#hit parade podcast

[bookgeekgrrl]

My media this week (31 Mar-6 Apr 2024)

lady constance is a seven foot tall badger and knows acab

📚 STUFF I READ 📚

pretty much nothing! It was a rough reading week! The first part of the week I was fairly consumed with the D20 I was watching & not reading much. Then I spent FIVE DAYS reading a little over half of a 258K fic before finally accepting that though it was pretty well written and not bad, I just wasn't into it and the thought of fighting thru another 120K was appalling, so I bailed.

and I did read about 20K of shorter stuff but nothing I want to shout out so.

📺 STUFF I WATCHED 📺

This Is Going To Hurt - s1, e1

QI - series S, ep 10-12

Death In Paradise - s11, e2-3

D20: Mice & Murder - "The Stabber of the Evening" (s9, e4)

D20: Mice & Murder - "The Eye of the Storm" (s9, e5)

D20: Mice & Murder - "Busted" (s9, e6)

D20: Mice & Murder - " I've Been Here the Whole Time" (s9, e7)

D20: Mice & Murder - "Outfoxed" (s9, e8)

D20: Mice & Murder - "The Belly of the Beast" (s9, e9)

D20: Mice & Murder - "Unfinished Business" (s9, e10)

D20: Adventuring Party - s4, e4-10 [Mice & Murder]

D20: Fantasy High: Junior Year - "Infernal Conflict" (s21, e13)

D20: Adventuring Party - "All Pulp, No Juice" (s16, e13)

🎧 PODCASTS 🎧

What Next: TBD - The Psychological Toll of Mars

Working - How a Magician Designs Original, Mind-Blowing Tricks

Hit Parade - The Bridge: Like a Revamped Stone

Worlds Beyond Number - WWW #7: Kahuna

WikiHole - Greek Easter (with Ellie Kemper, Josh Sharp and Aaron Jackson!)

Welcome to Night Vale #245 - Fridge-worthy

Worlds Beyond Number: Fireside - Fireside Chat for WWW ep7 "Kahuna"

Today, Explained - Making taxes less taxing

I Said No Gifts! - Tig Notaro Disobeys Bridger

⭐ Switched on Pop - Cowboy Carter: This Ain't Country

Consider This from NPR - Measuring The Economic Impact Of Baltimore's Port Closure

Pop Culture Happy Hour - Beyoncé's Cowboy Carter

⭐ Vibe Check - This Ain't Texas, This Is Vibe Check

Better Offline - Wikipedia Is All The Web Has Left ft. Molly White

Wiser Than Me - Julia Gets Wise with Bonnie Raitt

Short Wave - How To Make The Most Of Next Week's Solar Eclipse

Ologies with Alie Ward - Heliology (THE SUN/ECLIPSES) with India Jackson and Michael Kirk

99% Invisible #576 - Chambre de Bonne

Worlds Beyond Number - WWW #8: The Catch

Twenty Thousand Hertz+ - Untranslatable Words

Pop Culture Happy Hour - Ripley

Song Exploder - Shania Twain - You're Still The One

Off Menu - Ep 238: Katy Wix

Worlds Beyond Number: Fireside - Fireside Chat for WWW ep8 "The Catch"

Choice Words - Live in Fear or Love? (with Karamo)

What Next: TBD - Truth Social’s Rocky Week

Short Wave - The "Barcodes" Powering These Tiny Songbirds' Memories May Also Help Human Memory

⭐ Pop Culture Happy Hour - Monkey Man And What's Making Us Happy

The Atlas Obscura Podcast - Nevada Week: The Martin

Endless Thread - Nerd Fight

Strong Songs - "The Way" by Meshell Ndegeocello

Today, Explained - The Sephora kids

It's Been a Minute - Is DEI a slur now? Plus, control & basketball

Radiolab - The Moon Itself

Choice Words - Choices We Made: Stay Silent or Sue the Cops? (with Eric André)

Wait Wait… Don't Tell Me! - Chris Pine

Worlds Beyond Number - WWW #9: The King of Cups

Worlds Beyond Number: Fireside - Fireside Chat for WWW ep9 "The King of Cups"

Under the Influence - Cheeky Advertising

In Defense of Fandom - Season 2 Episode 1: What makes a TV ending?

