Lifestyle

Strength and Vulnerability: Majd Zaher’s New Novel Looks Beyond the Veneer of Lebanese Society

Published

5 years ago

June 21, 2021

Your first book ‘Borderline Love in Beirut’ explores some challenging topics and complex characters. Can you explain the inspiration behind the story?

Growing up in a conservative family brought many challenges to my life. There was always something missing in every moment I spent living. There was a part of me that I wanted to discover and unleash yet I was afraid of judgments and backlash. Hence, I grew up as the loneliest kid in town as I had no friends and always found myself the weakest individual wherever I was. Moving out from my family’s house and starting an independent life was an eye-opening experience and the main motive that made me talk and write. I wanted this novel to be a celebration for everyone who doubted his own potential, who thought that other’s opinion would be able to dim his or her own light, and on a personal level I wanted to prove to all those who had ever bullied me that I was able to find success and peace after all.

One of the themes you deal with is marginalization and marginalized groups. Why did you decide to address this topic?

Writing has always been a way to pave the road towards a better world and an escape from the prisons we might be existing in. Talking about marginalized groups is based on my stance that everyone has the right to exist if they are not hurting or killing anyone else; and no one has the right to decide who is eligible to enjoy life and who is not. Unfortunately, in Lebanon, we have no laws to protect vulnerable or marginalized groups. These groups include immigrants, domestic labors, queer people, or any other category. In Borderline Love in Beirut, I was no longer Majd, I ascended to Joy and Adam’s soul to show the world how difficult living life becomes when no one likes you, when everyone avoids you, and when everyone judges you for what you look like and not for the real person you are. In Lebanon, we have laws that penalize love that does not protect women from harassment. In Lebanon, our system does not give any attention to the importance of mental health and does not help marginalized groups to engage in society.

What is the role of mental health in ‘Borderline Love’, and what are some lessons about dealing with or treating mental health issues from the story?

In Borderline Love in Beirut mental health is the crux of the story. I will not be able to say how this Borderline case will evolve yet I could tell you how it all started. Joy and Adam were the victims of a society that has never been able to embrace them the way they are. Experiencing death, upbringing challenges, and health concerns, Joy and Adam grew to become victims each in their own way. The takeaway is that offering mental health care and support for people who undergo a certain trauma, and even those who did not, is something critical. We can no longer sit still when almost every hour a Lebanese citizen ends his or her life. We cannot sit still when people still think seeking mental health care are mad. We should learn that the strongest of us can sometimes be the weakest and most vulnerable.

Is ‘Borderline’ a cautionary tale? Or is it intended as a reflection of another kind?

I see in Borderline Love in Beirut as many tales narrated at once. This novel carries in its pages a cautionary and reflective approach. At many parts of the story when I discussed Joys struggles with loneliness, self-hate and first love I was narrating many past incidents. However, in other pages, I detached myself from this reality and decide to go the extra mile and tell others how destructive it would be for anyone to fall in love before loving himself or herself, or how painful does it become when you don’t praise your uniqueness, or you don’t embrace yourself before listening to people’s judgments.

The book is set in contemporary Beirut and focuses primarily on young characters. How do you perceive your own society in Lebanon in terms of some of these issues, including marginalized groups and mental health issues? What would you hope for the future of Lebanon in terms of societal relations and acceptance?

In Lebanon, the lifestyle is not bearable anymore but I’m still hopeful of what is coming next because I believe one day my people will wake up to realize that coexisting and accepting the other is the only way to guarantee long-lasting peace and prosperity. It is difficult to find words to describe Lebanese society, but I will say that it is strange and paradoxical. For example, if you go to certain areas in Beirut, you’ll see people of different backgrounds enjoying their lives without the essence of discrimination and stigma. However, if you would leave the city for a less than five-minute drive, you will see the opposite. My wish and sincere hope for the future is to have a safe place for all people to live in Lebanon. To have laws that do guarantee the rights of the weak, and more laws to ensure gender equality. I do hope as well more effort will be done to abolish the rules that penalize love and strengthen the rifts in society.

The past year has been incredibly hard for Lebanon, and the world. What do you hope to impart, through ‘Borderline Love’ to young Lebanese who might have struggled through the August 4th explosion, COVID, and other major obstacles?

My message here is for those who have struggled and continue to struggle, for those who have lost and learned, for those who are still seeking to find a path to a safe shore, to all dreamers and seekers, to all lovers, to parents and youth. I want to tell them all that fighting can be exhausting but the end results will be rewarding. Let them all know that we will not rest, nor will we accept living in a place where our brothers and sisters are being killed. Not when the weak are always abused, and when all we want to do is love yet obstacles are placed in our way. Let them all know that we shall rise, and we will rise stronger than ever because after each storm there is always hope. Borderline Love in Beirut is the utmost manifestation of this idea.

