Been gone for a bit thanks to reading for Woodpig Press, getting a new issue going for the FGTS magazine, and also trying to recover physically after metamorphosing into a slug over Christmas. I am (hopefully) back to posting silly pictures and dusty WIPs. Oh, also running the FGTS Bluesky!
![Image of the latest issue of From Glasgow to Saturn (FGTS) showing my film review titled 'Autistic Joy in Punch-Drunk Love: A Film Revew'.
Review contents:
There is something to be said about consuming media as an autistic individual. The constant holding of breath, waiting for cruelty, and wincing when it is exacted upon a character that acts just like you – only made worse when it is cheered on by the audience you sit beside. I felt a familiar dread when I sat in front of the TV glow depicting Barry Egan, the protagonist of ‘Punch-Drunk Love’, watching him have violent meltdowns and squirm under the thumb of his painfully neurotypical family members, living a life that echoed my own.
Oh Barry, I thought. They’re going to do something to you, and I don’t know what.
Yet, despite knowing of his impending doom, I could not tear my eyes off of the most succinct representation of myself I had seen since I projected onto similarly misunderstood violents like Pearl or Carrie. There was a warm familiarity as I watched him wearing the same clothes every day, forever obsessing over his niche business, mumbling, and growing his personal collection of pudding cups. Especially the way he whispers down the phone and reaches through the early-2000s digital ether for some sense of human connection. I watched a reflection of the life I lead (a paradox between the mind-numbingly boring and the intensely emotional) and held my breath whenever a new player entered it. I soon treated Barry’s life as I treated my own - with intense paranoia.
Will they hurt you? Do they know you? Will they think you are strange? Will my interests be critiqued? My appearance? Will they mock you? Will you know? What will I say? Will they love me?
I surely thought the catalyst of this destruction came in the form of Barry’s love interest, Lena Leonard[...] (Rest omitted due to alt text limit)](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:cqsuzz4gmcv5zi4mqgo55nbn/bafkreibwckontq3sroqs4okpsfwrenwfbjqsgqjac355bjbrgv4i7kt72m)