Dinner’s on Me - Kristen Bell

Dinner’s on Me - Dax Shepard

🎶 MUSIC 🎶

Louis Jordan

Ozzy Osbourne

Meshell Ndegeocello

Cowboys + Queens

[honeysucklepink]

Hey my favorite podcast did another Glee shoutout!

The latest episode of Slate's Hit Parade titled "A Deal With the TV Gods Edition" tracks the chart history of songs married to TV shows, whether it's theme songs, plot tie-ins, resurrecting old hits or discovering new artists.

I hoped they would touch on Glee. I assumed they would at least mention their cover of "Don't Stop Believing." I didn't know they would heavily feature "Teenage Dream!"

Go to Part Two, the Glee mention is at 26:23, but I recommend the whole episode (honestly I recommend the whole podcast), they also get into Stranger Things and Kate Bush at the end.

[hillbilly---man]

You can always tell when I've started listening to a new podcast because my "fun facts" start veering into new territory

[scoups4lyfe]

Hebi Anon

Would you believe me if I said I found the "Taro tells his weakness" scene to make little sense, even with Taro's inability to lie?

Because, the show has already shown us he doesn't have to answer questions. IN EPISODE 2

When Sanae (the woman who kept asking how old she looked) asked Taro the final time before turning into the MOTW, she asked "How old do I LOOK". KEY WORD IS LOOK. The first time, Taro tells the truth. Second time with a makeover, I can see how that's still the truth by her looks. The third time however, she objectively LOOKED younger, even an AI designed to approximate age by appearance would have said she looked younger. Taro didn't answer the question she spoke (How old do I look), he told the truthful answer to a question she didn't ask (How old am I). So that episode showed me that Taro can avoid answering questions, which made the weakness scene make little sense and made me angry again.

Another (smaller) thing. Taro knew Sonoi knew his weakness. If that's the case WHY DID HE USE ONITAIJIN!? HE STILL HAS DONZENKAI OH. And unlike other Sentai shows, NOTHING even implies that DonZenkai Oh became "outclassed" or anything. Though I can excuse this one as compulsions to maintain habits even if suboptimal is something I deal with (though nowhere near that extent).

Taro's neurodivergency and my neurodivergency is like trying to connect two completely incompatible gears. Ton of noise and something ends up breaking

I always interpreted the episode two scene as, idk, Tarou being able to see her actual age LOL! Regardless of the hitosuki effects.

But on second thought, rather than having to do with physical appearance, I think maybe it was the fact instead of the visual that had him answering this way.

If Tarou at first guessed her age,and she confirmed it. “Spot on, Tarou.” That would tell Tarou he was right, and she was like 68 or whatever. Which means, if she’s logically 68, then it doesn’t matter how much younger she becomes or looks, because if he knows that she IS 68, therefore she’ll always look 68.

The fact of her actual age changes the objective fact of her “look.”

Most people would just go “wow she looks younger!” But I think for Tarou, because he knows she is 68, then that means her look will always be “68.” Because that’s how old she actually is.

Idk if I’m making much sense. But the definition of “look” is directly impacted by the fact of her age. Basically, the fact determines the answer.

If she is 68. That means she’ll always look 68. Even if other people go “wow she could be 20!” Tarou would instead go, “she’s 68. So even if the dress changes, it doesn’t change the fact that she’s 68. Which mean she looks 68. Because she is 68.”

I really do not know how to explain this better LOL!

Basically he doesn’t look at someone and go “ah they look 20”. He looks at them by the actual fact of their age. So a thirty year old would always look 30, until they become 31. Then they look 31. (Etc. Etc.)

“How old do I look” for him is the same as “how old am I?”

So I don’t think he was avoiding the question. But rather answering the question he thought he was being asked.

For Sonoi, I’m again, going back to “Tarou’s mind works like a dot chart.”

I sincerely do not think he connected A) tell the truth (his weakness) with B) The enemy knows his weakness, or C) The enemy will use his weakness against him.

Especially because, Sonoi was/is his friend.

And they weren’t fighting. Momoi Tarou was Momoi Tarou, not the theatrical mask of “Don Momotarou.” (He sees these things as being separate.) So I’m not surprised he didn’t connect, “I told Sonoi my — Don Momotarou’s —weakness” with “I told my enemy, my weakness.”

