Recurring Character

Today I’m joined by my friend David McGovern, a writer and theatre-maker based in Dublin. We make a case for the Uncomplex Character: a composed, unbothered, private person who has no problem being misunderstood. In fact, they delight in it.

To set the scene, David and I remember the ‘complex female characters’ of the 2010s whose messy bedrooms and oozing relatability we are so over. We also have beef over Beef, make our stance on the traumatic backstory very clear, pay tribute to our forefathers Samantha Jones and Joanna Lumley, and predict a number of cultural shifts: from being seen to unseen, anxious to avoidant, deep to shallow.

We also tell you where to find these characters – from video games to Booker-winning literature, the outskirts of a friendship group to a women’s prison in the 1920s – and give tips on how you, too, can become one.

Check out David’s website and follow him on Instagram!

Show Notes:

• Sex and the City (1998–2004)

• The Sopranos (1999–2007)

• The Art of Being Unreachable by Alexis McElroy

• Do you feel like a person? by Nicola Dinan for Polyester

• Outline by Rachel Cusk

• Intimacies by Katie Kitamura

• Flesh by David Szalay

• Elif Batuman on Flesh

• The Drama (2026)

• Beef (2023–26)

• Beef, The Drama and the New Marriage Plot by Critics At Large

• Fleabag (2016–19)

• Adjacent Characters: the Eternal Adolescent; the Diarist; the Airhead

• Canon Event: Jemima Kirke and Joanna Lumley change our brain chemistry

• Backrooms (2026)

• Chicago (2002)

• Other Uncomplex Characters mentioned: Claire Underwood in House of Cards, Super Hans in Peep Show, Kramer in Seinfeld, Diane Lockhart in The Good Wife, Elle Woods in Legally Blonde, Big in Sex and the City

• The Stupidity Report by Protein

• Regularmaxxing, or Gen Z discover routine

• Caroline and Dolly on Sentimental in the City

In this episode, we time-travel to the late-2010s, an era where the hottest thing a man could be was Very Online.

From the philosophical YouTuber in Lena Dunham's Tiny Furniture (2010) to the self-styled literary fuckboy that is Sean Thor Conroe, in the first part of this two-part essay we ask the question: who is the Online Boyfriend, and why did we spend so long waiting for his texts?

Digressions include: the Beta men of the Vice era, the allure of the online troll, and the sexual disinterest crisis that I am linking to laptop addiction with absolutely no evidence.

Join me in this collective memorial of the Online Boyfriend: a character who may have died in 2019 but still lives on in the overactive imaginations of Millennial bloggers everywhere.

Show Notes:

• Subscribe to my Substack
• Fake Accounts by Lauren Oyler (2021)
• Tiny Furniture (2010)
• Girls (2012-17)
• The I in Internet by Jia Tolentino
• Adjacent characters: The Hetero-optimist, The Losers, The Femcel

• Washington Post poll
• Bini Yamin on SubwayTakes
• Fuccboi by Sean Thor Conroe (2022)
• Has Fuccboi killed literature? via Unherd

I’m joined by Sebastian Lloyd, a writer from South London, to ask the question: is Englishness inherently weird?

We discuss how Britain’s colonial hangover has shaped the ‘plucky’ national character, whether Dunkirk is the Roman Empire for blokes, and how TikTok is complicating neurodiversity discourse. Along the way, we stop to take shots at Seb’s old workplace, Noel Fielding, the entirety of Soho, Francis Bourgeois, and Brexit.

We also dig into real-life London eccentrics, such as Hackney’s mole man and a Nunhead Elvis impersonator, characters who appear to answer a generational yearning for Authentic Community™ in a city at the mercy of American sweet shops, noise complaints, and slop bowl salad bars.

Show Notes:

• Pinterest Board
• The English Eccentrics by Edith Sitwell
• Seb’s Substack post on Steve Bennett
• Henry Paget / Madfabulous (2026)
• The Mole Man of Hackney / Karen Russo
• Paddy Power World Cup advert

• Adjacent characters: The Free Spirit, The Branded Couple

• Rethinking Eccentricity by Miranda Gill
• Soho eccentrics: Philip Sallon & Thierry Alexandre
• Jonathan Nunn on ‘Sohoification’
• Eccentric Soho spots: All Is Joy, Bradley’s Spanish Bar & Bar Italia
• The Mighty Boosh (2003–2007)
• Withnail & I (1987)
• Wallace & Gromit (1989–Present)
• Gromit’s upcoming autobiography
• Richard E. Grant’s Instagram
• Saltburn (2023)

• SpaceX goes public
• Scrapheap Challenge (1998–2010)
• Poetry and the Turning World: Work by the LRB
• Francis Bourgeois
• Mission to Space with Francis Bourgeois (2026)
• Noel Fielding on Talk Art
• British eccentricity is dying out by the Telegraph
• The King of SE15 (2021)
• New York Nico

• There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack by Paul Gilroy (1991)
• Year of the Rat by Harry Shukman (2025)

• Vittles
• Caffs not Cafes and Wooden City by Isaac Rangaswami

I’m joined by my friend Emma Glenn Baker to discuss the undeniable allure of the Free Spirit, charting her journey from whimsical romcom girlfriend to self-authored internet forest nymph.

