Been headcannoning Lars as a Londoner because this is the city where it’s socially unacceptable to exist in the direction of a stranger and I think that fits him very well.

So he’s going to DESPISE the Subway. I’ve heard from people that live there that people make a fair bit of noise on it and actually make eye contact and such, sometimes people even play music on there.

I cannot imagine anything more opposed to the London tubes. They literally ran an ad campaign when I was a kid that basically said “Do not play music without headphones in a crowded tube carriage because not everyone wants to listen to your shitty music, Ethan.” Making eye contact? Unheard of. Forbidden. If you don’t have a phone or a book or a friend to occupy yourself with, you stare at the ads or the floor. That’s just the rules.

I think the first time a stranger makes eye contact with Lars he’s going to feel like living up to the stereotype and stabbing someone.

Twitchers could kill it in the supernatural genre

I’ve spent a lot of time around twitchers because my dad is one (and also a butterfly enthusiast) and because I’m into aviation and let me tell you, the Venn diagram of those interests (at least in the U.K.) is just a circle.

They know their shit better than possibly anyone else. Like the volume of information and life experience these people have is frankly insane. Every time I went to sit in a field for 5+ hours or something with my dad and got chatting to a twitcher, they’d impart some kind of eldritch wisdom, compare their findings with the others there and then either go back to another hour of complete silence or start nerding out about their subject of choice.

I got more information about planes on a weekly butterfly-watching trip just by asking like one question a week than I have by doing anything else. One time a guy started eagerly gushing to me about his authentic Concord boarding pass he found on EBay, absolutely thrilled that he could share it. You do not get books like these people. They are another breed. (This of course goes mostly for twitchers encountered in the wild).

They also have insane dedication. Up at the crack of dawn and out until dark. Will spend 5+ hours unmoving in the same spot just to try and glimpse a new bird. AND they have good knowledge of wildlife and terrain, meaning they have the advantage when put in unknown (U.K.) surroundings.

I fully believe that they should be more prominent in the supernatural/modern fantasy/paranormal genre in Britain like it would be so good. They would be able to endear themselves to the fay, hide from monsters, document evidence of findings (because a. Christ, have you seen some of the equipment they use? and b. There is nothing twitchers hate more than not having proof of what they saw. It’s literally the word for an obsessive bird photographer).

If the main characters are ALL twitchers you could even centre it around a group of them. Or if one of the main characters is, you could pull a funny and be like “Oh, [supernatural phenomena]? I’ve known about that for months. Someone on bird Twitter reported it.” because who the fuck checks bird Twitter other than the people refreshing it every 2 minutes for updates on firecrest sightings.

Twitcher character gets distracted from main plotline to go chase a fuckin stonechat or something and the rest of the team have to try and stalk bird Twitter to find out where they’ve gone.Accidentally get the protection of any and all nature spirits encountered on the journey.

Hell, I’m tempted to find a D&D party and play as a twitcher now. I think that’d be a laugh. Maybe their goal is to see a super specific rare bird that only appears once a millennia under super specific conditions and the journey is too dangerous for them to make alone.

These guys are deffo the modern equivalent of druids is what I’m saying. More stories should feature them.

Also, in case you are unfamiliar with the sight:

This is what twitchers look like when they’re not in a bird hide (which to the unaware, is like a camouflaged shed with windows you can poke a camera/binoculars through to observe birds without being observed).

We had a shitty makeshift gallery for my grandma and it was awesome.

My grandma’s always been disappointed that she couldn’t get higher education (especially higher education in art) because “It just wasn’t what you did back then.” (she got married quite young which meant she had to take up a lot of jobs immediately after getting out of school).

She’s said a few times that she feels like people think she’s stupid because she spent a lot of time teaching kids with special needs and people thought it meant she was too thick to teach ‘normal’ kids. And she somehow refuses to acknowledge how great of a painter she is like babe. I take Art GCSE. I’ve SEEN the average person’s painting ability.

