Laughing out loud at how often Del Toro’s Frankenstein turns to the camera and says, “Man is the REAL monster!” “Victor is the monster!” “The monster is the most human of them all!” “Who’s the monster? Is it the monster? No! It’s Frankenstein!” “FrankenMONSTER.” “MONSTERstein!” “Monster-man! Man-m

Issue #38 of our newsletter isnout now, ft. Andrew & Steven, Eyes Wide Shut, Frankenstein, mair battletech, mair Bowie, a basic but heartfelt end of year list ("IT’S SO GOOD"), The Ballad of Peckham Rye and more! mindless-ones.ghost.io/into-my-life...

Harrowing.

Took a while to get round to it but, Wake Up Dead Man? Masterpiece. Highly recommend watching it with a religious mother who likes murder podcasts and an atheist father who’s a bit of a showman, if you have access to them, really hammers home the performances.

Reads of 2025, or: a year of disappointment. Sometimes that's how it goes! I did read some bangers, but overall, I made poor choices. Enjoy my increasingly frustrated write up, here: www.ryanvance.co.uk/reads-of-2025

If you can’t write insightfully about what it means to have real life plot armour at a time when (no hyperbole) the survival of the human race depends on you and everyone else in the same situation voluntarily extending that protection beyond themselves, then maybe you’re not a good writer.

Deliberately didn’t wear my new beanie but haven’t been visited by an eight storey demon cat, smdh.

I have shrunken the Tim that was in the Carol and which you were probably Scrooging for Christmas Forgive me What day is it? So BOY!, and NOT dead

And Tinie Tempah, who did NOT let go

I don't abstain from Midnight Mass only to get a mini-sermon through my inbox, Ross Greer.

And Supermassive Tim, who collapsed into a singularity the microsecond he came into being

SCROOGE: you there, boy! what day is it? BOY: i don't know, i'm like six SCROOGE: well fuckin – can you ask someone

Jodie Foster: They should have sent a poet Poet: Aliens ahoy! A galactic sight. When you’re in space all day is night

I’m writing up a Books I’ve Read in 2025 post and let me tell you this, it’s not looking good for the 2026 project of Relinquishing Haterdom. Sometimes you read a year of duds and there’s nothing you can do about it.

“Write every day.” Puritanical claptrap reframing one of life’s most unambiguously rewarding fuckabouts into a vocation with targets and parameters of success and development opportunities and all the rest of it. No thanks. At least with a normal job you get a weekend off!

A hybrid of a camellia flower and a traditional daruma doll, Ofunaton is the mascot of Ofunato City, Iwate Prefecture. He denies being a pig.

Home for the holidays so, as is tradition, I present to you, the Dont Let of Best Butter a Pound Get the Half The Cat Butter butter dish.

Anteaters of the future

Since getting the flu last week, my brain be like soup. I am taking suggestions for what kind of soup, specifically, my brain be like.

In art, ideas are next to nothing and the work is everything. Anyone who has held onto an idea for years only to see another artist implement it, knows this. Slop Merchants have tricked themselves into believing the idea is everything and the work is nothing. That’s how you know it’s not art.

IMINT #8983 from NROL-111 (EXPERIMENTAL) 1. AI Boardwalk

Quick! Hard-reset the Doomsday Clock before they reinstate time!

As is tradition: show us your baubles!

Nobody asked for it, it's my favourite book covers of 2025! Sort of! It's more a cherry-picking of other lists doing the rounds, with a few extras thrown in for funsies, because I'm not organised enough to have my own 2025 archive to draw from. But still! www.ryanvance.co.uk/best-book-co...

When Walliams was dropped by his publisher he went SPLATTT! He CRIED and CRIED and CRIED but nobody would help!! Bwaaabooo hoO HOOHOO boo hoo He tried to get back up but then he shat himself!!!! PFFffFfTFttFtFllpppPP He couldn’t stop SHITTING his PANTS! fppt ploppfltpppp fppt PFFFTPLOPP

My response to anything over the next two weeks

Being queer is not a choice, just as being cis and straight is not a choice. But deciding what those identities mean, at the level of the individual and the collective, is a million choices. It’s hard work, but it’s human work. Limiting choices of what it means to be queer, or not, limits humanity.

Thinking of trying this in 2026. Pivot to pure himboism for my 40s. Attempts have been made in the past but this time it’ll stick, I’m certain of it.

Pet peeve in mystery or crime: not actually giving away clues? so that what should be a tense and terse finale of truth and consequence, is actually a long conversation between protag and antag laying everything out for the reader, because god forbid the reader work it out before you want them to.

The four different cold/flu/cough/noro bugs doing the rounds have all been very polite in waiting their turn rather than hitting me all at once but I’d like to not be low-key ill for the seventh week in a row.

🚨 performative male alert 🚨 [Sat alone with an amaretto coke and China Mieville’s The City and The City in a deserted bar playing minimalist meditation-core]

Tag yourself, I’m I Will Be More Unspotted

labour-of-love [derogatory]

It’s a Vance trademark Catfood Dinner Night aka curry super noodles with a can of tuna, suck on THAT, Mary Oliver.

Stop Making Sense at the GFT - every five minutes or so, someone would start dancing, and the ushers would shame them back into their seats, but then one mad lad ran from the back row down to the pit, and before long we were all with him, dancing under David Byrne’s 20-ft-tall face.

Looking to spread some yuletide cheer with my new song “Big Nick Christmas”

Developments in the AI book club scammer I instructed to only talk in all-caps.

Nobody asked for it, it's my end-of-year best songs of 2025! It also happens to include songs from 2024, 2013, and 1968. What? It was a long year. www.ryanvance.co.uk/best-songs-o...

Adverts for Valium from a 1971 Graphis magazine feature on La Roche pharmaceutical company’s advertising campaigns

If we as a society loved ourselves, we would not rise before the sun. Yes, yes, farming, emergency services, energy suppliers, and so on. If we really, truly loved ourselves, we would make it work, we would not wake and labour in the darkness, nor allow others (specifically me) to do so.

don't get your news about trans issues from people who hate us. this is true generally, but especially when it comes to the analysis of legal judgements

can't stop watching this clip of a tesla Optimus teleoperator taking his headset off before properly logging out the robot

Thank you all, the update than we can barely believe we get to make. To everyone who supported us through this last month, we couldn’t have even come close to this outcome without you all. Have a peaceful festive period, we’ll see you in the bookshop soon 🧡

toooo much color of the year discourse. the color of 2026 is the same color as every year, wet dark red like blood and organs 🫶

Thinking about the interior design trend away from tat and clutter and colour and pattern, towards white and clean and empty, as a manipulative push out of our visually under-stimulating homes, into commerce, commerce, commerce, where everything you buy looks too outlandish in your white box house.

Nestle Global Peace Prize Panama Papers Peace Prize British Petroleum Peace Prize Japanese Whaling Peace Prize Netflix-Spotify Collab Peace Prize Union-Busters Peace Prize Pink Peacock Peace Prize Disgraced Club Kid Peace Prize Habbo Hotel Ban List Peace Prize Farted in Crowded Lift Peace Prize