#I'm really impressed that I actually convinced someone to listen to the podcast

[carriesthewind]

So I just finished season 2 of Wondery's Suspect podcast, and if you enjoyed season 1's thoughtfulness and interrogation of the injustice and biases of the criminal legal system, ughhhhh....maybe skip season 2. I'm usually chill about subsequent seasons of podcasts departing pretty far from the original season's premise/presentation, but this was such a refutation of the original season that even though it was technically just (high production-value) true crime drek, I feel honestly betrayed and disguised at the end.

Season 1: educational, nuanced, thoughtful and thought-provoking; takes pains not to demonize anyone involved (even people that it presents as doing/having done incredibly harmful things) and to try to understand their motivations and pov; explores how past/other criminal (even unarguably atrocious) behavior is not sufficient evidence that someone committed a separate criminal offense (and how our human brains and biases will overweigh such "evidence"), and also how weird/unusual/bizarre behavior - behavior that seems bizarre or inexplicable to "normal" people - isn't sufficient either (and the dangers of how our human brains and biases might overweigh such "evidence"; presents contrasting juror viewpoints from a trial that highlights how hard "beyond a reasonable doubt" is to actually apply and what it looks like to wrestle with that standard, while also highlighting how real jurors absolutely do decide based on impermissible biases and assumptions; bluntly and explicitly refuses to provide (or even try to provide) an answer to the viewer about whodonit; and wrestles with how sometimes we can't actually know who committed a horrible offense and get justice for a victim (and their surviving friends and family)

Season 2: standard bog-issue true crime (just with a high-end production value and presentation); cops are great and let's not interrogate at all when we hear them explicitly lying to the Criminal, we've got real clear Good Guys and Bad Guys here; presents a narrative (and uncontested statements from speakers) suggesting that previous criminal/atrocious behavior is 100% evidence that a person probably also did the murder; weird/unusual/bizarre behavior is at minimum justifiably suspicious, and at maximum absolutely evidence that a person did Crime, and there is no need to interrogate our reactions and assumptions; interviews a single juror who (without any pushback or interrogation of her position) presents as unreasonable and unethical the juror who came in with a list of all his (reasonable) doubts and didn't think the prosecution presented a strong case - to the point of stating that he violated his oath/pretrial statements that he could convict based on circumstantial evidence (b/c he wasn't convinced by the particular circumstantial case presented) (meanwhile the interviewed juror was being 100% reasonable and Correct in being convinced he was guilty when she admittedly had no idea why he might have done it until she wrote a bunch of true crime fanfic "figured it out" after the trial); presents a narrative clearly intended to leave the listener with the impression that yay the cops clearly got the right guy, justice has been served, the gross/creepy/abusive dude really was the one who did it; and we all get to sleep at night with the certainty that the world makes narrative sense and justice can be wrapped up in a neat little bow and the only problem is how long it took the system to get there :)

Just, incredibly disappointing.

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

oh my god was the welsh thing really an act i was just under the impression he'd spent so long in england he lost the accent

Part 2: "by now i'm convinced mark watsons special talent is making jokes about air travel that are actually funny because one of my favourite mock the week moments was his bit about airport security that went like "i really hate all the stressful security announcements in airports. "ladies and gentlemen, at this time of maximum security" what do they mean, "at this time"? whens it gonna stop? "ladies and gentlemen, i think they've gone. if you see a mysterious package, shake it!""

Yep, the Welsh accent was not real. I mean, it was clearly sort of "real", in that sounded enough like a Welsh accent to fool people for quite a while. His mother's Welsh so I guess he grew up around it and could do it very well. And the Welsh accent wasn't that different from the voice he uses now, he has quite a distinctive speaking style so to me it clearly sounds like "how Mark Watson is supposed to sound" no matter what accent he's using. But he was born in Bristol and went to school in Bristol and then went to Cambridge. He did not grow up with a Welsh accent.

