My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite – a book review

This book being set in Nigeria is more than just a background setting: author Oyinkan Braithwaite is Nigerian and the characters’ names, speech and social norms are all distinctly tied to the culture they live in. It gives the setting far more than any amount of descriptions of the landscape could.

Protagonist Korede is a well-rounded and believable character, her motivations and opinions make perfect sense as you read them. Through her perspective we feel like we know her sister Ayoola and friend Tade, but wonder how accurate that view of them is. Her viewpoint slowly widens throughout the story as she learns more about them, and about herself.

Starting after the third murder, we get flashbacks to Ayoola’s boyfriends and the sisters’ abusive childhood at the hands of their father. This bit by bit reveal of more context reframes things as worse and as better: Braithewaite weaves a complex web of complex characters, questioning everyone’s motivations for everything at every turn. Is Ayoola a cold blooded murderer, a victim of serial domestic abuse, or neither? Are the hospital staff disgusting and lazy or just people who could never live up to Korede’s standards? Is Tade the caring and honest angel that Korede sees or the shallow everyman that Ayoola claims?

The investigation into Ayoola’s murdered ex-boyfriend Femi’s disappearance and the relationship between Ayoola and Tade ramps up not only the tension but Korede’s anxiety. Will they be discovered? Where does Korede’s loyalty truly lie? As time goes by, the pressure for Korede to choose between turning her sister in or potentially letting her kill again builds. The tension for the reader builds too, as we wonder if Tade is truly in danger and whether the secret will come out. Femi’s body lies in the river waiting to be discovered. Korede pours out the secrets to a comatose patient despite the potential to be overheard. Ayoola’s boyfriends lives are at constant risk.

A beautiful piece of writing, especially for what is apparently Braithwaite’s first full length novel. Don’t just take my word for it: My Sister, the Serial Killer won the LA Times’ Book Prize for best mystery/thriller, the Amazon Publishing Reader’s Award for best first novel, and the British Book Award for best crime and thriller book of the year. Oyinkan Braithwaite is a name to watch.

Eurovision 2022: the Aeron-Score winners

Like most people, I have my own drinking game slash scoreboard system for judging Eurovision entries: points for glittery costumes, costume changes, and particular gay culture costumes; points for singing in their own language, using obscure instruments and for doing impressive vocal things; points for impressive staging things like fire or moving set. There are many things, and sometimes they change, because it’s all just for fun.

That all being said: here are my top three and where they came in the jury, public and overall rating, and as bonuses, my ‘nil points’ country and take on UK too.

Nil Points!: Switzerland

They’ve got three official languages and another recognised national language to choose from, none of which are English, but they sang in English. It was a beautiful little low key ballad that I really enjoyed, but between that and the minimalist staging and costume, they just didn’t manage to score any points in my system. Perhaps if I had a better musical ear they might have scored points, as I know plenty of people award/drink for key changes and the like, but I can’t recognise that.

People seemed to agree with me, as they got zero voter points, although the jury gave them 78, putting them last by voters, 12th by jury and 17th overall.

Us: the UK

We’ve had some dross for entries and I never expect much. I quite liked our entry this year and it got a pretty respectable 6½. There were rhinestones, a strange light-up pylon that moved, and a guitar seemed to appear out of nowhere. Sam Ryder did some impressive vocals and falsetto, too, giving him points for classic things. I don’t give us points for singing in English, and I quite liked the song.

What a wild ride the score results were! As usual, Graham Norton blabbered on that he thought we had a winner and I thought back longingly to the outstanding commentary Terry Wogan gave. But instead of counting nils, I found myself shouting, “What!?” as I counted douzes. Somehow we swept up the jury points, getting twelve from 8 countries and coming an astonishing 283 and first place. As the official people probably started to panic about having to host next year, the whitewash win of voter votes for Ukraine came in. But, with 183 voter points, fifth place, we came second.

Third Place (9pts): Ukraine

An enjoyable song and the winner overall, I gave them nine points. Between their costumes, audience participation and the breakdancing, they got a fair few non-musical points. Adding the genre-blend, long flute and Ukrainian lyrics, and it nearly broke ten points.

Politically motivated or not, as it was an amazing entry, it really gathered up those votes. Five different countries’ juries gave it 12, and an amazing 28 countries’ voters gave it 12. Fourth in jury ranking with 192 and a runaway voter winner with 439 (200 points more than the voters’ second place!) they came first overall with 631 points.

An Aside: Russia vs Israel

I fully agree with the decision to remove Russia from Eurovision, and was happy to see the amount of support for Ukraine, including flags in the audience and even on Germany’s Malik Harris’ guitar. However, every year I am disappointed to see Israel included and the country’s crimes and attempted genocide of the Palestinians ignored. If Russia can be removed for active war, surely Israel can too? Or at the very least Palestine could be included.

Second Place (10pts): Australia

All controversy and memes (and photoshopped maps) aside, I love seeing Australia in Eurovision. They really engage with the Eurovision atmosphere and don’t feel like outsiders to watch. With the bejewelled veil that he took off later, white feather costume that turned out to be a train, and the dry ice and moving stairs, it was a good scoring performance. There were a few points I had to award it for all the impressive voice things, too.

Voters didn’t seem to agree with me, though, giving the second lowest score of 2. The juries gave it 123 points and ninth place, which added up to a 15th place score of 125.

First (13pts): Moldova

I note down my favourite songs separately from my scores to listen to later. This was on both lists, because it was brilliant in both ways. They had costumes that looked like reimagined traditional clothing, matching novelty suits and funny hats. They got the audience to participate, they sang in mostly Romanian, they had a big set change and went down to the audience… and it was a polka. It was a scream, it was a spectacle, it was a score-magnet.

They didn’t do well on the jury scores, coming 20th with 14 points. The voters were more on my wavelength, though, and gave them 239, second only to Ukraine. That means a respectable 7th, with a total of 253.

Some Other Highlights:

Remember the Rasmus, rock band of Top 5 song “In The Shadows” and frontman-with-hair-feathers fame? I hadn’t thought about them in apparently almost 20 years, when that album was out, but I was happy to see them. Representing Finland, they had a great song and the frontman still has the feathers.

Norway’s entry was another novelty one; yellow wolf masks, morphsuit dancers and an astronaut DJ, and a fun funny song about the Big Bad Wolf. Apparently grandma’s a high source of potassium, if giving him a banana will stop him eating her.

Serbia brought the artistic performance and political messages, and did not come to play. Creepy religious symbolism, repeated hand washing and Serbian and Latin lyrics about healthcare and inequality.

