49: INFERNO

INFERNO

Deputy Print Editor

INFERNO– probably the most apt word to describe the chaos of the world we’re living in right now. It’s applicable to everything, which is why this edition has such a great range of articles from our fantastic contributors and team. Looking towards graduation, reflecting across my time here, it’s been a pleasure to contribute to and work on such a vibrant and creative magazine. Long live RAZZ!

Deputy Print Editor

Catherine Beavis

What does your mind conjure when you read INFERNO? Are you haunted by the crazy hell of final exams and assessments? Are you reminded of boiling summer evenings and trips to Exmouth? Do you think about the rapidly worsening climate emergency? Or, are you (like me) reminded of the flames engulfing your academic life as you prepare to graduate and enter the ‘real’ world? Either way, this INFERNO edition is for you.

1

Nathan Steward- Editor in Chief

EDITOR’S NOTE KittyCarter

It would be an easy mistake to assume that INFERNO was chosen as our theme because it is so bloody hot outside. There are the religious connotations; as modern democracies embrace Christian nationalism, we have to ask who really is being thrown into the INFERNO on their behalf. Perhaps, like ORBIT, we are commenting upon the bigger picture with climate change.

However, I would like to offer another interpretation.

Much of the recent news cycle is concerned with the future of our generation. Rampant unemployment and a lack of financial mobility is collapsing opportunities for our youth. If, like me, you are graduating this year, it is an unwelcoming world which we now face, where hard work counts for little and AI automation looms over our ambitions. Apathy is the common answer, and I see many individuals I love and admire fall into this pit. They accept their circumstances with indifference and slink back home to mulch off their families and bemoan their unfortunate fate. They are drowning themselves in noise in an effort to forget that everything is on fire.

This is my final edition of RAZZ. When I became Editor In Chief, it was to find a shrinking society - hardly a third of elected positions were filled, we had gone to almost half of our usual member-count, restrained to a single unmarked desk in the University’s media room, with the Guild threatening to shut us down unless I filled two more committee spots in the next three days.

This, for obvious reasons, made me angry. I am happy to say that anger paid off. We have a full future committee, with three new roles on offer, our membership has been boosted back to pre-Covid levels, we were nominated for multiple awards, and much to the newspaper’s ire, we now have half the media room at our disposal. I did not do this alone - my committee has been better than I could have ever imagined. I am proud to work alongside them and even prouder to call them my friends. If VINTAGE was a call for peace and relaxation, and ORBIT a plea to take heed of our surroundings, then INFERNO contains a very different message. I want you to be angry - to rage against the situation we find ourselves in. Burn your anxieties and leave your expectations and entitlements in the ashes. If I can ask for one last thing from our wonderful readership and our talented new committee, it is to set yourself ablaze. Put aside your self-doubt and self-pity and allow yourself to be really and truly angry, then direct it toward what needs to change, no matter the cost.

Together, we can become an INFERNO.

2

INFERNO

Editorial Contributions Amelia D’Aoust

Cover Competition Winner Sam Patterson Contributors Nathan Steward Kitty Carter Hattie Owen Paige Fitzsimmons Emma Williamson Vlad Perciun Jasmin Siavoshy Ella Burke Katie Hackett Lucas Taylor Kent Cristina Ferrin Pereda Varya Mishra Isabel Cowell Sofía Tapia Jasmin Siavoshy Lily Habibyan

Voluntary Inferno: Modern Day Tanning Culture By Hattie Owen

Polka Dot Pandemic: A History of Pattern By Isabel Cowell

Down the Rabbit Hole: the Algorithm Designed to Keep You Scrolling By Kitty Carter

INFERNO in Art By Jasmin Siavoshy

Beach Read by Emily Henry By Katie Hackett / Hot Milk by Deborah Levy By Ella Burke

Navigating the Inferno By Paige Fitzsimmons

The AI INFERNO By Lucas Taylor-Kent

Jus Ad Bellum: The Tool of Christian Nationalism By Cristina Ferrin Pereda

Assistant Creative Director Megan Ransome

Odysseus in Ammoudia By Vlad Perciun

19

17

INFERNO Poetry -FIRES ALL ACROSS THE WORLD By Sofía Tapia / Let Me Clear Something Up By Nathan Steward / A Dark Inferno By Emma William-

Angry Girl Punk Rock Summer By Varya Mishra

The Burnout Generation By Sofía Tapia

Bricks are Back: the Return of Analogue

By Kitty Carter The New Prohibition: A Cigarette Ban Is Going To Make Smoking Cool Again By Lily Habibiyan

4 3

Deputy Print Editors Kitty Carter Catherine Beavis

12 13

21 23 25 29 33 35 37

Copy Editors Chessie Fernandes Mila Pascolini Maytum

29

Creative Director Meina Sumida

9

INFERNO

Print Editor In Chief Nathan Steward

CONTENTS 5

11

STAFF ISSUE 49 RAZZ MAGAZINE

The New Prohibition: A Cigarette Ban Is Going To Make Smoking Cool Again I started smoking at 16 because, in my measly £6 an hour waitressing job circa 2021, the only form of workers’ rights was the cigarette break; generously granted during unbearable 12-hour shifts. Although not intended as an excuse, it is a rather standard explanation. It is also one the Government might have considered before passing a law premised on the idea that making cigarettes harder to obtain will inevitably make them less appealing to teenagers.

I loath to admit I have not gone more than a couple of months without some form of nicotine in almost four years. I offer this not for sympathy but for transparency: in fact, I think The Tobacco and Vapes Bill, which cleared Parliament on 21 April, is a good idea. However, I also think it might accidentally make smoking cool again. These two positions are not contradictory.

The mechanics are, one must concede, rather clever. Anyone born after 31 December 2008 will never legally be permitted to buy tobacco. Not now. Not when they turn 30. Not ever. From 2027, the minimum age of sale rises by one year, every year, until the legal smoker simply disappears (like a Cheshire cat, but with worse lungs).

