Over the last month, I've thought a lot about the way humans value each other. About the conscious and subconscious methods and criteria we use to determine the worth of another person's life, and the subsequent way we treat them: not according to what matters - to who they are as a sentient being of flesh and blood - but only according to what we think about them. I thought about the power of a public platform when used for good, and when used for evil, by the famous, the in

When I first started my blog, I was in my mid twenties. I'd been away from home for about five or so years by that stage, living in a flat in Sydney with a friend and another guy who liked eating all my food and putting the near empty boxes back in the fridge so I wouldn't know I had no food until after he'd gone to his mother's house for the weekend. I remember the day pretty clearly actually: sitting there, signing in before going off to make my shiny new site look pretty.

IMAGE: Fans walk to preview night at Comic-Con held at the San Diego Convention Center on Wednesday July 11, 2012, in San Diego. (Photo by Denis Poroy/Invision/AP) Being a TV and movie fan is a pretty awesome thing. Sure, there are a lot of things networks and studios have yet to pick their game up on (SERIOUSLY THOUGH WHERE THE ACTUAL DICKENS IS MY BLACK WIDOW MOVIE, MARVEL) but altogether, I reckon these days we're pretty spoilt. Indeed, we all have our favourites but ultim

​​ NAME: Humans of Twitter HOST: Steve Molk WEB: www.humansoftwitter.com One of the best perks of the technological age is when you encounter awesome people online: people you probably would never have met otherwise. What's doubly cool though is when you DO meet them in real life, AND they turn out as awesome in person. Such was my experience with the wonderful Steve Molk, who runs the Humans of Twitter podcast: a series I am so glad to recommend to you here. Steve - a respec

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light." - Plato Reading the news regularly during each day is a thing for me. A habit I've found impossible to break over time. I have this weirdly voracious need to know what's happening out there in the world. I read in a way that suggests if I go one day not looking at what's happening, inevitably that will be the one day they...I don't know. Discover a new plane

Words cannot express the extraordinary heartbreak over the two innocent people - a 38 year old loving mother of three who was also a distinguished barrister; and the brave 34 year old man who managed the cafe, and died trying to wrest the gun from the attacker - who lost their lives under horrific circumstances in the early hours of this morning, in the horror of the Martin Place siege. Someone was only telling me yesterday, that when it all began to unfold, a friend of their

As encouraging as Emma Watson's words are to hear for women, to all of my male friends and family who see this link appear in their news feed: I urge you to watch this video, and consider the compassionate, inspiring and empowering thoughts she imparts to you, too, on the other side of the gender fence. She is such a moving, brilliant and formidable testament to the existence of not only wisdom and substance in the younger generations - so often accused of selfishness these d

Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being "in love" which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself i

I have this memory. It was summer and I was sitting out on our front porch, sometime in the late afternoon but while the sun hadn’t quite disappeared yet. We lived at the end of a valley, but opposite an enormous hill; it usually took a long time for the sun to completely disappear each day but when it did it dipped behind the hill the same way you imagine a sun would in a kid’s picture book: a big, perfectly round gold orb behind a bell curved slope. I loved that porch. In s

This morning, my dear boss - who was adamant that he owed me a coffee after I shouted him recently - refused to take my change and with a mad grin, picked up the tab for my chai latte fix, saying "Better make it a large one for both of us - I think it's going to be that kind of day." True to form, it has been a bit of a mad one. So I'm sitting here on my lunch break, and taking ten minutes out of slicing and dicing my way through my workload in my stubborn refusal to be beate

Oy. So I had no idea how much exhausting fun it would be re-doing my website and developing all the new content. Brain also very tired from watching oodles of Sleepy Hollow and Dracula for the purposes of recaps and indulging in my general love of a spectacularly well done (like a performance and not like a steak) renaissance man. Yes, Tom Mison and Jonathan Rhys Meyers. I'm talking to you. (Seriously, ladies. GOOGLE.) In any case, as my dear Audrey says so beautifully, good

So, last night was one of those delightful nights that went absolutely marvellous until naturally I had too much caffeine and made a child cry by accident over a game of UNO, at which point he ran away and cried under a Union Jack bed cover and refused to come out again. Here is a GIF of a cat perfectly re-enacting my subsequent inward response. #blog #feels

Blistering action? Check. Ooodles of Avengery awesomeness? Check. Chris Evans in a suit so fitted he makes George Clooney's Batsuit look looser than a politician's morals? SO. MUCH. CHECK. The epic final trailer for Captain America: The Winter Soldier is out and I can honestly say 2014 can't come fast enough. Aside from the battle sequences (which look amazing), it will be interesting to see if the film really lives up to the character driven drama it seems to really tease. M

So. My name is Erin and I am so glad to welcome you to my new site. Well, newish. Mythconception in its initial form was a blog that had, for the most part, been a simple platform for my online musings for about five years. Blogging was somewhat of a revelation for me when I first started. I’d been writing for a long time to that point – it’s something I have utterly loved doing since I could pick up a pencil, really – but had kind of always been crippled by that fear of ente

And then there I was. All alone, like some great hands had snatched you up from the earth, never to be seen or known again in the tangible, beautiful, human ways always lost to us when the things we love turn into shadows. I looked down, watching my shocked fingers ripple like a white fringe beneath the dark cuff of my coat as the last warmth of your touch faded from them. So soon. How long had it been? A second? A day? But I knew well enough in that moment how many millenni

After all, if growing up is war, then the friends who grew up with you deserve a special respect. The ones who stuck by you shoulder to shoulder, in a time when nothing was certain, all life lay ahead, and every road led home. Kevin Arnold, The Wonder Years To a dearest and beautiful friend. What's hard, amongst other things, is that we were there when you were born. We were even there when your mother was a baby; I am almost 28 years old and I still remember her being placed