Poor Germany did not get a single point from the juries, wallowing in nil points while 10 other countries got more than 100. They only got 6 voter points, too, staying pretty close to the bottom despite a nice song and interesting staging.

Elliot Page, and Eight Non Binary Celebrities

Elliot Page

The Hard Candy, Juno, Inception and X-Men film star, Tales of the City and Umbrella Academy TV star and Oscar, BAFTA and Golden Globe nominee came out as trans on 1st December 2020. Announcing his new name as Elliot and his pronouns as both he/him and they/them, Page became front page news and received an outpouring of love and support from fans and backlash from bigots.

While most headlines reported that they had come out as non binary, they only mentioned being trans and that they use both he/him and they/them pronouns. Coming out can be a terrifying process which takes a while, so they may clarify their gender in the upcoming months or be content without a precise label of man, non binary etc. Either way, Here are eight famous people who are specifically non binary.

Asia Kate Dillon

The John Wick 3 film star and Orange is the New Black TV star also plays the non binary character Taylor in Billions. They say it was a coincidence, but a fortunate one, as the character being played by a real non binary person is significant. They took pronouns off of their online presence in 2015, saying it felt really good to. It wasn’t until reading into the character for Billions, however, that they found the language to really explain who they are. Likewise, having a clearly non binary character in a mainstream programme is fantastic representation.

Tommy Dorfman

The Thirteen Reasons Why and Jane the Virgin TV star came out as non binary in November 2017. They told online magazine Refinery29 in an interview about clothing and its importance. They referred to a childhood of seeing clothes as costume and hating the idea that clothing is gendered. While it didn’t come up in the interview, they posted a comment on the article to reassure readers that they have no preference for he/him, she/her or they/them pronouns.

Brigitte Lundy-Payne

Brigette Lundy-Paine (Photo by Ryan Emberley/amfAR/Getty Images)

The Atypical TV star and Bombshell and Bill and Ted Face the Music film star came out in an Instagram post on 7th November 2019. As well as saying that they’re non binary, they say they’ve always felt partially a girl, partially a boy and partially neither of those. The use they/them pronouns and the same name, shortened to Brig (or Briiiiiiiiiig, on Instagram).

Indya Moore

Before playing Angel Evangelista in Pose, they were a model who worked for Dior and Gucci, in New York Fashion Week and has been featured in Vogue España. She clarified in a tweet in September 2019, saying she is non binary and femme, and that agender fits too. At that point, they said their pronouns were they/them, but as of December 2020, her twitter bio lists both they/them and she/her.

Her role in Pose is a vitally important one, as the programme is groundbreaking in its sheer number of trans characters and the fact that most of them are played by trans actors.

Amandla Stenberg

The Hunger Games and The Hate U Give film star, and BET Award and Teen Choice Award winner came out as non binary in March 2016. In a Tumblr post, they talked about intersectional feminism and posed the question of how they can claim a movement for women without feeling like one all the time. In another post, in April 2016, they clarified that while she/her does not upset or offend them, they prefer they/them pronouns.

Rebecca Sugar

The Steven Universe creator told NPR’s 1A that she is a non binary woman, which is to say she is isn’t entirely a woman but is okay being seen as one, but she is in herself non binary. She made the crystal gems non binary characters who look female both as representation and as a way to express her gender experience.
As another programme with central characters who are not cisgender, Steven Universe is important representation. As a children’s cartoon, it is especially important for showing children gender diversity is normal and positive.

Bex Taylor-Klaus

The TV star from The Killing, Scream and Thirteen Reasons Why, came out as non binary in July 2018. Saying that they had already come out as trans non binary to a room full of people that day, and that it was time to do it on twitter, too. They also used the word enby for themself, a noun for non binary person along the same meaning as girl and boy, but not a word that all non binary people use.

Jonathan Van Ness

JVN is a hairdresser, the grooming expert on Queer Eye and the host of Gay of Thrones. He identifies as gay and gender non conforming as well as non binary. He has been femme since childhood, loving skirts, scarves, nail polish and other things which made him the target of hatred. He uses he/him pronouns and his male-assumed birthname, although he has said he doesn’t consider she/her or they/them to be the wrong pronouns either. While many see the concept of androgyny as a lack of gendered traits, Van Ness happily mixes skirts and a beard in a presentation style sometimes known as genderfuck.

Bonus Round!

While RuPaul has a terrible track record on trans topics, a surprising number of the drag queens who have competed on RuPaul’s Drag Race are non binary or otherwise not men or women.

This includes, but is probably not limited to:
Pandora Boxx in Season Two;
Jinkx Monsoon in Season Five;
Adore Delano, Kelly Mantle, Courtney Act and Laganja Estranja in Season Six;
Violet Chachki and Miss Fame in Season Seven;
Bob the Drag Queen in Season Eight;
Shea Coulee, Eureka O’Hara, Sasha Velour and Aja in Season Nine;
Gigi Goode and Crystal Methyd in Season Twelve;
Scarlett BoBo and Ilona Verley in Drag Race Canada;
Divina de Campo in Drag Race UK.

12 Ways to Protest During Lockdown (Without Being a Typhoid Mary)

There are some people who refuse to accept universal medical advice about COVID-19, and are outside putting vulnerable people at risk as a “protest”. Typhoid Mary is one of the cleanest and politest names for this behaviour, especially as the main concern seems to be “getting a haircut”. This article is not aimed at them, because the lockdown is our best method of slowing the spread of disease and keeping people alive. This article is aimed at the activists who were protesting inequality, oppression and injustice before all this, and at the people who want to protest things that have come up during this time.

Indoor Things That We’ve Always Done

Due to distance, physical limitations, vulnerability and many other reasons, not everyone can attend standard protests anyway. There are things that you can do inside, and people have been doing these instead of or as well as outdoor, gathered protests.

1 Write letters to your MP

MPs are obliged by protocol to reply to their constituents, and technically they do work for us and are employed to represent the people who live in their constituency. You can write to them at the House of Commons or email them at their government email address. Writing to them is hard evidence that real people care about a topic, and prompts them to address it in some way. The more people write, the more the pressure is on them to act – you can organise a group to all write to your MPs about the same issue.

Find your MP here: https://www.parliament.uk/mps-lords-and-offices/mps/find-your-mp/

Tips on writing to MPs here: https://www.gingerbread.org.uk/policy-campaigns/our-campaigns/campaign-toolkit/how-to-write-to-your-mp/

2 Make and Sign Petitions

The government has an official website for petitions. Only British Citizens and UK Residents can create or sign petitions, and can only sign once per petition. Petitions will only be rejected if they don’t fit the standards listed on the official site’s help page, and if any petition gets 10,000 signatures it will get a response from the government. Any petition that gets 100,000 signatures is raised as a potential topic of debate in Parliament.