Lifestyle

The Future of Youth Horror Gaming: Lonely Rabbit’s Midnight Strikes

Published

5 days ago

April 1, 2026

Michelle Langton

Credit: Lonely Rabbit

Empty hallways echo with footsteps that aren’t yours. The carnival rides spin without passengers. Familiar spaces, the ones etched into childhood memory, twist into something menacing, something that watches. Lonely Rabbit’s Midnight Strikes arrives eight months before its completion, targeting a youth horror genre that is hungry for experiences that feel personal rather than purely fantastical. The indie studio searches for a publisher while building momentum for a game that weaponizes nostalgia, turning high schools and carnivals into theaters of psychological dread. As franchises age and audiences demand fresh scares, this PC title tests whether memory-based terror represents the next chapter in youth horror.

Maturing Past Jump Scares

Youth horror gaming shed its training wheels. Little Nightmares and Bendy and the Ink Machine proved that younger players crave atmospheric storytelling over cheap shocks, puzzle-solving over gore, and visual distinctiveness over recycled formulas. Bendy’s ink-soaked corridors attracted a massive audience, including children drawn to the characters despite the T-rating, because the experience felt emotionally authentic rather than condescending. Players now expect psychological tension woven through environmental details, stories told through decaying spaces, and cryptic objects scattered across levels.

The genre’s maturation reflects audiences who grew up solving Portal’s test chambers and exploring Limbo’s monochrome nightmares. Among the Sleep demonstrated the potency of perspective: experiencing horror through a toddler’s eyes made familiar domestic spaces feel uncanny and threatening. Fran Bow plunged players into hand-drawn asylum corridors where perception itself became unreliable, where puzzles demanded engagement with trauma and grief rather than simple pattern recognition. Modern youth horror respects its audience enough to disturb them thoughtfully, creating experiences that linger days after the screen goes dark.

Corrupted Childhood as New Territory

Midnight Strikes drags players through levels “reminiscent of their childhood memories”: the high school, the carnival, spaces universal enough to feel personal. Lonely Rabbit constructs what they describe as a “menacingly beautiful atmosphere filled with bizarre and terrifying creatures,” pairing monster survival with puzzle challenges that prioritize mood over mechanics. The game adopts a “cinematic and otherworldly feel” while grounding its terror in locations players actually inhabited, making fear feel intimate rather than abstract.

This memory-based direction distinguishes Midnight Strikes from fantasy settings that dominate youth horror. Deserted carnival rides and empty school corridors carry weight because players recognize them as such. Maybe the locker rows feel too narrow, maybe the Ferris wheel groans with a voice that shouldn’t exist, maybe the cafeteria smells wrong. The game challenges players to “survive their fear of the unknown” while navigating spaces that should feel known, creating cognitive dissonance that amplifies dread. Other developers exploring similar territory, such as Subliminal, which utilizes “nostalgic spaces” and “a rotting feeling that something is not quite right,” suggest that childhood corruption represents an emerging subgenre.

Lonely Rabbit’s approach weaponizes personal history. Every player attended school, visited carnivals, and formed memories in spaces designed for safety and joy. Corrupting those spaces turns nostalgia into a threat, asking audiences to confront distorted versions of their own experiences. The monsters inhabiting these environments become more than obstacles; they represent the fear that familiar places might betray us, that memory itself becomes unreliable when shadows move in the wrong direction.

Smaller Teams, Bigger Risks

Indie studios like Lonely Rabbit maneuver where larger publishers hesitate. Their two-month publisher search and pre-launch community building reflect changing pathways for games that defy established franchise formulas. Building a follower base before release creates market validation, proving that audiences want what you’re making before significant capital is committed. Transparency about development timelines and production milestones generates audience investment, turning potential players into advocates during the publisher search.

Midnight Strikes represents creative gambles major studios avoid when quarterly earnings loom. Smaller teams experiment with concepts, corrupted childhood spaces, memory-based horror, pand sychological tension prioritized over action mechanics, that might fracture focus groups but resonate with underserved audiences. Lonely Rabbit’s global distribution ambitions demonstrate indie confidence: build something distinctive enough, and geography becomes irrelevant when digital storefronts erase borders.

The next eight months determine whether Midnight Strikes defines a subgenre or remains an interesting experiment. If players respond to horror that mines personal history, if corrupted nostalgia proves more terrifying than fantasy monsters, other developers will follow this path. Lonely Rabbit’s gamble, that childhood spaces make better horror stages than alien planets or demon dimensions, could redefine what scares young players next. The studio’s publisher search tests whether the industry views memory-based terror as the future of youth horror or a niche curiosity. Either outcome writes the next page in a genre still learning what it can become.