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الاستماع والقراءة

Adèle Oliver

Deeping It analyses drill's fight against moral panic and its fraught relationship with the police and political authority in the UK, exemplified by constant censorship, racism, and moments such as when a drill duo became the first people in British legal history to receive a prison sentence for simply performing a song.
Policing, policy and criminalisation are the cornerstones of colonial suppression; art, self-expression and collective action are beacons of resistance. Deeping It places drill firmly in the latter category, tracing its production and criminalisation across borders and eras of the British Empire, exploring drill's artistic singularity but also its inherent threat as a Black artform in a world that prioritises whiteness.
Intervening on this discourse steeped in anti-Blackness, this Inkling 'deeps' how the criminalisation of UK drill cannot be disentangled from histories, technologies, and realities of colonialism and consumerism.

404 Ink

Inklings

Deeping It: Colonialism, Culture & the Criminalisation of UK Drill

Nathan Charles

When you think of 'gambling' you might think of Vegas casinos, betting shops and football flutters but the risk of gambling is embedded in numerous corners of popular culture that many of us consume.
By considering the concept of 'soft gambling', No Dice asks how we could possibly link the Pokémon Trading Card Game with gambling. Can we compare Netflix to a night at the theatre? When does fictional gambling within video games go too far with their infamous loot boxes? Does such risk affect everyone or are socio-economic divides driving further inequality?
No Dice explores the messy world of gambling and risk that we encounter regularly, from childhood through adulthood, considering if it is worth the risk and if we even know what risks we might be taking.

No Dice: Gambling and Risk in Modern Culture

Karl Thomas Smith

Grief is all around us. Even at the heart of the brightly coloured, vividly characterised, joyful films of Studio Ghibli, they are wracked with loss – of innocence and love, of the world itself and our connection to it. Whether facing the realities of death, the small and continual losses we encounter through our daily lives, or the anticipatory grief of the environment's ongoing decline, each has a distinct presence in these beloved films, with their own lesson to hold close in our lives, and comfort to be found.
Now Go enters the emotional waters to interrogate not only how Studio Ghibli navigates grief, but how that informs our own understanding of its manifold faces. Touching on some of the cornerstone films and characters — from My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away and beyond — and their intersections with his own life, the broader spectrum of loss, and how we can move forward, Smith invites us to consider how these beacons of joy offer us a winking light in the darkness.
(Please note this title is unaffiliated with Studio Ghibli.)

Now Go: On Grief and Studio Ghibli

Karl Johnson

Loki, ever the shapeshifter, has never been more adaptable across pop culture. Whether it's deep in the stories from Norse mythology, the countless offshoots and interpretations across media, or even the prolific Loki that has come to dominate our screens via the Marvel Cinematic Universe, each serves its own purpose and offers a new layer to the character we've come to know so well.
By exploring contemporary variations of Loki from Norse god to anti-hero trickster in four distinct categories – the God of Knots, Mischief, Outcasts and Stories – we can better understand the power of myth, queer theory, fandom, ritual, pop culture itself and more.
Johnson invites readers to journey with him as he unpicks his own evolving relationship with Loki, and to ask: Who is your Loki? And what is their glorious purpose?

The Loki Variations: The Man, The Myth, The Mischief

Anahit Behrooz

Friendships can be the foundation of our earliest memories and most formative moments. But why are they often seen as secondary to romantic, or familial connection, something to age out of and take a back seat to other relationships? BFFs is an examination of the power of female friendship, not as something lesser, but as a site of radical intimacy, as told through the cultural touchstones around us.
From coming-of-age tales through physical intimacy and discovering personhood to break ups and parting of ways, Behrooz considers the vast significance of our friendships through the work of Toni Morrison and Elena Ferrante, Booksmart and Grey's Anatomy, Insecure, The Virgin Suicides and beyond.
To have a life rich in love is often viewed through a specific lens; BFFs shows us that friendship can offer a more expansive and emancipatory understanding of female intimacy, and can be the most important, loving relationships in our lives.

BFFs: The Radical Potential of Female Friendship

Kajal Odedra

Hair is potent. Its presence and its absence has profound influence upon our lives, across race, gender, sexuality, status, and more. It will grow in places you don't like and it may desert you – suddenly, or gradually. Whatever your experience, you have had a relationship with hair and its power. Kajal Odedra considers how hair has shaped society today, from the 'perfect' blondes in the school playground to the angry skinheads on the streets. Mohawks, wigs, afros, these are just a few of the ways in which hair has been part of history and wider activism. The word 'essay' derives from the French 'essayer', meaning 'to try' or 'to attempt'. This is Odedra's 'try' at hair – part memoir, part observation across history, politics, religion, and culture. Hair/Power explores the power, control and ultimate liberation that hair can provide.

Hair/Power: Essays on Control and Freedom

J. David Reed

It's one of modern history's most beloved sci-fi creations and while the Doctor is revered world-round, what about their companions, friends and acquaintances along the way? For all the time travel and extravagant alien worlds, Doctor Who is often at its best when it looks to you, the average viewer, and how the lives and values of us human beings are actually spectacular.
The cup of tea or coffee we make in the morning, the relationships we carry and lose in life, the routines we love and hate, the vinegar-soaked chippies we have at night – they might look mundane against the spectacle of the Doctor but what if it's us, the humans, who are the fantastical ones?
In We're Falling Through Space, J. David Reed investigates how Doctor Who uses its larger-than-life lens to consider how the mundane is a lot more special than we might realise. As one of the Doctors put it, 'Do you know, in nine hundred years of time and space, I've never met anyone who wasn't important before.'

We're Falling Through Space: Doctor Who and Celebrating the Mundane

Zara Rahman

As we go about our day-to-day lives, digital information about who we are is gathered from all angles via biometric scans, passport applications, and, of course, social media. This data can never fully capture our complex, fluid identities over decades of our lives. Yet, this data populates numerous databases we may not even be aware of that can make life-or-death decisions such as who is allowed access to welfare benefits or who is granted food parcels as they pass war-torn borders.
Machine Readable Me considers how and why data that is gathered about us is increasingly limiting what we can and can't do in our lives and, crucially, what the alternatives are.

Machine Readable Me: The Hidden Ways Tech Shapes our Identities

Selin Bucak

When we hear news stories about displaced people, people running away from war, living in exile, they're always accompanied by big numbers, presented as waves of immigrants. The Last Day Before Exile re-focuses the narrative to the human side, sharing some of the hardest moments of their lives, where they had to make the decision to stay or go.

Tracing the steps of professionals who have moved from the Gaza Strip, Pakistan, Morocco, Iran, Afghanistan Turkey, and Ukraine, Selin Bucak shares stories of rebellion, fear, and, in some cases, victory.

To truly understand what immigrants often have to go through at the hands of governments, legislation, and war, we need to put ourselves into the shoes of the people living in exile.

The Last Day Before Exile: Stories of Resistance, Displacement & Finding Home

Jean Menzies

For a period in time that gave us Sappho and the love affair of Achilles and Patroclus, the Ancient Greek relationship with queer folk is more complicated than at first glance. Tales as old as antiquity persevere, whether the goddess of love Aphrodite, Tiresias, the prophet who spent time as both man and woman, or the infamous Heracles. But, what can these ancient stories offer our contemporary world?
Historian Jean Menzies dives into the world of queer retellings and the Greek myths being told anew by LGBTQ+ writers. From explorations of gender and identity across millennia, to celebrating queer love in its many forms, All the Violet Tiaras invites readers to discover the power to be found in remaking these myths, time and again, carving a space for queer stories to be told with all the complexity and tenderness they deserve, with a goddess or two for good measure.