There’s also Change.org, which works in a similar way but with a much wider scope. Anyone in the world can create or sign a petition, and the targets can be companies, world leaders, organisations etc. There isn’t the same guaranteed response system, but it’s a huge petition platform that has gotten solutions for hundred of petitions.

Official petition site: https://petition.parliament.uk/

Change.org: https://www.change.org/

3 Social Media Awareness

A lot of things are less about reaching the government, and more about reaching as many people as possible. You might only have your real friend and family on Facebook, but platforms like Twitter and Instagram are perfect for sharing things with hundreds of strangers. Even on Facebook, there are pages and the friends of your friends; every conversation you have online is a chance to spread a message. And unlike an in-person conversation, your points stay there forever for other people to read. It’s not just gaining allies, either, as you can bring your points to people on the fence and even debate people who so far disagree with you; you might even win them over.

Solo or Distanced Outdoor Things

4 Civil Disobedience

Civil disobedience is, at its core, breaking of unjust laws and/or breaking laws for activist effect. Obviously, for legal reasons, I am not recommending any of these illegal acts. Graffiti is a clear example – for every illegible name tag, there is a striking political statement. Resources online offer methods to disrupt construction such as putting sugar in cement, to disrupt businesses such as glueing locks shut, and to disrupt demolition by chaining yourself to the structure in question.

There are even companies that will send glitter parcels, embarrassingly labelled packages and rancid smelling food products, should you wish to take your protest to an individual in particular.

5 Banner Drops

Speaking of things that are technically illegal, you could drop a banner over a wall, bridge or out of a window. It takes a team but can be done with two or three depending on the size. If you have a banner big enough to need four, you can meet on-site and keep as far apart as you can. There are three parts to dropping a banner. You can make a banner out of a bedsheet or sewing together spare fabric and painting your message on it, and some next-level things to do include weighting the bottom and including padlocks to lock your banner in place for a longer protest.

Choosing your drop place and time is where the question of legality comes in. Places that can be seen or that are context-appropriate might be restricted, and locked banners can be classed as vandalism. Give yourself time to access the place and set up your banner in time for it to be seen by as many people as possible.

How To article about banner drops: https://destructables.org/node/56

6 One Person, One Sign

In fact, you can stage a street protest all by yourself, without any huge and high effort banners or breaking any laws. Make a protest sign out of a large piece of card or cardboard and pen or paint. You might already own a few, as a seasoned activist. Choose a place where people will see you, and possibly combine this with the blockage part of civil disobedience. If you would already wear a face covering to protest, get ready as you normally do to protest. If you don’t, consider it for your own safety, and then don’t forget to wear a mask or bandana over your mouth and nose.

All that’s left is to get out there and get your message seen and heard!

Some safe protest advice: https://www.itspronouncedmetrosexual.com/2017/01/a-few-small-tips-for-attending-your-first-protest-march/

Virtual Things

7 Online Rallies

People are already taking to platforms like Zoom to protest during the lockdown. Over 200 people joined a Zoom rally set up by staff and students at Forth Valley College in Scotland on 1^st April, almost 500 Irish protestors attended an event on Zoom to demand justice for sacked Debenhams staff on 29^th April and various unions held online rallies on 1^st May for the historically celebrated International Workers Day.

While these online rallies aren’t quite as effective as rallies in locations where people pass by, they can easily get much higher attendance. There’s no need to be able to physically attend, so international, disabled and time-constrained people can join in. This numbers advantage means that while bystanders aren’t as easily reached, the companies and governments being protested against do see a bigger potential impact. As a new phenomenon, news media is more likely to report your rally, as it’ll have that topical lockdown factor.

Facebook’s Portal App: https://portal.facebook.com/gb/

Skype: https://www.skype.com/en/

Zoom: https://zoom.us

8 Panels and Parties

Similarly, you can host or attend parties and panels. You can have speakers and performers on a zoom chat or party, just like you would at a physical event. Unlike a rally, which only attracts protestors and rally watchers, these ideas can attract people interested in the content itself. The bigger the names you can get to talk or perform, the bigger the viewership you can get. Themes of talks or performances attract viewers too, and a party setting can get non-activist people interested.

Event names and things like Facebook event listings give you the option to hype the event up and point to clear numbers of people interested in your cause. You can use them to raise money as well as awareness, and explore new events such as vigils, readings and skill-sharing.

9 Map Pins and Geo-Tagging

Key locations can be protested at without physically going there! The Russian equivalent of Google Maps, Yandex.Maps and Yandex.Navigator, has been used by Russian protestors to leave public messages at public government buildings. Pins can be dropped on the map and shared publicly, so whatever is written is visible to people looking at that area. Coordinated protests have led to slogans and complaints covering government buildings and routes on the map service.

While Google Maps doesn’t have the same ease of public pin-dropping, locations can be added, and geo-tagging can be used to a similar effect on other platforms. Facebook statuses can be checked in to locations, Instagram posts can be tagged with locations, and while you can’t geotag tweets you can set your whole Twitter account to a location.

COVID-related protests

10 Rent Strike

You may have seen the discourse around rent – many people are out of work, unpaid or on reduced pay, and unable to pay their bills. Many reasonable landlord companies are offering rent reductions and even non-collection of rent during this time. Some, however, are demanding full rent from their tenants and threatening homelessness during this terrifying period. The obvious protest is rent strikes, which is the refusal to pay rent with no access to the property and broadcast of the facts.

Rent Strike London and the London Renters Union are among the groups sharing the 2020 rent strike campaign, with university student unions and other activism groups encouraging people. There are template letters to send to your landlords, official demands of suspended rent and rent debt cancellation, and a movement to hang white sheet banners from home windows.

Rent Strike London on Twitter: https://twitter.com/RentStrikeLDN

London Renters Union: https://londonrentersunion.org/

Template Letter to Landlords: https://londonrentersunion.org/coronavirus-landlord-letter/

11 NHS PPE

A lot of the current protest and activism is related to the terrible situation that NHS staff has been forced into. People are clapping for them weekly and calling them heroes, but more effectively people and businesses have been donating personal protection equipment or PPE, such as masks, gloves and disinfectant. Despite UK taxpayers paying more than £100 billion a year, and the Brexit promise to spend an extra £350 million a week on the NHS, funding has not increased and PPE orders have not been filled.

A video was NHS staff explained about staff deaths and begged the government for PPE was projected onto the Palace of Westminster on 17^th April. This was organised by the government protest group Led By Donkeys and could be replicated and boosted.