A 40-year-old will be able to buy cigarettes whilst his 39-year-old friend is refused. Two adults, same pub, different legal status. An extraordinarily awkward round.

5

The law doesn’t criminalise smoking itself. Only the sale. The burden falls on retailers. It is, as one public health academic approvingly put it, prohibition that ‘almost happens invisibly as years pass’.

Cross-party support has been remarkable. 78% of the public backed it.

More striking: 52% of current smokers support it too. This is less paradoxical than it appears. Most people who smoke became addicted before they understood what they were signing up for - 83% start before 20 - and many wish someone had made the decision harder for their younger selves. Tobacco kills around 64,000 people a year in England.

The NHS spends an estimated £2.6 billion treating the consequences. The moral case is real. I believe it.

I also believe that the Government has misread what makes a teenager pick up a cigarette in the first place.

Oftentimes, it wasn’t the nicotine. It was the image. The cigarette has always been a prop for a particular kind of self-mythology; rebellious, fatalistic, vaguely continental. An entire generation of British teenagers was raised on Skins, in which Effy Stonem made smoking look like a personality rather than a slow respiratory catastrophe. The show is off air.

The damage, culturally speaking, is done, and nothing refreshes a myth quite like prohibition.

The Government’s theory is that making cigarettes harder to buy will reduce their appeal. The psychological evidence suggests the opposite. Some studies point to a ‘forbidden fruit’ effect: adolescents, who are constitutionally predisposed to do exactly what they’re told not to, may find illicit cigarettes considerably more compelling than legal ones. There is a grim irony in the possibility that The Tobacco and Vapes Bill, designed to make smoking quietly disappear, might instead make it aspirational. The contraband choice of the countercultural teenager, purchased from unregulated sellers without the tedium of proving your age.

Indeed, New Zealand implemented a near-identical generational tobacco ban in 2022, met with considerable international applause.

6

Yet, by 2025, concerns over the growth of the illicit tobacco market had become politically unavoidable. Illegal cigarettes were estimated to account for more than a quarter of total consumption: roughly five times their share before the ban. Likewise, critics of the Netherlands’ 2023 ban on flavoured nicotine vapes argue that restricting legal access did little to eliminate youth demand, instead pushing younger users towards black-market products of uncertain origin and content.

NKittyRCarter UTER

The statistics prove unfortunate, because Britain already had a model that worked. In 1974, 46% of British adults smoked. By 2024, that had fallen to 10%. This was not the product of prohibition. It came through health warnings, advertising bans, indoor smoking restrictions, rising age limits and decades of public education: measures which reduced smoking’s appeal whilst offering cessation support and safer nicotine alternatives. Sweden, Czechia and Greece, which pair strict cigarette regulation with access to smokeless alternatives, have cut smoking rates significantly faster than the EU average. The approach that brought Britain from nearly half the population to one in ten smokers was not prohibition. It was smart, evidence-based regulation.

The UK had a blueprint. It worked. And now we are trying something else.

The profits from tobacco still go to shareholders, whilst the costs amount to malfunctioning lungs and NHS waiting lists. The philosophical argument for protecting young people from addiction before they fully understand it is entirely reasonable. I find it fairly persuasive; which is why, nicotine patch firmly applied, moral hypocrisy temporarily suspended, I broadly support the legislation.

Yet, good intentions do not automatically produce good outcomes. Governments can regulate behaviour, but they are far less successful at regulating desire. The cigarette, one suspects, will outlast the legislation. Whether it survives as a legal product of diminishing cultural relevance or as a contraband trophy of adolescent rebellion depends entirely on whether the Government has learned from its history.

Truthfully, nothing has ever sold a vice to the young quite like telling them it is forbidden.

By Lily Habibiyan

7

TO

None of this proves The Tobacco and Vapes Bill will fail. Britain is not New Zealand, and cigarettes are not cocaine. But the lesson from the war on drugs, from American Prohibition, from every well-intentioned attempt to suppress supply without addressing demand, is depressingly consistent. You do not make things disappear by making them illegal, but you do make them interesting.

Bricks are Back: the Return of Analogue

ANALOGUE 8

One of the significant social media trends of 2026 has been the analogue trend. The trend signifies a general cultural shift towards being intentionally offline, and instead embracing slow living. Grab your flip-phone, send a postcard, and stuff your new bag with your iPod and wired earphones. We’re heading back to the nineties, baby!

The analogue trend truly marks a desire for slow living. It’s riding on the back of one of the biggest trends of 2025, that of the “tradwife”, popularised by Nara Smith and Ballerina Farm. That same theme of moving away from the busy pace of modern life and retreating to familiar hobbies, like cooking from scratch and homemaking, fuels the analogue trend.

For a trend to exist, however, it needs millions of people documenting it. In a world reaching boiling point, logging off and returning to our simple hobbies is attractive. The irony is that sharing this process online is the first thing many do. Content creators reporting on their analogue lifestyle still spend time editing their videos, adding hashtags, and engaging with their online audience to promote being off their phones.

The trend itself encourages overconsumption. Being “analogue” in 2026 isn’t apparently as simple as journaling more frequently and logging off socials. To be “analogue”, you need to acquire a dumbphone– think a flip phone, the kind that the characters of 2000s TV Shows would toss in the trash to sever communication with an ex. A camera, too, as well as a new leather journal.

Buy new CDs and DVDs because you’ve probably chucked or donated your old ones, or buy vinyl. With that, you need a CD, DVD and record player.

Don’t forget the “analogue bag”, the zines, the hardback books. None of this is bad, per se, but it’s the ruthlessly encouraged over-consumption that accompanies every major trend that is problematic.

S K C I BR

It’s also a monetised rebellion that has a class dimension to it: the brands that are being plastered across trending videos are those of Lamy, Moleskine and Polaroid, amongst others, and analogue elements like vinyl, film cameras, leather journals are all expensive, middle-class luxuries, complicating the misguided idea that this is a retreat from consumerism.

