Little Big Things

Imagine this: you spend your entire adult life searching for your mother's killer only to discover that the murderer is, in fact, your own future self. Not only that, but this outcome, abhorrent and appalling as it is, has been predetermined to be your Fate before you were even born. If this sounds like something so far-fetched as to be straight out of fiction, that's because it is.  This strange series of events forms the climax of the 2020 Korean drama, Alice . Billed as a science fiction story, it combined both scientific concepts from quantum physics and high fantasy tropes relating to Fate and prophecy to tell a story about the unintended consequences of scientific advancements that would allow humans to "time travel" - in reality, travel to parallel universes representing alternate versions of their pasts - by the year 2050. Perhaps it is this eclectic mishmash of genres that led Alice , ultimately, to flounder. Although the cast members received widespread prai...

  Monster. What comes to mind when you see that word? Maybe it's some eerie spectre or bloodthirsty creature: the one lurking in the darkness just out of the corner of your eye, yet never quite visible when you turn around to look. Maybe it's the supernatural and doomed Byronic hero: the one you know should repulse you, but who is far too alluring to resist. Or maybe, just maybe, it's the radicalized mass murderer: the one so deeply buried in their online echo chamber that you don't even know they exist until they suddenly burst out into the open, leaving death and destruction in their wake. For me, a monster can certainly be all of those things. Already, in my mind, I can hear some of the names. See some of the faces. And perhaps, given this time of year, you think this is where I plan to go. But it isn't. Not this year, nor any year either before or after. Because for me, when I hear the word "monster", I hear its root: Monstrare.  It's a Latin word ...