at the most despicable, engage in sex rituals and join “Spawnism” cults that coax users into self-harm. “Bacon hair” and gawky walk animations are what they know, so Roblox romance feels realer than reality.

@jesuslovesyou12330roblox church is so cute😂😂#roblox #church @The Grace Church

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Roblox isn’t the first game to spawn a parallel media industry. “Machinima,” or machine cinema built using a video game’s aesthetic or engine, has existed for over a decade. Minecraft has its own Mollywood: “Parkour Civilization,” a startlingly poignant film-length analogy for class consciousness, has over 45 million views on YouTube and an 8.4 on IMDb after 894 ratings. Grand Theft Hamlet, a fully machinima work about the process of staging the Shakespeare play in GTA Online, won the Grand Jury Award at SXSW Film Festival in 2024.

But Rollywood is different partly because of how both mundane and unhinged this scene can get. The most straightforward might be the sitcom-style RP TV shows, which often follow a fictional family’s hi-jinks. Riley, a 20-year-old from upstate New York who posts under the handle Elyxia, has made hundreds of RP videos centered around a single family. She plays the mother, her little brother voices the toddler Hunter; her sister acts as the grandma, and a network of friends she met through Roblox plays relatives and tertiary cast members.

Her clips range from humdrum day-in-the-lives to one-off weirdness like the family braving a tornado and an episode where a character named Finley’s secret dad kidnaps him. Riley describes an uber-competitive scene where oversaturation drives creative innovation. “You can do a basic morning routine, night routine, afterschool video, or even holiday specials — like Christmas, Thanksgiving. But you have to think of the viewer having multiple roleplay channel options to watch, and they don’t wanna watch the same five-six Christmas specials or school routines. You have to throw something in there that makes it pop out… The kidnapping videos, those were quite fun. Or, like, jail videos. It’s honestly the drama that [fans] love the most.”

Riley began making roleplay TV videos toward the end of 2019, and says the genre reached its apex during peak pandemic in 2020 and the following years. 2022 was the “summer of civil wars,” she reflects with a mix of nostalgia and anguish, where creators were constantly being called out for copying each other’s videos and viciously vying to seize the crown of top creator. She worries that “brainrot” videos are now killing the genre and overtaking the RP scene.

Back in the early days, a video didn’t need much to blow up: minimal editing and the thumbnail could be a screenshot of the game. Fast forward to now, and the genre’s become ground zero for the vanguard of clickbait tactics, a mad lab that convulses with the newest innovations guided by platform accumulation logic. Videos shimmer with ALL-CAPS titles and stimboard thumbnails that fuse MrBeast’s high-stakes adventure tourism with Piper Rockelle’s cutesy adolescent glitter. Some videos puke out constant flash forwards, where creators tease dramatic future scenes in the same video to boost retention, all the while blitzing you with sound effects every second and wobbling VTuber-style graphics of the characters.

Episode themes have gone full Euphoria, littered with family members dying, teen pregnancy scares, childbirth, alien invasions. You almost wish they went even further: RPs of mutants raving in the forest or obsessive sociopathic hoarders. One of Riley’s strats for increasing relevancy is integrating real-world events; she made a reference to the US government shutdown in a video and did a segment where the mother fell in love with a character inspired by Luigi Mangione. She feels it could offer some educational value. “Maybe a younger kid, they’re like, what even is that? So they research it and figure out what’s going on the world.”

For many, the allure of this content is the simplicity and the stimuli, SpongeBob rewired for a generation microwaving their minds in the endless scroll. “It’s more accessible than cable was when we were kids,” Riley reasons. “YouTube’s free, so it’s easy for kids to just hop on their iPad or their computer and see a new video.” It tracks that in an era of withering attention spans, kids would be willing to spend hours watching media that resembles their favorite online platform — it’s a frictionless, mind-numbing extension of the gaming experience.

And for the creators, beyond the financial and clout incentive, it’s a way to practice editing, make friends, and process things going on in their lives. Riley got into Roblox when she was a lonely teen, right around the time her parents separated: “I was going through a lot, so it was a light for me.” In her series, there’s been cheating scandals and divorce custody litigation. There’s also references poking fun at the romantic victories and failures of her and her collaborators. In one video, her friend named a rat character “Jeffrey,” an allusion to one of Riley’s ex-situationships.

While many of the most popular Roblox TV shows will seem grating or banal to anyone who’s not a 13-year-old dreaming of their first kiss with Timothée Chalamet, there are some gems. Riley’s Crush Island offers a cyborgian parody of Love Island, replete with “golden retriever” boys, a bisexual, a woman from Astoria with trust issues, and maximum narcissism and blush. “She has heels higher than half of the boys’ emotional maturity,” the host quips at one point.

These roleplays and TV shows are the easiest to make because they’re often shot in first-person, using sets and basic animations inherent to the game. But it’s not just retention-maxxed melodramas: Plenty of these predominantly teen video makers are like amateur Kubricks, painstakingly sculpting out facial expressions, establishing shots, and rule-of-thirds angles with perfectionist precision. Annabelle, the 22-year-old Ro-teur known as Robuilds, tells me she enlisted over 100 people — Roblox player volunteers, internet-turned-IRL pals, her own family members — and used up 2TB of hard drive space to produce Susan, a 78-minute YouTube film about a furniture store owner who discovers a magic power.

For more involved productions, directors spend hours and days designing full maps (the 3D layout of an in-game world) and quirky avatars, poring over all the appearance options like “Black Layered Wolf Cut” and the millions of accessories. They use the Roblox Studio and the Moon Animator plugin, which lets the committed Roblox artists program animation frames for every character — down to the specific elements that make up their blocky avatar model, like torso and arms — and add a specific camera rig to control shots and field of view.

For complex sequences like fights, Jay, the director of the Roblox film Bullet War, has directly simulated scenes from movies like Boy Kills World. The 17-year-old from Brunei got into the scene when he was nine after watching the pioneer ObliviousHD’s “The Last Guest,” which might be the most popular Roblox film of all time, with over 95 million views on YouTube. “I was mind-blown by the visuals and quality,” he tells me excitedly over Discord. “That really changed my entire goal for the future — I realized I wanted to be like him.” He began making “concept videos” that broke apart bits from ObliviousHD’s movies, eventually creating his own films. “I constantly practiced every single day in order to make a watchable film,” Jay says. “Before that I was a nobody.” Now he’s friends with his idol.

After the tedious work of animating, then begins the hellscape of editing, which closely mirrors real post-production. Editors drop footage in Sony Vegas Pro or Premiere Pro and go psycho with foley: fabric scratches, door creaks. Annabelle has all her voice actor volunteers send two-to-three takes of every line so she can decide which packs the most tonal punch. Jay sometimes hunts for voice actors like a genuine scout on the Casting Call website. Imaginative sound design can elevate a Rollywood work from second-screen slop to something like an emotional whirlwind. After that, directors design promo posters, trailers, and age ratings imitating the MPA classification system, all leading up to a release night where it unfurls live on YouTube. Annabelle also throws in-game premieres, where she invites her cast and crew to a specific theater map with a red carpet.

It’s weird that all this is happening in Roblox, which is owned by a mammoth tech company that reaps billions by incentivizing users to create mechanisms to hook kids on their phones and iPads. Every micro-element of Roblox — the avatars, the graphics, the logo, the code — is the company’s Intellectual Property, which would suggest that these directors lose the right to ownership as soon as they open the platform. But like pretty much every video game in history, fanmade Roblox clips never get struck down online, because why would they? UGC functions as an ad for the game, and it’s also a legal gray zone because this content could qualify for fair use as transformative videos. The ever-enterprising company is clearly looking for ways to capitalize on multimedia expansion. Roblox’s Grow a Garden, a Farmville-style server that became the most popular game in industry history with a peak of over 22 million active users, is set to become a movie. Another Roblox game, Jailbreak, also has a movie in the works.

There’s also Roblox’s perennial pedophile problem and frequent scandals. In many unsavory ways, Rollywood is not too dissimilar from the actual Hollywood, with its power imbalances and abuse. One of the most popular animators, PghLFilms, who was nominated for a Roblox Innovation Award in 2022, had his account shut down after allegations that he sent inappropriate posts and videos of animals decomposing to Discord servers with minors. (PghLFilms has publicly denied the accusations.) Jay described other gossip including a cheating scandal and animators being canceled for grooming. “It became a common stereotype to the point where I just look at my Instagram Reels comments and see people hoping that I don’t touch kids,” sighs Jay, who is himself a kid. “That’s a really horrible stereotype to be in.”

But in other respects, the Roblox media community is cool because it’s resisting the defining monetary mechanism of the platform, which is users making games for others to play. Instead, these creators pilfer the platform’s engine and aesthetic to make movies for their own benefit, which no one can “play” like a video game or spend Robux on that goes to the overlords. 20-year-old Riley told me she’s made a little less than $150,000 from the over 800 videos she’s posted across five years on YouTube.

Everyone I spoke to exuded a level of passion you wouldn’t expect from the clickbait thumbnails dredged up by a cursory “Roblox RP” search online. These are people who believe in toiling away for months or years to make “art,” even if it would be mocked by much of the population. Roblox media has helped them find themselves and their communities. Annabelle has befriended and met up with other Roblox cinematographers like Brandon Hau, whose debut Roblox movie Abducted she acted in, and which premiered online and at a physical party in the Bay Area. Riley says many of her current collaborators are people who were once fans, who she’s now met up with multiple times in real-life. One of her closest friends, the guy who plays Finley, is LGBTQ, so she decided to make his character canonically gay as well, with a roleplay video of Finley coming out and attending the school dance with a boy. “I didn’t want to make him love someone that he doesn’t, even if it’s just for the show,” she says. “That was really important to me — so people watching could feel heard and didn’t feel like they had to be quiet about it.”

Kieran Press-Reynolds is a writer from Brooklyn, New York, who does a weekly column called Rabbit Holed for Pitchfork. They edit the blog No Bells and have written about deep-internet weirdness and madcap influencers for places like GQ, i-D, and The Face.

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dear mf,

I’m a queer person of color who was raised in a family that values blood over everything. After my parents (finally) admitted they’re uncomfortable with my queerness, my queer relationship, and well, queer people in general, most of my friends think I should go ‘no contact’ with them. I’m really struggling with this because while I was raised in the West, my parents were not, and they feel like our family unit can remain the same, despite the hurtful things they said to me.

I feel like I’m at odds with two different versions of myself: one that was raised in the West and believes that love should be earned and one that was raised in a family with Eastern values that honor collectivism and filial piety. I’m not sure I’m ready to go “no contact” yet, but it’s not out of the question. In the meantime, how can I communicate and set boundaries that show my family that while I haven’t rescinded their access to me and will be there for them in times of need, I won’t stand for their bigotry? I’m worried that I have to cut them off to show them I stand by my values and if I keep communicating with them, that I’m sending a message that their bigotry doesn’t matter to me.” — Eastmeetswest, she/her

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Willie Greene is the Founder of WE THE URBAN which he created at fourteen years old from his bedroom in North Carolina. What began as an online community celebrating fashion and art, notably championing Black queer creativity, soon became Tumblr’s first blog to transform into a nationally syndicated print magazine. WE THE URBAN is now one of the biggest mental health platforms on social media for marginalized voices. His book, Not Sure Who Needs to Hear This, But, is now a national bestseller.

Dear EastMeetsWest,

When the people who raised you say they love you, but only the version of you they can understand, it creates a heartbreak that doesn’t fit neatly into any language. You’re being asked to choose between the family that taught you what love is, and the identity that taught you what freedom feels like.

That tension is not a failure on your part; it’s the cost of being the first in your family to live openly. You are carrying a bridge on your back: one side rooted in ancestral duty, the other in self-respect and queerness. And both sides feel like home.

Conversations around going “no contact” with family members have seen an uptick in recent years, but what often gets missed in these discussions is that (for better or for worse) immigrant families simply love differently. Affection isn’t always verbal. Commitment can look like obligation. “We are uncomfortable” can sometimes mean “we are terrified,” especially when queerness was never given a name in their world.

So let me say this clearly: Your queerness is not a betrayal of your culture. It’s an expansion of it. Your very existence is progress.

You are not Western or Eastern. You are the ocean between them, learning how to hold both without drowning. Some therapists who specialize in bicultural identity call this the “bridge role.” It’s when you become the one teaching your family a version of love they never had modeled. That’s sacred work. Work that shouldn’t come at the expense of your dignity.

Understanding how complicated these dynamics can be, staying connected to them is still a valid choice. The Family Acceptance Project has shown that even imperfect, gradual acceptance is protective for queer people’s mental health, meaning you can take time without taking harm.

I believe what matters most in your journey to figuring this out is boundaries. Clear, firm, loving boundaries. As psychologist Dr. Thema Bryant teaches: “Boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously.” They are an act of compassion because they keep relationships grounded in truth rather than resentment. They are not a door slam. They are a doorframe, determining what kind of love is allowed in. And you can keep the door open without leaving it unlocked.

When it comes time to actually say these boundaries out loud, you don’t need to deliver a monologue or hold a family intervention. You can name what you need in regular, imperfect human language.

Befriend simplicity. Understand that a moment of discomfort is worth the long-term peace and clarity that follows. Something like: “Hey, when you say things that make me feel small or judge my relationship, I have no choice but to step away from you. I love you, but I need to feel safe to stay in community with you.” Being that clear might feel extremely awkward, or like your voice is shaking, because it’s new. But even a shaky boundary is still a boundary.

Please be gentle with yourself through the process. If you slip up sometimes —if you laugh something off to avoid an argument, stay on the phone longer than feels good, or shrink a little to keep the peace — that doesn’t erase your progress. Boundary setting is a skill, a muscle. And skills get mastered through regular practice. Never forget that you’re learning this in real time with people who taught you to never say “no” to them. You can always reflect and say, “Actually…that didn’t sit right with me.” You can always gently reset: “I let that go earlier, but it’s important to me to say this again…” Being consistent doesn’t mean being bulletproof. It just means you keep coming back to yourself.

You get to decide what access looks like in this new chapter.

Maybe that means shorter check-ins instead of long visits.
Maybe you redirect conversations when they turn harmful.
Maybe there are topics that are no longer up for debate.

Your boundaries can be small shifts that communicate a big truth: “I’m here. But not at the expense of myself.”

And you can absolutely say: “I love you. I’m not going anywhere. But I won’t shrink my queerness to make this easier. I am whole, and I need you to meet me there.”

They may not know how to rise to that… yet. But let that be their limitation, not your queue to shrink and erase yourself. Sometimes the love that remains after all of that is thin, complicated, or quiet…but it’s still worth holding. When it comes to our caregivers, even the smallest thread of connection can be meaningful when it doesn’t require us to self-abandon.

Here’s what I ultimately hope for you:

That you remember your identity is not a negotiation.
That you stop preparing the softest parts of yourself for impact.
That you stop treating acceptance like something you have to earn.
That you stop dimming in case their eyes aren’t ready for your light.
That you always choose the version of yourself that feels like freedom.
That you never shut off the parts of you that make you special, for anyone.
That you treat yourself with kindness, love, grace, and compassion.

You can love your family and love yourself enough not to disappear. If they grow? Beautiful. If they don’t? You’re still standing.

And please remember: there are people in this world who will see you clearly and love you openly, in all the ways you deserve. That love exists. And it’s already moving toward you.

Your queerness deserves ease. Your authentic life deserves room. Your heart deserves a home, even if you have to build it yourself.

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Welcome to mixed feelings’ Hyperspecific, a profile series of increasingly intimate questions in which we ask our favorite artists, characters, musicians, and the like to unveil their innermost selves — their weird existential musings.

“Adela is the definition of rejection is not your destination.”

This is the first comment under a video of Adéla performing her song “Homewrecked” on October 22 while opening for Demi Lovato with the caption “A star was born tonight in Los Angeles.” Though the commenter is alluding to Adéla’s fame origin story, competing for a top spot in the girl group that is now Katseye on the hit Netflix show Pop Star Academy, they suggest that Adéla was perhaps always meant to be a solo artist.

