New Year, Same Me
healing my inner child or whatever
On or around the New Year, I write to my future self. I use a website called FutureMe - you write the message, you choose how far in the future to send it and on that date, you get an email. I’ve done it every year without fail since 2018 and every year, without fail, it makes me sad. The message is formulaic by this point: it’s been a tough year, there have been some moments of joy but it’s tough, I hope next year I’m finally learning to be happy.
So, every year, I sit and read and my heart aches for the past version of me who despite having had a difficult twelve months continues to hope and believe in a better future. At the same time, my heart aches for the present version of me, sitting and reading this note from the past and still feeling the same way. Then, after spending ten minutes staring at a wall worrying that I’ll always be stuck with an inherent sadness and wondering when this belief that better days are coming will finally be broken, I write my message for next year. Rinse and repeat.
I mentioned this phenomenon to a few people this week and that really, I should stop sending myself this message and perpetuating this cycle of melancholy. But one of them (shout out to Johanna, my partner in whimsical crime) said something that I think changed my view. She told me that I shouldn’t think about the me from a year ago or even the me of today, but to think about little me, the child I was and whether if they met me as I am now, they’d be happy. And believe it or not, I said yes.
Little me, her nose always stuck in a book would love that I still loved reading so much. She’d love that my flat was filled with pretty books and art from the stories I love. She’d be amazed by my craft table, giddy that I was still spending time creating and making things, even if they’re bad. She’d love I was still writing, even if it was only these monthly newsletters and the occasional mopey poem. She’d love that I’m still silly and funny and love to learn about ridiculous things and start ridiculous projects just because they interest me or make me laugh. But most of all, little me, who always felt a bit out of place, a bit different and a bit confused about friendships, she’d look at the fact that there are a host of people all over the world that I’m lucky to love and be loved by in return.
If I met the younger version of myself, she would look at me and I would look at her and we would know that we are the same person and sometimes, some things don’t change. This little girl wouldn’t know yet what was ahead, both highs and lows, but she would be smiling anyway seeing where the grown up version of herself is standing. Maybe we’re all just the little versions of ourselves, learning the navigate the world among other people who are little versions of themselves while we all pretend to be functioning adults.
So long story short, I have still written myself a message for next year and yes it’s still the same. But while I might be the same person, sending myself the same message every year, this time, it includes a reminder to think about that little girl and look after what she wants too.
WHAT I’VE BEEN READING
December
680,149 words read
Daily average of 21,940
54 fanfics / 1 published work
Running total word count for 2025: 18,760,667
Unfortunately, the slump has continued, but I did read one brilliant published work so let’s yap about it
In Memoriam by Alice Winn
“You’ll write more poems. They are not lost. You are the poetry.”
Brief summary:
The year is 1914. The violence of the war feels simultaneously far away and inescapable - news of heroic deaths are a world away from Henry Gaunt and Sidney Ellwood’s idyllic English public school, but it’s all anyone’s talking about. Gaunt, anti-war but half-German feels the pressure mount as anti-German sentiment intensifies and none of this is helped by the crushing infatuation he feels for his best friend.
So, he enlists and finds himself on the Western Front.
Ellwood, who is just as secretly infatuated, rushes to join him, soon followed by the rest of their classmates. Surrounded by the cruel realities of war and gruesome deaths that just seem to be accelerating in numbers, Gaunt and Ellwood find solace in each other. But the Western Front is no place to be falling in love, especially for two men, and the story follows them navigating the tragedies and the messy feelings that come with it.
My thoughts:
Surprising absolutely nobody, I loved this. Something about queer historical romances hit me in the chest every dang time. Then, with its perfectly imperfect characters, a devastating story and all wrapped in gorgeous prose, In Memoriam gave me all the ✨big feelings✨. It was raw and visceral and harrowing and among it all, emotional and heartfelt, and god, just stunning.
BUT, I wouldn’t call this a perfect five star read from me as I did have two problems with it. Gaunt and Ellwood were captivating as characters and while I loved the interactions between the supporting cast around them, I don’t feel like they had enough room to breathe on the page and really get to know them. Therefore, this left most of them blurring together in my head and I would have liked this to be tightened up.
Second, I know this harrowing story of the horrors of war and how these irreversibly change people didn’t need any more angles of angst or conflict, but the stakes of why they needed to keep their relationship secret didn’t feel that real. Contextually, this is the early 1900s so obviously there were social implications that were certainly referred to as a threat, along with the threat of being court-martialed, but any time anyone found out about Gaunt and Ellwood, they were… surprisingly chill? Again, not that this story needed any more strife, but it just struck me as odd.
