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This chapter embraces a rhythmanalytic approach to address the complexities of a city recovering from a disaster. Bridging Henri Lefebvre's work on everyday life with his later work on rhythms this chapter engages his theory to analyse the case of L'Aquila, a city in central Italy that was destroyed by an earthquake in 2009. To this day, the city's skyline is dominated by cranes, while life unfolds along with sounds of the ongoing reconstruction. While the city is still recovering from the earthquake, the landscape of ruins co-exists with a landscape of construction. More than 10 years after the earthquake stripped away life from its historical centre, the city continues to live in a temporal in-between the disaster and its future ‘rebirth’. While most of the current research on the city neglects the city's everyday experience, my research decentres the debate by analysing the everyday rhythms of L'Aquila's historical centre. Additionally, drawing from walking interviews this chapter highlights the perplexing aspects of everyday life in the city emphasising how the city is negotiated and learned from the locals. This chapter highlights the way different temporalities blur in the everyday practices of reconstruction, emphasising how the city is lived and created in the here-and-now.

This chapter analyses the character of Mrs Coulter in BBC/HBO TV show His Dark Materials (2019–ongoing). Mrs Coulter shows clear links with traditional fairy tale figures; in the words of actor Ruth Wilson, ‘She's fairy godmother and she's the nasty queen. She's like Snow White, and she's the Wicked Witch’ (HBO, 2019). Keeping in mind these intertextual references, but focusing on the text, I am going to study the ways in which Mrs Coulter's ‘being evil’ is constructed: are any motivations provided to account for her becoming evil?

Are we supposed to feel sympathy for her – a woman struggling for power in a patriarchal society? How do her interactions with other characters modify the ‘traditional’ roles she evokes and her perceived evilness? To answer these questions, I will employ theoretical tools stemming from queer theory and positioning theory. While arguing for the usefulness of such theoretical outlook for the study of villains, I aim to prove that Mrs Coulter is depicted as a thwarted good character, ruined not only by societal sexist norms, but also by the internalization of ideals typical of toxic masculinity.