I’ll admit I let the video loop for four minutes straight, noting the way she reclines her head back to hit a gorgeous high note in her chest voice, the wind blowing through her spotlit hair, the attention she commands on the stage.

Adéla is a burgeoning pop star if I’ve ever seen one. When she comes to our studio, she wears 8-inch platform black leather heels shaped like lobster claws, matching cotton shorts and a bra, and an oversized leather jacket. She has an inherently cool way of carrying herself, as well, confirmed by each answer she shares.

In our interview I found myself moved by her ambition, charmed by her repeated use of the word “sickening,” and her vitriol for fashion boys. It’s not often you meet someone who you believe to be truly at the cusp of superstardom, but that is Adéla. And even if the cards are mysteriously not stacked in her favor in the future, much like Ali Rose in Burlesque, there is nothing she will stop at in pursuing her dreams.

Read her Hyperspecific interview below, and sell yourself on Adéla. — Amalie MacGowan

LEVEL I

1. Something you’re always hoping people bring up in conversation.

[First of all], I hope they talk. Sometimes when I meet people, they want me to talk entirely too much and I already talk about myself a lot. I write about my life. I do interviews like this…It’s really nice to have a conversation. Like, no, let’s talk about you.

[But also] Beyoncé. I can talk about everything Beyoncé and Madonna. Just pop culture in general. Pop culture is to me what World War II is to the middle-aged white man. I know everything about that shit.

MF: What about when people ask you about ‘Dream Academy’?

I’m like, okay, I get it, that it’s a part of the lore, but I think there’ll come a point where I’m like, I don’t want to fucking talk about this anymore. It’s been a year. Obviously it’s quite the experience to go back to mentally, but I’ve done a lot since then.

2. What’s a positive trait people always tell you you have?

I think people are always excited about how hardworking I am. I did ballet as a kid, and there’s no way to be good at ballet if you’re not the hardest worker in the room. I think it just taught me so much. I also was not the best, per se, naturally, because ballet, you have to have a specific, very niche body [type]. You have to have hyperextended knees and arch-y feet, and I didn’t necessarily have all of those things at first. I needed to work extra hard to still be on top, and I was, so it was really sickening.

I’m from a small ass country. To me, nobody’s ever done anything lit in the sphere that I would want them to do it in. We’ve had really good tennis players and hockey players, but I’m a girl and I do not give a fuck about that. I give a fuck about singing and dancing, and I didn’t have my Slovak GOAT, so I wanted to be my Slovak GOAT. That’s what I wanted to do.

3. One destructive trait you know you possess and wish you didn’t.

I can’t stop. I am not a quitter, basically. I think quitting is harder than if you keep going, sometimes. I can’t quit in relationships and certain career moves. I’m just like, no, it’s fine. It’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine. Then I want to [die].

I eventually do end up breaking up with people or quitting career moves where I’m like, “okay, this is clearly not for me,” but I wish that I didn’t have to get to that point, if that makes sense. I wish I could just, in a very healthy way, be like, “oh, I don’t think this is for me,” and then just move on, but I can’t move on.

4. If a bodega were to name a dish after you, what would it be? (Be specific.)

This is so New York, I’m from Eastern Europe. It’s so funny.

Okay. Well, something with duck. I fuck with duck heavy. I always get duck everywhere I go. It’s like a niche thing. But maybe a nasty, slutty, but smartly layered duck sandwich. [Then some] caramelized onions and then… like a brie maybe, and then a fig jam. Wait, I kind of ate. I don’t cook. I should make that. Write that down.

5. One song that makes you feel understood.

I’ve just been listening to this Lily Allen song. I was walking through New York and it was drizzling and I was wearing this purple hoodie from Los Angeles Apparel — the “One Less Lonely Girl” hoodie — and I was listening to “Littlest Things” by Lily Allen and I felt like I was in a movie. I really just was living, and my hair was kind of wet. It was blowing in my face and people were running into me and I was like, oh, New York. Yeah.

6. Something you think is wildly underrated.

Me? Say that. Me. I think I’m super underrated. You need to tap in everyone. You guys just need to listen and watch. If you come to my show, I’m really good at what I do. You guys, I work super hard. Please. If you listen to anything, have it be “Sex on the Beat”. Listen and watch that music video. I think it’s really good, and I know that it will turn some people off, but I kind of think it’ll turn the right people off, so it’ll do the work for me.

LEVEL II

1. A movie/tv show you watch when you want to self-soothe.

Pride & Prejudice (2005) with Keira Knightley. I love that shit. I remember I showed it to so many people, and nobody gets it. The first time I watched that movie, I watched it three times in one day.

Also Twilight. I watched [it] when I was a child, when I was an infant. I couldn’t speak English back then. [For Breaking Dawn — Part 2], I was able to go into the movie theater to watch it, but they were speaking in English and there were subtitles. I was too young and I couldn’t read fast enough to read the subtitles in Slovak, so my mom was holding me on her lap and she was whispering the subtitles to me out loud as they were going, just so I could watch it. It’s a core memory, and I was shook. I was shook because Carlisle died. Everybody died. I was like, what the fuck? I just invested all of my early childhood years into this story and now it’s over? Who would’ve thought? But then they gagged me. Everybody was clutching their pearls. And then they were still happily living afterwards.

2. What is your problematic favorite artist, actor, dead or alive?

Trisha Paytas. I really fuck with her. I want to eat Raising Cane’s with Trisha Paytas.

I grew up watching her videos and then I met her the other day [at Demi Lovato’s All Night release party] and I was like, “We’ve mukbang-ed together so many times. You don’t even know.” I would just eat while I was watching her eat. And she’s like, “Let’s do it in real life.” And I was like… I tweaked. I tweaked out.

This is me calling out Trisha Paytas. You better keep your promise. [Ugh], and she was holding her rainbow Birkin, her rainbow rhinestone Birkin. Sickening.

3. What is the first fandom you lost yourself in?

Hannah Montana. Miley Cyrus for sure. And then I was an Arianator, hardcore. I still am. Another one of my GOATs.

[My favorite Ari album is] either Sweetener or My Everything right now. And then for Miley, my favorite Hannah Montana song was “If We Were a Movie.” I loved that shit. It always sent me, I was wailing as a kid. I didn’t understand what she was saying. It was just music language to me.

4. What is something you bought recently after LOTS of research?

I usually don’t research things. I just buy and then regret. I actually do the exact opposite. I will just see something and I will not try it on — I’ll not do any of the necessary steps that you should do to be happy with your purchase. I will just buy blindly and then be really upset afterwards. Just kind of, like, to make myself feel something.

I bought this dress at a flea market and it’s red and sparkly and I was like, this is so Kate Moss. Nobody saw the vision. I was like, you’re going to see the vision. And I put it on and it was the ugliest fucking thing ever. It did not fit me. I looked like a door. It was so fucked up. Then I tried to gift it to a friend and she was like, fuck no. Nobody wants it. It’s in my closet.

5. A fictional world you want to live in and why?

Harry Potter? Because I think I’d be a baddie. I’m a Slytherin. Me and Draco Malfoy. Ugh, I just thought about Jojo Siwa cosplaying Draco Malfoy. I said Draco Malfoy and just saw Jojo’s face.

MF: What about ‘Twilight’?

It was just too drama — the Volturi, everything. I saw Death Becomes Her yesterday, and that’s about eternal life, and I was like, yeah, this shit would suck. I am so glad for death. I’m so glad that there’s an end to this. I’m so excited to have a rest. I would hate to just keep living, but if you have Edward by your side… the only way that I would [choose to live forever] is by having Edward. I would have to steal Edward away. But I’m not a home-wrecker.

6. Random thing in your home that always requires explanation?

This is my boyfriend’s home, but I put it up there. It’s a picture of my best friend Emily. It’s her headshot, and me and her, we put it above his bed when he wasn’t home. And we were just like, when is he going to notice that her headshot is just above his bed? And so he noticed and he was like, this is pretty lit. And now it’s there. And then I haven’t seen him in two weeks and he was just calling me the other day and he was like, I need to take this shit down. It’s weird. You’re not here. Your best friend’s headshot is above my bed. I don’t know. It was funny.

@adela@emily PRE-SAVE SUPERSCAR IN BIO OUT OCT 25TH⭐️🧎🏼‍♀️💋 #popstaracademy #dancepop #britneyspears #ladygaga

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LEVEL III

1. What’s an anecdote you usually tell to describe how you were as a kid?

Well, I mean, I guess the way that I learned English explains a lot. I just did it in secret. I guess when you’re from Eastern Europe, and you’re eight, nobody expects you to be so obsessed with [American pop culture]. To the point [where] I learned English completely fluently and I didn’t tell anybody. And then, after a year, I just could speak English with an American accent and my parents were like, “What? I guess she learned a language at the ripe age of nine.”

I was just watching a lot of American YouTubers. I was watching My Life as Eva and Bethany Mota back in the day, LaurDIY, all of those people. I was doing it with the purpose of wanting to know more about American culture. I was just so fascinated by it. And I wanted to be on the Disney Channel. I had a plan where, at 15, I was going to fly to LA. I looked up the address of the Disney Channel headquarters. I was like, this is where I’ll go. My godfather lives in Hawaii, he won’t mind moving for pilot season. [Now] I’m like, how the fuck do you know when pilot season is? You’re eight and you’re from Slovakia.

So that, or [the fact that] I was just a shy kid. There’s this one story where my mom says I would sing to myself at all times. I was always singing, and she was like, there’s something wrong with her. But I would not want to be heard. And one time I was on the bus with my mom coming home from school or something and I was singing to myself, but I was doing it a little too loud. And this is one of those stories where it’s like, and then everybody clapped, but they actually did clap because it was so cute. And I got so upset. I started crying. I was like, fuck, fuck, fuck, I’m being perceived.

But now I love being perceived.

2. What is your lowkey hell and actual heaven?

Lowkey hell is being surrounded by exclusively Rick Owens-wearing young men — guys that only wear the tightest jeans ever made. Let them balls breathe! It’s okay, please just let it be. Because, it’s like a specific type of person, the fashion bros. No hate to you guys. (Well, I guess a little.)

I had this interaction with this person. It’s just like, why do you have so much Rick Owens at such a young age? And then you ask them what they do and they never can give you a straight answer. Usually it’s just like they have a [nepo baby vibe] and they think they’re so cool and it’s like… just chill out. Tell me your actual vibe.

Actual heaven is a whipped cream. I love whipped cream. I get it with everything. Everything. And pancakes. I’m a huge pancakes girl.

3. What is your most unhinged coping mechanism?

I don’t know if I have a coping mechanism. I think I’m pretty hinged. I don’t get crazy. And if I do, I literally let everybody know. I’m like, I’m tweaking out. I need to be alone. Nobody talk to me. I want to listen to music. I want to make my Pinterest boards. I want to be in my blanket. I want to eat my whipped cream and have a think. I love to think in peace, in silence and write it down. I write essays. Maybe that’s a little unhinged.

4. What is one random thing you hate so much for no apparent reason?

I hate sneezing. I fucking hate sneezing. And I hate hiccups. Sneezing or hiccups. No purpose, just pain and suffering. You just have to hiccup for no reason. It’s stupid. And I think sneezing is so annoying. I literally get so pissed off. I have to stop everything and make a noise and it’s a physical thing? Like, what? It drives me insane.

This is ballet trauma. You couldn’t sneeze loudly, because they would be like, like, I don’t know, it’s ballet, they would get mad. You couldn’t even drink water. It was insane. So basically, I block my sneezes. Everyone always says I have a “Pick Me” sneeze, but it’s like, no this is ballet trauma. I don’t even let loose, and if I did let loose, then what? Saliva and snot is going to fly out? I’m not doing that.

MF: What other negative things did ballet leave you with?

I think becoming an old, decrepit, petty woman is something that I fear because I’ve seen it a lot in ballet, and I get it. You guys were ballerinas in communist times. That sucks, but, hey, sorry, I’m just trying to dance. Sis, I’m 12. Get a therapist. I don’t know what to tell you. I’m just trying to do my little step.

5. How do you exit a party?

Irish Goodbye. Don’t say bye to anybody. Just leave.

6. How you wanna go (either un-seriously or seriously).

I hope that I die in a really peaceful vibe. I would really love to be super old and be surrounded by my family and just kind of go into a slumber.

YO. [She pauses.]

I’m really into true crime, but have you heard about the woman that basically had her head almost cut off? It was halfway off…and she crawled and found help and she’s alive. They sewed it back on. She’s alive. I’m like, I don’t think I would have the fight in me at that point. Even in a zombie apocalypse? Bitch, I’m one of the zombies. I’m not struggling. I’m not living in fear. I’m a diva. Zombies like brains and there’s a lot of brains in the world, so there’s a lot of food and they’re kind of just living. So I’ll do that.

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Welcome to mixed feelings’ Hyperspecific, a profile series of increasingly intimate questions in which we ask our favorite artists, characters, musicians, and the like to unveil their innermost selves — their weird existential musings.

If it were 2007, you might have described Audrey Hobert as “awkward,” but you’d be wrong. She’s not a wallflower, comfortable only in the most dimly-lit corners of the function. In fact, you’re more likely to find her on the dance floor, performing lanky pirouettes and making strange faces in other people’s selfies — a girl who’s simultaneously in on the joke and is the joke (intentionally).

Hobert’s second single, “Bowling Alley” explores the dichotomy of social anxiety and blown-out confidence perfectly: thinking no one wants you at their party, even though you were invited and feeling like the party doesn’t really start until you walk in. It’s also the song, she says, that feels most like her.

Before releasing her debut album Who’s the Clown? in September, Hobert was best known for co-writing seven songs on then-roommate (and friend) Gracie’s Abrams’ hit record The Secret of Us. It makes sense that the mind that helped contribute lines like, “Said that I was fine, said it from the coffin,” would turn around and deliver bars like “Sorry that your dog died, sorry that I’m like your dream bride,” on her own debut.

And that is her brilliance: Audrey is brazenly funny. She’s the human embodiment of pretending to be a pop star in your bedroom, complete with a desk fan for maximal hair-blowing visual effect (just watch her Fallon performance for proof).

Who’s the Clown? has been on my rotation since its release and after months of listens I can confidentially say that it is one of those rare no-skips feats. It was a joy and a pleasure to interview her for Hyperspecific. Read it below for gems such as: “I just chew nicotine gum. I think it’s less of a coping mechanism and more of a great passion.” — Mi-Anne

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LEVEL I

1. Something you’re always hoping people bring up in conversation.
   Something personal about their day that’s specific and also maybe in a way happened to me, so I can say that happened to me, too, today…like Chimichangas.

2. What’s a positive trait people always tell you?

   People say I’m funny, and my dad on the phone the other night said I was a joy.

3. One destructive trait you know you possess and wish you didn’t.
   I don’t know if it’s destructive, but one of my least favorite things about myself as I get older is the way that I feel [so uncomfortable] if there is a piece of dead skin or crumb in my sheets. I wish I were someone who could frolic in the grass barefoot and then go right to bed.
   
   I prefer not to have shoes in the house, but if you walk through my house with shoes on, I probably won’t say anything unless you’re my close friend. But I am thinking about how I’m going to mop later.

4. If a bodega were to name a dish after you, what would it be? (Be specific.)

   Maybe a chopped cheese named after me called “Audrey’s Chopped Cheese.” I’ve actually never had a chopped cheese.
   
   And if I’m eating between lunch and 4PM it’s a Diet Coke. At night if I’m drinking, I’m going to drink martinis dry up with a twist the way my mom does, and if it’s the morning just black coffee.

5. One song that makes you feel understood.

   I discovered the song on the radio about, I don’t know, a year and a half ago or something, but now it’s a big needle-drop moment in Superman, but it’s “Punkrocker” by Teddybears featuring Iggy Pop. I just like that that song is mostly him saying “I’m a punk rocker. Yes, I am.” There’s one line in that song where he says, “I’m bored with being God,” and that’s cool.

