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Janina Matthewson

@j9andif.bsky.social
963 followers 425 following 1.3K posts

Writer. Tired. Romcoms as Georgie Tilney.

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Reposted by Janina Matthewson
Janina Matthewson @j9andif.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Writing tips, tips for writing, get your writing tips here, etc, etc ihavenoplanforthis.ghost.io/writing-tip-...
ihavenoplanforthis.ghost.io
Writing tip: characters need to talk to each other about things
I watch a lot of movies and among the many movies I watch there are many old movies. I like a classic, I don't know what to tell you. But when you watch a decent amount of classics you discover someth...
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Janina Matthewson @j9andif.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Writing tips, tips for writing, get your writing tips here, etc, etc ihavenoplanforthis.ghost.io/writing-tip-...
ihavenoplanforthis.ghost.io
Writing tip: characters need to talk to each other about things
I watch a lot of movies and among the many movies I watch there are many old movies. I like a classic, I don't know what to tell you. But when you watch a decent amount of classics you discover someth...
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Janina Matthewson @j9andif.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Goes for tv shows also
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Janina Matthewson @j9andif.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
I was always taught that the closest modern day accent to early modern English as spoke in the Elizabethan age is Newfoundland, and if that's what Robert Eggers does I'm pretty on board
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Janina Matthewson @j9andif.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
These women are idiots. As if only being attracted to men isn't bad enough, you go and restrict yourself to straight men? God's worst creatures?
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Janina Matthewson @j9andif.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
I wrote a newsletter which is kind of about three different things at once but also about how everything's the same thing ihavenoplanforthis.ghost.io/the-one-figh...
ihavenoplanforthis.ghost.io
The One Fight Theory
Fairly regularly in the modern world there is a Happening™ that takes over for a few days. I'm sure you're familiar. In the wake of a Happening™ there are endless takes, jokes, questions and analyses,...
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Janina Matthewson @j9andif.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
I can't figure out which direction to do a jape about this
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Janina Matthewson @j9andif.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
lol, listened to a diabolical lies episode the other day that talked about how American anti littering campaigns were started by corporations as a reaction to states trying to ban single use GLASS bottles, I’m insane now, I’ve gone insane
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Janina Matthewson @j9andif.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
It's fun that a new Narnia adaptation is coming out so close to a new Harry Potter adaptation because the frequency with which I'm forced to think WATCH THE MAGICIANS is unbearable
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Dr Nafeez Ahmed @nafeez.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
EXCLUSIVE: AI giants warn their tech could kill us all. Their proposed safety rules could help kill off cheaper competition. Our @bylinetimes.bsky.social investigation exposes unproven runaway claims and a looming financial blackhole worth 10% of world GDP 1/20 bylinetimes.com/2026/09/15/b...
bylinetimes.com
Behind the AI ‘Extinction’ Power Bid: Soaring Costs Could Hit 10% of World GDP
AI firms are invoking unproven extinction warnings to justify restrictions on developments by their smaller rivals whilst seeking greater influence over regulation
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Reposted by Janina Matthewson
Janina Matthewson @j9andif.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
ihavenoplanforthis.ghost.io/what-it-take...
Obviously everything is stressful all the time is over-trodden ground, but I've been thinking a bit this week about how that's interacting with my work, or my attempts to do work. I've been dealing with chronic stress for a while now and, unsurprisingly, it makes it incredibly difficult to write. This is frustrating both because I'm trying to make a living and because there's really nothing better for my mental health than writing.
There's nothing worse for my mental health than trying to write and failing. Terrible position to be in, really.It's obvious why all this makes writing harder. Writing requires focus. It requires a degree of mental alertness. You have to be able to wrench yourself away from all your coping mechanisms and sit at your desk for a large chunk of the day and put words in sequence again and again. But I think something more important is lost too.
No one denies that writing requires bursts of intense, focussed activity, but for that to occur you need something else. You need some degree of control over where your mind goes when it wanders.
If you want to write a novel and the only time you think about that novel is when you sit down at your desk try to write it, there won't be very much there. All the pressure to come up with everything sits in that one little time slot, with the weight of your target word count pressing down on you.In my experience, writing is easy. But starting to write is nigh on impossible, and you have to start writing every day, multiple times. If your mind at rest moves towards what you're working on, it gets a lot more possible.