12 Lockdown Counter-Protest Content

The Typhoid Mary’s that this is a guide to NOT being, however, are protesting as normal. They’re also gathering and refusing to follow guidelines, and demanding businesses open and serve them. All of the ways in which they’re endangering hundreds of people, including NHS staff, don’t need to be re-explained yet again. It is possible to protest against them by making a political statement about following the guidelines.

Using hashtags on Twitter and Instagram to share your stay-at-home activities and PPE outfits is one easy way to promote helpful behaviour. Masks are not just for literal germ safety, but a visual signal that you’re following the rules. People have sewn their own, worn costume masks and worn fashion items such as bandanas. Sharing counter-protest content and advice on social media is quick, easy and effective, as is shaming all protestors and those who refuse to follow guidelines.

NHS hand-washing advice: https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/healthy-body/best-way-to-wash-your-hands/

Government Social Distancing Guide: www.gov.uk/government/publications/full-guidance-on-staying-at-home-and-away-from-others

Goldblum, Drag Race and the Issue of Us and Them

Disclaimer: I am not Muslim, Iranian/Persian, American or a woman, all of which are relevant to the comment and the issue. I am, however, Christian and queer/non-heterosexual, both of which are also relevant.

Note: Drag queens are referred to as they/them throughout this article to refer to them as the same person whether in or out of drag.

The episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race released on Saturday 26^th April 2020, Season 12 Episode 9 “Choices 2020”, guest-starred Jeff Goldblum. He asked lots of questions that revealed he isn’t familiar with drag culture, including the very awkward amazement with Gigi Goode’s tuck. However, his controversial question that prompted media outrage and this very article was in response to Jackie Cox’ stars and stripes hijab and kaftan outfit:

“Is there something in this religion that is anti-homosexuality and anti-woman? Does that complicate the issue? I’m just raising it and thinking out loud and maybe being stupid.”

Many responses are emotional, and justifiably so, and I was angry at his semi-rhetorical question. Having slept on it and read brilliant thoughts by various Muslim and Middle Eastern people, including queer/non-heterosexual people, women and drag performers, there are many layers of racism and othering in this mentality.

Bear in mind, Goldblum was not being deliberately racist, and RuPaul has a history of problematic behaviour; this question was not addressed as problematic and a decision was made to keep it in the final version of the episode, unaddressed.

Islam vs Christianity

Islam has come up a couple of times on RuPaul’s drag race, with Season 11’s Mercedes Iman Diamond having an emotional discussion about being a gay Muslim and deciding to openly talk about it rather than hide that part of them. Christianity comes up fairly often, with some contestants having religious family who rejected them and some having strong faith. In fact, Season 10’s Monét X Change talked about leading their church choir in drag.

The difference is clear and very troubling; both religions have strong vocal subsets who are homophobic and misogynist, and plenty of gay activist, feminist believers who fight against that. The problem here is that the issues within Christianity are portrayed as with bad apple Christians who we defeat by being gay activist, feminist Christians, but Islam isn’t given that same respect.

If being a Christian drag queen isn’t a clash of ideals because of homophobia and misogyny in the church, but instead a beautiful backlash against hateful Christians, shouldn’t the response to Muslim drag queens be the same?

Islam and the Middle East

In the runway voiceover, Jackie Cox explained the message behind the stars and stripes hijab and kaftan as not only celebrating their own Persian heritage but illustrating that people who are Middle Eastern and Muslim are still Americans. Pairing the US flag with traditional clothing, with a red and white striped kaftan and a blue hijab with the 50 white stars, made this outfit not only a stand-out look but one of two political statements. In fact, it was sad to see both Cox and The Widow Von’Du in the bottom, as they were the two who took the patriotic theme as an opportunity to make bold statements. Von’Du wore a black and white dress with a perfectly spherical afro and black activism pose.

Kaftans are widespread, part of traditional clothing in Russia, Western Africa, much of the Arabic-speaking world and are even common in Jewish populations from Slavic and Arabic influence. The word hijab refers both to the type of veil or scarf and the practice of Muslim women’s modesty clothing. Head coverings are common for men as well as women in Abrahamic religions and hotter, sandier areas. The nun’s wimple, Catholic and Eastern Orthodox mantillas, orthodox Judaism’s tichels and tallits are all religious examples, whereas the loose dupatta shawl is worn in India by women of various faiths and both keffiyehs and agals are common traditional Arabian men’s head coverings.

There is nothing exclusively or intrinsically Muslim about the outfit Jackie Cox wore: Goldblum’s first question was whether they are religious, to which they said no. Whilst deliberately mentioning the validity of Muslim Americans, the outfit itself was about Cox’ Iranian heritage and the combination of two nationalities and cultures. To equate all Middle Eastern tradition as Islamic is a major issue that gets overlooked.

Iran vs America

The theme of the runway was stars and stripes; the USA flag. All seven queens were celebrating the USA, colloquially referred to as America. By calling out Jackie Cox’ Middle Eastern representation as complicated due to the area’s religious homophobia and misogyny, especially in this challenge, completely ignores America’s exact same issue.

Whilst sex between people of the same gender is illegal in Iran, all extra-marital sex is illegal and gender-related medical transition is part-funded by the government. Iran was a progressive country in terms of feminism until the 70s, where a fundamentalist religious group took power and moved women’s liberation back. While there are serious problems in Iran and the Middle East, there are queer activism, gay activism and feminism movements.

The history of LGBTQ rights in America is similarly a fight for rights and against oppression by law. While same-gender marriage is now legal, getting that was a battle and there are still barriers and discrimination, with serious problems with transphobia. Just like Iran’s Islamic Revolution, there is no guarantee that the current status is permanent. Feminism is likewise a battle in America, with the President of the United States perpetuating misogynist ideals and boasting about committing sexual assault.

To question Cox celebrating their Middle Eastern and Iranian heritage as a queer/non-heterosexual person and as an American because of the area’s problems is very one-sided. After all, the entire programme’s premise was celebrating American citizenship without question as queer/non-heterosexual people despite the country’s problems.

Patriotism in RPDR

RuPaul’s Drag Race is sometimes ridiculously patriotic. For an international viewer, the connection of flags, military and national identity is intense. Where the closing song used to be “To the Moon” with the lyrics “to, to, to, to the moon!” it is now “American”, with the lyrics “I am American, American, red white and blue. […] I am American, just like you”. This episode’s stars and stripes runway theme is just the latest in a series of patriotic challenges – they’ve had two military drag challenges and filmed a patriotic message for US soldiers, had two separate “Presidential Debates” and filmed Presidential campaign ads, had a Patriotic Drag runway theme, and written verses for the RuPaul song American. That’s a lot of American patriotism without much criticism of the country.