9

The worst element of the analogue trend is the performance of it all. Trends inspire others, as demonstrated by the trad-wife to analogue pipeline. The analogue trend is reminiscent of the performative-man trend, which was characterised by this offline approach—wired earphones and a dog-eared paperback—and this signals the growing desire to slow down and return to the old. There’s a reason the saying “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” exists — and perhaps we’re all waking up to that truth a little too late, finally shaking off the fog of capitalist consumer manipulation engineered by corporations that profit from the endless cycle of tech “upgrades”.

The analogue trend can also be analysed as a general reflection of the growing distaste for digital media, and this is what is valuable about it.

We’re beginning to question what it means to live in a world where we are becoming resistant to living online. Perhaps we’re not as captured

by Silicon Valley any longer, but buying several old-school technologies suggests that we’ve not yet found the right solution.

Embrace the analogue impulse if it is genuinely yours - but switch off creators who set up their iPhone 17 Pro to film themselves writing a postcard, or pretending to use a vintage Nokia brick.

K C r e t A r a B C E y t t R i A K

10

Angry Girl Punk Rock Summer

BURNOUT GENERATION Almost a million young people are not in employment, education or training (Office of National Statistics). This is the highest level in more than a decade and equivalent to the population of the UK’s third largest city. One of the leading causes? The UK’s worsening job market. Having unsuccessfully applied for dozens of internships whilst at university, I can wholeheartedly understand this staggering level of unemployment amongst graduates. It’s not just Exeter University: for most students, this is not a simple statistic, but everyday life.

Unlike previous generations, Gen Z students struggle to get long-term employment, be it year-long placements, summer internships or graduate jobs. Just one application can take hours, between answering every question and tailoring your cover letter and CV to the job advert’s specific key words (just so their ATS doesn’t reject you before your application has even been thoroughly considered).

Applications require that you even qualify to apply for the job, with some companies requiring months to years of experience on top of your degree. As someone who entered university with little work experience, I had to scramble to get some any way I could, constantly feeling like I was handling three jobs: getting experience, applying for jobs and studying.

It’s no wonder Gen Z experiences continuous burnout.

11

By Sofía Tapia

As the climate grows increasingly warmer, the days are getting loud, restless and slightly messy in the best way. Feminist punk rock and its wider influences provide the perfect soundtrack for rising temperatures and those days when it feels like the town is melting under your feet. Emerging in the late twentieth century, feminist punk developed as both a sound and a stance. The genre was raw, distorted and confrontational, allowing women to carve out spaces for themselves in music scenes that often excluded them.

Hole sits at the heavier, grunge-leaning end of this spectrum. Songs such as “Doll Parts”. “Miss World” and “Jennifer’s Body”, from the album Live Through This, combine vulnerability with distortion, while “Celebrity Skin” has a more polished sound without losing its emotional impact.

The broader tradition of feminist punk and alternative music stretches way further back, with Joan Jett’s “Bad Reputation” helping to establish an early model of female defiance in rock. No Doubt’s “Just a Girl” categorised pop-rock through the frustration of gendered limitation, and X-Ray Spex’s “Oh Bondage Up Yours!” channelled the abrasive energy of punk into direct feminist critique.

The Riot Grrrl movement intensified this, with Bikini Kill’s “Rebel Gir”’ remaining one of the defining feminist punk songs, while “New Radio” is more stripped-back but still has a sense of urgency. Heavier tracks like “Powertrip” have a similar feeling of resistance, expression, and the refusal to be contained. Some more songs that deserve to join the others are “Detroit Valentine” by Red Aunts and another song by No Doubt, “Don’t Speak”.

These tracks together form a feminist punk-infected summer playlist that faces the heat and is alive with defiance.

By Varya Mishra 12

FIRES ALL ACROSS THE WORLD Our world is on fire.

It lights up in uncontrollable, flaming, warning signs; and we turn the news off and say they’re all lies.

We ignore the problem until it’s not on a screen, but in our backyard where we hear the screams.

Before: it would never happen, not to me, Now: When will I wake up from this dream?

What if you never did?

If when you put on your headphones, all you heard were cries and pleading, Voices screaming for their lives, rebelling for a chance to live.

Would you turn the volume off and swipe to the next reel?

Fires are not easily put out.

You must start gathering water now, before it is taken all by drought.

Extinguish the small candle lights, before they turn into engulfing flames and drown us.

Then you’ll become just one more of those noises, forever in the background, but always left voiceless.

It’ll be out of your control.

So decide now, while you still have the chance.

This is not a show where you can pause or call “CUT!”.

Soon, it’ll be your neighbourhood that’s burning.

The flames can be seen on the horizon, slowly turning everything to ash.

It will never happen to me, said the dead man, living.

So let us extinguish them while they’re still small.

Call up your troops to fight off the dragons, before they destroy us all.

If you keep dreaming and stay inactive, soon it won’t be a faraway land, but your bedroom that’s on fire.

This is a warning.

13

Sofía Tapia

Let Me Clear Something Up They told you that Hell is on fire because our tools destroy us.

Why not, then, could we be consumed by nails and screws and hammers – we are not Greek, and fire is not impetus for a soul; there is no Promethean knot we cannot unravel, even if the burning bush shrunk our jaw and tidied our gut – the only tool unsuitable for a monkey’s palm is fat and grey and heavy and nestled in our skull.

If we must fall, must we burn?

Perhaps the reds and yellows can be black and white instead.

Perhaps pain is a blessing and He makes us fear the heat because the final fate is to forget, and that blasted, blazing Inferno is everything we will never know – coveted, cosied, clutched to God’s breast – His last and oldest trick of never letting go.

Nathan Steward

14

A Dark Inferno

Our teas are drunk cold. I sit, s p l i t in two.

I step out of my house for a walk. The night spreads like a wave, crashing and suffocating the sun.

One side wants nothing more than to be alone, to lock the door and bar the windows.

I drift in two black currents – one inside me and one outside.

The other clings to him, not you. I plead to God that he will restart my icecold inferno.

I cannot tell which darkness is mine, nor will I say which will drown me.

My heart reaches for you, but I know better. You are no longer what I need.

I find myself at John’s door.