Due to what I'm calling the circumstances, by which I mean my constant financial stress to which I see no end, my mind at rest moves towards money, all the time, constantly.
I'm doing my best to redirect it. I'm doing deeply uncool writing exercises. I've created short, specific playlists to listen to when, and only when, and always when I'm working on a project, to try and jolt my brain into the right lane on association. Like pavlov's writer.It is only getting harder for working artists to have stable careers and that is bad for
everyone. We all want art and
entertainment in our lives; we all want a large amount of the stuff we like to be coming out all the time. Whether it's books or movies or tv shows or video games or
whatever.
All industries are becoming less and less stable and that means all working artists are becoming less and less stable - and financial instability causes intense mental and emotional harm. All of which makes it harder and harder for artists to just do the work. The work that, really, everyone wants them to be doing, because everyone wants the output.
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Reposted by Janina Matthewson
Janina Matthewson @j9andif.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
This week's newsletter, late again, is a bit more personal than usual and a lot more about writing than usual, please enjoy, free to read etc ihavenoplanforthis.ghost.io/what-it-take...
ihavenoplanforthis.ghost.io
What it takes to write a book
Obviously everything is stressful all the time is possibly over-trodden ground, but I've been thinking a bit this week about how that's interacting with my work, or my attempts to do work. I've been d...
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Janina Matthewson @j9andif.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
This week's newsletter, late again, is a bit more personal than usual and a lot more about writing than usual, please enjoy, free to read etc ihavenoplanforthis.ghost.io/what-it-take...
ihavenoplanforthis.ghost.io
What it takes to write a book
Obviously everything is stressful all the time is possibly over-trodden ground, but I've been thinking a bit this week about how that's interacting with my work, or my attempts to do work. I've been d...
165
Janina Matthewson @j9andif.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Listen, I love you, two magpies
Two magpies standing on parched ground, one a few feet being the other
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Janina Matthewson @j9andif.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Among the things I'm angry at the AI chuds for, ruining anthropomorphisation is climbing the charts to the top spot. These fucks are making me regret putting googly eyes on my air fryer.
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Janina Matthewson @j9andif.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Never expected to read the words "an otherworldly collaboration between M. Night Shyamalan and Nicholas Sparks" but here we are
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Janina Matthewson @j9andif.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
We are literally being told we have to sacrifice net zero for AI data centres, the respectable argument here is fuck clean off
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Janina Matthewson @j9andif.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Can't wait to see what ineffectual neo-liberal think tank the ghoul keir starmer joins/starts
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Janina Matthewson @j9andif.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Cassie Workman made what is probably my favourite ever piece of live storytelling, she is so magical, watch her stuff imo
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Janina Matthewson @j9andif.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
This is the single hottest thing any human has ever done. It is simply not possible to be sexier than this. youtu.be/JWoYy4Ah81s?...
youtu.be
The Rocky Horror Picture Show "Sweet Transvestite" (1975) - (4K)
YouTube video by VideoXL
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Reposted by Janina Matthewson
Janina Matthewson @j9andif.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
I think this is important. Everyone is investing heavily in adhering to aesthetic standards. They're willing to pay a high cost of entry into this particular in group - an in group that is rooted in patriarchal and white supremacist gender norms - and when you've paid a lot to get in, you might put up with a lot to avoid risking expulsion.
I know it feels kind of silly. This is all so superficial. But honestly we are superficial creatures. The things that matter to us personally drive our core identities.
Reinforcing those norms psychologically ties us to the group that demands them; every time we agree we commit a little
more.This person is like me is powerful framing. So when huge amounts of people are narrowing their ideas of who they should be like, look like, act like, that is going to narrow their ideas of who they should vote like.
What you look like is a massive drive of your personal sense of identity, which is why a drive towards homogeny is so valuable for fascism. The more we bow to the pressure to fit in, the harder it is to dissent.
There have been a lot of jokes about MAGA face, about all these women who look so unnatural in exactly the same way. I think that looking the same is the point. It's like a subconscious uniform. It's purpose is to unify.