So in the February half term we all dressed up like posh guests and blu-tacked her recent paintings to the wall, then we all walked around pretending we were at a very prestigious exhibition. She was equal parts flattered and embarrassed, so mission successful. My 10-year-old cousin was very happy to pretend to be a rich, snooty woman coming to buy the whole lot with her 50p coin.

This is the woman who insists she can’t paint, lads.

We’ve tried to tell her lmao. We’ve tried our best.

We had a great night and everyone got really drunk except me and the kids, and then someone broke a glass and we had to evacuate. 10/10.

Wowee. This is a bit of an emotional one. Just warning you now.

I’ve been watching Ghosts pretty much since it came out. My dad surprised me with the first episode and refused to let me know what we were watching until I saw Ben Willbond’s face and was like “HOLD ON.”

(Nobody asked, but my favourite has always been the Captain because I’ve been obsessed with the Second World War since I was 7. My dad’s favourite is Robin, my mum’s is Kitty and my sister likes Pat).

It wasn’t niche then by any stretch of it. It’s always been popular, but it certainly wasn’t something your teachers plus the whole internet were cracking out the good wine for. (I proceeded to annoy everyone in my life by talking about it, little did they know that 3 years later they’d become equally obsessed by it).

And that doesn’t sound too special, but like. When Ghosts came out, I was in Primary School. Now I’m sitting my GCSEs. That’s fucking insane. Not even mentioning how it singlehandedly carried me through lockdown when I was dealing with a bigger workload than ever (online school just means strictish parents get to cross over into actually strict) and only had one friend to communicate with.

The first (and last) time I read proper fanfiction was when I was like 12 and looking through the Ghosts fandom because I was having a really, really bad time with paranoia and couldn’t sleep.

When we had our Year 10 mocks, my friend showed up half an hour late to our Chemistry exam after doing zero revision because she was bingewatching every episode of Ghosts to cope with exams. She gave me a rose for valentine’s this year with “I’m from Yorkshire mate, I’m practically made of tea.” on it. Her Yearbook quote is gonna be “I’m going to drown myself in the lake! I mean it!”

My Media Studies teacher found out I watched the show and started enthusiastically taking me through all of her theories about it before Season 4 came out. (She’s like sixty and her favourite show is Line of Duty by the way). Before Season 5 came out I asked her how she felt and she gave me a very excited “We’re getting out the good wine!!!”

So. My grandad died in 2022. Just before Christmas. They thought he’d make it to celebrate Christmas with us, but they’d overestimated. He had lung cancer, caused by working around asbestos as an industrial electrician. I genuinely cannot describe how much of a wonderful man he was. He was the best person I ever met, and more of a second dad than a grandad.

The last thing my grandad watched with us (we put a lot of importance on watching things as a family, at least in my family. Not sure if this is the same for everyone) was an episode of Ghosts. We thought it would be a laugh, because his end of the family are all from Sheffield and they’d introduced Maddocks. He was very out of it, and on an oxygen drip. He couldn’t really pay attention but he insisted on trying because he wanted to make us happy.

He died that week, on the day we had to leave. We were in the house when he started failing and all we could do was drive back down to London.

(Ghosts actually got a shoutout in the funeral. We’re a family with a sense of humour, and my grandad was the kind of man that results in a family debate about whether Ça Plane Pour Moi is an appropriate song for a funeral).

The Christmas episode that year broke me. In a good way. When they played Pat’s video tapes, I saw every photo of my dad’s family in the eighties in Yorkshire. It can’t be too hard to capture the energy, I’m sure, but I’ll tell you this. There wasn’t a dry bloody eye in the sitting room. My aunt even got their Christmas pictures out afterwards. My Sheffield family saw their childhoods on the screen and my London family saw my grandad.

It’s funny how things can end up being an accidental allegory or feel cosmically intentional.

I’m not saying this for pity, or to one-up anyone about my connection to the show. I just feel like if I don’t describe every detail, Ghosts’ impact on my life is going to be understated. And I’m more than happy that it will impact so many more people.