I did not plan it, but my feet seemed to know the way to him instinctively.

I rise to leave and apologise for interrupting, yearning that he will tell me to stay.

It is where I need to be.

The invitation never comes. Instead, he walks me to the door and slips on a coat.

He sees when something shifts inside me, softly reassuring me that he is there if I need him.

We sit on a bench, watching the world pass through the cold air that lingers between

You are always too busy playing padel to notice.

the streetlamps. Our late night discussion fixes more than I knew had been broken by you.

He invites me in for tea and quiet company.

The kettle screams its steamy tune.

After an hour, we return to his house. He hugs me tight, pressing my shattered pieces together.

Snailtrails of tears snake down my face, attempting to escape the violent voice of the kettle.

On my walk home, his hug echoes throughout my hollow body, left alone to perpetually answer itself.

They meet my chin and fall onto the table, like the leaky kitchen tap which always mocks me.

Each time it collides with my bones, a spark is created. It is not enough yet to revive my inferno.

My tears stain small circles on the tabletop.

But, once the spark births an uncontrollable fire, I will bring Hell to those who made me feel this way.

They last as a reminder of the night I watched John weep over the loss of his uncle.

This time it was a quiet, defeated lament. Not the unstoppable downpour I have seen before.

15

He brings a passion out in me that I thought had been numbed by the hollowness.

John’s hug will bounce around my ribs, escaping the day I regain my fiery inferno.

Emma Wil iamson 16

Odysseus in Ammoudia

By Vlad Perciun

At the mouth of river Acheron, in the city of Ammoudia, there lay aground a large vessel of white sails. Its bow protruded onto the shore, where merchants and fishermen gathered and debated whether or not to board.

‘I say we find out who these travellers are, and why they have come to our shores!’, a sailor spoke from the back.

‘Yes, our shores!’, more voices added.

Together they crept toward the side of the vessel, where they found a large hole at its waist, but to their disappointment, could discover nothing else but a hollow room.

‘It is I you are looking for.’

The inhabitants of Ammoudia turned to find staring at them a man of unremarkable stature; his clothes ragged and unkempt.

‘Who are you, we demand to know!’

‘I am Odysseus, son of Laertes, known to the world for every kind of craft – my fame reaches the heavens. I may not dress like a warrior, though I am one. I require help to reach Hades, and for that, I must find the junction at which Kokytos and Pyriphlegethon flow into Acheron. To the one who chooses to help, me and my men shall give five sheep and five ram.’

The inhabitants scrambled to reach Odysseus first, salivating at the prospect of walking home five sheep and five ram richer. First to reach him was a child, his name being Lysias.

‘I can help you, Odysseus. My name is Lysias, son of Sosias, and I can take you to the place where the Kokytos and Pyriphlegethon meet. It is two hours by foot, but our horses are blessed by Hermes and fast like the wind. Please, come.’

17

And so Lysias and Odysseus, son of Laertes, and five of his men rode by horse into the thick groves which lead from the shore, bringing with them one of their rams, and a fat. black sheep. Tall poplar trees lined the road to Mesopotamos, and their shade kept the horses and his men cool. Soon, they had reached the stone that stood at the junction of the two rivers.

‘Thank you Lysias, son of Sosias. When you return to my vessel, five sheep and five ram will be yours. Now, I must leave and split the earth and the hell that lies beneath it. Farewell.’

Odysseus and his men faced the stone and below it, began to dig a pit of roughly a cubit in each direction, just as they were instructed. Once that was done, a mixture of sweet milk and honey was poured directly into the pit. Then, a pouring of sweet wine, and lastly, water, with a generous sprinkle of white barley, which was stirred well. The ram and the black sheep were brought forward and their throats were slit so the blood flowed into the pit.

‘Drink now, forgotten shades, and hear the oath I cast into this darkened tide— while breath yet fills my chest, your names shall not be lost among the dead.’

At the sound of these words, the ground beneath them turned crimson, then trembled and shook as Odysseus sat silently by the pit. The earth crumbled and a giant chasm formed beside them and there the river emptied itself into it with immense rage; fish and debris twisting into the abyss. A hurling wind blew out and in an instant became a blazing inferno, reaching far above the poplar trees, so that the horses became agitated and his men froze in terror.

They had reached Hades, and Hades had reached Odysseus.

18

INFERNO IN ART

By Jasmin Siavoshy

For centuries, presentations of Hell were strictly religious.

In early religious art it appeared as an elaborate nightmarish spectacle.

There were demons, pitchforks and bodies contorted in bright colours.

Fra Angelico’s (c.1430s) depiction of Hell illustrates this - with tonguelike flames and multiple sections exhibiting different torture methods. Everyone is naked. The retributionists have wings and horns. It is distinctly removed from earthliness.

There were no depictions of earthly horror. In the twentieth century, this distance started to collapse. The scale of human suffering began to alter irrevocably.

The First World War saw 22 million dead. The Second World War introduced mechanised death on a scale previously unimaginable. And this one brought a new terrible angle: nuclear destruction. Masses of human bodies could be, and were, annihilated in an instant. Suddenly, the potential for the extinction of civilisations was possible.

The kinds of suffering once reserved for religious imaginings - mass murder, bodily destruction, the extermination of land - were no longer hypothetical.

The taste of Hell was palpable.

19

As always, Art shifted with this change. Not only had people lost their lives to these wars, but others had lived to tell the tale. Five years later they would be back, reading the paper, walking the dog and getting dressed for work, with business as usual.

In 1998 Terence Mckenna predicted that human civilisation was speeding toward a perpetual state of weirdness.

“It’s only gonna get weirder and weirder, and finally it’s going to be so weird, that people are going to have to talk about how weird it is.

I look for the invention of artificial life, possible contact with extraterrestrials, possible human immortality, appalling acts of brutality and genocide.”

This sense of ‘weirdness’, once seen in the wacky medieval depictions of Hell, was manifesting itself in repeated wars throughout the century. This is where contemporary depictions of Hell become particularly revealing.