While citizenship is not a requirement, it seems that living in the USA is; all but eight contestants have been living in the USA, with those eight from Puerto Rico, a US territory. Sometimes their heritage or previous nationality comes up, but as a second to their American-ness: African nations are treated as racial and Canada is often treated as a joke, such as Jackie Cox’ own performance in the Presidential Debate challenge.

Just as the RPDR contracts requires contestants to be positive about sponsors, it seems America must come first in terms of national identity. Other countries, when brought up, haven’t been questioned as incompatible with American identity, however.

Jeff’s Outsider Status

Regardless of Jeff Goldblum’s intentions, it was an inappropriate question and he asked it very clumsily. That inappropriateness is heightened by Goldblum being outside to the issue; he is an apparently heterosexual man in a room with women and gay men who dress like women, making him the only one in the room not directly affected by either homophobia or misogyny. He’s also a white man with a Jewish background, asking a Persian person with a Muslim background about issues in the region and faith as if they would be unaware.

He awkwardly showed himself up as entirely new to drag culture throughout the episode, with the previously mentioned fascination with tucking putting Gigi Goode, RuPaul and indeed the whole room in an awkward position of being unable to answer in much detail on an international television programme. If the question was to be asked at all, he was the last person qualified to ask it.

Us and Them

All of this boils down to the same issue as most prejudice, which is the separation of “Us” and “Them”. Here, the Us is Christian Americans, and the Them is Muslims and people from the Middle East. To ask whether they are compatible is to make one the “other” to be potentially excluded. It isn’t just what Goldblum asked, it’s the separation that his question comes from and that it fuels.

Jackie Cox was trying to make a statement of unity for a Middle Eastern and Muslim Americans, and just by asking this question the importance of that statement is clear. The fact that that question was left in the show, answered only by Cox and unaddressed as problematic by anyone in charge, completely undermines that statement of unity.

Five Easy, Last-Minute Hallowe’en Costumes

It happens every year. You have an amazing costume planned, you work on it and get all excited, and it’s just not ready by the time Hallowe’en rolls around. You have an idea, but you can’t find the thing you need in time. You just entirely forget until two days before Hallowe’en. You could throw on that same lazy vampire costume you wear every year, or pull a “serial killer: they look just like everyone else” normal clothes ‘costume’. You don’t need to! You have a day or two, you can do one of these easy costumes that will still say “I planned this and I love costume parties” to everyone else.

One: A Sim

There are levels to this, and all you actually need to buy or make is a plumbob head piece– the green diamond that floats above a Sims head. Greet people with “sul sul!” and occasionally say nonsense or fail to interact with a chair and you’ll really sell it.

At the most basic level, you can wear literally whatever you like. By now, the Sims have near infinite clothing options. Plain tops, t-shirts with nonsense writing or generic images, and slightly odd outfits like pyjamas or a sports outfit are best for that Sims feel.

For a really top-level costume a knee-length strapless red dress, flat shoes and straight dark hair makes for a spot on Bella Goth outfit. Her look varies from game to game, so accuracy is flexible. If you have a little more time and craft skills, another impressive Sim costume is nude Sim. Make yourself a large board of skin-colour pixels and find a way to hang it or attach it to you, and leave your arms and legs bare.

Two: Beanie Baby, Build a Bear, etc

You’ve got an animal costume, but it’s a bit dull and overdone. Spice it up and give people a laugh by turning yourself into a Beanie Baby, a build a bear or other recognisable brand of toy! For the beanie baby costume, just throw on your lazy cat costume or penguin onesie and make your label. Take thick card or cardboard and cut it in a heart shape, colour it red with a big white “ty”. An optional bonus to the label is the yellow “ORIGINAL BEANIE BABY” part, whether the star shape or the bubble text version. Tie it round your neck or to your costume ear with red ribbon and you’ve turned a cliché costume into a funny pop culture reference.

If your costume isn’t a full animal, opt for Build a Bear! Those toys come with clothing and costumes, so the possibilities are nearly endless. Whether you have a full bear costume or cat ears and tail with a princess dress, as long as you have a paw-like glove and a BAB heart-print on it you’re a Build a Bear. The hand logo is a heart shaped red paw print with “BAB” on it in white.

Other brands you can impersonate include Steiff, who have a distinctive yellow label in the bear’s ear, or Hamleys, who have a red ribbon with their name on tied in a bow around the bear’s neck. If you can recreate the label, you can dress as the cuddly toy.

Three: Easy Film/TV Characters

Raid your wardrobe and get your cosplay thinking hat on. A black dress and plaited pigtails equals Wednesday Addams; a shirt and a moustache equals Ron Swanson from Parks and Recreation; a little black dress and some nice accessories equals Holly Golightly from Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

Got a leather jacket and some hair styling products? White tshirt and jeans and you’re Danny from Grease or the Fonz. Black leggings and some blonde curls and you’re Sandy from Grease. Some sunglasses (if you’re muscular) and you’re the terminator. The list goes on, Marlon Brando in Wild Ones, Charlie Sheen in the Breakfast Club, Mad Max…

There are incredibly easy group costumes in this category. Three friends in red, blue and green plain dresses are the Powerpuff Girls. A green t shirt is a rubbish costume unless you have a friend in a purple dress, a friend in an orange sweater and a friend in a white top with a red scarf, and suddenly you’re the Scooby Doo team!

You could even be as lazy as possible and turn up to the party in a dressing gown. If you grab a towel, you’re Arthur Dent from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and if you grab some milk you’re the Dude from the Big Lebowski.

Four: Tourist

All you really need for this one is a camera or a map, but there are some nice tourist stereotypes to wear if you have them. The most obvious is a Hawaiian shirt and beige shorts, but you can swap those out with I heart NY t-shirts or a top with a landmark on it. Just pop down to your local tourist area and grab one of the t-shirts there, or even dig out one you bought on your own holiday and never wore again.

Accessories are what takes costumes like this from half-baked to last minute winner. With socks and sandals, a sun hat and a bumbag (fanny pack to Americans) it’s obvious what you are. Give yourself a sunburn or some tan lines with make up and take a selfie with a selfie stick and you’ll impress people.

To really sell it, stay in character just like with the Sims costume. Pose for photos, take selfies, maintain a general feeling of confusion and awe. If there’s more than one of you dressed as tourists, go on a tour of the party!

Five: Fruit

It’s not spooky, it’s not pop culture, and it’s not funny, but it is a costume and it will pleasantly surprise people. Get as accurate or stylised as you like, and stick to the most visually obvious fruit. You can wear it again at a non-Hallowe’en party, too.