Ripe with sensuality, sex appeal and an array of halter tops, the Free Spirit lives a life of nourishment and goodness, rising with the sun, bathing in waterfalls, and relying on her intuition over Google Maps. In the age of the Oura ring and corporate burnout, she also appears to release us from our technological hysteria.

Emma is the host of ⁠STARGIRL⁠, a podcast about girls who stand out, and she’s also a personal trainer and health goddess at large.

Show Notes:

• Almost Famous (2000)
• 50 First Dates (2004)
• Along Came Polly (2004)
• Vicky Christina Barcelona (2008)
• 500 Days of Summer (2009)
• The Blithe Spirit by TV Tropes

• Manic Pixie Dream Girl by TV Tropes
• ‘What time was I born’ meme
• Girls (2012–2017)
• Hippies by Dear Americana
• Faye Wong’s pixie crop in Chungking Express (1994)
• Tao Lin’s Substack
• Joel Golby on Eat Pray Love (2006)

• Health Gossip
• Emma’s interview with Lily Sperry, founder of Health Gossip, and episode on Hitomi
• Sigh Swoon
• Hitomi Mochizuki

• Sotce

• Kamryn Renae
• Kamryn Renae on Getting Glam to Hike the Pacific Crest Trail by Interview

Let's wrap up Femcel Studies.

In Part II, we explore how a post-Femcel internet has cultivated an appetite for online stalking, emotional scarcity, and sexual competition, and why this has left us in a crisis of disembodiment.

We also spotlight two of the freakiest writers working today – Sheena Patel and Sayaka Murata – whose estranged heroines reveal what happens when romance loses its grip on reality.

Expect questions like: is love entertainment? Is celibacy anti-establishment? Do anime boyfriends and emotionally unavailable men have more in common than we think?

Show Notes:

• he needs me by The Femcels
• Post-Femcel Femininity by Virginia Karnstein
• I’m A Fan (2022) by Sheena Patel
• Fandom with Sheena Patel by Literary Friction
• Pillion (2025)
• Sayaka Murata: The Cosmic Novelist by The Gentlewoman
• Convenience Store Woman (2016) by Sayaka Murata
• Vanishing World (2025) by Sayaka Murata
• Sayaka Murata Inhabits A Planet of Her Own by Wired

• ‘Marriage feels like a hostage situation, and motherhood a curse’ – Sayaka profiled in The Guardian
• The rise of mixed-orientation marriage by Impact
• What’s going on with straight women? by Dee Salmin
• To Rest Our Minds and Bodies (2025) by Harriet Armstrong
• Mimetic theory of desire by René Girard

• Doomers in Love by Mana Afsari

In this episode, I talk about the first character who actively scares me: The Femcel.

In Part I, we define what a Femcel actually is: an aesthetic? Alt-right? Is she actually celibate? Is it involuntarily?

Join me as we chart the demise of the Millennial Slut and the SHEconomy, as a new generation of chronically online sadgirls embrace performative – and actual? – sexlessness.

In an era where everyone is beautiful and no one is horny, where heterosexuality is deemed ‘embarrassing’ and female loneliness is on the rise, is the Femcel really a cute feminine dream, or is she a symptom of a bigger, and much scarier, cultural reality?

Show Notes:

• Femcel by Aesthetics Fandom Wiki
• r/psychologyofsex “Femcels”

• The Rise of Femcels by The Hook Up
• The woman who founded the ‘incel’ movement by BBC
• Adjacent characters: The Hetero-optimist
• My thoughts on the ‘having a boyfriend is embarrassing’ discourse
• She’s Not Celibate – She’s Boysober by The New York Times
• 2025 Was the Year Single Women Chose Themselves by Vogue
• r/FemaleDatingStrategy
• Everyone is Beautiful and No One is Horny by RS Benedict
• The Sex Recession by Andrea Mizrahi
• Rise of the SHEconomy by Morgan Stanley
• Married moms twice as likely to be be ‘very happy’ than single childless women by YouGov
• Materialists (2025)
• Sophie as a tragic character by @marmaryeesa2026
• i want to be a girl in love again by Ismene Ormonde

In this episode, we honour the beautiful universality of loserdom. From America's bromance comedies to the UK's weirdo sitcoms, we explore the 2000s tropes for the genre, and whether two misfits can cancel each other out.

We also deep-dive on Ghost World, the 2001 indie cinema classic that not only bridges the generational loser divide, but asks a question that, in today's loneliness epidemic, has never been more relevant: can loser friendships save us?

Show notes:

• TV Tropes: The Loser archetype
• The Loser Canon by Crooked Marquee
• Losercore by Nymphet Alumni
• The Mainstreaming of Loserdom by Tell the Bees
• Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk at fashion week
• Superbad (2007)
• An Oral History of Superbad by Vanity Fair
• The Inbetweeners (2008–2010)
• Booksmart (2019)
• Peep Show (2003–2015)
• Peep Show Still Proves That Self-loathing is Pretty Universal by The New York Times
• Succession Owes its Genius to Peep Show by i
• Four Naan, Jeremy?
• Ghost World (2001)

• Discussing Ottessa Moshfegh on STARGIRL
• Types of Social Networks: Samplers on TikTok