   
   I think the song that feels most like me all the time is “Bowling Alley”, but I love “Sex and the City,” too. “Sex and the City” is a little melodramatic and “Bowling Alley” is probably right in line with who I actually am as a person.

   
   I think “Bowling Alley” sort of encapsulates the kind of deep thinker that I can be about things that don’t always require deep thought. I get nervous sometimes and I think that’s a useless feeling — especially at a party.

LEVEL II

1. A movie/tv show you watch when you want to self-soothe.

   It’s got to be Gilmore Girls but I can only watch it between the months of November and January. That is my holiday show and it’s also my most comforting show.

2. What is your problematic favorite artist, actor, dead or alive?

   I have a few problematic faves I feel like I shouldn’t name, but maybe Marni from Girls. I just feel like when I originally watched the show, I was like, God, that woman sucks. But I knew Allison Williams was brilliant in it. And then the older I get, the more I understand Marni. She’s actually so wrapped up in herself. She can’t even help it.

@girlsrewatchpodcastthe Marnie renaissance is here to stay.😭🙏💗 #hbogirls #marniemichaels #makefunofthegirl #putherselfoutthere #allisonwilliams #girlshbo

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3. What is the first fandom you lost yourself in?

   I kind of pride myself in the fact that while I’m a big fan of people, but I’ve never showed up at someone’s hotel…But I probably lost myself a little bit in One Direction. I love “Heart Attack” and “Fireproof”.

4. What is something you bought recently after LOTS of research?

   I would say if it feels like a meatier purchase than what I usually make, I make myself think about it for a week before I press “buy”. I’m like, “do I really want this?” But mostly I just know I’m going to buy it. I just think it’s important to not be able to get everything you want all the time, whenever you want it.

   
   [The last big purchase I got] were these shoes from the Row.

5. A fictional world you want to live in and why?

   I think I would like to live in the New York of Girls and I think I’d like to live in Stars Hollow. I would also like to go to Hogwarts and I would like to be in A Bug’s Life.

6. Random thing in your home that always requires explanation?

   I have four copies of Infinite Jest stacked up on one another. They were for a photo shoot I did and I’ve just left them.

LEVEL III

1. What’s an anecdote you usually tell to describe how you were as a kid?

   On my first day of preschool the teacher asked — in front of all the parents and all the kids — if any kid wanted to get up and share something with the class. So I got up and I sang the first minute of “Goodbye Earl” by The Chicks, which is a song about domestic abuse. My mom cut it off and went, “woo!” She says she stopped me…And now I’m here.

2. What is your lowkey hell and actual heaven?

   I think my low-key hell is the days I find myself on the couch with nothing to do between the hours of three to five. I think three to five is a witching hour during the day. I know three to four is the witching hour during the night, but three to five during the day is as spooky.

   Actual heaven is when my mom is whispering something a little bitchy to me in a public place.

3. What is your most unhinged coping mechanism?

   I just chew nicotine gum. I think it’s less of a coping mechanism and more of a great passion.

4. What is one random thing you hate so much for no apparent reason?

   I really dislike when I am told to chill. Even “chill out” is better than chill. I find that to be very rude.

5. How do you exit a party?

   Sometimes I just slip right out and then sometimes I say goodbye to the host or whoever I found myself talking to most that night. Pretty standard ways to leave.

6. How you wanna go (either un-seriously or seriously).

   Definitely unserious. I mean, it’s just more fun.

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welcome to strong feelings! Essays by writers we love, in which they share their most impassioned opinions on a given subject. In today’s strong feelings, writer & social video producer for mixed feelings, Catherine Mhloyi explores blurry lines between love and hate and the long history of queer-coding archenemies.

“You’re a fake fan!” my coworker joked as we discussed my notable disinterest in Taylor Swift’s podcast appearance debuting her new album and my failure to retain the date of its release. As someone who begrudgingly embraced my classification as a “Swiftie” after traveling to another state to snag last minute tickets to the Eras tour, I did feel a bit like a phony. I told them that The Tortured Poets Department “broke my heart,” which wasn’t entirely hyperbolic because that’s how close I had gotten to her music and inevitably her as an artist. The fact that TTPD was sonically offensive and a third of the songs were about her racist ex-boyfriend (had I not known that I probably would’ve enjoyed the album more) gutted me.

It was last week after The Life of a Showgirl proved to be her most poorly written, thematically vapid, and woefully unrelatable album (IMO) that I finally realized that it’s okay to hate Taylor’s new stuff just as much as I love her old work — no one will kick my ass IRL, and to disengage from any interest in her personal life wouldn’t diminish my connection to her earlier repertoire. No celebrity is deserving of this level of devotion, especially since these billionaires are high-key evil, but how do we know when it’s time to un-stan?

Fandom, or being a stan, has changed significantly over the years, which is largely credited to the existence of social media and the way that celebrities engage with it. It’s funny because the term “stan” comes from the Eminem song with the same name released in 2000, almost a decade before the widespread use of Twitter and Tumblr (the platforms most associated with fan accounts and celebrity interactions). Stan, the subject of the song, was a fictional, obsessive fan whose correspondence with “Slim [Shady]” was entirely through unanswered letters and one last desperate cassette tape.

Lyrics like “I just think it’s fucked up you don’t answer fans,” and Eminem’s ultimate response, “I’m glad I inspire you, but, Stan why are you so mad?” really encapsulate today’s relationships between fans and artists. But they are no longer investigated as, or associated with, erotomania, especially now that many of these stars feed into it and even depend on it, e.g., I left these easter eggs especially for you, this diss track is awesome because you hate that person as much as I do, you are the reason I’m so successful, thank you, I couldn’t have done it without you.

The more we have access to our favorite artists’ thoughts, feelings, and personal lives, the more we start to lump that in with their art. But what happens when the art no longer measures up? What if the music’s still good, but your fave is a horrible person? Some of us devote years of our lives and entire social media accounts to our idols, which is probably why it’s hard to let go, even when that artist has veered so far from who they were and what they made when we first became fans. Nobody seems to want to admit when their favorite musician is washed. Stans root for their faves like sports fanatics root for their regional teams (some even have team names, team colors, mascots, and rival teams). There’s this feeling of unwavering loyalty no matter how they perform because of the forced parasociality, or in this case years of devotion, making stans feel like they’re locked in no matter what.

I often think of the TikTok trend where a voice off camera asks someone if they’re a Nicki [Minaj] fan which immediately activates the person to recite her iconic verses as they run towards the camera person ferociously. While I’m sure it’s meant to be an exaggerated way to show their love for the rapper, this is fully how Barbz, and the stans of many other artists (Swifties, Beyhive, Selenators, ARMY, etc.) act in defense of their idols online. Every fanbase seems to have their own militia that camps out in the comments of their artists’ competitors to tear them down anytime they release a new project. They also often use their own accounts to run unpaid campaigns to make sure everyone is streaming and contributing to their fave’s numbers.

@zhaquice_#amianickifan??? #fypシ #33333 #zhaquice_

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On the flip side, there are many calls to separate the art from the artist, particularly whenever there are widespread appeals to cancel someone really talented for taboo actions or bigoted remarks, (Claire Dederer’s book Monster: A Fan’s Dilemma explores the complexity of this exact issue). And while as an argument it feels flimsy at best, and irresponsible at worst, to continue to platform anyone who displays high levels of moral bankruptcy, many of us (myself included) have a few Voldemort-esque artists (people who shall not be named — but not him) lingering in our saved songs. I admit that it’s morally gray to pray that Spotify doesn’t unwrap any of my secrets at the end of the year, but being able to recognize that someone whose art we admire should not be deified, even if we can’t get their songs from their unproblematic eras out of our heads, feels a little bit closer to the relationship we should have with celebrities. Or maybe it’s still fucked up. But let ye who doesn’t have a single Azealia Banks song saved cast the first stone.

If you’re old enough to remember the “Leave Britney alone!” video, it feels like one of the earliest viral displays of super-fandom of a musician online. While at the time many of us were oblivious to the financial abuse Britney Spears was facing at the hands of her family, Cara Cunningham, the creator of the video, had her finger on the pulse, encouraging us to show compassion towards Britney in the midst of her mental health crisis. Even though it felt melodramatic to be driven to tears over Britney’s media treatment (poor thing probably has some strong water placements), the “#Free Britney” movement that followed years later showed the value in her call to action over a woman who had zero control over her fortune or fame. Dare I say that, in moments like this, having adoring fans to remind the world that these celebrities are human feels like a benevolent use of a parasocial relationship. But where do we draw the line?

The first public un-stanning that I ever became aware of was that of the creators behind a Jack Harlow fan account. They published an Instagram story to announce that they “no longer want to have sex with this man.” I can’t pretend that it’s not completely unhinged to base your love for an artist solely on whether you think they’re sexy enough for your delusional fantasies, but they gave me hope that more and more people will realize that you’re allowed to have limits.

Whatever the reason — she’s not an untouchable singer or actress, you just miss her old relationship, a certain pop girly and a certain rap girly are not writing as well as they used to (i.e. “CANCELLED!” and “Big Foot”), whatshisname has been exposed too many times as an abuser — you don’t have to stay on this ride! In fact, it’s time to hop off. Even if your fave hasn’t become problematic (yet), the way we worship them has. No wonder Doja Cat cursed out her fans two years ago and even encouraged deactivations of her stans’ accounts.

I’m begging you: Delete or unfollow stan accounts. Put down the pen, or in this case, phone, Stan. We’ve lost the plot completely. Your hero worship only serves to enable wealthy corrupt artists to continue to be corrupt while becoming more wealthy. You maintain a one-sided relationship that doesn’t move the cultural needle and therefore does not serve you. What would happen if these artists solely had to depend on the quality of their art and an ambiguous or unproblematic persona rather than their congregations’ cult-like steadfastness in order to sell us something?

Certainly not The Life of a Showgirl.

Catherine Mhloyi (she/her) is a Brooklyn-based social editor and producer at Them and a culture writer whose work has been published by Them and Teen Vogue.

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Welcome to mixed feelings’ Hyperspecific, a profile series of increasingly intimate questions in which we ask our favorite artists, characters, musicians, and the like to unveil their innermost selves — their weird existential musings.

This summer, I saw something at the Bktherula show that I’ll never forget: a fan, arm stretched toward the stage, filming on an old Nintendo DS…in the middle of a mosh pit. It was an apt symbol for Bk’s fandom, a group of exceedingly fashionable individuals who felt (and feel!) at once nostalgic and hyper-online.

Bk was in town to promote the release of Lucy, the Atlanta-based rapper’s 4th studio album. The album’s title is yet another Bktherula-type amalgamation of the present and the past: “Lucy is a movie with Scarlett Johnansson in it; in the movie she’s the first woman in the world to have access to 100% of her brain. And then there’s Lucy, the Saint, who was one of the first women to gain popularity…It all kind of goes back to being the first.”

Bk’s only 23, which was shocking to me, until I remembered that the rapper has been sharing music to SoundCloud since age 13, and started gaining a following shortly after. Now, she has dozens of songs under her belt, and a handful more musical collaborations with heavy-hitters like Denzel Curry, Coi Leray, and Rico Nasty.

Bk said it herself: Lucy is a transitional album, and she’s growing into her own. Read the rest of her Hyperspecific below.

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LEVEL I

1. Something you’re always hoping people bring up in conversation.

Clothes, maybe. I’m really digging Carol Christian Poell right now. I think I’m kind of interested in the mystery of the designer right now. There isn’t a single picture on the internet of the designer. I don’t think he has an Instagram. Or he might, but it’s hidden. He doesn’t have any social media. There’s these shoes and they drip on the bottom. It’s really, really cool. I’m really into those.

2. What’s a positive trait people always tell you?

I would say a lot of people say that I’m very nice and very welcoming. So I would say that I agree.

3. One destructive trait you know you possess and wish you didn’t.

I feel like I’m just too humble, but it’s kind of destructive in the end a little bit. Sometimes you take [on] more than you should and I think that’s something I need to work on. Sometimes I need to be a little hard on people instead of being super nice.

Honestly, I feel like I’ve grown and matured so much. All of my features, “Still In The Paint” with Denzel [Curry] honestly put me into a whole other realm, and it opened the door for a lot of new features. I’m about to drop something with Coi Leray and G Herbo, so that’s pretty fire. I think it’s just putting me into a great realm. I’m growing, my music is maturing.

4. If a bodega were to name a dish after you, what would it be? (Be specific.)

Okay, this is corny, but the B-C-A: bacon, cream cheese, avocado. That’s it. Best thing you could ever have. You dip the bacon into the cream cheese, you take a bite and then you cut a slice of avocado and you eat it, no bread.

5. One song that makes you feel understood.

There’s a song called “I Can’t Handle Change.” It’s the most insane song. I’ve cried to it thousands of times. It makes me feel understood. It makes me feel like they put their whole emotions in it instead of dwindling down their thoughts for a song or what people might like.

A song of mine? “DROPWHENIDROP” It’s actually the intro to my album, Lucy. That song makes me feel understood 1000% because it’s got a little bit of ego into it, but at the same time there’s humility in it.

“I know that you flop when you think that I flopped, but I still come out on top” — favorite lyric for sure, because it’s so real. And then I dropped the song, and then I watched my words happen, and it just felt great.

6. Something you think is wildly underrated.

Massages, man, I’m not going to lie. People don’t really understand. Lymphatic massage, to be exact. That can really change your whole life.

The spots that say “massage” with a $50 next to it…Those are the spots you go to. The random low-key spots in Atlanta are the places that are going to give you that perfect pressure.

LEVEL II

1. A movie/tv show you watch when you want to self-soothe.

Victorious. [I watch it] whenever I need to go to sleep, say if I’m in a hotel out of the country, or honestly just anywhere other than home. It really does help bring me back home. And that could be the nostalgia to be honest. I fuck with Jade. I really liked her hair. I liked the black and the teal and all the random colors that she did. It kind of inspired me, not going to lie.

2. What is your problematic favorite artist, actor, dead or alive?

Ice King from Adventure Time. He’s mad sweet and down to earth if you really get to know him. Even Finn be cool with him. Everyone’s still cool with Ice King. He was a very cool person and his name was Simon. Then, he got turned into the Ice King because the crown makes him do weird things. So technically it’s not even him. Problematic fav, 100%.

3. What is the first fandom you lost yourself in?

Black Mirror. I was on Reddit a lot. I still am on Reddit, but because of Black Mirror, I was trying to do deep dives on each episode. “Playtest” broke my mind insanely. It’s basically about this guy who’s running low on money. He’s in Europe, he’s trying to travel the world, and he found this flyer that said if he joined a game he could get mad bread off of it. Obviously I’m not going to spoil it for anyone who hasn’t watched it. But the end of the episode blew my mind. I wouldn’t be able to guess the ending from the beginning.

4. What is something you bought recently after LOTS of research?

It’s that little lip peel-off stain thing. It keeps your lips lined through the entire day without you having to touch it up. I actually have it on now. I did a lot of research on TikTok to be exact. It got me right, for sure. 1000%.

5. A fictional world you want to live in and why?

Roku City, 1000%.

6. Random thing in your home that always requires explanation?

I have this toy, well, I have a whole toy collection, and there’s this one toy that’s actually a toilet. Everyone would walk into my house and be like, “BK, what is that?”

If you press a little flusher, it makes a noise. But at the bottom of the toilet, there’s a little button that you press, and a little head pops out of the toilet and it has a creepy face. It’s a Skibidi toilet toy. I honestly just bought that toy at Target because lately I’ve been obsessed with toilets. I actually have another toy that requires explanation and it’s a golden toilet and it has a guy sitting on the toilet, using the toilet, and, I don’t know. I like toilets, I guess.

LEVEL III

1. What’s an anecdote you usually tell to describe how you were as a kid?

I don’t really think things through all the time. When I was younger, I was in the shower. I was super kiddish and I noticed something flying around. So I’m like, “Okay, maybe a fly.” It turns out it was a wasp. So then I’m like, all right, everything’s cool. I open the shower — I’m definitely losing my mind — and the wasp proceeds to sting me. So I open the door, I have a hardwood floor, I’m soaking wet, and I just start running. And then of course, I slip. Literally fell on the back of my head. So I had a concussion, on top of being stung by a wasp. And things like that still happen to me to this day, it doesn’t change.