Overall though, this ranks highly - I tend to avoid star ratings but this would certainly be 4.5 stars from me.
2025 Reading Wrapped
WHAT I’VE BEEN DOING
Ah December, my favourite month of the year! I can’t lie, I’m a Christmas bitch through and through so December was definitely filled with its fair share of festive joy. I had a wonderful few days with my family up north, getting spoiled absolutely rotten with food, drink and presents. We continued our tradition of the annual Christmas Eve fire pit night and on Boxing Day, I even got to meet my little nephew for the first time and officially take my place as Cool Auntie Annie (although my sister might disagree with that title)
The one big thing I want to yap about though is the magical weekend I spent at Hever Castle. Anyone who has read these newsletters before, or indeed spoken to me for longer than five minutes, will know that me and my best friend, Amy, are obsessed with Tudor history and specifically our Queen, Anne Boleyn. While a considerable amount of this obsession is attributed to Natty D (Natalie Dormer) and her portrayal of Anne in the Showtime TV series, The Tudors, we also have a love for the real history and our ongoing History Dates have centred a fair few locations with Tudor connections.
Our favourite ever History Date was one of our early ones, Hever Castle in August 2023, and since then we’ve been dying to go back. We’ve also been dying to stay at the B&B there and so for Amy’s birthday this year, me and our friends got her a voucher to stay. Selfishly, this was also a gift for me, and the first weekend of December was finally the time for that gift to come to fruition.
Hever Castle, while the oldest parts date back to the 13th Century, is most famously known as being the home of the Boleyn family and therefore, the childhood home of Anne Boleyn herself. Thomas Boleyn (Anne’s father) inherited the castle in 1505 and it remained in his possession until his death in 1539. During his courtship of Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII stayed in residences nearby, mostly Bolebrook Castle and Penshurst Place, and after Thomas Boleyn’s death, he took ownership. At this time, he bestowed the castle to his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, following the annulment of their marriage in 1540.
The castle subsequently passed through several eras of ownership but in 1903, it was purchased by an American millionaire called William Waldorf Astor who restored the property, added varying features and used it as his family residence. Today, the castle is a tourist attraction and museum, exhibiting an array of historical antiques, portraits and tapestries. Most notably, it’s home to Anne Boleyn’s Book of Hours (a personal prayer book) which she carried and even wrote notes in the margins.
The castle itself is stunning, but what really makes this place beautiful is the gardens and grounds. For Christmas, Hever Castle transforms - the rooms are decorated with Christmas trees (27 to be exact, we counted!) and the grounds turn into a light trail with fairground rides and food stalls. This year, the theme was Christmas in Oz so the light trail also included a section inspired by the original book by L Frank Baum.
The B&B was SO nice and I’ll be honest, we’ve both been thinking about the glorious shower the room had since…..
WHAT I’VE BEEN WATCHING
WARNING: THIS SECTION CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR SEASON 5 OF STRANGER THINGS, INCLUDING THE FINALE
I’ve gone back and forth as to whether to post my raw ~2200 word unhinged rant on the finale of Stranger Things but fuck it, I have big feelings about it and big feelings need big rants…
When Volume 1 of the final season of Stranger Things was released, I was thrilled. Not just because Stranger Things is my favourite TV show and the episodes were incredible, but because they were seemingly doing something ground-breaking. Stranger Things is one of the top shows in the world, having both cult nerd following and mainstream appeal, and without being specifically marketed as LGBTQ+ media, their main character was confirmed to be canonically gay.
The show had already done an excellent job with positive queer representation, having introduced Robin Buckley (my wife) in Season 3, but to have Will’s arc centre his queerness? Incredible scenes. It’s mad that in this day and age it still feels ground-breaking, but alas, such is the modern world and it was exciting.
There were also some beautiful scenes of allyship between Robin and Will. I spoke about this in my last newsletter but Robin’s speech about the freedom of accepting and embracing her sexuality was SO impactful on me and I stand by that being such an important scene. The representation there does matter and it sounds silly but for a show as big as Stranger Things to delve into these themes, wow, maybe the tides were turning.
But then, in the space of four episodes, their final four episodes at that, the Duffer Brothers have undone all of that work and betrayed every queer fan they baited along the way. I have mixed feelings about the finale in general, which I’ll go into later, but this is the problem that I can’t stop thinking about.
After Volume 2, things were looking bleak for Byler (for normal people, this is the name for the relationship between Will Byers and Mike Wheeler). Will came out to everyone but reduced his long established feelings for Mike as a fleeting crush, despite seasons (and years) of build up and most of the fanbase felt that this meant Byler was now never going to happen. I was part of the delusional minority that still thought something might switch around in Volume 3 (aka the finale) and part of the even smaller minority that actually really enjoyed Volume 2.