In 2008, Brothers Jake and Dino Chapman created an artwork titled ‘Fucking Hell’. It was the second version of the work ‘Hell’, which was accidentally destroyed in 2004. It takes the form of nine display cases laid out like swastikas. They contain models, where 30,000 small skeletons of Nazi soldiers are staged to demonstrate the absurdity of the Second World War. But there are intentional drastic inaccuracies and inconsistencies in their work.

The ones being systematically murdered are soldiers wearing Nazi uniforms. But, amongst the relentless violence: skeletons of soldiers caught in cycles of destruction, surrounded by mutants, clowns, and strange, extraterrestrial figures.

One of the artists, Jake Chapman, said “The fact that it’s been seen as somehow sympathetic to Nazis because there’s so many of them, is ridiculous. The Nazis are being put into their own systematic genocide. It’s not called Holocaust, it’s called Hell.”

“The Nazis practised genocide on everyone they thought was inferior. What we’ve done is mirror that: the Nazis are being recycled within their own mechanism by skeletons, mutants and aliens. Nazis getting the shit kicked out of them is so science-fictionally wrong that there might as well be Martians in there.”

The World Wars which altered depictions of Hell were decades ago. Sadly, brutal conflicts still take place around the world, and Hell is a reality for those involved.

Imagery of Hell continues to be shaped today, for as long as we let it be.

20

Beach Read by Emily Henry Looking for a beach read to pass an hour or two in the lazy summer sun? Look no further than Emily Henry’s Beach Read. Emily Henry quickly became a household name known for her idyllic romance novels.

Beach Read is another triumph for Henry, with all the charms of an early 2000s rom-com.

Nestled in a dreamy beachside town, two writers find themselves broke and in dire need of bestselling manuscripts before the end of the summer. Did I mention that they are not only college rivals, but also neighbours? After having her romanticised ideals of life crushed when she discovers her deceased father’s infidelity, January cannot seem to find the words to write another cushy romance novel. Gus, on the other hand, believes happy endings don’t exist. He prefers more ‘realistic’ creative pursuits. To cure their dreaded writer’s block, Gus and January swap genres for the summer– as a bet.

They say ‘opposites attract’. So, be prepared for a steamy romance that begins with hatred, grows into friendship, and finally blossoms into something deeper. If you are someone who tends to romanticise every moment of your life, then you’ll love January Andrews. Not only that, but brooding Gus Everett (who has a dark past) is the perfect love-interest. Can both writers reignite the joy of writing, and most importantly, fall in love with love again?

Beach Read is one of my favourite books that I come back to every time a heatwave erupts. It’s perfect for fans of enemies-to-lovers and slow-burn romances.

Will you catch yourself blushing when January and Gus finally get together? Most definitely. But don’t worry, you can blame your inevitable rosy cheeks on the sun.

By Katie Hackett

21

Hot Milk by Deborah Levy Sweat drips in the south of Spain, with walks along the sand, drives through the hot air and ocean dips among the jellyfish. Hot Milk is the ultimate beach read.

Sophie is on a trip with her mother Rose, but they aren’t travelling for pleasure. Rose is chronically ill and unable to walk, and Dr Gomez’s clinic in Spain is her last resort for finding the diagnosis, and therefore solution, to all her problems. Sophie dutifully tends to her mother, serving her food and water, and tagging along to her appointments at the strange clinic, but things don’t feel quite right between mother and daughter. As it all unfolds, Sophie is also exploring the local town and meeting its residents: Juan, the young medic who tends to her jellyfish stings, and Ingrid, the mysterious artist from Berlin who embroiders vintage clothes for a living.

Hot Milk explores co-dependency, family, and liberation. It has all the right components for a beach read, particularly the hot holiday vibe. Think of days so warm you feel like you’re in a dream, a holiday romance with that wild, mysterious character you see in the local town and become infatuated with. But amidst this striking scenery, there’s a compelling undertone, studded with tensions and conversations left unsaid, unresolved trauma, and deep-rooted resentment. You can’t quite work out what is going to happen, and unusual characters are everywhere.

It is a lovely, easy read, perfect for dozing off on the beach. There’s just enough happening to keep you invested, but nothing so intense that it will disturb your sunbathing. It makes you long for a summer trip away. Short and sweet, it’s designed to be finished in a couple of days lying out in the sun.

By Ella Burke 22

Navigating the INFERNO On the 12th April 2025, my lung collapsed.

Before that, my life had direction. It was moving towards something I had always wanted and worked hard for. In June, I was moving to Australia for my year abroad at Griffith University on the Gold Coast. I found comfort in this, the way most students do with set plans, deadlines and departure dates. I had booked flights and spent my evenings searching through beachside accommodations, and I was starting conversations with ‘when I am away next year…’.

Very suddenly, I experienced chest pain that spread into my left arm and left side of my body. The idea of my lung collapsing sounded dramatic and exaggerated. I experienced a sort of imposter syndrome as I sat in the hospital for hours surrounded by people I felt were truly ill, those experiencing strokes and epileptic fits. It emerged that it wasn’t just that my lung was deflated, but also my plans to travel 24 hours across the globe to the other side of the world, due to the dangers of flying with a collapsed lung. I was crushed. When I first received the offer to study in Australia,I had thought the most difficult part would have been making an extensive pros and cons mind map (because a list is simply not enough) of the reasons for and against going.I hadn’t considered that anything else would have got in the way after I had made the decision to go.

23

By Paige Fitzsimmons The real inferno was not my experience in the hospital, but the aftermath. I had a sense of invincibility when I was younger that had continued up to this point, but this had shown me that the world was unpredictable and uncertain. I grieved over a year abroad that was more than an academic part of my degree. It was a dream of mine from a young age; a symbol of independence and change. I had built a new version of myself around leaving and attached a great deal of meaning to the long-awaited departure. Staying, at first, felt like failure.