2. What is your lowkey hell and actual heaven?

Hell: Fashion week. It feels like one continuous day. It’s fun with all your friends and then you get to experience all the cool brands, but then you be outside ‘til 5:00 AM, you go back home, you sleep for two hours and you wake up great breakfast and go to another show. It’s definitely hell, to be honest, it feels like a continuous day that never ends.

Heaven: Honestly, just my bed. My bed with my cat next to me, and watching a show, and just eating my mom’s food.

I have four cats, but I have one cat that lives in my room and her name is Sardine. I have two cats that live in my brother’s room, and then I have another cat that lives in my mom’s room. There’s Sardine, there’s Finn, Salmon, and Red.

3. What’s your favorite, if you had to request your mom’s best dish, what would it be?

Picadillo for sure. It’s a Cuban dish. It’s ground beef with white rice, but it’s seasoned to a T and it has capers and olives in it. You can chop a fucking banana and just put it in the rice. I swear it goes hand-in-hand. It’s insane.

4. What is your most unhinged coping mechanism?

Fidget spinners. I mean, it’s not really unhinged, but it really helps me to this day. I actually have one at my Airbnb right now.

5. What is one random thing you hate so much for no apparent reason?

Holes, I hate holes. I don’t like holes. Not “hoes.” H-O-L-E-S. Too many holes in one area. I need to itch my skin, it makes it crawl. Honestly, the three little cameras on the back of the iPhone might be doing something to me, too.

6. How do you exit a party?

I’d be like, “be safe, y’all boys.” Literally, if you heard it, you heard it. If you didn’t, you didn’t.

7. How you wanna go (either un-seriously or seriously).

I don’t want to leave this earth with unfinished business. I want to get everything done, and I want to go [from] old age, or something like that. I don’t want to go [from] any health issues. I just want to go peacefully, maybe next to my cat, and just watching some type of show or something that makes me happy. I just want to go very naturally without any pain.

MF: Would you let your cat eat your body?

I would, but I don’t know if she would. I feel like she loves me so much. She would fight that little cat instinct, don’t you think?

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welcome to strong feelings! Essays by writers we love, in which they share their most impassioned opinions on a given subject. In today’s strong feelings, writer AJ Mason explores blurry lines between love and hate and the long history of queer-coding archenemies.

Lex Luthor seems to consistently use his intellectual prowess, scientific access, and privilege to do one thing: have a son with Superman. This has been occurring since the ‘90s, when Conner Kent (aka Superboy) was first introduced to the comics, and then most recently with Ultraman in James Gunn’s Superman this year. Often stealing DNA samples from Superman during combat and mixing in his own to “fill in the gaps”, Lex seems to desperately claw at the right to reproduce with his so-called archenemy, even referring to Superboy as his son in some iterations. Though Lex is generally defined as Clark’s biggest hater, looking closer reveals something much more complex: a pining desire and admiration for Superman that feels decidedly queer in nature, with even the requisite LL initials to match the rest of Superman’s love interests (Lois Lane, Lana Lang, etc.).

There’s a layer of eroticism — an air of intimacy — that comes with nemesis pairings like this. The undercurrent of obsession that serves as the foundation for most rivalries, and the way they experience each other at their most stripped bare and raw, seems to move characters and audiences alike; hence the craving for enemies-to-lovers tropes. The intensity of this dynamic is arguably best exhibited in comics, filled with superhero settings primed for lifelong archenemy romances that connect multiple generations of queer kids searching for any representation they can salvage. When this lens is used to read relationships like Deathnote’s star-crossed manga “boyfriends” Light and L, X-Men’s Professor X and Magneto and their on-and-off again “friendship”, Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Buffy and Faith steamy rivalry and, of course, Lex Luthor and Superman – we open ourselves to a deeply queer reading.

In setting the stage for our right to read Lex and Superman as a story of queer yearning, we have to take it back to the 1930s. Censoring of queer stories in media is foundational to the birth of multiple artistic mediums, with guidelines like the Hays Code (1934-1968) preventing depictions of queerness in film. During the 1950s, the Lavender Scare era depicted queer folks as a national security threat, perfectly setting the stage for a different moral panic focused entirely on comics. The 1954 release of American psychiatrist Fredric Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent heavily contributed to the comic panic, as he alleged that comic books were harmful, violent, and caused juvenile delinquency. Wertham even specifically critiqued what he considered to be queer subtext in characters like Wonder Woman and Batman. Since comics were seen as literature for children, parents around the US campaigned for censorship.

In 1954, the Comics Association of America was formed in response to the massive public outcry against the violence, horror, and supposed queer imagery in comic books. Its magistrate, Charles F. Murphy, established the Comics Code Authority (CCA), which intentionally resembled the Hays Code and placed huge restrictions on comics, establishing many story staples we’re accustomed to today like superheroes’ ‘no-kill’ rules or the ‘good guys’ always triumphing. Mirroring the Hays Code, the CCA also strictly forbade the depiction of “sexual perversion or any inference to it”, which was understood to include queerness of any kind. Though the CCA was technically “voluntary”, publishers truthfully had no choice but to abide by it when the population was staging public book burnings and various cities issued comics bans; not to mention the de facto enforcement from comic distributors who refused to carry comics that lacked the CCA stamp of approval.

All of this created the framework for how queerness would be portrayed in media, such as queer aesthetics being associated with evil characters that should be punished. This association of queerness with villains makes reading nemesis pairings as queer that much more reasonable. It also meant that when writers wanted to include queerness, they had to do their best to work around the ‘sexual perversion’ rule, setting the stage for queer-coded characters in comics: characters who aren’t clearly declared queer, but whose mannerisms, habits and actions indicate the presence of queer subtext.

While some may attempt to relegate queer coding and subtext to wishful gay thinking, writers like Chris Claremont, who wrote on the Uncanny X-men from 1975 to 1991, have confirmed that there absolutely were characters intended to be queer. Claremont discussed in various interviews that his original intent for X-Men characters Mystique and Destiny was not only for the pair to be a couple, but for Nightcrawler to be their biological child. Although his pitch was refused 40 years ago, in 2023 it was finally retconned (the act of revising an existing fictional narrative by introducing new information post-publishing) into X-men canon. There are other examples as well, such as Claremont’s declaration on fan podcast Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men that his intent for Kitty Pryde and Rachel Summers was for the duo to be love interests.

Even in an attempt to stamp out queer media, our stories have a way of being told. Whether it was ‘80s Destiny & Mystique’s mainstream-coded romance or thriving underground comics that allowed actual queer writers to depict our lives like Alison Bechdel’s Dykes To Watch Out For (1983-2008), we’ve always been here. This reality also gives us the license to explore the queerness of countless relationships through a deeper and more subtext-focused lens, because we know that lens is not only historically supported, but necessary. An ability to read and write queer subtext, to provide representation even when we can only do so quietly, to take our right to be represented even in characters straight society holds most dear, are necessary tools during mass moral panics like the one we’re barreling towards now.

For many queer kids, comics were — and are — a safe haven; not only because of these queer and queer-coded couples, but because of the innate queerness many of these stories carry. From Superman to X-men, many comics tell tales of oppression, isolation and social prejudice that resonated with us. Even further, the rejection of normative ideas around romance, sex, and sexuality that comes from incorporating beings and characters from all over space and time has a queer undertone. Alien/human relationships that fundamentally disrupt how we think of sexuality, shape-shifting creatures who render our understandings of gender moot, and characters from various dimensions and cultures with different romantic norms made us feel like we fit in easily.

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In reading archenemies from a queer lens in particular, their passion and intensity coupled with fear and frustration can feel rather familiar for queer folks. These similarities between love and hate that feel perfectly exemplified through archenemy pairings aren’t just fictional, but actually have scientific backing. Neurobiologist Semir Zeki of University College London studied the patterns of brain activity stimulated by both hatred and love, finding that there are two areas that show notable stimulation under both scenarios. The neurological overlap between these emotions can help explain characters like Lex Luthor. What could be seen as a misplacement of his desire for Superman and an inability to identify it, resulting in his obsessive desire to clone and in some readings, procreate, with his archnemesis. It then gets confused as hatred or jealousy instead, something many queer folks have experienced. In a society telling you that you simply cannot, and should not, feel queer affection, many of us moved our unyielding fascination, our clinginess or preoccupation, with a crush that simply couldn’t be into the only other emotion we’re taught can justify that obsession: hate.

The specific areas of the brain that are stimulated by both love and hate are the putamen, heavily tied to motor skills, and the insula, which performs a variety of functions but the most relevant for this context is its suspected involvement in responding to emotionally distressing stimuli. In love, the insula can be stimulated by the fear of loss or absence of a partner, while in hate it may be due to feeling frustrated at someone’s presence. Receiving constant societal messaging that there is something innately wrong with queer desire means that we’re likely feeling both versions of this stimulus simultaneously; we may fear the loss of our object of desire just as much as we are also frustrated by their presence and what it requires us to acknowledge. Lex’s discomfort with Superman’s very existence, his belief that Superman is an abomination he must be rid of, reminds me of the first time the mere presence of a woman forced me to confront my queerness. Growing up in the deep south, and then the midwest, I couldn’t have been less comfortable with those feelings – and I absolutely wanted her to disappear and rid me of them, to free me.

This coincides with another aspect of Zeki’s research as well: that love actually deactivates the parts of the brain linked to judgement and reasoning, while they remain intact in hatred. For queer folks, we aren’t afforded the luxury of acting on our desires without rational thought; our homophobic world requires that we remain rational out of survival, potentially making it difficult to lean into the full neurological experience of love in the brain and making it even easier to mistake our feelings for the staunch rationality of hatred. Lex exemplifies this perfectly in his extremely calculated and strategic behavior towards Superman, leaning on his intellect to distance himself from feelings of affection.

This muddying of feelings, this mix up of obsession and childish possessiveness, of confusion birthing disdain, doesn’t just make Lex’s habits surprisingly relatable, but the habits of countless other nemesis pairings can be seen this way as well. For some, it’s the oozing sex appeal of resident DC hot-boy Nightwing and his enemy Deathstroke, for others it’s Wonder Woman and Cheetah or Storm and Callisto — all of which have strong queer-coded cases. Live action shows like Buffy and Faith in Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Xena and Callisto in Xena the Warrior Princess can’t be forgotten either, with their cult queer followings.

While readings of villains like Lex or Callisto as queer are certainly imperfect, and there’s a valid critique of the history that portrays us in this light, it doesn’t mean that no aspect of it may resonate with those reading it – because many of our own experiences are imperfect as well. Ultimately, from even the worst of conditions we’ve found ways to see ourselves in these stories; hell, we’ve built communities around it. We write fanfiction and interpret, and we have every right to, because who could better understand the pain of a desire that cannot be realized, and the fight to do it anyway, more than us?

As we dive headfirst into yet another frenzy of reigniting “traditional” values, writers and artists will still work to create queer stories and these techniques will be all the more important. While reading into Lex and Superman’s relationship, or any other duo’s, might be all fun and games, it also taps into a powerful ability to will our stories into existence.

AJ Mason (@ajvstheeworld) is a writer and creative, based in Brooklyn, NY. AJ’s writing attempts to contextualize smaller moments within our larger culture, weaving connections between history, art and politics. Alongside writing for publications like Them and Autostraddle, AJ is either putting their philosophy degree to use (finally!) in essays on their Substack or conducting deep dives into their favorite animated shows on TikTok!

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Welcome to mixed feelings’ Hyperspecific, a profile series of increasingly intimate questions in which we ask our favorite artists, characters, musicians, and the like to unveil their innermost selves — their weird existential musings.

Rachel Chinouriri’s “The Hills” was my gateway into her universe. The music video is a love letter to South London after the singer-songwriter had spent a month trying to find her place in LA’s music scene. “I was in LA having a pretty terrible time,” Chinouriri told Clash.

Chinouriri’s shoegazey, pop-punk sound, paired with her gritty, rough-around-the-edges depiction of London took me right back to my dorm room in college, watching “Parklife” by Blur for the first time. Her music evokes similar juxtaposing feelings of swagger and vulnerability, isolation and community, earnestness and cheekiness, all wrapped in one.

Chinouriri released her newest oeuvre, the “Little House” EP in April and after touring as a supporting act for artists like Sabrina Carpenter and Louis Tomlinson, she’s just finishing out a sold-out headline tour this month.

To celebrate, she visited us at the mixed feelings studio to do our Hyperspecific questionnaire. Read it in full below:

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LEVEL I

1. Something you’re always hoping people will bring up in conversation when you first meet.
   Star signs…because I always end up asking it somehow. I kind of believe in it. I kind of don’t…no, I absolutely do believe in it. So yeah, it’s always interesting to see if someone’s like, “Oh, this is my style sign” versus “Oh, you’re one of those people.”

2. A positive trait people always tell you you have.
   People say I’m a bit blunt and upfront, but always for the good of the people. If there’s a girl who’s going through a bit of trauma about someone, I’ll be like, “Get your shit together, get up." We’re going outside.” I’m that kind of blunt in a loving way.

3. One destructive trait you know you possess and wish you didn’t.
   I’ve done a lot of therapy to stop myself from being revengeful because that’s actually a really horrible trait to have. When people do [shitty] stuff, I’m instantly like, “I’m going to ruin your entire life.” But that’s obviously really bad and not a good example to lead by. However, deep in my heart and core and soul, whenever people upset me or upset other people, I look at them like, you’re lucky I’m not a crash out anymore, because that is not a nice way of being to people. You need revenge for that, but I don’t do that anymore.

4. If a bodega were to name a dish after you, what would it be? (Be specific.)
   So the sandwich would have a lot of cured meat and a lot of cheese. I don’t want to call it a chopped cheese because “chopped” means ugly in slang, isn’t it? So it will have to be something like…what’s another word that’s not chopped?…Grated. Now the sandwich I’m thinking about is the cured meat is chopped up into pieces and then it’s got grated cheese on it. And it’s going to be called, The Grated Mighty Meaty Cheesy Baddie.

5. One song that makes you feel understood.
   Currently, the song that makes me feel understood is Lola Young’s “Spiders”. I’m obsessed with it. I’ve played it a million times, and I think she is such a unique and phenomenal performer, singer, and writer and she is incredibly passionate and I’ve not seen any other artists like her, and I like that she’s from South London as well.

6. Something you think is wildly underrated.
   I think Filofax are underrated because I put all my money in there, my wallet, my pen, my map, my gratitudes list…I’ve got loads of things in there. And I think having a Filofax is an underrated thing that everyone needs to bring back. And then an underrated artist who I would love to see be huge is Alemeda. I took her on tour and she is one of the nicest people that I’ve ever met.

LEVEL II

1. A movie/tv show you watch when you want to self-soothe.
   Catfish. Nev and Kamie…it’s entertaining! I used to watch lots of crime documentaries — I wanted to be a detective — then I realized that it’s actually a really unhealthy thing to overly consume. But I feel like with Catfish the way Nev handles people and his patience for people and his understanding for people I actually really love and I love how Kamie’s a bit of a “no nonsense” sort of thing. I feel like that’s something I put on to stay calm or Gangs of London, which actually gives me a lot of stress and anxiety when I watch it, but I feel relaxed when the episode is done.

2. Your problematic fave artist/actor/musician/character (dead or alive). And why?

   Have you ever seen a show called Horrid Henry? So Horrid Henry is a British TV show, and then I used to think Horrid Henry was really naughty. But then I saw a clip where someone showed his mom, and I think his mom was actually really horrible and she was actually a very neglectful mother and would blame everything on Henry. She started calling him “Horrid Henry” when actually she was the bad one. But as a child I was like, “Oh, Henry’s really naughty.” And now I’m like, “no, your mom’s actually a bit of a prick.”