Solid colour outfits are best here, with a hat or headpiece turning it from clothes to costume. Make a green leaf hat and you can mix and match for multiple fruits! A yellow dress is now a pineapple costume, pink or red with polka dots is a strawberry, and wearing all orange makes you a carrot.

Give yourself a round shape and any colour is a fruit. Red apples, orange well, oranges, yellow lemons, green limes, blue blueberry or purple grape. Get a pear shape to your costume for a pear, and get the sharpie out to dot yourself a pink watermelon top. A little fabric paint and you can make a group citrus slice costume, with orange, lemon and lime.

For top notch fun, a bunch or purple or green balloons makes you into a whole bunch of grapes, or a tall yellow hat with a long yellow dress makes you into a banana.

A Dyspraxic’s Thoughts on Doctor Who’s Dyspraxic Character

Note: there are some mild character spoilers, but I’ve tried to keep spoilers to a minimum; no plot details or details on any other character!

As a lifelong Doctor Who fan, I’d been waiting for this season and the new female Doctor with baited breath. Unlike a lot of naysayers, I had high hopes and one episode in I’m already thrilled. However, Jodie’s performance and all the other new and exciting things aside, I feel a special connection to a certain non-Doctor character. In his introduction, the 19-year-old Ryan mentions that he can’t ride a bike and says it’s because of a condition the listener already know about. We, the audience, don’t know what condition but my immediate reaction was ‘imagine if it was dyspraxia!’. I myself can’t ride a bike, so it was a very relatable confession, and my cause is dyspraxia.

Later another character confirms it as such, and I almost yelled at the television! Dyspraxia, also known as Developmental Co-Ordination Disorder, is a condition that affects physical and mental co-ordination. The most obvious symptoms are the issues with ‘gross motor skills’ and ‘fine motor skills’, which as basically larger body movement and smaller precise movements – balance, hand-eye co-ordination and things like posture or gracefulness. It can even effect speech, planning and your internal sense of time.

There are a lot of symptoms and issues, and they vary from person to person. Symptoms, separated into groups, are listed on the Dyspraxia Foundation’s Adults page [http://dyspraxiafoundation.org.uk/dyspraxia-adults/]. People with dyspraxia don’t all have exactly the same issues to exactly the same extent, but it’s a very good resource for understanding dyspraxia in yourself or others. The large movement issues are the clearest and easiest to show, which is why the bike riding and ladder climbing were a good choice for his introduction.

The struggle of bike riding is a common one and a strong visual to introduce him. His feeling of failure and determination to succeed in this task spoke to me, and inspired me to try harder in my own bike riding. Another character’s outburst about his capability also feels familiar; whether the criticism from other people or my own feelings of inadequacy, dyspraxia is an invisible disability and the idea that you’re lazy and useless does come up. For me, as I don’t have an official diagnosis, the idea that it’s an excuse does feel like a familiar insult.

While I don’t have a diagnosis, I am part of a few forums and Facebook groups for adults with dyspraxia where many members do. While there were some that didn’t like his character, no group is a hivemind and the general consensus was positive. His most obvious problem is my own most telling issue, and others felt various levels of connection to it – some felt it a bit stereotypical. Others felt his mountain edge seat was unrealistic enough to break their belief, as they would be too afraid of getting so close to the edge.

Everyone I’ve spoken to agrees on one thing, though, and that’s that having a character with dyspraxia is fantastic representation! Being an ‘invisible’ disability and not a particularly well-known condition, telling someone that you have dyspraxia almost always needs an explanation of what it is afterwards. Ryan is potentially the first ever character with dyspraxia in main stream fiction; I can’t think of a single dyspraxic character and Google searching only brings up a handful of lesser known book that seem to be about dyspraxia. Being able to say “like Ryan in Doctor Who” can take the explanation of your condition from a long conversation to a single sentence.

However, representation by itself isn’t the be-all and end-all. If, as the rest of the series continues, their representation of Ryan and his dyspraxia doesn’t go beyond balance or is portrayed only as a problem, that would have negative effects for dyspraxic people everywhere. Being the first mainstream character with dyspraxia is a big responsibility for positive and helpful representation. There are nine more episodes of this series, and I’ll wait and watch on the edge of my seat to see how it unfolds.

One concern brought up in a dyspraxia group was whether the actor or writer are, themselves, dyspraxic. So far, it doesn’t appear that the actor who plays Ryan, Tosin Cole, has dyspraxia or any related condition. The new writer, Chris Chibnall, said in an interview that his decision to have a dyspraxic character was influenced by his nephew with dyspraxia. With non-dyspraxic people writing and portraying him, there is a risk that this will be an unrealistic, outside view of dyspraxia. One episode in seems good to me, though, so it seems a good amount of research has been done.

Having a dyspraxic actor play Ryan would be fantastic, but it isn’t a visible condition so it isn’t necessarily mandatory. How many actors with dyspraxia there are isn’t easy information to find, and Doctor Who may not have had anyone dyspraxic audition. Dyspraxic actors and dyspraxic roles are not as urgent or vital an issue as – for example – white washing, able bodied actors playing characters in wheelchairs, or transgender women being portrayed by cisgender men.

One actor who does have dyspraxia but would be wholly inappropriate for the role is now twenty-nine-year-old white Daniel Radcliffe! Celebrities with dyspraxia are few and far between, with the only other one I’m aware of being singer Florence Welch. Having a fictional character to add to this sparse group to look to makes a huge difference. The social media conversations about dyspraxia this will spark could also bring more famous person to mention their own experiences and diagnoses!

Doctor Who has always been a show with aspirational characters, and the big character for this in the new season is the female Doctor, letting girls have their chance to want to be her. Plenty of girls and feminist groups have been talking about their excitement since Jodie Whittaker was announced. Her appearance is also accompanied by a mostly non-white companion team, what appear to be other genuinely strong female characters and this character with an invisible disability. Some great characters for plenty of people to look up to! As well as another great series of aliens and adventures, the Thirteenth Doctor could bring some fantastic representation and conversation starters all round!

Just Fab, or Just a Scam?

JustFab is yet another online shop, offering discounted shoes and other clothing items. They’ve been advertising on television as well as on YouTube, really making themselves known. The screaming women are excited about the shoes (SHOES!) and excited that they’re just so cheap. The adverts state that you can get shoes from as little as £7 and that they have VIP memberships. That seems great, but is it too good to be true?