I

still think about the life I would have had if I could have travelled abroad to study. I imagine alternate versions of this year unfolding somewhere. For me,navigating the inferno of the past year has meant learning to live with uncertainty and not being consumed by this (which is still a work in progress). I have learned lessons about myself, namely how much my self-worth depended on having future plans, being busy and constantly productive. I am now trying to focus on appreciating myself for simply being and concentrating on seeking out as many fun and valuable experiences to enrich my life before I return to university. The past year has definitely changed my perceptions of the world, but has shown me I am still capable of rebuilding from what survives the fire.

24

Abilene is a city in West Texas. It is roughly midway between Dallas-Fort Worth and the oil country of Midland-Odessa. Outside its gridded streets are long red-brown measures of wind combed land.

Mesquite and scrub hold to the dry land, their roots entrenched near forty feet in search of water. The caliche flats are not technically desert. More often in Spring and early Summer than the rest of the year, the dust of the flats are scattered by the first fat drops of rain. A rain that hoards and then spends itself recklessly in a great deluge, before slipping away again into the draws and arroyos of the land. For this reason, Abilene land is known to be difficult. This fact was known well by the ranchers, whose agricultural work formed the foundations for Abilene as a city.

On the city’s northeastern edge, a plot of land is being used today for a purpose these ranchers had no word for, nor the ability to understand. Regimented rows of panels convert solar into electricity, feeding this into long, low buildings that contain, by some estimates, the future. Inside, machines process in a single second more text than the entire workforce of Abilene’s ranch outfits could have read in their combined lifetimes. These machines can write, reason, and converse, and, at least to the extent that it has begun to make some people nervous: they are thinking. They belong to OpenAI.

25

TH E AI N F E R N O

Abilene is now the flagship site for the Stargate AI data center project, a partnership between OpenAI, Oracle, SoftBank, and Crusoe, that aims to power future generations of ChatGPT and other AI models. As these centres increasingly occupy land once given to older and more legible economies, they demand to be questioned.

26

The way that it rains in Abilene, the clouds emptying a deluge so fast that the ground can barely absorb what it is given, is what AI does to information. The machines do not try to lie. They do, however, produce at a rate no human can match.

They flood the flats of human discussion, a great torrent of information that flows through the valleys of the internet. The droplets of information they dispense are not bad. Neither are they wrong. They are however, perverse in the way that they carry away real human thought in their current. Words generated by artificial intelligence are difficult to distinguish from human thought, but clog the finite human attention. The deluge passes by and the ground, the dirt of human consciousness, is left epistemically dry.

The same machines that flood human discourse are, themselves, drinking. Texas data centers are projected to consume 49 billion gallons of water this year alone, a figure expected to rise to 399 billion gallons annually by 2030. The Stargate facility in Abilene will require eight million gallons of city water simply to fill its cooling system at the outset, before a single question has been asked of it, before a single answer has been generated. A small data center requires around 300,000 gallons of municipal water per day. Something on the scale of Stargate could require millions. It is comical absurdity that land where mesquites have evolved to cling onto each drop of water now hosts machines that use millions of gallons.

27

Beyond water, they require energy, and that energy comes predominantly from fossil fuel. Around sixty percent of the increasing electricity demands from data centers will be met by burning fossil fuels, adding approximately 220 million tons of carbon to the atmosphere.

The carbon footprint of AI systems could reach eighty million tons of CO2 in 2025, equivalent to the entire annual emissions of New York City.

The ranchers who built Abilene understood that extraction has a tempo. That taking too much, too fast, does not end well. They learned the hard way, from drought, failed crops, and cattle dead on the caliche flats. None of this is to say that what is being built on the northeastern edge of Abilene is useless. The machines are solving real problems that help real people. It is very likely that they are the future and they will, without a doubt, do a great deal of good in the world. However, they come with terms. Water will be used, carbon will be spent, and real human voices will, increasingly, become crowded out.

The mesquite does not know about any of this. It will go on, driving its roots in search of water that may or may not be there. It has been doing this longer than anyone has been asking these questions. The lesson it learned is the same that the ranchers learned, and the same one that is quietly, now, being asked of us. That there are limits to what any place can give, whether that place be a corner of Abilene or the entire world.

By Lucas Taylor-Kent 28

Jus Ad Bellum: The Tool of Christian Nationalism On the 15th of April 2026, Pete Hegseth, the United States Defence Secretary, delivered a speech at the Pentagon during one of his ‘worship services’. The purpose of this was to bless the current Iran war effort, yet his prayer, which he claimed to have based on a Bible passage in the Old Testament book of Ezekiel, bore an unmistakable resemblance to Samuel L. Jackson’s speech from the movie ‘Pulp Fiction’: “And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to capture and destroy my brother”.

In doing this, Hegseth reached for the language of holy war and found it in a hitman’s mouth. The prayer sounds sacred because Tarantino engineered it to – this kind of language is a performance, and disingenious. Sounding holy and being holy are completely separable things. This was not an isolated incident – it was just the sharpest expression of a deliberate and systemic project to Christianise America’s war with Iran.

The Christianisation of war is a recent phenomenon within segments of the Republican party. It involves framing military conflicts, especially those in the Middle East, through a lens of biblical prophecy, holy war, and Christian nationalism. Through this, conflicts become divine acts rather than geopolitical ones – ordained by God and directed

by Trump. The worship services themselves have attracted legal challenge. Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AU) have filed lawsuits arguing that the worship services are inherently pressurising and that holding religious services within a military institution promotes one faith above others, placing non-Christian soldiers in an impossible position. Over 100 of those soldiers have lodged complaints with the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, reporting commanders who describe the conflict in explicitly religious terms, such as ‘holy war’. The worship services are not merely symbolic. For those who do not share the faith, they are coercive.

29

The religious framing of the war comes from the top-down. Hegseth isn’t a rogue actor– he’s executing a tone set by Trump himself.

The president told reporters that God supports the US military action in Iran, a statement delivered on one of Christianity’s holiest days: “God is good and God wants to see people taken care of”.