   

   @rachelchinouririFrom being fan to opening his show 7 years later, thank you @lthqofficial 🥹 tour has been amazing so far 🫶🏾🌟 #fitftour #louistomlinson #newmusic #altmusic

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3. What’s the first fandom you lost yourself in…
   A fandom where I’d say I felt like I was in their community would probably be Louis Tomlinson’s fans. It’s kind of work-related, but I feel like every time I was fans of people in the past, I never really got too much into their fandoms. But then with working [and touring with Louis], I was tweeting fans before going on tour and after going on tour. And then even now when I go on tour, Louis Thomason fans are everywhere. And I feel like that’s the first fandom where I was like, “Okay guys, teach me how this goes.” And they’re showing me the ways, they’re showing me how to mosh. I had a beer which was splashing everywhere and they taught me how to seal the beer and close it so that when I’m mosh-pitting it doesn’t go everywhere. I was getting proper involved with them. So yeah. Thanks Louis. I didn’t really go to gigs when I was younger, so I like getting involved in them now.

   What fictional world would you want to live in and why?
   I [loved] playing Habbo hotel. I loved it because I feel like the design, the architecture, everything was so blocky and I was very rich. So I kind of enjoyed the levels of money I’d get for doing not really anything at all. So I’d want to live in Habbo hotel, only because I was pretty well off on it.

   

4. What the most random thing you have in your home that always requires explanation?
   I have a trophy of a knee brace. I’ve been nominated for a couple of things in my life and I’ve lost all of them. But the first thing that I won was for a competition about who has the best knees at the BRIT Awards. And it was presented to me live on TV by my friend Harriet. And it’s in my house on a shelf and whenever anyone comes in they go, “What is that?” And it’s a spray-painted knee brace, which says “champion” at the bottom because I have some pretty good knees despite actually having knee injuries all the time. I was nominated for two BRIT awards and I left with an award for having the best knees. Would like a Brit award or a Grammy, but that’s going to be my first one for now.

LEVEL III

1. What’s an anecdote you usually tell to describe how you were as a kid?
   I was unhinged. I was more quiet outside the house until my teachers actually told my mom that I was mute. But when the teachers would leave I was quite yappy. From this interview you see that I yap a lot when I get comfortable and forget this is going to be on the internet at some point. So yes, I would say quiet when I’m outside, but when I’m inside the house, she’s yapping.

2. What is your low-key hell and actual heaven?
   The gym. I hate the gym, but I love the gym. But every time I go to the gym and finish, I just have a little pep in my walk. I’m like, “oh, I’m feeling powerful today.” I am feeling like I’ve got an extra muscle. I’m always cussing out my personal trainer. So that’s my hell, but also heaven.

3. What is your most unhinged coping mechanism?
   If you asked me this when I was 16 my most unhinged coping mechanism would be rambling a lot. I feel like I just ramble and then I end up in the worst scenario possible. And then I’m like, the whole world has ended. This is the worst thing ever. That’s how I used to cope. And then I’d crash out and then look back thinking, was the situation ever that deep?
   
   It’s the circle of life. It’s also the circle of getting out of Croydon and not being raised by people in Croydon, but shouts, croydon. It made me have my fire.

4. Random thing you hate so much for no apparent reason.
   I can’t say *laughs*….I kind of have one: Butterflies, which is really horrible to say, but it’s because I’m scared of moths. I’ve been scared of moths since I was a child. I remember my cousin held a moth in front of my face when I was probably four or five and I’ve never forgotten it since. But the collateral damage is that now I hate butterflies because I feel like butterflies are moths who are wearing fancy dress and it’s the same thing. It makes me panic.

5. How you exit a party.
   French exit. The music’s going and you go, “One second, I’m just going to go and get a drink quickly.” Suddenly you’re walking past the bus while you’re putting on your jacket. Your Uber’s downstairs. One minute. Your friends are usually hammered anyways and then they’re like, “Oh, where are you?” I just went home. Sorry guys. Or you just kind of never end up leaving. And if I don’t do a French exit, I’m out in someone’s kitchen ‘til seven in the morning. So the best thing to do is get your friend and go, “We fucking off.”

6. How you wanna go (either un-seriously or seriously).
   Well, obviously if I had a choice it wouldn’t be very painful. I feel like I would have my eyes closed in a field with my feet on the ground. So I’m grounding connecting with the earth and then I just disappear like those genies who turn into pink smoke with glitter. It’s like I took so much energy from the ground, I just combust into sparkles of pink. Thank you.

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Thank you for all of your love and support on our first foray into print. Our hearts are so warm. There are still a few copies of The Medievalist available for purchase online, grab one now! 🌟

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I used to think astrology was bullshit. During my first semester at art school, the first person who introduced herself to me said, “I’m blah blah, and I’m a Sagittarius. What’s your sign?” Sorry to blah blah, but her name was not what stood out to me about that interaction — it was the first time someone had asked me what my sign was as if it were just as important as my name.

I reluctantly offered that I was also a Sagittarius but made it clear I didn’t believe stars and planets had anything to do with my personality. But as time went on, and people continued to lead with their zodiac signs as important aspects of their being (as queer art school students are wont to do), I gave in.

All of a sudden, I found myself studying astrology, and when I discovered natal charts, my whole world changed. Soon enough, I was collecting everyone’s birthplaces and times for “data and research.” Aside from my dinner-table readings of my friends’ charts, I also developed two astrology series for Them’s TikTok: Ask a Zodiac Sign and an astrology ranking show.

Through all of this, I learned that the value of astrology is not about defining people; it’s about understanding them. I mean, if astrology isn’t real, why does every Pisces Venus act like that? And why can I finally understand — and even anticipate — their point of view without judgment? Understanding astrology can be the ultimate act of empathy if you let it. So when I was approached to assign medieval weapons to each sign, it was time to put that power to good use. Here’s what I came up with:

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Welcome to mixed feelings’ Hyperspecific, a profile series of increasingly intimate questions in which we ask our favorite artists, characters, musicians, and the like to unveil their innermost selves — their weird existential musings.

It all started with a DM. One day, after seeing that V — one of the members of BTS — had reposted her song to his Instagram story, Umi’s mom encouraged her to DM the artist and ask if he’d be open to writing a song together.

“And then I got nervous, so I threw my phone across the room,” Umi said. “And when I picked up my phone a couple of hours later, he’d responded.” Little did he know back then that Umi was (and still is) a big fan of BTS and K-pop in general. They rattle off a list of favorites: Red Velvet, 2NE1, NCT, and BIGBANG. Girl has great taste.

The collaboration felt like kismet. Singer-songwriter Umi started her career posting covers of songs to her YouTube channel — one of which was of the BTS song “Save Me.” “To then do a song with [V] is just… my brain can’t even comprehend it,” Umi says of that pivotal moment. “My younger self would just be so proud. I think she wouldn’t even believe me if I told her.”

Since deciding to pursue music full-time in 2019, Umi has brought their R&B-meets-alt-pop sound to dozens of tracks, opened for Jhené Aiko and Conan Gray, and is now back with a new album: people stories. Their new oeuvre is a collection of songs inspired by the stories of others, ranging from love to heartbreak to taking a break and touching grass.

Umi visited us at the mixed feelings studio to do our Hyperspecific interview. Read it in full below. — Mi-Anne

LEVEL I

1. Something you’re always hoping people will bring up in conversation when you first meet.
   I hope they ask me, “Were you athletic when you were younger?” So I can tell them that I have a state record [for running track] with my little sisters. I ran at the Junior Olympics with my sisters in the relay, so I like to throw that out so I can brag just a little bit.

2. A positive trait people always tell you you have.
   I think people say that I’m very kind and easy to be around. I think people think I’m flirting with them, but I’m not. I’m just being nice sometimes.

3. One destructive trait you know you possess and wish you didn’t.
   I let myself crash out. I think you need to crash out to regulate yourself, but when I crash out, I’ll be throwing stuff in my room…I think it’s just female rage. It needs to be expressed. I’ll put a timer on. I’ll be like, “I’m going to let myself rage for 15 minutes and then when it’s done, it’s done.” Sometimes it’s the whole day and then when the day’s done, I’m done. It helps me feel [all my emotions] while also putting boundaries around myself.

4. If a bodega were to name a dish after you, what would it be? (Be specific.)
   The Umi Meal Deal: You get a bacon, egg and cheese, you get a drink, you also get a smoothie and then you get a free something else. Pretty much my order is a free-for-all abundance meal that you only pay $2 for. But it definitely comes with the bacon, egg, and cheese [and a] strawberry, banana, mango, blueberry, and coconut milk smoothie.

5. One song that makes you feel understood.
   My album drops, so I have a lot to choose from my album. I would say my song 10AM encapsulates my energy very well. It just feels like being loved, being in love, being kissed on forehead, put into a song so that song feels like me. The whole album, I wrote it based on other people’s stories. My friend told me about. how they have breakfast in bed with their girlfriend and how in that moment they were like, “This is what love is.”

   
   So I wrote:

   Pretty close to paradise,
   Breakfast in your bed is nice,
   Let’s stay here forever,
   Tell the world to wait, hours turn to days.
   I could never leave your side, oh, I would rather die.

   I just think it’s so poetic and you can see the whole scene in your head. And then another song is probably “Lovely Day” by Bill Withers. Even when I’m having a bad day, that song makes me feel happy.

6. Something you think is wildly underrated.
   Me! But apart from me: getting eight hours of sleep. I’ll be like, “Why am I so anxious?” And it’s because I slept four hours. It’s really simple.

LEVEL II

1. A movie/tv show you watch when you want to self-soothe.
   Spirited Away. Every time I watch it, it connects me to my inner child again and it’s kind of weird and I like that.

2. Your problematic fave artist/actor/musician/character (dead or alive). And why?
   Well, all the boys in KPop Demon Hunters. I feel like they’re problematic but cute. They really animated those boys really well. Real sweet…Not good intentions, but execution was very well done.

3. What’s the first fandom you lost yourself in…
   Oh my gosh. BIGBANG. I would just binge watch all their music videos when I was in middle school and high school to the point where I wasn’t doing my homework and wasn’t really taking care of myself. My bias is G-Dragon. I went to his [solo] show. I think he’s just so artistic and tasteful and cool.
   
   I love K-Pop. I grew up listening to 2NE1. I loved BTS, Red Velvet, NCT…Got7. And Girls’ Generation! They were big in Japan. All the groups that crossed over into Japan I watched so much growing up.
   
   MF: What was it like being a BTS fan and then working with V?
   
   That was crazy. It’s not on my YouTube anymore, but I did covers of BTS songs. I did this cover of “Save Me.” I did a lot of covers of K-pop songs, especially BTS songs. So to then do a song with him…my brain can’t even comprehend it…And it just happened [randomly]. He had tagged me on his story…[sharing] one of my songs. And then I was with my mom and she said, “You should just DM and ask him if he would make a song with you.” So I DM’d him and I was like, “Thanks for reposting my song. You want to make a song with me?” And then I got nervous, so I threw my phone across the room and when I picked up my phone a couple hours later he’d responded. And then we made a song and we’ve been friends since.

4. Something you bought recently after LOTS of research.
   My lip liner. I’ve used a lot of different lip liners to arrive at the Charlotte Tilbury liner color that I use.

5. What fictional world would you want to live in and why?
   I probably should say Spirited Away, but I actually would not want to live in that universe. I think that would be very trippy. So I have two answers: I would love to live in whatever universal Lilo & Stitch exists in, so I could have a Stitch. And my second answer would be, I’ve always been curious about Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs where the food falls from the sky. What would it be like if I could just have all-you-can-eat buffet weather?

6. What the most random thing you have in your home that always requires explanation?
   I have a lot of mushroom chairs in my house. People always ask if I do shrooms and I have to be like, “No, I just like the way mushrooms look.” I think they’re really cute.

LEVEL III

1. What’s an anecdote you usually tell to describe how you were as a kid?
   Ever since I was little, my dad would always sing me this song. He goes, “We can do it, we can do it.” And [because of that] I think I can do anything. Someone could ask, “Could you do five back flips the first time” And I’d be like “Yeah, I could do that. I think I can do anything.” That mindset thanks to my dad.

2. What is your low-key hell and actual heaven?
   Low-key hell is when I’m hungry and I haven’t slept. My heaven is taking a warm bath with a candle and a good movie.
   

   MF: Do you have a bath movie?
   

   Honestly, it’s KPop Demon Hunters. I’ve watched it probably four times already.

3. What is your most unhinged coping mechanism?
   Pretending that it never happened.

4. Random thing you hate so much for no apparent reason.
   California rolls! I think they taste good, but I hate that people think they’re sushi because it’s not sushi. And everyone’s like, “I love sushi.” And I’m like, “What’s your favorite sushi?” And they say California roll? Pisses me off.

5. How you exit a party.
   There’s two ways I exit a party: One way is you don’t even know that I left because I left through the back very quietly. Number two is I make a scene…Somehow I end up on the stage behind the DJ dancing and…then I get everybody to come with me.

6. How you wanna go (either un-seriously or seriously)

   I want to go laughing.

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Welcome to mixed feelings’ Hyperspecific, a profile series of increasingly intimate questions in which we ask our favorite artists, characters, musicians, and the like to unveil their innermost selves — their weird existential musings.

“The ‘Gay Uncle’ shirt def set the vibe,” said Catherine Mhloyi, mixed feelings writer + social video producer, when I asked about the feeling on set during her interview with King Princess this past summer. I had no idea what she was talking about, but then I saw the recording: King Princess laid back in a director’s chair wearing a black rhinestoned tee with the words “GAY UNCLE” written across the chest.

Watching the interview footage for the first time, I can hear Catherine behind the camera, stifling giggles, held captive by their charm. (At least, that’s my fan fiction re-telling of the encounter.) And though I wish I could’ve been there in person, too, I maintain that it’s unhealthy to meet artists who you actually care about.

There’s a Dadaism to King Princess’ online and artistic presence that, prior to this interview, made me feel like they were from a different cool/funny-person dimension. (Exhibit A: King Princess getting hit in the face by clown tits in the music video for “RIP KP”.) But when we ask them about their low-key hell, they complain about not being able to hold a conversation over loud bar music. I can’t help but love the unexpected relatability.

If you’re already a fan like me, or are somehow just getting into their music now, please sit back and relax in your genderfuck baby tees and enjoy reading about being vers (in the context of Hogwarts houses). — Logan Tsugita

P.S. If you’re a NYC queer (or really, any good-music-loving individual), I suggest you listen to Girl Violence (out now) on the train and astral project into a state of unequivocal yearning.

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LEVEL I

1. Something you’re always hoping people bring up in conversation.

Reality television. When people bring up reality television early in a conversation, I'm like, okay, I'm amongst friends. I'm watching this new season of Project Runway with Law Roach. This is brutal. It's really funny and good. Remember when Michael Kors would just destroy everyone? It's [Law] filling those shoes because Michael Kors…He could throw an insult.

2. What’s a positive trait people always tell you?

I'm told I'm funny quite a bit, and I appreciate that.

3. One destructive trait you know you possess and wish you didn’t.

Diva. Well, I don't know if I wish I didn't…I feel like I'm always acting like a diva. Even when I'm in my underwear playing PS5, my friends are still like, “Why are you being such a diva?” And I'm like, “Yeah, but I appreciate it.” I mean, they're right.

4. If a bodega were to name a dish after you, what would it be? (Be specific.)

Tuna sandwich on a hard roll with lettuce, cheese, and mustard, and it'd be called the “King Princess.”

5. One song that makes you feel understood.

I've just been singing “Messy.” The Lola Young song. I mean, I agree with the sentiment. I probably heard it on TikTok — how we all get our music now — and it is a really good song. Sometimes you hear songs and you're like, “I wish I wrote that song.”

6. Something you think is wildly underrated.

Me? I would say I'm wildly underrated. You knew I was going to say that.

[Maybe when I’m wildly overrated] it'll go from “You look like King Princess” to “What's up King Princess?” You know what I mean? I am fine being just another lesbian who looks like King Princess. That's also honestly an honor in its own right.