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Janina Matthewson @j9andif.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
I don't want to slip into a tirade about how keeping your natural face and body is an act of resistance, but I do think current aesthetic trends and the rise of fascism are connected. But I don't think it's necessarily about making women physically weaker. I don't think it's necessarily about having our minds so occupied by our appearance that we are left with no room for thoughts of rebellion. Although those might be a bit of a bonus.
I think it's about conformity.Even without pinning it to the wider horrendous themes that underpin our existence here in the late stage capitalist hell we're forced to live in, it's this that has driven me crazy about modern beauty trends. Everyone looks the same. And honestly it's not just that everyone has the same fillers; it's also the fashion for intensely contoured make up. It's undeniably fascinating to watch someone change the entire structure of her face with make up, but the question remains why do you want to change the entire structure of your face?
Every little biological fashion don't impoverishes the world. Every time we accept a ruling against having a bump in your nose, or hooded eyelids, or round cheeks or whatever the fuck, we get a little more boring.It can feel complicated to talk about bodies and faces because criticising what people do with their own bodies feels like
overstepping. I believe wholeheartedly in bodily autonomy and I assume basically everyone I ever interact with does too; why else live in an artsy, progressive bubble? But it's important to consider individual decisions in relation to the context within which they're being made.
We have to ask why it's normal to turn so readily to botox and fillers and face lifts, why it's been so easy for us to return, again and again, to an ideal of feminine beauty that involves extreme thinness.
Why, in short, we have accepted as normal the wholesale rejection of our own exquisite variety and imperfection.It can feel complicated to talk about bodies and faces because criticising what people do with their own bodies feels like
overstepping. I believe wholeheartedly in bodily autonomy and I assume basically everyone I ever interact with does too; why else live in an artsy, progressive bubble? But it's important to consider individual decisions in relation to the context within which they're being made.
We have to ask why it's normal to turn so readily to botox and fillers and face lifts, why it's been so easy for us to return, again and again, to an ideal of feminine beauty that involves extreme thinness.
Why, in short, we have accepted as normal the wholesale rejection of our own exquisite variety and imperfection.
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Janina Matthewson @j9andif.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
I've been trying to figure out my discomfort around the current aesthetic fashions and I'm making it everyone's problem to the tune of three thousand words buff.ly/PBvuC9j
ihavenoplanforthis.ghost.io
Faces and fascism
The thing about me is that I love a face. I love to see a face and think good god, that's a face. A face that gives the world assurance of a face, do you know what I mean? But another thing about me…
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Janina Matthewson @j9andif.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
I've been trying to figure out my discomfort around the current aesthetic fashions and I'm making it everyone's problem to the tune of three thousand words buff.ly/PBvuC9j
ihavenoplanforthis.ghost.io
Faces and fascism
The thing about me is that I love a face. I love to see a face and think good god, that's a face. A face that gives the world assurance of a face, do you know what I mean? But another thing about me…
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Reposted by Janina Matthewson
Jamie Drew @jamiedrew.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Reposting this as a social media strategy
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Reposted by Janina Matthewson
Marie Le Conte @youngvulgarian.marieleconte.com · 24/08/2026
friends! handsome genius @jamiedrew.bsky.social is running this offer for a little bit: get your picture taken by him! I can confirm it's a very fun and rewarding experience! truly it should not be this cheap! reach out to him on Instagram:
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Janina Matthewson @j9andif.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
I feel very strongly that the Roadrunner is saying “meep meep” not “beep beep”
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Janina Matthewson @j9andif.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
I've decided we need to start selling people on the concept of contributing to society, tyfyt buff.ly/zj2ROre
ihavenoplanforthis.ghost.io
A political coms strategy for anyone who wants it, or; imagine if Labour had their shit together
CAVEAT: I'm just some idiot. The UK has yet another new Prime Minister who is once again promising basically they same shit they all have, in a slightly different font. There are jokes akimbo* and…
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Janina Matthewson @j9andif.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Anyway, my mother in law sleeps furthest from the door so if The Killer comes her husband will be the first one murdered, she believes everyone does this
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Janina Matthewson @j9andif.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