I previously knew that he did that for the same reason Lee McKillop goes by Lee Mack on stage - it can be easier to perform as someone slightly different from who you are in real life. But I only recently learned just how far he took it. Here he is explaining it on a podcast, and it's such a classically Mark Watson story. Started what was meant to be a small thing that he thought would help him, committed to the bit so hard that he got in over his head, and then had to keep it up for way too long out of sheer social embarrassment. Which appears to be plot of both much of Mark Watson's life and all sitcoms. I'm still really stuck on this idea that I want a sitcom where two guys named Tim Key and Mark Watson become friends through the Cambridge Footlights program while both trying to hide their ridiculous secrets that they are respectively not really a Cambridge student and not really Welsh (even though Mark probably didn't do the accent when he was really in university, artistic license).

I actually just saw that Mock the Week bit last night, while going through old videos and looking for a different bit, and I thought the same thing! That he does do airline jokes well. I've now listened to the first two of his three radio shows, and I've realized he does observational stuff in general really well, which I say as someone who isn't normally into purely observational comedy. I think his delivery lends itself well to jokes like that, the way he constantly sounds hesitant and unsure about anything while he breaks down strange things in the world.

I've been really enjoying his radio shows, they've gotten better with every episode and are making me appreciate him more as a comedian than I ever did before. I really like this small almost Welsh man.

[gingerbreadmonsters]

omg spain how lovely!!!! I bet it's amazing over there, I hope youre traveling safe <3 what kind of things did you do there, or was it more of a just enjoy the sun kind of holiday? and rest the hell up when you get back! or I'm gonna come over there and put you on bedrest myself 😠 and that'll be nice! it's funny bc I'm actually planning to meet an old friend from sixth form this week too 😂 we haven't seen each other in two years and we've been meaning to meet up for ages

I'm not up to much tho, I'm just at home for the holidays (I'm caring for my mum since she's been sick) but I'll be going back to uni after easter break for exams. after exams, I don't really have any plans other than earning some money and an anime convention in july.

I am convinced we are living the same life!!! you must be my doppelganger or smth wth. I also have zero romance/dating experience, we can be single pringles together ❤ I feel the exact same way about love tbh, I feel that I sometimes have my expectations way too high bc of it, and that's why I stick to fictional characters 😌 they never disappoint. It's amazing how you can put it into such beautiful words the way you do. I often try a poetic prose but it's very inconsistent when I do, so I just stick to the basics in my fics so I don't sound dumb 😂

I just call it sun lotion haha

I finally checked out the asmr! I don't know how I feel about it ngl, it definitely needs time to grow on me. there's definitely a lot of information to take in but I'm pretty sure I checked out the vampire one and there was another, I think it was the most recent video of paperwork? yeah, idk, there's something about the accent that sounds cool but also makes me not like it. like you, I know jack all about the regional accents but I do prefer different american accents over his. it's not that I don't like it, but it needs some getting used to. or maybe it's just asmr in general, it kinda feels uncomfortable with headphones, so maybe I'll try playing it in the background on my laptop rather than hearing it right in my ears. there is something appealing about having a nice voice playing in the background, I often have obey me voice lines or the podcast/boys in the house playing as background noise to cough cough kill the loneliness lmao

at this point tho I'm still trying to get my head around the whole universe he has going on, it's really impressive. I think I'll be hooked when I understand it more. also it is so friggin cute that he has specific nicknames for listeners for each character!!!!! I don't even know him much but that makes me wanna sob

- 🌻

hey hey lovely!! aah spain was v nice - spent some time exploring madrid and valencia, plus a day on the beach which is always good :) but definitely resting this week!! got big plans for lots of hitman and for finishing an azure moon run...... for the fourth time....... not my fault dimitri's hot.....

hope you and your mum are alright - all my love to the pair of you (because it's tough being sick! but it's also tough taking care of someone who's not feeling too well, so you look after yourself too!) and i hope she feels better soon 💕💕

singles club!! omg one of my flatmates asked me to pick a celebrity crush/someone who was 'my type' and i fully bluescreened like....... i CANNOT admit that he's 2D i just CANNOT do that to her (i ended up choosing hu yitian because he's beautiful but that's beside the point)