LEVEL II

1. A movie/tv show you watch when you want to self-soothe.

Alone. Oh, it’s [a survival show] — shit's fabulous. They drop people off in the Arctic Circle in the fall and they're like, “Survive.” They're filming themselves. You're watching their minds race and wander and they're shooting stuff, but they're also foraging and fishing and building little houses. Maybe I have a kink for The Revenant, you know what I mean? And Children of Men, that energy, that Gilgamesh-ian journey. I’d like to, in an alternate universe, be able to do that.

2. What is your problematic favorite artist, actor, dead or alive?

I guess going back, I would say Joan Rivers, I think that we need to go back and watch a lot of those jokes. They're really fucking funny. And then as far as artists, I mean, I'll always be an Azealia Banks fan.

3. What is the first fandom you lost yourself in?

Nicki Minaj. I was deep in [Nicki Minaj] Twitter in high school, just trying to figure things out. It was a guiding light. Those gay people raised me. I think I fell in love with “Roman's Revenge,” but I also loved “Itty Bitty Piggy.” I love the Beam Me Up Scotty mixtape, but I remember when “Roman Reloaded” came out, and “Roman's Revenge”…I was just like, “This is theater.” She's a theatrical genius. She's a Shakespearean actor. And she's doing a monologue, a soliloquy, if you will.

MF: Do you consider yourself a Barb?

Unfortunately, yes. You can't fuck with SZA. I mean, [Nicki] crossed the line there…SZA’s response was so brilliant. That hurt my heart a little bit. Every other fight I could get behind, pretty much every other fight she's had.

MF: Most legendary Nicki Minaj beef?

Most legendary. I mean, her verse destroying Remy Ma on “No Frauds” is pretty sinister. It is incredible. “Left the operating table, still look like ‘nah.’” I think that's pretty amazing.

4. What is something you bought recently after LOTS of research?

I've been wearing Taekwondo shoes. When I first bought this pair they were on Amazon and they were literally like 50 bucks. And now they've gone up to a hundred. They clearly know they hit the jackpot. But then I realized that on DePop and Grailed, there's a bunch of different, weird colorways. So I bought two pairs. I did a bunch of research on the sizing because the pair I bought is kind of jank, so I didn't trust the sizing. I did a lot of Taekwondo shoe research about the sizing and then bought the new colors that I wanted. They’re Adidas, but they're meant to do martial arts in, so I wanted to make sure the fit was good.

I've never done Taekwondo. I just like the shoes. I've never once done Taekwondo in my life. But in the event that there’s a brawl, I'd be nimble.

5. A fictional world you want to live in and why?

Harry Potter. I mean, fuck JK Rowling. She can suck a huge bag of dicks. And I go on record saying that. She is a horrible, horrible person. What a terrible woman.

But I just want to go to Hogwarts, man. I just want to be at Hogwarts. I think about that twice a day. I just would thrive in that academic environment. Unfortunately, I am a Slytherin. I think I'm a switch. I could be, you know what I mean? You know what Harry Potter is? He's such a vers. He can be Slytherin, but he can also be a Gryffindor. It just depends on if he wants to be evil or not. I'm kind of that. I feel like I choose evil, but I could probably do great in Gryffindor.

MF: Favorite Harry Potter character?

Probably Hagrid. He's just hot and he understands who he is.

6. Random thing in your home that always requires explanation?

Well, I made a still life. That's one of those floating bookshelves. The ones that look like there's no shelf. It's just a stack. And on top of it is a paintball mask. But I put Voldemort face prosthetic over the paintball mask. And then there's four wigs.

And I always joke, I'm going to apply to Yale with the sculpture. I also have a lot of swords. So people always ask about the swords.

There's one on my coffee table that's a Game of Thrones vibe sword. It's very sharp and people are always like, “Oh, is that a sword?” And I'm like, yes. I went to the Ren Faire. I didn't know that you couldn't bring in an actual sword. I was like, “What's the point?” So I show up and I have a full real sword, and they're like, “You cannot bring that in there.” And I was like, “I'm bringing this in.” So I got in, but then every time I walked, I was cutting myself with the sword. Now I understand why they don't want real swords. They don't want drunk idiots with real swords walking around the Renaissance Fair. But I did.

MF: Where does one get a real sword?

My friend Jack actually had it made for me…in Eastern Europe. Jack took a train and sat at this man's forge and watched him make the sword, and then he shipped it back to the States. It was one of the most incredible gifts I've ever received.

LEVEL III

1. What’s an anecdote you usually tell to describe how you were as a kid?

I’ll just describe the way I looked. Backwards hat, T-shirt, long sleeve under the T-shirt, baggy jeans, little Vans sneakers…Full little boy. But also I spent a lot of time in the woods upstate. So I was mostly by myself, just talking to myself in the woods. I was entrenched in a fantasy world as a child. I had a very active imagination. I could entertain myself for hours just pretending I was in a different universe. I also whittled a lot of Harry Potter wands as a child. I have a whittling kit. I was a whittler, so yeah, I was always with a wand.

2. What is your lowkey hell and actual heaven?

My low-key hell is a bar with loud music on. I cannot, I hate it. I've been on this tirade. I will go to the bar and say, “Please turn it down.” It's too loud. It's deafening. I can't talk. I can't hear other people's thoughts. I can't hear anything. I can't hear my own thoughts. I can't talk to people. I mean, I'm constantly in hell with the level of music that people play. It's insane. It's unsafe. I'd say my heaven is the park with my friends and my dog in New York on a hot summer day.

MF: What's your dog's name?

Raz. [Short for] Raspberry white claw.

3. What is your most unhinged coping mechanism?

I already said whittling. That's pretty fucking unhinged. I would say Call of Duty. It's unhinged. I take out my vengeance on Call of Duty to 12 year olds around the globe. I'm the villain on the mic. I am losing my mind on that microphone.

4. What is one random thing you hate so much for no apparent reason?

Labubu. I can't stand this. They're frightening looking. Everyone says they're so cute. They're horrifying. I don't understand how it's a status symbol to have something dangling from your purse, besides pepper spray. There should be nothing dangling from your purse. You know what I mean? I can't stand it. I'm like, this is so fucking ugly.

MF: How do you think this is going to be received on the internet?

I don't care. I don't care how it's received. I haven't seen a lot of gay people with Labubu’s. I have one friend, Julia, she's obsessed, and I'm like, “You've got to stop this. You're ruining your lovely purse with this hideous doll. You have a beautiful purse on. It goes with your outfit, goes with your shoes, and you've got this Furby hanging from it.”

5. How do you exit a party?

I'm good about that. I do say bye to people. I'm not an Irish goodbye-r or I would feel too guilty. I make my rounds. I say, “Bye, good to see you.” And then I leave. I like to be home before 2am. I think nothing good happens after 2am. I like to stay out late-ish and party, but after 2am I have no business being there.

6. How you wanna go (either un-seriously or seriously).

Death wise? Well, hopefully it's something fabulous. Have you seen Spinal Tap? I would love to spontaneously combust. That would be pretty cool if I just blew up on stage. The whole crowd's covered in guts, like, “Bye!” That sounds pretty cool to me. Poisoning would be interesting and probably apt. I would get fucking poisoned.

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welcome to strong feelings! Essays by writers we love, in which they share their most impassioned opinions on a given subject. In today’s strong feelings, writer & comedian Tess Garcia explores the deeply connective power of the women’s public restroom, as seen in her most recent trip to Bad Bunny’s residency in Puerto Rico.

One Friday night in August, I stood in a crowd of women and femmes at El Coliseo in San Juan, Puerto Rico. We arrived in pursuit of Bad Bunny’s historic “No Me Quiero Ir de Aquí” residency, donning crochet dresses and sets inspired by his latest album, DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS. With hours before the show kicked off, we weren’t in our seats. Nor were we waiting in line for merch, or even for a Benito-themed cocktail. This group of concertgoers, singing and dancing to reggaetón classics that blared across El Choli, was having the time of our lives in the bathroom.

“I guess I’ve never been in a men’s bathroom, but I don’t think they use that as a sacred space in the way that we do,” said Nora Princiotti, cohost of The Ringer’s Every Single Album podcast and author of Hit Girls, a deep dive into the world of 2000s popstars. “It’s the portal to girl world.”

Public restrooms are highly politicized spaces that connote belief systems as easily as bodily functions. At worst, they’re weaponized in the persecution of trans people. At best, they offer fertile ground for kinship among women and femme-identifying folks. According to Bloomberg, America’s first public bathrooms emerged in the mid 19th century, but for decades prior, white, middle class women congregated in public “lounges.” These gender-segregated rooms were found in hotels and department stores, and reinforced the belief that women should lead private lives, even when outside the home.

When indoor plumbing came around, the women’s lounge was factored into the creation of the earliest public bathrooms. The concept of gendered, multi-stall bathrooms — a thoroughly outdated formula by today’s standards — is in part thanks to the work of the architect Isaiah Rogers, who couldn’t have known his design would set the stage for one of the most unique, yet universally recognized forms of community-building among women.

I grew up on early aughts pop culture, which transfixed me with its portrayal of bathrooms as connective tissue between female friends and strangers. The Amanda Show might not have aged well, but it gave us The Girls’ Room, a recurring sketch about four high schoolers who used sinks, mirrors, and automatic hand dryers as the backdrop for their antics. The girls’ personalities couldn’t have been more different, but they developed a bond in this siloed space, away from the social hierarchies of classrooms and cafeterias.

In 2025, bathroom bonding is associated with vulnerability. Nothing strips you down to your humanity like waiting in line to pee. Even celebrities aren’t immune. Consider the annual Met Gala bathroom selfie, which gives onlookers a rare peek into fashion’s biggest night, or Taylor Swift’s “All Too Well (10 Minute Version),” which reveals an emotional encounter in an awards show bathroom (“Not weeping in a party bathroom, some actress asking me what happened). Few of these now-viral pop cultural moments could have taken place without the centuries-ingrained “lounge” culture of the space. “Either you go to the bathroom for this moment of euphoria, like, 'oh my God, I met this girl and she’s going to be my best friend and she says I look so hot,” said Princiotti. “Or something went wrong, and the bathroom is where you go to have an absolute meltdown and hopefully be picked up by the community.”

For every depiction of the women’s bathroom as a safe haven, free from the threat of cisgender men, dozens more depict it as a hotbed of drug use. The phenomenon has permeated across mediums since Y2K. As Page Six captured the jaunts of Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, and Lindsay Lohan, Pharrell’s N.E.R.D. released a track called “All the Girls Standing in the Line for the Bathroom.” Now, the glorification of restroom drug use pervades in party-hard projects like Charli XCX’s Brat.

Within this polarizing narrative, the public bathroom remains a unifying force. In the words of Princiotti: “It’s the space that’s adjacent to the party but separate enough that either it brings out a different set of reactions from people, or they go there to tell a secret or take a break, or they go there to do something that they don’t want people to see them doing.”

I have never attended the Met Gala. I’m not a Swiftie. I’ve never seen cocaine in real life. But as an Argentine-American who’s obsessed with pop culture, I’ve found connection with other Latinos through the music of our diaspora. Bad Bunny’s residency was my bathroom bonding Super Bowl.

From the moment I stepped into the bathroom in El Choli, it was clear that Benito’s team anticipated its use as a gathering place — to the extent that they enlisted personal care brand method as a sponsor. The company transformed nearly every bathroom in the arena into a tropical oasis, akin to a colorful speakeasy. Stall doors were draped in decals inspired by Viejo San Juan. Colloquial Puerto Rican affirmations, like “Te ves brutal” (“You look amazing”), danced across the walls. Each sink was equipped with bottles of method’s Island Mist Body Wash and faux plaintains hung from the ceiling in bunches. The space was built for the chitchat, makeup touch-ups, and group photos that turn a bathroom from necessary resource to destination.

I spent five hours in El Choli and used the bathroom six times. The visits were fueled by a desire to witness sisterhood, and my frequent hydration. In my first go round, I realized I was tied to fellow concertgoers by the invisible string of chisme, the Spanish word for gossip. In English, the term has negative connotations, but in Latin American cultures, it often connects more than it divides.

“Unlike American gossip culture hell-bent on talking trash about those who have wronged you with a viciously sharp tongue, chisme is never that serious,” journalist Ana Escalante wrote in a 2022 Glamour article. She added that in Latin America’s earliest indigenous societies, orally-traded legends were treated as currency, akin to other valuable items ripe for trading. By the 18th century, women across cultures used gossip to discuss the social acceptability of their behaviors, a protective measure in a male-dominated world. Put simply, the feminine urge to gossip has centuries-old roots, and the Latina urge to chismear dates back further still.

In the bathroom at El Choli, I watched the magic of chisme transpire in real time. Superfans debated which celebrities would appear in Bad Bunny’s casita, the onstage house whose patio has welcomed Lebron James and Jon Hamm. Others weighed the pros and cons of a post-concert club visit. “Déjame secar las manos” (“Let me dry my hands”), one woman playfully scolded two companions, who demanded to see her current love interest’s Instagram profile before she even finished washing her hands. The women could have been family, friends, or recent acquaintances, but in this intimate, femmes-only setting, those lines were wishfully blurred.

As more guests piled into the arena, its bathrooms morphed into de facto dressing rooms. Long lines created time for women to adjust each other’s bra straps, exchange combs, and smooth out any bunching in the outfits most of us spent months preparing. “Oh, body glitter was a great idea,” one stranger said as she looked me up and down. I’ve carried the high of that compliment with me ever since.

In 2025, environments of such safety and community are near impossible to find, especially for Latinos in the continental United States. In an interview with i-D, Bad Bunny told journalist Suzy Expósito that his choice to avoid the US — in both the residency and his upcoming world tour — was fueled by the Trump administration’s mass deportations. “Latinos and Puerto Ricans of the United States could also travel here, or to any part of the world. But there was the issue of—like, fucking ICE could be outside [my concert].”

Between stalls and sinks, I found myself disarmed by an atmosphere of courtesy and calm, one that couldn’t have existed in even the most liberal US cities. Fans freely spoke Spanish, English, and Spanglish as they exchanged tips on how to capture the best videos of the show. When I lingered in the doorway to eavesdrop, women filed behind me without even asking if I was in line. I overheard an impossible number of polite photo requests, and one “You’re in the background of my photo; is that okay with you?”

Princiotti recalled a similarly surreal experience in the bathroom at Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. “[Swift] does this whole section in Evermore, where for the song ‘Willow,’ there are these big, glowing orbs,” she said. “Somebody had an orb that was made to look like one of those. We would just pass it back. Everyone’s just passing the orb and doing the dance with the orb. We’re having a seance with the orb.”

Our orb rituals and compliment fests matter. They present rare moments of pure unity for women and femmes who have sacrificed financially, emotionally, or otherwise, all in the name of one perfect night surrounded by like-minded people. On Saturday, September 20, Bad Bunny will round out his residency with “Una Más,” a bonus show that will be livestreamed on Amazon Prime Video. For one final night, El Choli’s bathrooms will be the epicenter of chisme for the Latina diaspora. They may exit the bathroom physically lighter, but they’ll also leave more energized than when they arrived.

Tess Garcia is a Brooklyn-based writer, comedian, and stylist who wears many other hats across media and entertainment. Her written work focuses on fashion, pop culture, social justice, and the intersections of all three.

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To celebrate the launch of The Medievalist, our first print issue, we’re publishing a selection of stories from the magazine, plus a few newsletter-only additions, for all of you wenches to enjoy. Today, writer and photographer Skyli Alvarez speaks with Ren Faire shop clerk Rhea Callisto and axe-thrower Anthony Scott on how to bring Ren Faire aesthetics into your everyday style. The Medievalist is available for purchase online, now!

For the fashion set, the Ren Faire marketplace is often equally as memorable as the Ren Faire festivities. The Faire shopping experience is rife with everything from chainmail headwear and gladiator boots to elvin accessories and corsetry, all pulled from the inspirational depths of the Dark Ages. As fantasy-forward dressing continues to spill far beyond the fair grounds, there’s no reason dressing on-theme needs to be reserved for just a handful of weekends a year.