That, and (again this is from my Autism research, podcast notes LOL)

Often times there will be a disconnect in “This hurt” and “what hurt me?”

There was an eloquent speaker they had on the podcast, who was (herself) autistic. And she told them that often times she doesn’t have the foresight of realizing “Ah, this (thing) caused a meltdown/me to throw a fit / hurt myself.” And that often she won’t know until the thing caused her distress until she has already punched the wall.

And even THEN, she might not realize the cause until months later.

This helped me realize why Momoi would attempt at lying, even when his first attempt killed him.

“Doesn’t he know that lying hurts him? That it could kill him?”

(This really confused me. ‘Why would he actively do something that would hurt him?’ Which is double compounded by him telling Sonoi his weakness. I just knew in my soul when he answered Sonoi, that this was a man that did NOT understand what he was doing. ) So;

No. I don’t think he’s connected “I tried to lie” with his metaphorical “fist hitting the wall.”

Here’s some really good quotes from that episode of the podcast that really stuck with me for just…ALL of episode 13 (esp how I interpretated it):

“I only realize that I’m out of my depth after I’ve done the dangerous thing —only when the fist hits the wall.”

“I didn’t know I was scared until it was too late.”

“I didn’t know. I had no idea.”

For using Onitaijin—again, I don’t think he realized ‘I told my enemy if I use this thing I have a split few seconds of weakness. And they could take advantage of that to hurt me.’

And, I think Tarou prefers to use Onitaijin, because then it’s not just him fighting, but him and his comrades. Using Zenkai-Oh would’ve just enforced the idea “I don’t need you guys. I can handle it myself.” But by using Onitaijin and calling them (he’s also included in this) “My fools”

—Again, want to double down on this, Tarou is saying ‘obaka’ rather than ‘baka’ so he’s essientially using the cuter, softer/nicer word for ‘fool’ here. Which is why the translator put ‘my’ when there was no actual possessive used, because he was being teasing. “My fools.”

Essentially Tarou is admitting, “I need you guys to fight. We’re a team” (Albeit a team of ‘silly fools.’)

Especially because Onitaijin involves them becoming One. Tarou literally could not do Onitaijin without the help AND support (they’re his arms and legs, wings and shoulders) of his companions.

Uhhh,,, that’s my interpretation of episode 13 😛.

[kingofmyborrowedheart]

I want to listen to more podcasts but I’m so incredibly picky that it takes me forever to find one I like.

[ms-demeanor]

Why reblog machine-generated art?

When I was ten years old I took a photography class where we developed black and white photos by projecting light on papers bathed in chemicals. If we wanted to change something in the image, we had to go through a gradual, arduous process called dodging and burning.

When I was fifteen years old I used photoshop for the first time, and I remember clicking on the clone tool or the blur tool and feeling like I was cheating.

When I was twenty eight I got my first smartphone. The phone could edit photos. A few taps with my thumb were enough to apply filters and change contrast and even spot correct. I was holding in my hand something more powerful than the huge light machines I'd first used to edit images.

When I was thirty six, just a few weeks ago, I took a photo class that used Lightroom Classic and again, it felt like cheating. It made me really understand how much the color profiles of popular web images I'd been seeing for years had been pumped and tweaked and layered with local edits to make something that, to my eyes, didn't much resemble photography. To me, photography is light on paper. It's what you capture in the lens. It's not automatic skin smoothing and a local filter to boost the sky. This reminded me a lot more of the photomanipulations my friend used to make on deviantart; layered things with unnatural colors that put wings on buildings or turned an eye into a swimming pool. It didn't remake the images to that extent, obviously, but it tipped into the uncanny valley. More real than real, more saturated more sharp and more present than the actual world my lens saw. And that was before I found the AI assisted filters and the tool that would identify the whole sky for you, picking pieces of it out from between leaves.

You know, it's funny, when people talk about artists who might lose their jobs to AI they don't talk about the people who have already had to move on from their photo editing work because of technology. You used to be able to get paid for basic photo manipulation, you know? If you were quick with a lasso or skilled with masks you could get a pretty decent chunk of change by pulling subjects out of backgrounds for family holiday cards or isolating the pies on the menu for a mom and pop. Not a lot, but enough to help. But, of course, you can just do that on your phone now. There's no need to pay a human for it, even if they might do a better job or be more considerate toward the aesthetic of an image.

