Grown woman reduced to tears by slightly outdated children's movie

I know. It's so last year. Please forgive me.

My eldest got caught up in the Kpop Demon Hunters craze last summer. It was a bittersweet sort of time. You know that end-of-summer feeling? Those long, golden afternoons? Ice creams in the park, dragonflies, an ever-so-slight nip in the air? You get what I'm saying. The entire summer felt like that. I felt sticky, sweaty, and a little bit sad. (Physically and metaphorically.) Everyone told me that kids change when they go into secondary school; I was keen to protect her true childhood. Just for one more summer.

I spoke about this before, but I really rate the characterisation in KPop Demon Hunters. I read a few complaints about the lack of Mira and Zoey in the main story. I actually disagreed. I think more subplots would interfere with the pacing. More Mira and Zoey in the sequel? Absolutely, yes please. I will wait patiently until 2029 for this.

Much of the characterisation of Mira and Zoey lies in the animation. It's a skill that I find both enviable and incredible. We watched the Corridor Crew interview with the directors. Even as they were describing it, I couldn't understand how it all came together. There are a lot of moving parts. Narrative, dialogue, songs, animation. What comes first? Where do you even start trying to organise it all? When you're months or even years deep into it, how do you see straight? How do you gather everything together into a coherent whole?

There is a brief moment in Golden where we get to find out a tiny snippet of Mira and Zoey's past:

I lived two lives, tries to play both sides
But I couldn't find my own place

And

Called a problem child 'cause I got too wild
But now that's how I'm getting paid

Literally a few seconds each, and now we know that Zoey had identity issues and Mira was the black sheep of the family. I love this. Short but sweet. Just enough intrigue to make me want to wait several years for a sequel.

I'm aware that this isn't exactly master level analysis. I do like Kpop Demon Hunters for swerving the traditional good/evil battle to include shades of grey; ultimately though, it's a kids movie with ridiculously catchy pop songs. But one night, I was hanging out with my two best friends, cross-legged on the floor, all of us ripping pages out of my old issues of Vogue and absent-mindedly making collages while we talked.

'And then,' I said, midway through an unnecessarily detailed explanation of the plot, 'there's a moment when the characters are being called by the demons, and they all hear these messages, like, designed to tempt them, and Zoey has a voice in her ear that says:

'You're too much. And not enough.''

I said it with that much emphasis. Vocally, I put it in big quotes. Verbal formatting, for emphasis. And I looked at them expectantly.

'Too much, and not enough!' I repeated.

June has been interesting.

I went to a music festival, I ate breakfast on the beach, I went dancing, and I did lots of other things I'm grateful for.

Things I've experienced in June:

• Severance. I know how late I am to this. But omg, Severance
• Something else I am also late to: 1000xRESIST. It is baffling and excellent and emotional.
• I was slowly plodding my way through The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton. The beginning chapters are very ship-heavy. Like it is 85% about ships (as in boats, not relationships). Gave up on it in the end. I have a literature degree and I appreciate that it won the Man Booker Prize but even I have limits
• But while we're talking of books, I've been really enjoying the Games Narrative Kaleidoscope book and accompanying podcast from Inkle. It's a collection of essays by narrative designers on the craft of making games. I'm dipping into it freely and at random, and I'm learning so much from it.
• Watched Backrooms with Chris on a Monday morning, which felt several levels of decadent more than I'm used to. I thought it was fantastic. I watched much of it while hiding behind my jumper so that's a good sign in terms of the fear factor.
• And finally: I watched the newest season of America's Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. Don't judge me. Or do, I don't actually mind. Those cheerleaders continue to fascinate and amaze me

Back to the movie thing. I was being weird because a few years back, I told my best friends (who understandably forgot in the avalanche of issues we've collectively dealt with since then) that I worry I am too much but also not enough. Am I annoying? Too needy? Too weird? Too emotional? As my personal goddess and idol Carly Rae Jepsen once said: is this too? Is this too? Is this too much?

Zoey has this feeling of being torn in different directions. It's relatable, I think, to just about everyone on the planet. Everyone has felt this weird pull from different places. Sometimes, you end up on the margins of things. Not fully in or out, kind of hovering between different places. It means that you can't give yourself, fully, to anything. And it means that sometimes you show up as yourself in a space that doesn't quite want you; it also means you can give too little of your heart to something that really needs your full, authentic self.

God, look at this. It's like a horoscope. Follow your dreams! Today is your lucky day! You will soon face a big decision, but trust your gut! Or something.

All I'm saying is, the exact phrase 'I am too much but not enough' escaped my actual lips at some point in the last five years and, in that moment, when Zoey said it, I stopped what I was thinking about and just stared at her, I connected with whoever put that line into the script. Someone out there has felt that specific feeling and built it into Zoey. And it meant something to me, a random mum, diligently watching a movie her daughter loves.

By the time we got to the harmonies in the last song I was already in tears. And yes I know this is terribly cheesy, but I wanted to hug every single woman in my life who encourages me to grow while holding me up. My three sisters, my best friends, my mum. The women who make up a huge part of the scaffolding of my life. Some of whom I had to find a little later in life. I thought of the potential women I might meet in the future, who could mean just as much to me in the end. I thought about my own kid sitting next to me and her journey into adulthood. I reached across the seat in that hot, sticky cinema and hugged her tight and thought:

I want this for you, I want this for you, I want this for you

like a wish.

Thanks for reading! It was my birthday this weekend. I ate a lot of cake.

And RIP to a real one:

This Time in 2025: I reflect on the concept of a solstice and the terrible inevitability of ageing in Getting Old, Innit

This Time in 2024: I reminisce about an old digital hangout spot in Same, But Different