So, yeah. Thank you, Ghosts. I can’t think of a single piece of other media that’s been as impactful on my life. Thank you for being made with care and love and attention to detail and terminal levels of Britishness. Thank you for dealing with death and grief and healing in an entertaining way.

Thank you. For everything.

Being a late 2010s kid was mad because most of the tv and film that fundamentally changed and shaped you as a person wasn’t even GOOD. I would not be the idiot I am today without the absolute crap that aired in my youth.

Late 2010s nostalgia is always “This may be utter flaming surface-level garbage but I will defend it with my life.”

It’s like stockholm syndrome. If you told 8 year old me I’d be nostalgic about Justin Bieber music one day I’d have slapped you. But here I am. Like I’m so young I unironically watched Teletubbies as a child (not to say I enjoyed it, but still-).

Respect to our decade for the pure insanity that was the media landscape, we had a good run lads.

Oh my god the effort not to shit myself laughing at my English teacher’s expression when half the class (secondary school average level of intelligence - we’re not set for English, some of these guys forgot there was a murder in Macbeth) knew what hamartia/a fatal flaw was. Thank you Rick Riordan it seems we collectively retained something.

Nobody talk to me I’m thinking of the historical and cultural landscape leading up to the Scottish Knights of the Round Table tales where a heroic Mordred leads a rebellion against a tyrannical King Arthur.

Sorry I just

Just in case anyone had any respect for me here’s something I drew when I was in Year 8.

I have always been and will always be a dumbass have a nice day.

The ninth doctor is Northern (and why I think that’s cool)

So the ninth doctor was a very successful attempt at reintroducing Dr. Who to the British public, working under the assumption that they might never have seen the show before. And it was so successful that there was major upset when he left after one season. Even my grandma found herself watching Dr. Who with me and my mum because it’s!!!!! Christopher!!!!! Eccleston!!!!!

The reintroduction of the character of the doctor is straight up genius in my opinion and my brain will not shut up about it. They play off a trope in a lot of British media that I’m going to call the Big Friendly Northerner trope. Think characters like the BFG, Maurice Flitcroft in The Phantom of the Open, Kempton Bunton in The Duke, that one guy in the Railway Children movie (actually a lot of them). Characterised by stubbornness, childlike qualities, cheeriness, not always being the brightest in conventional settings but very practical/resourceful/excellent at what they do, a mix of comedically arrogant and heartbreakingly humble (to the point of seemingly not caring about themselves at all), etc. An ‘atlas complex’ or compulsive need to help and please everyone is also common but not necessary to fit the criteria.

They play off this trope for the character of the Ninth doctor with his chaotic all-over-the-place energy, parental qualities, childlike sense of wonder and cheery disposition.

And then they make it their own to give you more of an idea of the Doctor’s nature. His cheerful demeanour at times becomes almost sociopathic when he doesn’t react in the face of horrors (which definitely helps it sink in just how ancient the guy is). The ‘atlas complex’ is his years and years and years building up on him and his desire to protect life that cannot protect itself.

This is a genius way to introduce the Doctor back to British audiences who may not necessarily be familiar with the character but are certainly familiar with this trope (even if they can’t identify it).

And hey, it puts a big Northern guy with a thick accent as a godlike genius who’s constantly stated to be super smart and I am here for saying fuck you to the idea of who ‘smart’ is and what ‘smart’ looks like. Like fuck yeah Christopher Eccleston go play an alien genius with your thick accent fully intact, fuck yeah “Lots of planets have a North.” and having Northerners be part of sci-fi without needing a good explanation. (This honestly goes for having diversity in accent and dialect in general, always a Grade 9 from me). I just. It makes me happy. Gives me the feels.

God I have a lot of feels about this.

I love subversions/twists on this trope (see The Phantom of the Open and how they use it to make the suicide scene so much more heartbreaking).

And I mean hey it’s always good to see Northerners thriving in this country.