We spoke with Atlanta-based Faire dwellers Rhea Callisto, shop clerk, and Anthony Scott, axe-thrower, on all things Ren style and bringing the Middle Ages to modern-day dress.

Unlikely Accessories

The easiest way to fuse days of olde with an outfit is accessorizing — the more adornments and trinkets, the better. “Props such as daggers, tails, swords, elf ears, parasols, bows and arrows, bird whistles, elf ear cuffs, and more” are available for purchase at most Faire markets, Callisto says, and can easily transform an otherwise-reserved ensemble into something novel.

While approved weaponry may be best for the fairgrounds, jewelry such as layered chainmail can spruce up an everyday look, as well as small, yet unconventional, elements like brightly-colored eye contacts or elf ears. For the statement-dressers, however, “over-accessorize to the point of looking like you’re in costume,” Scott says. One of his personal favorite accessories at his Faire is a prop dragon that anchors onto the shoulder, with a pull-string to make it “talk.” After all, theatricality and tapping into one’s imagination is the foundation of Ren Faire style.

1. Scalemail & Chainmail Shoulder Pauldrons, $161.94 $244.59

2. Human Skintone Elf Cosplay Ears | Etsy, $25

3. Deer ears, $89

Layers On Layers

“Layering is the best way to use regular wardrobe pieces and create a wide variety of outfits,” Callisto says, recommending scarves, bathing suit cover-ups, and skirts atop other skirts, for starters. Especially as most Ren Faires take place throughout the hotter months of the year, outerwear like sheer shirts, shrugs, or boleros can help with airflow while being easy to take off.

Similarly, sweeping floor-length or ruffled high-low skirts pair well with corsetry for contrasting silhouettes, as well as billowing tunics or shawls for a flowy alternative. Beyond the marketplace, Callisto recommends corsetry brands like Corset Story and Lacemade, as well as Renaissance-inspired label HolyClothing as starting points.

1. HolyClothing Bonny Top, $70

2. HolyClothing Oberon Pants, $85

3. LaceMade Princess Cynthia Corset, $89

Worlds Colliding

Lately, Callisto has seen attendees dress as fairies, elves, mushrooms, and flowers, and always advises pairing cosplay and costume pieces for versatility. “If you’re comfortable, lean into fantasy by [wearing] bright neon colors à la faeries or dragons,” Scott adds.

For the vampiric folk, he says gothic styles work well with an array of medieval looks. “People blend every aspect of contemporary style into every aspect of medieval garb,” he elaborates, having observed many memorable concept- and subculture-inspired outfits. From Middle Ages-goes-goth to rave maidens and vampy vassals, melding archetypes can bring an outfit entirely into one’s own.

1. I Do Declare Highcollar Bise Dress, $355

2. I Do Declare Parade of Devils Socks, $25

3. Medieval Moccasins Low Tops, $115

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Skyli Alvarez is the editorial assistant at Teen Vogue. She holds a BA in journalism and minor in art history from the University of Georgia and has words and photos in Vogue Japan, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Polyester Zine, and more. Her work, written and visual, explores the intersections of style, identity, and subcultures past and present. Follow her on Instagram.

To celebrate the launch of The Medievalist, our first print issue, we’re publishing a selection of stories from the magazine, plus a few newsletter-only additions, for all of you wenches to enjoy. Today, artist Rui Gao explores how the rise in medieval fashion aesthetics could be an act of political defiance. The Medievalist is available for purchase online, now!

POV: The year is 1320 and beads of sweat constellate your brow as you tirelessly sow wheat. You live on a grand estate — but don’t get your hopes up. You are just another penniless peasant on a fief.

This is the unfortunate life of an average person during medieval times.

While it might sound foreign, we are currently living with similar realities in our digital fiefs. In these online kingdoms, we are unpaid laborers producing data for the cloud empires of Amazon, Google, Meta, and Apple. So how do we cope with such a stark reality?

We choose to situate our dreams in the past when the future seems so grim. Online trends are often born out of escapist desires to flee these realities. Politics has long spurred shifts in fashion trends and behaviors. In fact, we’re living through one of those shifts now.

We live in a realm that's evolved past capitalism: a new regime where data is the dominant currency, economist Yanis Varoufakis argues in Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism. We’ve become “cloud serfs” producing algorithm-training material for free while Big Tech monetizes our identity, attention, and habits. Tapping to pay, clicking add to cart, scrolling through your feed – each action fleshes out another piece of binary code in your digital identity, driving you further down the funnel across countless privately-owned realms that you will never fully access.

In fashion, this manifests most visibly through the algorithmic webs of fast fashion and microtrends. Platforms like TikTok and Instagram spur the trend cycle forward at increasingly higher speeds; micro-aesthetics are born, peak, and decay in the span of weeks. This phenomenon produces poorly-made garments in response to the demands of the trend cycle, only for these pieces to be quickly discarded once these trends die. Historic fashion honors meticulousness, intentionality, and craftsmanship. Every garment becomes a small, personal act of rebellion towards a system that reduces our existence to data points. This is just the latest chapter in a long history of political resistance expressed through clothing.

Fashion’s connection to political resistance is well-documented. In the 19th century, during the first wave of feminism, Amelia Bloomer’s eponymous garment — loose, ankle-length pants — symbolized comfort, defiance, and liberation from the restrictive corsets of Victorian dress codes. In the 1960s and ’70s, as part of the anti-Vietnam War movement, hippies expressed their anti-establishment, anti-war politics through flowing garments, tie-dye, black armbands, and flower crowns. Clothing became both a protest and a utopian manifesto that honored peace, rejected militarism, and defied norms of gender, class, and consumption.

Take, for instance, the punk subculture, born in the 1970s out of England’s depressed sociopolitical and economic conditions. The “DIY mindset” is a core component of punk styling, and commonly associated elements include bondage trousers, ripped tees, and spikes.

Today’s revival of medieval fashion feels similarly rooted in rebellion, but with a fantastical twist. Medievalcore is how we dream of a slower, more sovereign life, severed from our digital overlords. As Summer Anne Lee, fashion historian and adjunct instructor at the Fashion Institute of Technology, puts it, "trends like medievalcore that romanticize the past can be interpreted as a longing for a time that’s seen as simpler and more beautiful.”

Medievalcore has a long history of being romanticized through the ages, especially in face of alarming technological or societal advances. The Victorian-era Arts and Crafts movement rejected the mechanized ugliness of the Industrial Revolution. The 1970s’ kitschy psychedelica-infused medieval revival flourished with velvet capes, bishop sleeves, and Arthurian silhouettes seen in the jewel-toned collections of The Fools Clothing Collective and bohemian gowns of artist and fashion designer Thea Porter. Even recently, the bardcore trend on TikTok during early-COVID times prompted the creation of tavern-inspired remakes of popular tunes. Medieval fashion consistently maintained its appeal throughout the years because “European tailoring methods were not very complex,” says Lee. “We see gowns, tunics, hose, and headwear made from simple shapes with bold color combinations. Building off of the same concept, medieval fashion is extra fun when we get into more exaggerated proportions.”

Contemporarily-speaking, Ann Demeulemeester’s unicorn-inspired 2020 fall ready-to-wear collection played with the creature’s mythical, noble ancestry and its role as the symbol of Scotland. Lush velvets, rich brocades, and opulent jewel tones construct the dramatic puff-sleeves and crinolines that shape the collection’s modernized tunics and gowns. At Dior’s 2026 Cruise show in Rome, Maria Grazia Chiuri sent out armor-inspired corsets, heraldic embroidery, and baroque capes.

One of my favorite examples is the Medieval Revival Collection by indie brand Firefly Path. The ethereality of elven princesses combined with classic medieval silhouettes, headwear, and jewelry forms the most enchanting capsule fit for a heroine of a bygone era.

Some might say that the resurgence of medieval aesthetics online itself isn’t an entirely authentic way of escaping the cloudalists. After all, the algorithm pushes similar material to us based on the content with which we’ve previously interacted. Mere exposure effect takes over, and a new question arises: Am I interested in this aesthetic just because it’s trending, or do I genuinely like it? Asking this is the first step in reclaiming your identity and autonomy over the capitalist machine. The next part involves seeking out ethical, well-made garments that fit the bill. Ultimately we do have free will in deciding to actually execute certain trends. Your personal style itself can be a form of escapism (and rebellion).

In my experience documenting my fashion journey online, micro-trends and micro-aesthetics both irritate and fascinate me. The revival of medieval designs resonate with many of our shared sentiments of wanting to slow down, to take time to appreciate beauty and craftsmanship. Historic fashion reminds us of the intention in slowly exploring our identities through curating a smaller, more meaningful wardrobe. One chainmail garment can take days — even months — to create. You’re not actually supposed to own an entire armory of these relics. Just enough to help you cope in the face of a digital apocalypse.

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Documenting their character growth online for the past five years, Rui Gao loves to explore personal style and agency in the digital age. In their spare time, they enjoy matcha lattes and collecting stickers. They humbly invite you over for afternoon tea in their corner of the Internet at @rui.gaoo.

Welcome to mixed feelings’ Hyperspecific, a profile series of increasingly intimate questions in which we ask our favorite artists, characters, musicians, and the like to unveil their innermost selves — their weird existential musings.

In 2024 the universe had a mission: Make me fall in love with Fujii Kaze. After seeing his now-viral NPR Tiny Desk Japan performance in April of that year, “Garden” became my song of Spring. I played his 2022 album Love All Serve All on repeat that summer, but my fate was sealed when I saw a clip of Kaze performing his song “Matsuri” that June at Kings Theater in Brooklyn. His keyboard toppled over mid-song but Kaze didn’t miss a beat. It was as delightful as the mishaps in the Jingle Bell Rock dance scene in Mean Girls, but perfected by a J-pop and jazz virtuoso.

“Some said ‘it must be staged or something’,” he said of the (again, now-viral) incident. “But no, absolutely not. That was the first time and I didn’t expect it. The show must go on, baby.”

His energy is infectious — that much is clear, whether you’re seeing him through the illuminated screen of your phone or standing a few feet from him. I had the pleasure of experiencing the latter earlier this summer while Kaze was in New York to promote Prema, his third album, out today.

“Prema is a Sanskrit word,” Kaze says of his new oeuvre. “My father is very influenced by Indian philosophy and taught me everything about that kind of spirituality. 'Prema' means love, it’s a word that’s been very close to me my whole life.” Notably, Prema is Kaze’s first primarily-English album, which feels like an intentional choice in his global domination (his most recent tour sold out in minutes in a number of American cities). But you can tell from the first track, “Casket Girl,” that his typical upbeat jazz and R&B flavor is still intact, whether he’s singing in Japanese or in English.

When asked to describe Prema in a few words, “peaceful, divine, and random,” come to mind for Kaze — all words that perfectly describe his character, too. Our interview was strange, and zany, and wild, in all the best ways. Read our full questionnaire below.

— Mi-Anne

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LEVEL I

1. Something you’re always hoping people bring up in conversation.

I don't expect anything…but let me give you a silent hug or something. I appreciate the silence. I want you to enjoy the silence too. But, [in terms of conversation topics,] I love to talk about music. I’ll ask: What kind of music do you listen to? [I’m listening to] Sabrina Carpenter. Last year’ Short n’ Sweet. [I love] “Good Graces.” Great song. I love that album, R&B vibes all the time.

2. What’s a positive trait people always tell you?

I don't need no drugs or weed to get high. I don't drink. I just don't get the taste. It's kind of bitter. I prefer orange juice or apple juice. I just stay high all the time.

3. One destructive trait you know you possess and wish you didn’t.

I want to pick my nose at least nine times a day.

4. If a bodega were to name a dish after you, what would it be? (Be specific.)

“Peaceful vegan protein cookie.” Vanilla.

5. One song that makes you feel understood.

The title track for my third album, Prema. I am basically spiritually boasting, if you know what I mean. It has a kind of hip hop vibe…and a very strong positive, affirming message.

6. Something you think is wildly underrated.

Being spiritual. In Japan, I don't see many people who are very spiritual. But spirituality is a very, very important part of my life.

I meditate in the morning when I wake up and say something to myself that is uplifting. That makes me feel grounded. Without praying or being spiritual, I wouldn’t even [be here doing this interview today]. It’s terrifying.

LEVEL II

1. A movie/tv show you watch when you want to self-soothe.

I still haven't found any movie that I can watch when I want to soothe myself, but I listen to a lot of jazz and R&B. [I like] Julie London or Chet Baker. They're very soothing jazz [artists]. And any R&B from ‘90s like Toni Braxton, Aaliyah, Boyz II Men, and Mariah Carey. Always.

2. What is your problematic favorite artist, actor, dead or alive?

It'd probably be Amy Winehouse, for me. Her life is absolutely tragic, but I love her music so much.

3. What is the first fandom you lost yourself in?

I remember I had a crush on Gwen Stefani…her weird vibes and weird music and her swag. After going solo with her first album, the second one, Sweet Escape — my sister had the CD — I was like, “What the kind of music is that?” I was blown away. [My favorite song is] “Cool.” One of the best music videos in history.

4. What is something you bought recently after LOTS of research?

Probably 10 kilograms of white rice. I sent it to my parents because white rice is getting really expensive in Japan.

5. A fictional world you want to live in and why?

Spirited Away. It was very scary when I was a child, but I can't help it. It was so captivating in some kind of weird way.

6. Random thing in your home that always requires explanation?

I don't know. Me picking my nose.

LEVEL III

1. What’s an anecdote you usually tell to describe how you were as a kid?

I used to eat clover growing under the slide I don't know why. It tasted a little bit sour. I liked that. I wasn't a vegetarian [then], but yeah, I was a very free-spirited kid.

2. What is your low-key hell and actual heaven?

Low-key hell? Wasting my time on social media. That’s the worst feeling.

Actual heaven? I’m a good boy. I like seeing my parents being happy. That’s my heaven.

3. What is your most unhinged coping mechanism?

I don’t know, probably farting. Release some stress and negativity, all at once.

4. What is one random thing you hate so much for no apparent reason?
   
   Probably coriander…cilantro. I don’t hate it but I just don’t understand the taste.

5. How do you exit a party?

I pretend I got a phone call; “Excuse me? Oh, I totally forgot about that….”

6. How you wanna go (either un-seriously or seriously).

I want to go in a meditative state of mind. But make sure to play some funky shit at my funeral. Like, Kool & the Gang “Celebration”, Earth, Wind & Fire “Boogie Wonderland,” and of course, Fujii Kaze. I recommend “Matsuri”.

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To celebrate the launch of The Medievalist, our first print issue, we’re publishing a selection of stories from the magazine, plus a few newsletter-only additions, for all of you wenches to enjoy. Today, pop culture writer & creator of ModernGurlz Tessa Rahaman explores just how the Middle Ages became known for drab, gray, and frankly, “dirty” aesthetics…and how that couldn’t be further from the truth. The Medievalist is available for purchase online, now!

When did Timothée Chalamet in The King, with his bowl cut, grey wardrobe, and penchant for rolling around in the mud, become the poster child for style in the Middle Ages? Sometime in the last 50 years, all the color, pomp, and play was drained from medieval fashion in film. The irony is that this drab aesthetic is as much a Medieval fantasy as fire-breathing dragons, magical sorcerers, and immortal unicorns.

During the Middle Ages, wool was the most common textile throughout Europe, and in its undyed form it came in shades of beige, grey, and brown. But even back then, people cared about their appearance. “There’s this idea that fashion has only existed for one social class, but people have wanted to express themselves through clothing for almost as long as we’ve been wearing clothing,” says fashion historian Cora Harrington. “Medieval peasants may not have had access to all the luxurious velvets and silks worn by the upper class, but they still would have used whatever local textiles and dyes they did have to appear as fashionable as they could.”

While they didn’t have as wide a range of dyes as we do today, Mother Nature still provided, with red, orange, yellow, green, and blue being used as popular options for clothing at the time. The more saturated these dyes were, the wealthier you were, and in existing Medieval artwork, you can see how commonplace it was for nobles to wear garments made up of multiple vibrant colors. We can still see a divide when it comes to the clothing of different economic classes to this day, but in the Middle Ages it was even more apparent, with nobles adorning themselves in garments that featured intricate embroidery, jeweled embellishments, and even cloth woven out of literal gold.