Jus Ad Bellum sets the criteria for when a conflict can be considered ‘just’. Rooted in Catholic just war theory and later codified in the UN Charter, it was developed specifically to prevent rulers from using faith as a pretext for violence. It requires right intention, legitimate authority, and proportionality – essentially that wars are fought for genuine justice rather than conquest, sanctioned by recognised authority rather than divine claim, and conducted without excessive force. The administration distorts every one of them.

Right intention is replaced by holy mandate, legitimate authority

by Pentagon worship services, and proportionality by prayers for overwhelming violence against those who ‘deserve no mercy’.

Additionally, the conflict between Trump and Pope Leo XIV is not simply a disagreement over foreign policy. It is a contest over who owns the figure of Christ. Trump made that explicit when he shared an AI-generated image of himself depicted as Jesus – not invoking Christianity but replacing its central figure with himself. This image is visual proof of a wider theology, that of ‘MAGA Jesus’. This is the version of Christianity that Trump alludes to when he declares God’s support for America’s war with Iran. MAGA is no longer just a political movement, it’s also a religious one. It offers Trump as its ‘chosen one’ and Israel as the ‘chosen nation’ – a theology with no room for a Pope who disagrees.

30

When Pope Leo XIV responded, he wasn’t just disagreeing with Trump’s foreign policy but also defending the actual figure of Christ from being supplanted by a political leader. He clarifies that “Jesus is the King of Peace, whom no one can use to justify war”, and also that Jesus “rejects war” and “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war”. Archbishop Reinhard Marx of Munich, who also condemned Russia’s Orthodox Church for identical rhetoric, called it “shameless blasphemy”. The Chairman of the US Catholic Bishops Committee was unequivocal – for over a thousand years, the Catholic Church has taught just war theory, and Leo is explicitly deploying that tradition against the administration that claims to speak in its name. Trump’s later attacks on Leo frame him as reactive in response to the doctrinal loss, calling the Pope weak on crime and terrible for foreign policy, unprecedented in presidential conduct toward the papacy. Ultimately, the doctrine requires recognisable Christian authority, and two versions of Christianity are now contesting what that means.

The danger of this move isn’t that the administration is insincere in its faith – it may well be sincere. The danger is structural. Jus Ad Bellum was forged precisely because Christian rulers have always been tempted to dress conquest in the language of God. It exists because the Church understood that sincere belief is not the same as just cause, and that divine conviction is the oldest justification for unjust war. When that doctrine is repurposed to sanctify rather than scrutinise, it doesn’t just fail as law. It fails as theology.

By Cristina Ferrin Pereda 31

32

Down the Rabbit Hole: the Algorithm Designed to Keep You Scrolling inventSince social media platforms were first de it ed, highly sensitive algorithms have ma lling scro of increasingly difficult to get out rabbit holes. entures Evolved from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adv ” in Wonderland, the phrase “rabbit hole vein refers to a prolonged trip into a specific me al soci ite of addictive, seemingly infin term this of dia content. The cultural osmosis lity of has exposed the uncomfortable rea , or You ? rge cha in y scrolling: who’s actuall t to ten con its the algorithm which refreshes maximise its engagement? we have On another branch of internet slang, lish Eng “doomscrolling”. Awarded Oxford , the Dictionary word of the year in 2020 iction add e abl fort term refers to the uncom ely larg is of scrolling through media which time on negative, such as spending excessive hms that the news, or scrolling through algorit g and erin are largely filled with fear-mong distressing content.

By Kitty Carter

33

We doomscroll for several reasons. Firstly, there’s a survival aspect to it: consuming excessive amounts of negative news alerts us to the threats surrounding us. The user chases the sense of being informed and prepared. Furthermore, due to the distressing nature of the content, your nervous system becomes dysregulated, anxiety is increased and the practice of seeking out threat-related content begins to feel like a necessary routine.

Dopamine scrolling, on the other hand, is the pursuit of entertainment which triggers dopamine release. As social media has developed, algorithm updates have introduced features designed solely to increase user scrolling and addictions to these instant reward mechanisms, such as autoplay, speed adjustments and infinite scrolling. The unpredictability of the reward keeps you addicted, just like gambling on a slot machine. As time passes, you find you must scroll for longer just to gain an average standard of dopamine, which is why you can lose hours to your phone without really realising the truth - an addiction has formed.

Both of these effects of media scrolling form harmful addictions. They share the same basic mechanics: the compulsive scrolling despite negative consequences, the tolerance building which leads to increased usage, the withdrawal anxiety when you can’t access social media and the utter loss of control over the scrolling itself. However, they are on opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of what drives each. Doom scrolling is closer to an anxiety disorder, the attempt to manage an uncomfortable feeling. Dopamine scrolling is about the chase of novelty and entertainment.

It’s a matter of opinion where the root cause lies. It can be argued that it’s down to the individual, the screen itself, or the social media platform designs. With screen addictions being classed as increasingly damaging and more research appearing about the long term effects on our brains, it’s likely that we will see a gradual shift in regulations. Already, on apps such as TikTok, there are enforced breaks that recommend stretching your legs, drinking water, or taking time for mindfulness. However, it’s likely that a lot of warnings and possible legislations will centre around harm to children, rather than harm to adults.

Whatever restrictions are introduced, they will have to be carefully considered, evaluating just how effective they will actually be. The recent social media ban in Australia for under 16’s was proven largely ineffective, as reported by the Molly Rose Foundation who reported that over 60% of teenagers still had access to one or more of their accounts through the use of VPNs and similar means.

The threat of scrolling addiction is still largely undermined. While we can assume that legislation and controls will be introduced around it, it’s worth interrogating your own screen usage to decide whether it is you, or the algorithm, who is in control.

34

We ’ v e all seen them trending around campus and social media recently, and it seems everyone owns a polka dot top all of a sudden - but have you ever wondered where the pattern and its name came from? Despite their recent surge in popularity, polka dots have long been prevalent in fashion, from Marilyn Monroe’s iconic outfits to Katy Perry’s 2010s style and, more recently, Olivia Dean. It is a trend that has always seemed to dip in and out of fashion. Looking back to the Middle Ages, polka dots originally had negative connotations of disease and illness due to their resemblance to smallpox, but the Industrial Revolution saw a growth in their popularity, as the invention of the sewing machine and mechanised weaving allowed for evenly spaced and symmetrical spots.