Post-War London Dr. Who companion

They don’t even know what a banana is, nevermind the aliens. All they know is smog and cans of spam.

They have the exact same reaction to outer space/universes beyond our comprehension as they do to like… Brazil. They form a conspiracy theory that the Americans are descended from aliens and refuse to drop it because the notion of America as a country is just so strange to them they struggle to comprehend it. They ask all the aliens they meet if they know the Americans much to the doctor’s embarrassment.

They go to London in the modern day and they’re like “Okay… not much has changed.”

But they’re taken to a slightly different part of England in the same year, same everything and they’re like

“Wow, Doctor! What planet is this?!”

“………..this is Coventry.”

They will eat literally anything from any era or planet. I mean it beats rationing, amarite? And plus, people came up with some weird recipes during rationing. (Or just. Y’know. Use carrots for everything.)

They go back home for an episode and tell all these colourful stories to the people they know, their family, their football mates, and everyone thinks they’ve gone mad but they’re so intrigued! And it brings some light into the lives of people that really, really need it.

They’re bright and cheery and resilient in the face of danger because they grew up in the aftermath of ‘blitz spirit’ where people had to keep calm and carry on otherwise the stress of the situation would completely break them. Maybe sometimes they share little tidbits of their home life and the doctor is just stunned by how thrilled they are about such small things that seem so pathetic and trivial to a nigh-immortal alien.

They talk about playing football in the smog when you couldn’t even see the other side of the pitch and how it made playground games much more exciting as a kid (The doctor is very concerned for their health). They talk about how much fun they used to have playing on old bomb ruins with their friends. They talk about the pranks they pulled at school and how their education was completely useless but they had a jolly good time being educated, despite the beatings. They know how to find joy in difficult places and situations.

Maybe every once in a while they drop a short sad bit like “Oh, I never saw my parents’ wedding photos myself. Their best friends had them in their house during the war, you see, and I’m afraid the bombs took the photos with them.” or “My mother cried when I turned eighteen because I was old enough now to be sent away to war if things turned sour with Russia.” but they say it cheerily and almost seem not to realise the tone of the conversation has gone down because everyone has stories like that, don’t they?

They take home souvenirs from every adventure they go on with the doctor and in episodes where they go home they slowly build up a display for them in their family home.

New hobby

Feeding English Lit quotes into this opposites day bot on character.ai like god intended. Try it. It’s free.

What is it with wizards and Sixth Formers

Like seriously, as far as media representation of Sixth Formers goes, nothing is as accurate as these two (Merlin from The Kid Who Would Be King - essentially a David Walliams movie with more swords and turning into owls, Douxie from Tales of Arcadia). They have so much post-GCSE energy and I have no idea how to feel about it.

It’s the “I’m the most unhinged person you’ve ever met but so dead inside and mid-giving up that it either balances out or propels me at 500 miles an hour into the nearest obstacle.” And the I-was-not-prepared-to-be-an-adult-but-now-I’m-in-a-room-full-of-secondary-school-children.

Like damn Mr. Pratchett you really were onto something with that “Sometimes you can only reflect reality with allegory.” shit.

(For reference, a little more information about this particular version of Merlin, because I know this movie probably didn’t reach many people but this version of him is absolute gold:

He ages backwards, do not think about it. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about the implications of that. Will he end up as a foetohgodIthoughtaboutitfortoolong.

He does not try at all to disguise himself or who he is. He is physically sixteen but walks into a class full of Year 8s and doesn’t bother with excuses, just gets chatting to the main characters. His fake name is Mervin or Marlin or something. And I mean, his philosophy is completely correct. Why bother trying? What fucking school senior staff member/Year 8 child is going to be like “You know….. I think he might be the wizard Merlin.”? Nobody’s gonna suddenly draw the conclusion he’s a magic man who’s older than the English language. And I love it.

He’s not even really trying that hard to stop the world ending (which by the way, it will if the main cast don’t stop it). He’s just like “Lol the world’s ending, you want McDonald’s?”

He turns into an owl when he sneezes.)