While there were differences across countries, centuries, and classes, there are prevailing silhouettes that have come to define the Medieval period. “Women would wear a kirtle — a straight, floor-length dress with a round neck and long sleeves,” says dress and design historian, Vicky Haddock, “And for men, they’d wear tunics, doublets, and hose.”

In modern times, women tend to be associated with bolder fashion choices than men, but during the Middle Ages, societal norms made it the opposite. Men of noble backgrounds were expected to dress ostentatiously as a way of highlighting their king’s wealth and means, but this sort of colorful clothing isn’t really considered “attractive” to audiences of today. As a result, instead of patterned hosiery and ornate surcoats, modern male characters have a habit of sporting leather pants and quilted manteau, making them look more like H&M models than Medieval lords. (Case in point: 2017’s King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, starring a brooding Charlie Hunnam.)

Modern beauty standards have impacted women’s fashion in Medieval films as well, particularly with regard to headdresses. Because of the influence of medieval Christianity throughout Europe, it was considered inappropriate for a married woman to show her hair in public, which led to a variety of headdresses emerging throughout the period, from the more simple wimple to the height-defying hennin. While I personally think they look fabulous, (I mean, have you seen Faye Dunaway’s escoffion in The Story of Joan of Arc?), Hollywood has a tendency to avoid them. As Haddock says, “Because we’re not used to seeing people wear hats in general, these sorts of large headdresses can be off-putting, so movies ignore that and go for flowing hair. It appears more natural, so people will believe it.”

Since the inception of the film industry over a century ago, the Middle Ages have served as a source of inspiration, with The Adventures of Robin Hood in 1938 being one of the genre's earliest successes, featuring bright and playful costumes. Its popularity subsequently set the standard for films set in the Medieval Era, and in the following decades Ivanhoe, The Court Jester, and Henry V adopted similar looks, consisting of colorful houppelandes (a tunic-like garment with flared sleeves), shining armor, eye-catching tights, and jewel-encrusted weapons.

At the time, film was a lot more over-the-top than it is now, as evidenced by the phony Transatlantic accents, giant set pieces, bold Technicolor, and frequent musical numbers. The costuming maintained their playful aesthetics well into the 70s and 80s, with medieval settings incorporating distinctly ‘80s additions like giant hair, fishnet kirtles, and spandex leotards (Excalibur, Ivanhoe, and The Princess Bride).

However, the grungy ‘90s ushered in the grittier representations of the Middle Ages, with films like The 13th Warrior, Dragonheart, and Robin Hood solidifying the aesthetic as the new normal. By rooting these films in a version of the past that audiences could more easily accept, and contrast with their current lives, the more absurd aspects of their premise could be excused. Obviously, these movies had their fair share of historical inaccuracies (e.g., Mel Gibson’s kilt in Braveheart), but they were interpreted as being more “realistic” than Medieval movies of the past due to the absence of glitz and glamor. This led to an entire generation believing that medieval peasants never bathed, ate nothing but gruel, and wore garments akin to potato sacks. But, as Haddock says, “The myth that Medieval people didn’t bathe or didn’t wash their clothes just isn’t true. The same as now, if you walked around covered in mud, people were going to look down on you, so you would try to keep clean for appearance’s sake.”

When the rare film did take a more creative approach to the Medieval Era, deviating from this filthy association, they were often lambasted for being too ahistorical. Take for instance A Knight’s Tale — while Jocelyn’s black-and-white hat might look like it was pulled from Dior’s FW 2000 runway, costume designer Caroline Harris actually based it on real 15th-century headwear. This phenomenon was coined “The Tiffany Effect” by author Nicola Cornick, as a reference to a historical fact seeming anachronistic to modern audiences, (like the name Tiffany, which has actually been in use since the 1600s).

Over the last decade, there has been a major push for films to move in a more realistic direction, in large part because audiences are no longer suspending their disbelief long enough to accept the kind of fallacies that have historically gone hand-in-hand with film. With the internet giving anyone and everyone a place to voice their thoughts, these cynical critiques have completely changed the way that Hollywood goes about making movies. As former Paramount Pictures CEO Barry Diller said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, “It’s different. Everyone is more cautious and conformist now…The rough edges have been sanded off. We’ve gone from a town to a spreadsheet. And obviously that can’t help but impact the creative output as well.”

Although movies like The Last Duel and Outlaw King attempt to position themselves as historically accurate, their austerity is actually a pretty big deviation from reality. Sure, with most of these movies having darker themes, the muted visuals make sense from a character and world-building standpoint, but it’s unfortunate that they’ve resulted in so many misunderstandings about medieval fashions.

Instead of churning out this faux-realistic grit over and over again, I’d love to see Hollywood explore aspects of the time period that were more modern than people would suspect. They don’t actually have to be covered in dirt all the time. Give me a harlequin hennin. A pair of poulaines that look eerily similar to an Adidas Samba. Or a headdress covered in baby blue bows. And I will continue to repeat my refrain: Make the Middle Ages Colorful Again.

Buy The Medievalist now!

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Tessa Rahaman is best known as the mind behind ModernGurlz, a digital media organization dedicated to all things pop culture. She’s always on the hunt for something new to obsess over and will happily talk your ear off about food, fashion, and film.

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Welcome to mixed feelings’ Hyperspecific, a profile series of increasingly intimate questions in which we ask our favorite artists, characters, musicians, and the like to unveil their innermost selves — their weird existential musings.

To say I’m a Wednesday-head would be to put it lightly. Inside me there is a Tim Burton-coded woman, to be sure: surly, independent, vaguely goth.

When the first season of the series arrived in 2022, I swallowed it whole, and then again, and then again. Last September, I was invited to visit the sound stages where the show is filmed outside of Dublin, Ireland. I beheld hand-sculpted carnivorous plants, spoke with the former magician whose well-known hand now plays “Thing,” and had a chance encounter with Catherine Zeta-Jones in full “Morticia” regalia.

With part one of Wednesday Season 2 now out, we know that Georgie Farmer, who plays the gorgon “Ajax Petropolus,” and Noah B. Taylor, who plays werewolf “Bruno Yuson,” are grappling for the affection of one Enid Sinclair, Wednesday’s werewolf roommate. The end of Season 2, Part 1 leaves us heartbroken for Ajax, who Enid has emotionally left in the dust for her pack-mate Bruno, and yet optimistic about Enid and Bruno’s burgeoning romance.

While they play rivals in the world of Wednesday, it’s clear Georgie and Noah have an almost brotherly affection for each other when they walk into our studio. Single-handedly, they exhibited to me how the male loneliness epidemic could possibly be cured — through shared interests, unabashed kindness, and (take notes, boys) vulnerability.

All the proof that these two heartthrobs are faces to adorn with hearts and tape into your locker is below.

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LEVEL I

1. Something you’re always hoping people bring up in conversation.

Georgie: I feel like this is kind of bold, but, like, sarcasm. If you have sarcasm with someone straight off the bat, it's like, oh, we've got a good rapport.

Noah: I think just anything in common that I can latch onto. Something I've heard of. The worst is when you're talking to somebody and you’re like, “Oh, what movies do you like?” And they say stuff you don't know and you have to flip the coin. Do I pretend I know it or not? That's rough.

Georgie: Music's always a big one too.

Noah: If they bring up an artist you like, it's great.

2. Can you say a positive trait about each other?

Noah: Oh man, this is going to get emotional. Georgie has just— it's hard to verbalize it. I love this guy. He is always there for me whenever I need him, which sometimes is a lot. He’s a good guy.

Georgie: I said this to you the other day, but you're a real artist and I think you have a really beautiful artistic expression that is really rare to find these days. I love you, man.

3. One destructive trait you know you possess and wish you didn’t.

Georgie: I feel like for both of us, we're chronic over thinkers. Sometimes when we hang out with each other, we say how bad we are for each other because I'll overthink about something and then Noah will be like, “Man, you're overthinking.” And then Noah will start overthinking about something and I'm like, “Man, you are overthinking.”

Noah: It's just like five hours of like, “Did I say something wrong?” We can't go anywhere. We can't do anything.

Georgie: The amount of times we probably asked each other that question…

Noah: Is brutal.

Georgie: Is insane. I think we probably said that more than anything else to each other.

Noah: Probably more than the lines that we say in the show.

Georgie: I think it's the worst when people make you feel bad for overthinking. I get sometimes, obviously, it can get annoying, but one thing is to be there for your friends when they're going through it, because it's a real thing, that anxiety.

4. If a bodega were to name a dish after you, what would it be? (Be specific.)

Georgie: Probably just a plain burger.

Noah: Well done, with no sauce.

Georgie: With a bit of lettuce.

Noah: We were hanging out [last night], and he ordered a burger and they put cheese on it so Georgie didn't want it and he was like, “Oh man, you can have it.” I was like, “Oh, thanks Georgie, extra burger.” And I bite into it and it’s just dry. It's brutal. There's no juice. Just like, ugh.

Georgie: I’ve got some weird eating habits. [And then to drink], just a room temperature water. It's been out a little bit too long. Not filtered enough, maybe.

Noah: [For me, it’s a] Cup Noodles and coffee. That’s most of my meals.

Georgie: I remember going to his apartment one time and there were like 20 empty Cup Noodles. They were all in one area, like, he was about to clean, but I was like “Okay, man, you’ve been eatin’ good.”

5. One song that makes you feel understood.

Georgie: “Other Side” by One Minute Friend.

Noah: He's plugging my music. That's sweet. He didn't have to do that. I would go with, “Don't Delete the Kisses,” Wolf Alice. That song is so good. That song makes me feel like a kid.

6. Something you think is wildly underrated.

Noah: Walking around alone. If I'm having a good day, having a bad day, you got to just let the brain work itself out. Walk somewhere you haven't been before.

Georgie: Going to the movie theater by yourself, there is not a better experience. I love doing that. I think that's criminally underrated.

Noah: What about going to the movie theater with a loved one?

Georgie: No, I prefer going by myself honestly. Because you get to focus and you get to, you can study it. Especially here in America, I feel like the movie theaters are set up for you to go by yourself.

LEVEL II

1. A movie/tv show you watch when you want to self-soothe.

Georgie: There are so many, but I think maybe the one that comes to mind [is] The Hangover. If I get on a plane and The Hangover's on, I'll always put on The Hangover. It’s a great comfort movie for me.

Noah: Days of Being Wild. [It’s a] Wong Kar-Wai movie, very soothing. It's a beautiful movie and it's like, there’s this little dance in it, in the mirror. It's very cool.

2. What is your problematic favorite artist, actor, dead or alive?

Georgie: I was a big Kendall Roy fan from Succession. I know that he is problematic and there are definitely things that he did that were wrong and bad, but for some reason I was rooting for him in that last episode. Jeremy Strong is just incredible.

Noah: “I’m the eldest boy!” [For me, it’s] Shinji from Evangelion. I feel weird even saying that. I don't like him, but it's a good show. He's going through it and he’s a kid, and it’s crazy. I’m gonna get brutalized for that.

3. What is the first fandom you lost yourself in?

Georgie: Probably WWE. Still lost in there. Love John Cena. Or maybe Power Rangers. I used to have all the different suits.

Noah: Star Wars. I knew everything. I wanted to be Captain Rex from Clone Wars.

4. What is something you bought recently after LOTS of research?

Georgie: My issue is I don't research enough before I buy something. Recently, I bought a new film camera. I bought a Leica M6, and I'm just not skilled enough of a photographer to be able to use it, so every time I go get the film developed, it's, like, unusable.

Or amps, when we were in Dublin. I should have just got a drum amp, but I was like, “Oh, I'll try and get a bass amp instead.” It sounded terrible.

Noah: I am in the process of trying to convince myself to buy a Buzz Ricksons jacket. They're high quality replicas of World War II-era jackets. Actually, wait, I want to gate-keep this. I don't want people to know about this! Oh well.

5. A fictional world you want to live in and why?

Georgie: Nevermore Academy. If you went to school at Nevermore Academy, you get to live there. You're surrounded by all these guys that have these crazy powers. There's always some action. [I’d] see Bruno walking around, see Wednesday walking around, see the Addams Family walking around, Steve Buscemi is your Principal, Billie Piper is one of your teachers. Come on. No-brainer.

Noah: I want to live in Cowboy Bebop. That's it.

6. Random thing in your home that always requires explanation?

Georgie: I have a couple of weird paintings that I've done that sometimes my mom will just look at and just be like, “What a waste of a canvas.” Not in like a mean way. I don't want to out my mom, she's very loving, but at least when she says, “Oh, that's good” you know she feels like it’s good.

Noah: I’ve got music equipment, I’ve got film cameras, I’ve got audio stuff. I was looking for my gimbal, the focus assist. I couldn't find the gear. I was looking through piles of stuff for hours and I couldn't find it. I had to buy another one, and then I found it, and it was horrible. Great story, Noah.

Georgie: Struggles of being a filmmaker.

LEVEL III

1. What’s an anecdote you usually tell to describe how you were as a kid?

Georgie: I remember when I was younger, we used to go to Disney every year, and I used to go and meet Mickey Mouse every year, and I used to cry [on the plane home] because I was leaving Mickey, and then when we'd go back the next year, I'd be like, “Oh, do you think he remembers me?”

Noah: I really liked to do the dance from Mary Poppins. The chimney sweep dance. I have a video of it. [My parents] love to pull that up.

Georgie: I’m gonna need to see that. Born to dance.

2. What is your lowkey hell and actual heaven?

Georgie: My lowkey hell is probably deboarding. I get it why people want to stand up, but also— you’ll go to get up and then someone's lifting the overhead thing down and they'll just completely just take you out.

Noah: Mine is being stuck in traffic and really having to use a bathroom. And you're just genuinely just running out of options.

Georgie: Or, when you’re somewhere, and you go to the bathroom queue and there's a big line.

[My actual heaven is] doing an interview with Noah B. Taylor, to be honest. But also I think spending a really good day with someone that you love, going and getting coffee, then going and watching a movie at home. I just think quality time with someone that you love is heaven.

Noah Taylor: Driving somewhere I've never been before, listening to an album that I like, and not really knowing what I'm going to be doing in the next month.

Georgie: You’re a free spirit.

3. What is your most unhinged coping mechanism?

Georgie: Texting Noah Taylor loads of times, “Did I do something wrong?” I think probably just chronically overthinking, again. Normally what I'll do is I'll just put myself into a room and just chronically overthink, and then I'll just pace around the room and I'm thinking about every single thing that happened and every movement that I made, and that goes on for a couple hours, and then you get so tired to the point that you just fall asleep. Just a standard night.

Noah: Chopping wood calms me down. It’s because there's a goal, it's very achievable. It's so calming, and then you get through it and then it splits, and then you do the next one.

4. What is one random thing you hate so much for no apparent reason?

Georgie: You know when you are having a conversation with someone and you think they’ve finished, so then you start to say something, but then they’re still speaking. I hate that. I just think that's so uncomfortable.

Noah: I don't really like Arby’s. I mean, I guess I've just tanked my chances of a brand deal with Arby's, but I don’t enjoy your food. “We have the meat”?? There’s too much meat.

5. How do you exit a party?

Georgie: Too late, is probably the first thing. I'll go around and I wish I could do an Irish exit, because people that can pull off an Irish exit, that is a level of cool that I just could not get to.

Noah: I've tried to Irish exit and then people are like, “Are you okay?” They just feel bad for me. They think I'm having a crisis and I was just trying to be cool.

6. How you wanna go (either un-seriously or seriously).

Georgie: Something quick. Easy. Not dramatic. Everyone's sort of like, whatever, he had a good run. And then everyone goes and gets on with their life.

Noah: Into the sun. Spaceship. *Explosion sound* No, that's actually really bad. That sounds horrible. Peacefully in my sleep. Surrounded by loved ones, not alone. With Georgie Farmer. With Georgie. Actually Georgie by my bedside as I go into the sweet embrace of nothingness. Right?

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