The first issue I had with JustFab was delivery. The estimated delivery days came and went, and no tracking information; bear in mind that shipping is not free. When I chased up my order I just got excuses; they’re pretty backed up, and they’re sending it out today. Why not update the delivery details? Who knows. Hermes, the courier company JustFab use, eventually marked the parcel as “delivered to neighbour” on their tracking website. No note was put through my door to tell me about it and I had no way to know which neighbour had it. Knocking on every door in the neighbourhood is unrealistic, so I chased it up with JustFab again.

As I paid through PayPal, I requested a refund. It was immediately marked as having a response from JustFab, but there did not appear to be any message. I waited a day, but it wasn’t delayed. It would appear they have an automatic blank reply to all PayPal disputes, meaning that you can either escalate it, keep trying in vain, or mark it as solved. I escalated it. With no response from JustFab in the two-week period, PayPal gave me my money back.

Ironically, not long after that, a neighbour I had never met before brought the parcel round once she realised that she still had it. We thanked her and apologised, explaining that we hadn’t been told where it went. I thought this concluded my annoying experience and wouldn’t have done anything more than simply avoid using JustFab in future.

And then a £35 charge was taken out of my PayPal.

Despite the fact that I did not consent to this payment (having simply signed up for a basic account) the fact that I had paid for one pair of shoes apparently qualified me, and auto-upgraded me, to a “VIP” account which costs £35 a month. This charge was the first I know of the supposed upgrade. On checking the website, I found that there is no way to edit my payment details or change the level of status of my account. In fact, aside from thanking me for becoming a VIP member in a small text box, there was no way to view the cost of my unwanted VIP membership!

What’s more, there’s no way to cancel or delete a VIP account on the website at all. There’s just a very difficult to navigate series of FAQs along with mention of a “live chat” with zero links to access it. The only information is that, to cancel, call their cancellation phone number between 8am to 8pm. On calling 6:05pm I was met with answer; it rang but then just beeped. Call rejected?

I queried the payment on PayPal; I received another automatic blank response, so I just escalated it immediately. I messaged JustFab on Facebook and phoned again the next day. While Googling for their live chat at the same time, I found a lot of blog posts and some article links calling out JustFab for their shady charges. I eventually found the live chat. Although I had now had my call answered, I was on hold, so hung up as soon as I got a response on the live chat.

Despite claims that it is a live chat with a staff member, it felt an awful lot like a bot. After giving my account number, I asked to cancel my account. I was told I was a VIP member and had VIP points, am I sure I want to cancel? If I just want to skip a month I can just go to such-and-such a page and click “skip”. For an already convoluted process, this script was like pulling teeth. Yes, I told the ‘not-a-bot’. I double checked that it was done, and as soon as it allowed me to I cancelled my whole account.

Apparently, without a VIP account and paying £35 each month, the price offers are not available to you and you instead pay “retail prices”, the unadvertised £20+ prices the entire point of the site is to get a discount on. This is not made clear in their advertisements and is not made clear at any point during shopping, purchase or at all; I did not realise this until the live chat was trying to talk me out of cancelling.

This high monthly fee is not only already the price of buying a pair of shoes each month, but also means that to actually be saving more money overall you would need to be buying at least three pairs of shoes a month. Even the most extreme of shoe fanatic would be hard pushed to be buying a new pair of shoes almost every week. The kind of person that is, is probably not that concerned about saving money and is going to be spending well over £500 on each pair of Louboutin’s, Jimmy Choo’s and Steiger’s.

Using an unreliable courier is one thing, but this monetary practise is shady at best, and has all the ‘red flags’ of a scam. To advertise as a discount store and then sneak in exorbitant background ‘fees’ for access is disingenuous. To hide the details about the fees and force the customer to jump through hoops to cancel or even change that paid account at all? Deliberately nefarious.

Save your time, money and piece of mind, and avoid JustFab like the plague.

Film Mistakes That Might Not Be

There are plenty of articles and videos and even TV programmes dedicated to showing you mistakes in films. There are plenty; even big budget Hollywood films with entire job roles dedicated to continuity and accuracy, perfection is an incredibly high standard to demand. Mistakes get made and there’s nothing wrong with that. On the other hand, there are some mistakes in films with enough evidence to point to them being deliberate and clever details.

Bear in mind there are some spoilers ahead!

Pulp Fiction’s bullet holes

A pivotal scene in Pulp Fiction involves a man springing out of a bathroom and unloading a gun at Jules and Vincent. Unharmed, they shoot him and look in amazement at the bullet holes behind them. The mistake is, the bullet holes were there the whole time!

This works perfectly, though. Some are even behind where the two were standing so couldn’t have been misses. It makes much more sense that the gun fired no bullets and the characters simply hadn’t looked at the wall behind them yet.

It’s Tarantino; he wasn’t a huge star at this point so mistakes would be easy to make and hard to fix, but also he’s known for complicated points and being a film genius who might put in small details like that. Either way, it’s amusing to think of Jules’ religious epiphany about a bullet-bending miracle actually being caused by a lack of bullets entirely.

The Shining’s geographical weirdness

Kubrick is famous for not making sense and not giving a single damn about it. The Shining is no different, with most of the plot’s event happening without much explanation. While people are content to argue about WHY Jack/Johnny goes mad in the first place and needing multiple close watches to even understand the title, the geography often gets called a mistake.

The maze that is a major part of the end is huge and right beside the hotel doesn’t show up in earlier shots of the hotel. The window’s in the Torrence’s suite mean the room has to be a corner room, but lo and behold when Danny climbs out of the window we see that is isn’t. The huge ballroom cannot feasibly fit into the hotel.

Considering the other impossible geography such as rooms that would overlap and windows in impossible places, they’re almost certainly deliberate. The main goal of The Shining was clearly not to scare the viewer in a way they can logically think through, but to give an incomprehensible sense of wrongness. The impossible layout could be a series of oversights but still gives a strong feeling of the Overlook Hotel’s paranormal qualities.

Inception’s borrowed totem

In Inception, the team have personal ‘totems’ to help them know when they’re in a dream and when they’re in real life. No-one else can touch the totem or know how it works; this ensures it works differently in dreams than it does in real life. Cobb tells the viewer (via telling Ariadne) that his totem is the spinning top, and it belonged to his wife Mal before she killed herself. The mistake is that his totem won’t work because it’s not really his, and it’s clear that it falls over in the real world and spins forever in dreams.

This, of course, could be a mistake he is making in-universe, but it could be a deliberate diversion. Cobb is clearly paranoid; he checks his totem more than any other character and is continually worried that what he thinks is real life is a dream. For someone who misses his wife so much, it makes sense that he’d keep as much as he can of her, and for someone so paranoid it makes sense he’d keep not only the way his totem works a secret but even what it is.