So, why are they called ‘polka’ dots?

Polka Dot

The term originates from 19th-century European immigrants who brought the polka dance over to the United States. This completely exploded, and a number of polka clubs opened all over America. Women often wore dotted garments, which made the polka clubs recognisable and connected the dots (pun intended) between the pattern and its name. Polka dots really took off in fashion during the Roaring 20s, and it can be credited back to the 1926 Miss America, Norma Smallwood, who wore an iconic dotted bathing suit. Another key founder of the craze was Minnie Mouse, who was depicted in a polka dot dress in still images of the 1928 film Plane Crazy, although the dots were omitted in the film due to the difficulties in animating them. From here, the trend never really left, with polka dot patterns being seen all throughout the 20th-century, in and up to today. The pattern was seen consistently throughout the ‘Golden Age’ of Hollywood, with stars like Marilyn Monroe famously wearing dotted garments. Her most notable looks were her iconic black and white bathing suit and her polka-dot dress from the film The Seven Year Itch (1955).

35

1960s fashion features lots of polka dots in looks from the ‘It’ girls of the time, such as Twiggy and Jean Shrimpton.

These were often larger prints and bright colours, showing a shift from the neutrals which dominated the early 20th century, and a clear sign of the evolution of the pattern to fit with trending styles.

Continuing into the ‘80s and ‘90s, we have the famous brown and white dotted dress that Julia Roberts wears in ‘Pretty Woman’.

The people’s princess, Princess Diana, was also spotted sporting a polka dot look on a number of occasions.

The late 2000s and early 2010s saw a shift in polka dot fashion, with trends moving back towards the brighter colours and larger dots of the 60s, rather than the staple black-and white. Celebrities such as Katy Perry and Zooey Deschanel embodied the twee and Tumblr-era fashion, with the cover art on Katy Perry’s ‘One of the Boys’ album featuring Katy in a pin-up polka dot top.

Pandemic

As the bright colours and clashing patterns declined, polka dots themselves remained in fashion. The recent resurgence in popularity features mostly the classic black-andwhite polka dots, reimagining the polka-dot trend in a more mature and versatile way. Popular garments are now most reminiscent of the 90s, with flowy dresses, smaller dots, and an association with romantic femininity and confidence. Now the pattern is appearing on more than just clothing - it is covering bags, hats, water bottles, and phone cases.

Polka dots are in no way new or original. Instead, they serve as a reminder of how fashion trends have re-emerged and evolved over time. - forming into the style which we witness today.

By Isabel Cowell

A History of Pattern 36

Voluntary Inferno: Modern Day Tanning Culture 37

The phrase ‘healthy tan’ is probably one of the most successful marketing oxymorons in history.

The golden glow that typically signals your recent return from sun-kissed sandy beaches (or a night spent lathering yourself in green mousse) doesn’t always equal vitality. That ‘natural’ tan you have from lazing in the sun is your skin’s cry for help; a frantic attempt to protect its DNA by making melanin. Yet, in Western society, we sprint toward this ‘voluntary inferno.’ Modern tanning

The sun-kissed look, however, is not sought-after worldwide. In many South Asian and Western African countries, a preference for fair skin remains deeply rooted in beauty standards and continues to fuel a multi-billion-dollar industry for ‘skin-lightening’ creams and serums. In recent years, there has been increased concern about the long-term effects of these products, many of which contain mercury or hydroquinone, substances intended only for use under the strict supervision of a GP or dermatologist. In these areas, fairness is still synonymous with refinement and purity, an abhorrent hand-me-down from Western colonial powers and the Eurocentric beauty standards they enforced.

culture is a fascinating, dangerous intersection of shifting class symbols, racialised beauty standards, and a persistent ignorance of medical consequences.

There is a paradox here: while darker skin tones historically and continually face systemic discrimination, white consumers often seek to mimic those same tones through tanning to adhere to beauty standards. This, of course, is not the intention of the majority of sunbathers. However, it does highlight our superficial obsession with aesthetics and subsequent ignorance of lived realities.

For centuries, a pale complexion was the ultimate luxury; signalling wealth, comfort, and enough income. On the contrary, bronzed skin was the mark of the labourer, the farmer, and the impoverished, who were forced to work in the heat of the midday sun. It wasn’t until the twentieth century that this narrative flipped dramatically.

As the Industrial Revolution moved the working class into dark factories, paleness became a sign of urban drudgery and poor health. In fact, it was Coco Chanel’s famous return from a Mediterranean cruise - with a sunburn as her accessory - that accidentally rebranded the tan in the 1920s. Suddenly, golden skin showed you had money to travel, leisure time to lounge by a pool, and the status to escape the grey smog of the city. Today, even as most understand the risks, the association with vacations and wealth persists.

Ignorance also surfaces when discussing the biological cost of tanning.

There is a price to the glow, and it’s expensive. The primary cause of melanoma is over-exposure to UV radiation, and over the last decade, the UK has seen a thirty per cent increase in cases. UV radiation causes physical breaks in DNA strands, and if the body’s repair mechanisms fail or are overwhelmed, these mutations lead to skin cancers, or worse the potentially lethal melanoma. Tanning beds significantly raise this risk factor by emitting UV radiation levels up to fifteen times those of the midday sun.

It comes as no surprise, then, that the World Health Organisation (WHO) classifies tanning beds as Group 1 carcinogens — the same category as tobacco and asbestos.

Modern tanning culture is a testament to the power of beauty standards. We are willing to endure a ‘voluntary inferno’ to project an image of health, when in actuality we are compromising our bodies’ wellbeing.

An approximate eighty-six per cent of skin cancers are preventable with the right sun protection and tanning habits. We must eventually ask ourselves: Is temporary beauty worth permanent damage?

By Hattie Owen 38

Issue 49 www.razzmag.co.uk instagram:@razzmagexeter email: razzmag@gmail.com