And they certainly don't talk about all the development labs that went away, or the way that you could have trained to be a studio photographer if you wanted to take good photos of your family to hang on the walls and that digital photography allowed in a parade of amateurs who can make dozens of iterations of the same bad photo until they hit on a good one by sheer volume and luck; if you want to be a good photographer everyone can do that why didn't you train for it and spend a long time taking photos on film and being okay with bad photography don't you know that digital photography drove thousands of people out of their jobs.

My dad told me that he plays with AI the other day. He hosts a movie podcast and he puts up thumbnails for the downloads. In the past, he'd just take a screengrab from the film. Now he tells the Bing AI to make him little vignettes. A cowboy running away from a rhino, a dragon arm-wrestling a teddy bear. That kind of thing. Usually based on a joke that was made on the show, or about the subject of the film and an interest of the guest.

People talk about "well AI art doesn't allow people to create things, people were already able to create things, if they wanted to create things they should learn to create things." Not everyone wants to make good art that's creative. Even fewer people want to put the effort into making bad art for something that they aren't passionate about. Some people want filler to go on the cover of their youtube video. My dad isn't going to learn to draw, and as the person who he used to ask to photoshop him as Ant-Man because he certainly couldn't pay anyone for that kind of thing, I think this is a great use case for AI art. This senior citizen isn't going to start cartooning and at two recordings a week with a one-day editing turnaround he doesn't even really have the time for something like a Fiverr commission. This is a great use of AI art, actually.

I also know an artist who is going Hog Fucking Wild creating AI art of their blorbos. They're genuinely an incredibly talented artist who happens to want to see their niche interest represented visually without having to draw it all themself. They're posting the funny and good results to a small circle of mutuals on socials with clear information about the source of the images; they aren't trying to sell any of the images, they're basically using them as inserts for custom memes. Who is harmed by this person saying "i would like to see my blorbo lasciviously eating an ice cream cone in the is this a pigeon meme"?

The way I use machine-generated art, as an artist, is to proof things. Can I get an explosion to look like this. What would a wall of dead computer monitors look like. Would a ballerina leaping over the grand canyon look cool? Sometimes I use AI art to generate copyright free objects that I can snip for a collage. A lot of the time I use it to generate ideas. I start naming random things and seeing what it shows me and I start getting inspired. I can ask CrAIon for pose reference, I can ask it to show me the interior of spaces from a specific angle.

I profoundly dislike the antipathy that tumblr has for AI art. I understand if people don't want their art used in training pools. I understand if people don't want AI trained on their art to mimic their style. You should absolutely use those tools that poison datasets if you don't want your art included in AI training. I think that's an incredibly appropriate action to take as an artist who doesn't want AI learning from your work.

However I'm pretty fucking aggressively opposed to copyright and most of the "solid" arguments against AI art come down to "the AIs viewed and learned from people's copyrighted artwork and therefore AI is theft rather than fair use" and that's a losing argument for me. In. Like. A lot of ways. Primarily because it is saying that not only is copying someone's art theft, it is saying that looking at and learning from someone's art can be defined as theft rather than fair use.

Also because it's just patently untrue.

But that doesn't really answer your question. Why reblog machine-generated art? Because I liked that piece of art.

It was made by a machine that had looked at billions of images - some copyrighted, some not, some new, some old, some interesting, many boring - and guided by a human and I liked it. It was pretty. It communicated something to me. I looked at an image a machine made - an artificial picture, a total construct, something with no intrinsic meaning - and I felt a sense of quiet and loss and nostalgia. I looked at a collection of automatically arranged pixels and tasted salt and smelled the humidity in the air.

I liked it.

I don't think that all AI art is ugly. I don't think that AI art is all soulless (i actually think that 'having soul' is a bizarre descriptor for art and that lacking soul is an equally bizarre criticism). I don't think that AI art is bad for artists. I think the problem that people have with AI art is capitalism and I don't think that's a problem that can really be laid at the feet of people curating an aesthetic AI art blog on tumblr.