So if Mal’s spinning top is a red herring and his totem is secret – adding another layer to Cobb’s character – what is his totem? It could be his wedding ring, which isn’t always visible; it could be Mal herself, as her being dead means she can only show up in dreams; it could be his children’s faces, which he doesn’t see until the very end. It could even be something he hides from the audience…

Jurassic Park and the Inaccurate Dinosaurs

Firstly, while the dilophosaurus is from the early Jurassic period and the brachiosaurus is from the late Jurassic period, the velociraptor, triceratops and tyrannosaurus are all from the late Cretaceous period. This millennia time gap aside, the dinosaurs don’t even look like the ones they’re supposed to be. Worst is the velociraptor, which is styled after the bigger, earlier deinonychus. While whether or not tyrannosaurus had feathers is still a hotly debated topic, the fact that these supposed scientists don’t blink at the blatant misnaming of species is odd.

Even the Jurassic dinosaurs are overtly uncharacteristic, brachiosaurus rearing up when it’s always been known they wouldn’t have been able to or dilophosaurus spitting venom despite that idea being a complete invention of the film. Further than this, DNA degrades over time and would, even in ideal conditions, only last a maximum of six million years. The enormous extinction event that killed the late Cretaceous dinosaurs was… sixty-six million years ago, long enough for perfectly maintained DNA samples to degrade to nothing eleven times other.

The theory is that the dinosaurs being cloned is a big fat lie, not from the movie makers but the park owners in universe. Cobbling together the DNA of various current animals, they created brand new animals that matched the publics idea of what certain dinosaurs would be. Easily named, big ticket dinosaurs like tyrannosaurus and triceratops. The scientists aren’t even there to check the safety of the park, but to check the believability! If the awe-inspiring idea could stop real palaeontologists from putting the facts together, the park’s creations would definitely trick the public.

Many films’ fainting henchmen

There are so many film mistakes that are henchman in group fights just falling down unhit. The background actor or stunt actor, skipped in the fight or in the wrong place, knows they need to die but won’t be hit and just fall over. There’s one in a Batman film, for example, as well as smaller budget films where there isn’t time to reshoot. There’s at least one in the Bond franchise.

While this is obviously not a deliberate decision but a best-of-a-bad-situation compromise by an actor, it might be that the character themself is falling down without being hit too. Consider being a henchman at the edge of a fight, slowly realising that you’re all fighting a legendary hero or surprisingly amazing fighter. Your coworkers are being smacked unconscious or even killed, and you have no chance or doing any better. You just fall down when you hope the hero isn’t looking, and hope to claim being knocked out by the hero later, if you even have a boss to answer to later.

This is referenced in Austin Powers when his father fights the henchmen and tells one, who hasn’t even got a nametag, that he should just lie down without a fight. He does. It’s a funny scene and, with the sheer amount of self-aware action films being made, there must be at least one film with a deliberate falling-unhit henchman for this reason.

Are there any others you’ve noticed or been told are mistakes, that you have a theory or explanation of them as not mistakes? Do you know a film where a henchman character falls down without being hit and it’s clearly supposed to happen? Do you just want to rant and rave about one of the films I mentioned? Leave a comment.

5 Things Cinema Staff Want You To Know

1: No, we cannot and will not let young people into age-restricted film without ID

The film is a 15; you can tell me you’re fifteen all you like and beg me to allow you in, but if you haven’t got ID then I won’t let you in. It’s the law, and if I let an underage person in I could be fined or even go to jail. Your wheedling might be because you’re a Secret Shopper testing our practises, or someone who sees might report me.

If you’re plenty old enough and feel offended that you get IDed, take a look around. Some people look much younger than they really are and other people look much older than they really are. If there’s any doubt of your age, even a tiny part, staff are required to check ID. If you’re old enough, bring something with your photo and date of birth; you can just take a photo of your passport!

2: Take your rubbish with you, or at least don’t stuff it in hard to reach places

The ushers have to clean up after you when you leave. It’s one thing to sweep up tonnes of spilled popcorn and pick up all the drink cups and popcorn buckets after a popular film, especially a children’s film, but it’s disgusting to pick up your dirty tissues and time consuming to tug large items from under chairs.

When you’re leaving a screen, take a millisecond to consider the human being cleaning up after you. If the ice cream cup is the same size as the seat’s cup holder, how is the usher supposed to get it out? If you push your rubbish under your chair, the chair folding up will make it harder to reach. If you have sweets wrappers and a popcorn bucket, it saves a lot of time if you drop them in it rather than presumably tossing them out like ticker tape. We love the people who pick up their rubbish and bin it, we like the people who stack their rubbish up in clear view, and we hate the people who make our job harder for no reason.

3: Don’t complain about paying too much for the popcorn and drinks if you aren’t even going to eat and drink them

Everyone complains about the price of the concessions, and the two arguments of why they’re expensive and how they aren’t compulsory are for another article. So, they’re expensive and people like to complain; enough people still buy them and are annoyed if there’s a delay or an item has sold out.

However, staff know from cleaning the screens that almost half the people buying popcorn and drinks don’t finish them; a ridiculous amount of cups and buckets just sit there at the end of the film, untouched. It’s annoying to know people fuss at the till about the cost of concessions and then just put them on the floor and leave them. Just stop whining and eat up.

4: When it’s incredibly busy, there’s nothing that can be done about the crowds or queues

When a popular film comes out, the school holidays start or its discount day, it’s going to be incredibly busy. There’s nothing that can be done about that, so if it’s too busy for you your best option is just to go home and come back another time. Somehow, people don’t seem to notice the sheer amount of people or somehow can’t comprehend that the reason they’re there is the same reason everyone else is too.

For some reason, people seem to think we’re hiding staff out the back doing nothing, or that staff are purposefully low, and have a go at the staff they’re served by as if the queues are deliberate. It’s incredibly annoying for people to walk through a massive crowd, queue for more than ten minutes and then be incredulous that the popular film they want to see is fully booked.

5: It really does make a difference to us how rude or nice you are.

A pair of small children who picked up all the booster seats in their screen not once but twice in one day were the talk of the cinema; such a lovely thing to do made all the ushers’ days and we made sure to thank them. A man who argued about age restrictions and shouted at the manager he made me call made an already stressful shift even worse. The seniors’ special is the best day to work, as they’re quite friendly and chatty.

This is another case of remembering that staff are humans. People don’t work in retail or customer service for fun, they do it because those are the jobs going, jobs pay money, and money can be exchanged for goods and services. Before you act like the cinema staff are you personal servants or even robots, think about how you would feel if you worked shifts in a high energy role and had to keep a happy friendly face on. There’s no need to for to take out your day’s problems on the poor person who sells you popcorn and the ticket to the current superhero movie.