There was a fantastic quote that I’ve seen a load of times online on Mike’s character that feels apt to talk about before we dive into Volume 3 - “either Mike Wheeler is the best written representation of internalised homophobia in the 1980s, or he’s just a guy I don’t like very much”.
I was holding out hope for the former, but it turns out he’s just a guy I don’t like very much.
The Duffer Brothers really had an opportunity to do something special, but they chose not to, instead opting for the narrative choice of “slow burn rejection” (who knew that was even a thing). Pre season 5, I was indifferent to Byler, but it was definitely building even from the very early seasons and to have this arc come to such a dissatisfying conclusion is beyond weird writing.
Worse, the arc was dragged out until the final episode while at the same time keeping the status of Mileven (Mike/ Eleven) deliberately ambiguous until the Byler arc had concluded. Mike and El had limited interactions this season where although there did not seem to be any bad feelings, they noticeably were not romantic and many people assumed they had amicably separated in the time skip between season 4 and season 5. However, once the Byler story was done, it was suddenly “I love you”, “you’re the only one who truly sees me”, “don’t leave me” and their first on-screen kiss of the season. The entire thing reeks of queerbaiting but the worst kind because we were so close to actually having it this time.
Will Byers is a character who has been severely and routinely traumatised throughout the show, and sure, it’s nice that he got an arc of self acceptance but why is it that that’s the happiest a queer character gets to be in mainstream media? Why couldn’t Will accept himself and have a loving relationship? Is it so inconceivable that a queer person can have both? Especially after experiencing nothing but horrific trauma for five seasons.
And even if the point of his arc was to embrace himself (which sure, it’s overdone, but sure), there was a way to do this without the breadcrumbed slow burn build of a romance that was always intended to be one sided. There’s a reason “slow burn rejection” isn’t really a thing - it’s a poor narrative choice and doesn’t resonate with audiences. There’s no two ways about it, the Byler storyline was handled badly and that’s not even mentioning the lack of emotional resolution on key plot points. To summarise, instead of a beautifully layered slow burn friends to lovers storyline, we got:
No direct confession to Mike (although the Duffer Brothers have said that Mike realised in the moment of Will’s coming out where he was talking about a crush, he was talking about him). But this meant there was no real conversation about it or emotional resolution, just Mike apologising to Will for not being there for him and assuring them that they’re still best friends. WHICH WHILE WE’RE TALKING ABOUT IT WAS WRITTEN IN THE WORST WAY. Will says something about how he hopes they’re still friends and Mike says “friends? No.” Dramatic pause. “Best friends.” Oh fuck tf off with that???
No resolution on the painting storyline from season 4 (where Will paints a picture for Mike, El tells him Will is painting a picture for a girl he likes, Will gives it to Mike but lies at the last second that El commissioned it for him before quietly sobbing to himself).
The conversation between Robin and Will about signals that turn into an avalanche was entirely redundant. Why have Robin explain the signals she had from Vickie then show Mike making those signals if it was always going to be one-sided?
Mike’s character is now just pretty insufferable with no explanation as to his motives or behaviour. He’s spent the last few seasons being both a shitty boyfriend to Eleven and shitty friend to Will, for which we could have had a really nuanced explanation for had it been the case that he was a repressed queer teen. But nope, turns out he’s just a bit of a prick who couldn’t even say “I love you too” when El was about to die.
As I said, before the release of this season, I was completely indifferent to Byler so this is not a “ahhh my favourite couple didn’t get together so everything sucks!” situation, this is a “again? we could have had something ground-breaking but again the best we get is a self acceptance storyline?” and a “yet again a major media franchise queerbaited its audience”
Also it’s kind of crazy to me that in the final scene when Mike is imagining the happy futures of the party, Will’s involves travelling to a far off city where he finds acceptance and we see him in a gay bar with presumably a boyfriend. You’re telling me that we’re expected to believe that Will’s “happily ever after” is miles away from the people he loves, in a gay bar? Will, the boy who’s greatest fear with coming out was his closest friends and family either not accepting him or drifting away from him? That Will, yeah? Everyone else got something really meaningful and important to them, whereas Will’s felt like a bit of a dig. Like… “yeah you won’t find acceptance here btw, I guess if you go elsewhere, ya know, away from us all, you’ll find some kind of connection”.
But it’s okay, because at least we had some positive representation of a queer relationship with Robin and Vickie, right? Right guys?