Machine learning isn't the fucking problem the problem is massive corporations have been trying hard not to pay artists for as long as massive corporations have existed (isn't that a b-plot in the shape of water? the neighbor who draws ads gets pushed out of his job by product photography? did you know that as recently as ten years ago NewEgg had in-house photographers who would take pictures of the products so users wouldn't have to rely on the manufacturer photos? I want you to guess what killed that job and I'll give you a hint: it wasn't AI)

Am I putting a human out of a job because I reblogged an AI-generated "photo" of curtains waving in the pale green waters of an imaginary beach? Who would have taken this photo of a place that doesn't exist? Who would have painted this hypersurrealistic image? What meaning would it have had if they had painted it or would it have just been for the aesthetic? Would someone have paid for it or would it be like so many of the things that artists on this site have spent dozens of hours on only to get no attention or value for their work?

My worst ratio of hours to notes is an 8-page hand-drawn detailed ink comic about getting assaulted at a concert and the complicated feelings that evoked that took me weeks of daily drawing after work with something like 54 notes after 8 years; should I be offended if something generated from a prompt has more notes than me? What does that actually get the blogger? Clout? I believe someone said that popularity on tumblr gets you one thing and that is yelled at.

What do you get out of this? Are you helping artists right now? You're helping me, and I'm an artist. I've wanted to unload this opinion for a while because I'm sick of the argument that all Real Artists think AI is bullshit. I'm a Real Artist. I've been paid for Real Art. I've been commissioned as an artist.

And I find a hell of a lot of AI art a lot more interesting than I find human-generated corporate art or Thomas Kincaid (but then, I repeat myself).

There are plenty of people who don't like AI art and don't want to interact with it. I am not one of those people. I thought the gay sex cats were funny and looked good and that shitposting is the ideal use of a machine image generation: to make uncopyrightable images to laugh at.

I think that tumblr has decided to take a principled stand against something that most people making the argument don't understand. I think tumblr's loathing for AI has, generally speaking, thrown weight behind a bunch of ideas that I think are going to be incredibly harmful *to artists specifically* in the long run.

Anyway. If you hate AI art and you don't want to interact with people who interact with it, block me.

[one-album-wonders]

One of my favorite music podcasts is Slate's Hit Parade hosted by Chris Molanphy. With the UK tournament coming up, the two most recent episodes are good introductions to some important periods in UK rock.

The British Are Charting Edition - focuses on the original British Invasion of the 1960s and the second New Wave invasion of the 1980s.

Champagne Supernova Edition - all about the Britpop movement of the 1990s and why it was big at home but failed to make a big impression in the USA.

Some older episodes are also good primers:

Angry Young Men Edition - Elvis Costello, Joe Jackson and Graham Parker bridge pub rock and punk to power pop and New Wave.

The Lost and Lonely Edition - Moody music that hit a nerve with angsty teens in the 1980s from The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bauhaus, Joy Division/New Order, and the Smiths.

The Christmas Is All Around Edition - It's a bit bizarre to American eyes, but the UK's Christmas Number One contest is a delightful tradition.

[copperbadge]

rosefyrefyre

Okay, but what IS your favorite dumb conspiracy theory about JFK?

So, I can’t ever in good conscience actually recommend this podcast, since it’s more than a little risque and the boys have been quite problematic in the past, but Last Podcast On The Left did a massive series about the JFK assassination and dedicated at least an entire episode (possibly two) to the conspiracy theories surrounding it, from the plausible to the absolutely ludicrous.

The one they put forward that they found reasonable (and so do I, though I do believe it was Oswald, acting alone) was that it was a confluence of a couple of things -- the Secret Service agents had been out drinking the night before, so were hungover or still drunk during the parade, and one of them was very young and not well-trained, and didn’t secure his gun properly. When Oswald fired, the young agent startled and the gun went off, and that’s the shot that hit Kennedy. The Secret Service covered it up to keep themselves from being implicated and protect the agent who fired from a lifetime of persecution for killing a president.  

It has the advantage of being somewhat believable, but also being fucking wild, that you think Oswald shot at the president but didn’t hit him, but caused someone ELSE to hit him. So it’s a fun one to bring up when discussing it. 