My campaign platform will be mandating that if you spend an hour screaming into your phone outside my house you have to slip a letter into my mailbox with the tea
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Janina Matthewson @j9andif.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
These people are just mad they have to share the world with other people at all
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Janina Matthewson @j9andif.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
I've decided we need to start selling people on the concept of contributing to society, tyfyt buff.ly/zj2ROre
ihavenoplanforthis.ghost.io
A political coms strategy for anyone who wants it, or; imagine if Labour had their shit together
CAVEAT: I'm just some idiot. The UK has yet another new Prime Minister who is once again promising basically they same shit they all have, in a slightly different font. There are jokes akimbo* and…
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Janina Matthewson @j9andif.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
Dunno man, finding it increasingly difficult not to fall into despair about the decadence of legacy media institutions acting as PR for fascists and billionaires all the fucking time
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Janina Matthewson @j9andif.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
There are, broadly speaking, two ways to love something. Whether that thing is horror movies or musicals or cats or the colour green. You either love them selectively, or universally.
You're either a Cat Person™ and are, by default, devoted to every cat who has ever or will ever lived, or you're a fan of some specific cats because they're just particularly cool guys.
When it comes to fiction, whether film or theatre or literature or whatever, there are people who love a particular genre whatever it throws at them. People who'll watch any horror film that comes up and have a great time because they're just broadly there for it. And people who'll watch any horror film that comes up because they're always looking for great horror and they're willing to put time into a whole lot of bad horror to find it.I am not a universal fan of anything. I hate more musicals than I love and I love
musical theatre. I love it because when it's good it's fucking transcendent and it makes me so sad when something that can be genuinely, overwhelmingly wonderful is only mediocre.
This only occasionally upsets me. I think it's good to be discerning. But it's also a bummer being the only person on a girls' night out to Mamma Mia who isn't having a good time, for example. I can't even fake it!
Despite being, honestly, a very good actor, I'm extremely bad at hiding my feelings in real life, so I ruin everyone's nice time without trying!
You can call this dichotomy differences of taste or expectation or attitude, but I think it comes down to what Samuel Taylor Coleridge called poetic faith or what is more commonly known as suspension of disbelief.Some people are naturally inclined to be generous with their poetic faith. Others are more withholding. I'm coming to believe that, however much I find value in discernment, there is also a lot of value in generosity.
We make a lot of jokes around here about making up a guy to get mad at and people are very good at doing that. But we're also very good at making up a guy to care deeply about and that's a wonderful thing.
This manifests in all sorts of ways. We imbue a particular tree with a personality because of the weird bend in its trunk. We get very invested in Fat Bear Week. And we open a book or walk into a cinema preparing to have our hearts ripped out by people who never existed experiencing things that never happened.The question is do you owe a book or a film or a play your poetic faith, or does that work need to earn it? And the answer, of course, is yes.
When I see things going around my little corner of the internet about Al bros
claiming they can't read books without ChatGPT summarising the chapters for them or, worse, claiming that reading ChatGPT summaries of books counts as reading the books I can't help but feel like it's time to think properly about why we read at all.
We do it to connect with something, we do it to feel things, we do it with engage with the world outside of ourselves. To do that properly we have to be willing to be taken.
When we withhold our poetic faith, or have it taken for granted by shitty art I think that is tragic.
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Janina Matthewson @j9andif.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Wrote kind of a rambly, very late newsletter about how and why we engage with things, tyfyt ihavenoplanforthis.ghost.io/poe/
ihavenoplanforthis.ghost.io
Poetic faith
In the spirit of being vast and containing multitudes, I'm starting to develop a really defensive reflex around snobbery regarding people's artistic tastes. It's wildly hypocritical of me, because I'm...
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Janina Matthewson @j9andif.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Wrote kind of a rambly, very late newsletter about how and why we engage with things, tyfyt ihavenoplanforthis.ghost.io/poe/
ihavenoplanforthis.ghost.io
Poetic faith
In the spirit of being vast and containing multitudes, I'm starting to develop a really defensive reflex around snobbery regarding people's artistic tastes. It's wildly hypocritical of me, because I'm...
143
Janina Matthewson @j9andif.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
New Zealand's gearing up for a general election so I thought I'd double check I'm ready to vote from the UK and also demonstrate how easy it can be to vote these days if you want it to be
get your voting papers

