bye bye, bedroom

a yung rebrand

I dreamt up Bedroom Cinema Club around 2013 when I found myself transitioning from watching television to binge-watching on my laptop. I wanted to start it as a blog and expand into something more communal that would capture the cultural shifts of films and television shows and discuss them.

Every time a film had a buzz, I’d think about launching Bedroom Cinema Club.

When I watched 300 films in 2017, I thought about launching Bedroom Cinema Club.

But as a vehicle, I could never find the right ignition, drive or clarity of vision to nail the execution.

Cue: Discovering Substack

It felt like the convergence I’d been waiting for. Substack was such a great conduit for what I wanted Bedroom Cinema Club to be.

My first piece, How to Sabotage a Black Utopia was, for a long time, my most successful essay. It’s still one of my favourites. Without blowing my own sax too hard, I think I have a gift for drawing unrelated connections as clearly as I see my own skin.

It's never quite felt right, though.

Bedroom Cinema Club has seemed like pursuing a fading memory, something I should’ve committed to long ago and was regretfully trying to chase the vestiges of. Tasking myself to only write about film and television has meant many cultural moments wafted away in favour of adhering to my platform's concentrated mission.

There’ve been times where I’ve managed to weave in what I really wanted to talk about with Bedroom Cinema Club’s tenets. There are other times, like I Need You Alive where the connection was a little more tenuous. I’ve getting agitated by the limitations of my own making but when I conceptualise an idea, theme, principle it's important to me to remain respectful of its rules.

My agitation reached a fever pitch earlier in the year when I wanted to write more about the Kendrick and Drake feud. I perceived so many connections that I didn’t see other people articulate and I still haven’t committed them all to text. I broke my rule to write a skinny sliver of my thoughts down, but I’ve been feeling pretty frustrated with myself ever since.

In order to relinquish the restrictions of Bedroom Cinema Club, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m going to have to relinquish it altogether.

Bedroom Cinema Club was supposed to focus the subject matter of my writing into something that could be organised and consistent. But I’ve found it more restrictive than concentrative. I’ve struggled with consistency since its inception. In September, a light-switch flicked and I just slithered into a more f*ck-it flavour of attitude which has since allowed me to truly hit the ground running, write and post consistently, and gather a more active readership.

Magical Bingeism was about how my appetite for film and TV has evolved past artistic sustenance and escapism and veered into bed-rotting avoidance. In writing that essay, I acknowledged a want—a need—to change. The most drastic and necessary change I could make is stepping out of the bedroom and moving into the world.

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Enter: Yours, Inigo

Beyond being a void-scream with legs online, I’m a fiction writer who’s been short-listed for a number of prizes, an award-winning poet, a sound designer and musician.

I used to believe that indulging my analytic side was the safest way to navigate this whole capitalism thing. But great things are rarely achieved in havens. Wonderful things are earned by risk.

Yours, Inigo is an avenue to indulge my creativity more intentionally—a more holistic endeavour to offer more varied glimpses.

What’s changing?

I’ve been affectionately dubbed “visually gluttonous” and I intend to honour that. I’ll still write about the things I see—usually films and television shows—but the catchment area will expand more broadly into the whole cultural zeitgeist, especially how it pertains to Black life. Completely vibes-driven.

Aesthetically, Yours, Inigo has come with a lickle refurbishment. I’ll be restructuring my old essays and republishing them with brand new imagery. I’ve done a handful already so you can jump to Yoursinigo.com, check it out and let me know what you think!

Going paid?

To the handful of paid subscribers so far, I just want to say thanks for being real ones.

I’m going to continue building momentum for now but once I’m settled into this new paradigm, I have a lot of cool ideas for exclusive perks for paid subscribers that I’ll keep you posted about! I’m hoping this will include some actual, tangible things to offer out.

For now, if you can’t commit to a monthly subscription but still want to support, you can send one-off contributions (that’ll mostly go towards instax film cartridges) at buymeacoffee.com/yoursinigo.

I’ll be finding my bearings in full view of you so forgive me if its all a little frenetic at first!

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2025 — Ins and Outs

For the end of my mic-time: I’m somersaulting onto the bandwagon of sharing some ins and outs for 2025:

In

• Mastering an eccentric set of skills for the spiritual XP (aka “hobbies”)

• Heartwarming conversations in dimly lit bars

• Flirting with life itself

• Conquering a single, long-term fear

• Gentle candour and kind truth-telling

• Creative follow-through

• Brevity

• Intimate gatherings

• Gravitational shift from doom-scrolling to book-reading

• Tangible artefacts to harness memories (aka clutter)

• Crush confessionals (intellectual, romantic, platonic, aesthetic)

• Dexterous activities

• Braving the hard conversations

• Getting lost (aka putting the GPS away)

• Trains as writing nooks

• Raw-dogging reality (aka not using the phone as an everyday coping mechanism)

• Non-performative Growth

• Zhooshed-up revenue streams

• Embraces (of all kinds)

Out

• Bedroom Cinema Club ✋🏾😔🤚🏾

• Fear-driven, bad-faith dating discourse

• Interpersonal punitive measures

• The endless scourge of subscriptions

• Bringing dogs in train carriages and other confined spaces

• Over-thinking and under-doing

• “The Ick”

• Over-stimulating events with mid-vibes

• Indulging outrage machinery

• Overfamiliarity (aka “you don’t know me well enough to chat to me like that”)

• Brutal honesty (yuck!)

• Lower back pain (and the systems that tweaked it)

• Perpetual phone availability

• Forcing it

• Minor Inconvenience Discardment (things, people, etc)

• Britain

• Irony indistinguishable from being genuinely terrible

• Entertaining a sequel after a very clear conclusion

• Generalised subtweeting (posting “people are/will do x, y, z” online when you really wanna say it to a specific person’s face)

• Sneaking 12.5% discretionary charges on the bill

• Pole-dropping down shame spirals

• J.K. Rowling

Thanks for being here.

🫶🏾