YOU WRITE TOO?? bro!!!! that's so cool!!! and i won't stand for this self-slander - everybody's got different ways to go about it, different things they like to highlight or show, different ways of wording stuff....... there's no one kind or style of writing that's necessarily better or worse! (plus if you ever want to share it..... lmk i would love to read your writing 😍😘)

mmmm redacted.... if you're totally new to the universe, i suggest starting with the "Freelancer Season One" playlist on youtube - canonically, freelancer is new to the world of magic, so the basic outline of the world and the rules of magic get explained very well! i will say that freelancer's early story does contain descriptions of assault - if that's not good, i reckon that asher ("Sweet Werewolf") and david ("Tsundere Werewolf") - or the Valenweek and Afterfluff playlists too tbh - probably have enough background detail to fill you in :)

plus, if his accent is yet to grow on you, sam ("Vampire Mate") and milo ("Feisty Werewolf") both have quite strong regional accents that are distinct from the rest - milo's is my favourite, but i recommend both if you're not feeling it just yet ✌️✌️

[tanadrin]

I'm really impressed how you (and cyprinodont) managed to get from a place of typical internet snark to actual discussion. I enjoyed reading your discussion and feel like I learned a bit from both of you. It's nice to be reminded that sometimes being charitable and trying to better understand others' viewpoints and better explain your own actually works. Thanks!

This is kind of a digression, but bear with me:

I’ve been listening to a lot of Trash Future and What a Hell of a Way to Die recently; they’re both lefty podcasts with people who have a fairly different set of life experiences from me, and so pretty interesting on that basis (and also quite funny), but they both self-consciously come from a perspective of what they might call extremely online, irony-poisoned left podcasters. It solidified something that’s been percolating in my thoughts for a little while about how I spend time online and, like, the kind of media I consume and the kind of Twitter accounts I follow, which is that even if I agree with someone 100% (or 99% when they start dissing the idea of nuclear power or space colonization) politically and practically, there’s a kind of snarky, sarcastic, of-course-we’re-right-and-our-opponents-are-ridiculous-villains worldview that’s... not good for me emotionally. That I don’t think is productive in terms of either individual truthseeking or convincing others to your cause or even just maintaining a healthy relationship with the world, the sort of insular, often even toxic instinct to withdraw from things that are frustrating and disappointing and depressing about the world instead of trying to extend empathy and patience to those who feel like your mortal enemies.

But I understand where that urge comes from. Boy, do I understand it. I can’t indict people who feel that way; it’s hard for me even to come to a point of “both sides are bad as each other, because politics is a mindkiller,” because even the snarkiest, angriest, least-empathetic leftist seems to me to have a worldview less conducive to mass immiseration of humanity than the most blithe austerity-supporting neoliberal or the most ardent tradcon. It is often very hard to live in a world where you see things like Tory austerity based on discredited economic theories and concentration camps on the border and US military adventurism and climate change all running amok and destroying the lives of thousands of people, if not killing them outright, and we all have to find a way to live in that world, and get through the day to day.

But that cynicism doesn’t work for me. It’s not motivating. It’s not a balm to the soul. It just sort of... sits there, and curdles. Empathy and patience, especially with people with whom I disagree on far more than nuclear power or space travel, with people on whom I disagree about basic shit like my right to exist in the world as I am, is important to me. Not because it is anything like my default response--my default response is something like “fuck you, go die in a hole”--or because I prize some abstract virtue of “civility” because I watched Mr. Smith Goes to Washington at an impressionable age. But because I don’t see any way to get to the kind of world I want to live in without empathy and patience, because all my political beliefs, no matter how left-wing, spring from a desire to be more empathetic and patient, because kindness, even to the worst of the worst, is the root and foundation of my entire worldview to begin with. And that shit’s hard. And I gotta practice it continually. In fact, I think I’m still pretty bad at it, and if you flip back through this blog you’ll see evidence of that sooner or later. But I’m trying to get better at it, because the world needs more of it.