Your voting papers are not automatically sent to you overseas.

The easiest and quickest way to vote from overseas is to download your voting papers. Before you download your voting papers you need to be correctly enrolled.

If you're on the unpublished roll you will not be able to download your voting papers. Please contact us on overseas@vote.nz for further assistance.mark your voting papers

Mark your voting papers digitally, or print, complete and scan
Overseas voters may now mark their voting paper digitally, and overseas voters and their witnesses can sign the special vote declaration using an electronic device or by inserting a digital signature, as long as it shows their normal signature.

You may also choose to print your voting papers and complete them by hand, then scan or photograph and upload them.Return your voting papers

When you’ve marked your voting papers, return them to us in one of the following ways:

Upload them online
Post or hand deliver them to your nearest overseas voting place.
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Janina Matthewson @j9andif.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
I've gone and left it too late to get eclipse glasses like some kind of dweeb
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Janina Matthewson @j9andif.bsky.social · 09/08/2026
Ok fair play, it may not be a good movie, but they did at least give Nicholas Galitzine a full magical girl transformation
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Janina Matthewson @j9andif.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
Ok but Bridgerton has been Netflix’s biggest show for years now. Heated Rivalry took over the whole world. This debate should really be over
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Janina Matthewson @j9andif.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
There is no war in Ba Sing Se
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Janina Matthewson @j9andif.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
We have to stop letting straight men make films
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Janina Matthewson @j9andif.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
Tell me your favourite song of 2026 so far and maybe I will put it on my New Music That Is Good playlist
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Janina Matthewson @j9andif.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
I do wonder sometimes when we're going to reckon with the fact that the stock market is, by nature, bad for businesses
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Janina Matthewson @j9andif.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
Fun that we have to keep watching untold billions thrown into endless data centres because “AGI will figure out how to fix the environment” when actually people are figuring it out and we could give them the money instead
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Janina Matthewson @j9andif.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
As I'm sure plenty of people are surprised and upset to learn that the dead Irish singer was a wrong 'un, worth remembering that the whisper network only exists because we still don't know how to protect victims who come forward, tyfyt
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🎥 Kathy 📼 Fennessy 📽️ @kcfennessy.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
This is really depressing. Neko Case doesn't name names, and nor does she need to, but I believe her. If anything, she tends to be honest to a fault--this post illustrates exactly what I mean--and abso-fucking-lutely does not hold back (except for said dude's name). [ht: @rahnealexander.com]
nekocase.substack.com
IN WHAT FUCKING UNIVERSE?
This last week I was just cookin’ along minding my business when I suddenly found myself quite depressed.
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Janina Matthewson @j9andif.bsky.social · 02/08/2026
this is a perfect illustration of why genAI training on copyrighted work can never be fair use – obviously the person who made this asked it to plagiarise Peanuts and it did, but it has also accidentally plagiarised Winnie the Pooh
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Janina Matthewson @j9andif.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
Criticism is a weird area. There's not one straightforward path to it - not in film, not in theatre or dance or opera, not in music or visual art. It's an art form in and of itself, and it does take a specific kind of skill. But the skill required of any individual critic is just one facet of a whole world, and that world needs multiple perspectives.
There are film critics who went to film school. There are film critics who went to journalism school. There are film critics who have no training. I have done a non zero amount of professional film criticism work.
It's something a person might aim for specifically as a career path, and something you might stumble on through experimentation. The idea of someone critiquing one film one time because it relates to their area of expertise is not new - it's just part of the discussion.Because that's what art is. An endless conversation about what it means to be alive that anyone can take part in. Criticism is part of that conversation. And it can be a destructive part. It can be done in bad faith, it can be spiteful. That just makes it all the more important to include and embrace views from a wide range of people.
This is not science. We don't do peer review in the arts. There will never be a consensus on anything here.
You are under no obligation to read the opinion of a classist and Homeric myth expert and give it more weight than your own. You are under no obligation to read the opinion of an experienced critic at an esteemed publication and give it more weight than your own.
You are under no obligation to read or listen to or think about anyone else's opions at all, if you don't want to.I am astonishingly inconsistent with how I engage with criticism. Quite a lot of the time my interest in analysing or discussing a film disappears after like, five minutes. Most people's opinions are not just meaningless to me, but actively annoying. Not because of the people themselves, or their opinions, just because I reached the point where discussing that film became tedious on my way home from the cinema.
But from time to time, for whatever reason, there'll be a film that I keep turning over and over in my brain. The Odyssey has been one of those films for me, even though in my opinion it's a fun but mediocre and inessential movie. Even though I expect the films Nolan writes to be mediocre because he's not good at writing. Even though I went into it already expecting a somewhat drab, prosaic film when I prefer colour and excess and imagination.I found it interesting to have the perspective of one of the world's foremost experts on Homer. Translation is interpretation, just as adaptation is; just through having been through that process Wilson will be approaching the film with questions that have likely not occurred to the vast majority of viewers, even those who have read the book multiple times.
And while I understand people wanting to experience the film as a stand alone project without worrying too much about the source material, I think it's valuable to ask why tell this story? Why adapt this work?
It's clear that what interests Nolan about The Odyssey is not what interests me about it, and that's fine! I guess! But I want to understand what interested him and why. I want to figure out whether I think he was successful at exploring his own take on the story and it's just not for me, or whether he aimed for something and missed.
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Janina Matthewson @j9andif.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
It's me, continuing to discourse ihavenoplanforthis.ghost.io/who-gets-to-...
ihavenoplanforthis.ghost.io
Who gets to have an opinion, professionally?
A grand time for the discourse this week after Emily Wilson, the first woman ever to translate The Odyssey into English threw eloquent shade at Christopher Nolan for his adaptation in the LRB. I very ...
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