Wrong, nope, incorrect, buzzer womp womp sound. Because Vickie is not only completely absent from the epilogue, but we get exactly zero explanation on why this is the case. So now it appears that the purpose of the Robin and Vickie relationship wasn’t to give Robin some light in her life and a positive representation of lesbian relationships, but only as a vehicle to forward Will’s poorly handled story.
Lesbians lose yet again.
At this point, the Duffer Brothers may as well have called us a slur.
I know it doesn’t sound like it, but I did enjoy the Stranger Things finale and cried a lot, it’s just I had problems with it too. The treatment of its queer characters was one of the problems, but I’m afraid I’m not done with my gripes…
Low stakes, poor pacing and predictability
Objectively looking at the finale, this is its biggest issue. Everything just… went well? They came up with a plan and executed it perfectly, in turn defeating the Mind Flayer and Vecna, wooo! Any issue they came across was quickly resolved and the final battle (albeit visually a very cool sequence) was over in a blink of an eye. This meant that the entire thing felt very low stakes and anticlimactic, particularly as this season had been hyped for there being some serious character deaths. Nobody was even really injured!
As much as I was relieved that my favourites survived, the fact that everything went perfectly to plan without the devastating blow of some major character deaths (excluding El as this was obviously going to happen and the Duffers backpedalled on it anyway with some ambiguity at the end) meant the stakes and tension just weren’t there. I kept waiting for something to happen, for a plot twist or a spanner in the works, but it never did materialise.
Pairing this with the wild pacing choices and how utterly predictable it was, I left thoroughly underwhelmed with how safe they played it.
Unresolved plot lines, unanswered questions and possible plot holes
I felt like I was in the trenches after Volume 2 was released because I wanted to scream at everyone complaining how shit the episodes were that we still have one episode so calm tf down, all of these questions that you think point to bad writing will definitely be answered.
Right, aside from the ones already mentioned, let’s speed run what’s still unclear/ unanswered/ an un-shot Chekhov’s gun:
The Demogorgans/ Demodogs/ Demobats were completely absent in the final episode with no reference to this or why it was the case
Henry’s high school memory served no purpose and although it might go into this in the stage show, it feels like a big deal that all of the parents went to school with him so would have known who he is? If not, then why the memory?
The ticking grandfather clock and time motifs for when someone has been cursed by Vecna served no purpose other than what.. his own theatrics?
When they were attacking the Mind Flayer, Will was tapped into the hive mind which we’ve seen before means that he feels what they feel. Yet, while Vecna was affected by it, Will wasn’t?
Unclear what happened to Erica and Mr Clarke when the church was raided
When they exited the Upside Down and got caught by the military, how did they get out of that? They had trespassed onto military bases, obtained top secret information and killed a load of soldiers along the way, surely the military wouldn’t just be like “okay see ya later”
While we’re at it, there was no real conclusion on the Dr Kay plot. Like yeah the Upside Down imploded with (maybe) El and Kali so they can’t carry on their research but did they just shrug and go home? Like what happened there?
Still no explanations given for the absence of Suzie (you can assume that she and Dustin broke up but it would have been so easy to chuck in a throwaway line!)
No explanations given about the Turnbows escaping the barn or Ted Wheeler coming out of a coma. Obviously you just assume it’s happened and it’s not super important but pointing it out anyway
STILL no explanation on how in Season 1, El recognised Will from a picture and knew he was in the Upside Down
God it feels like the right time to point out again that I did actually enjoy the finale and there were some good, emotional and impactful moments:
Like I said, while short lived, the Mind Flayer battle sequence was visually brilliant and we got some primo Nancy-Wheeler-with-a-gun content.
When Vecna showed Hopper his fears around El and he believed he accidentally shot her, DEVASTATING
Holly and Max’s reunion, and Holly earning her ‘Walk ‘Em Down Wheeler title
I’m not crazy about Mileven (again kinda neutral in general, although preferred Byler) but despite their ambiguity this season, their goodbye sequence was pretty heart wrenching. As was everyone’s reactions to El’s sacrifice.
Joyce and Hopper engagement!!! The doomed Enzos date finally happened!!!
Dustin’s speech at graduation and echoing what Eddie said he was going to do when he graduated !!!
The final D&D game scene was lovely, and despite Will’s imagined future, the entire thing was incredibly wholesome
The older kids rooftop scene was equally lovely and Steve’s ending was so right for his character, a coach? Pls I sob!!
Stranger Things is still my favourite show, so while I have serious disappointments with its conclusion, I can’t say that I totally hated it. Regardless, it’s the end of an era but I won’t be saying goodbye to the show anytime soon.
Oooft that was a long one. Thank you if you made it to the end - catch y’all next time!
With muchos love, Annie x