[theblogtini]

Congrats on the podcast! I've been catching up and I thought I knew most stuff re H&M but I had 0 idea about them parading through London with an xmas tree. The image made me chuckle. You guys hit the nail on the head when you talked about them not being able to empathise with other peoples perspectives and feelings. I think that links to accountability as well. Its a running theme with friends and family, their staff, and how their projects have gone. Are you enjoying going back over it all?

I'm loving going back over it. Honestly, going through their entire rise as individuals and then as a couple - and then starting to really analyze when we could actually see the cracks is really interesting. There's a lot of stuff that in real-time I never noticed it (if you've been here a while you all know that I was a big fan of Meghan and when it was coming out that William and Harry were fighting, that Meghan was having problems I was very much like no no no that's ridiculous) but now when I look back at the whole picture and dive into the details that we now have from Finding Freedom, Spare, and the Netflix doc I'm like "oh wow I didnt realize that this thing and that thing were happening at the same time -- that makes so much more sense now"

[russilton]

Alright I’m listening to beyond the grid, my notes are going here if I have any:

- THIS WAS RECORDED RIGHT AFTER SINGAPORE?? bruh poor guy

- Shov calling George up to comfort him bruh I love shov he looks after his guys

- “Oh my god he’s hit the wall- then I hit the wall” is unintentionally a hilarious delivery

- Legit glad to hear this growth in George, he’s changed his mindset on how much he criticises himself and he’s sticking to that promise last year where he said he wanted to exist more outside of the track, find his passions and person away from the job.

-“He lets Lewis get away with it! but when it comes to me it’s like- [he has all these safety warnings] but I can’t wrap myself up in bubble wrap”

- don’t put baby in the corner he wants to do the extreme sports too

- [Toto can’t treat Lewis like his kid because Lewis was a household name before Toto joined the sport, but he signed me as a 16 year old I guess so it’s not paternal but-] it’s paternal George

- George really lives 200m from Toto and Susie oh my god child

- He did in fact say all three of them (Lewis, George, Toto) are learning to free dive, sometimes together because he finds it RELAXING

- George is learning to spend more time under water and not push it but Toto however keeps trying to go deeper and deeper

- BOX BREATHING! (it’s fantastic for panic attacks by the way, I fuckin love box breathing)

- “I can feel the car through my bottom” George drives with his ass confirmed (it was among other things but those aren’t as funny)

- he never felt not at home in the team in 22, since he’s been part of the family for years, it was more that the whole team was feeling unstable because of its new place not in a winning position

- “in 2021 max won the championship… or at least there was a battle” this man is trying so hard not to start an argument about 2021

- “at what age did it become a career and stop being fun” “probably when I was 11 years old..” oh so you’ve been experiencing the horrors for a decade that tracks

- without Toto’s funding George thinks he never would have touched F1, in his days you didn’t get picked up by F1 teams during karting, and without Toto funding his journey, George couldn’t have been able to continue beyond F4. That’s why he stressed so heavily his need to win that year or he might have lost it all.

- new baby is his brothers, his sister just has her husband and a dog lmao

- on imola and Valtteri: “I did give him a phonecall!… which he did not answer.. but we’ve never spoken about it” “is that because you never speak at all?” “No! No we’ve spoke all the time, around drivers parades and around the paddock” (they get on well now, it’s just considered part of the job, but George has learned from it, and how to accept sometimes going for more than the maximum only ends badly)

- Austin is George’s 100th Race

George ends the podcast monologuing about Lewis and how excited it was to be racing without max in Singapore

- George prefers Brazil to potentially winning Sakhir, because he wouldn’t have felt like he truly earned it, because he wouldn’t have put the work into the W11, and he wouldn’t have had lewis’ pressure

Tldr: he feels like he truly earned his Brazil win because he had to fight the Goat for it

- “Brazil it- it truly felt earned, for all of the hard work everyone had put in, for all of the hard work I had put in, the pressure that I was under from Lewis for the last fifteen laps of the race I think, because he is the greatest driver of all time, and you know every single weekend I go out, practice, Quali, race, you are direct compared to the greatest driver of all time, and having that sort of fair fight was extraordinarily rewarding for me and uh, and why it is an incredibly satisfying position for me to be in, and an incredibly privileged position for me to be in because not many drivers get that chance”

- “I don’t think I’ve ever been pushed as hard in my career as I have in these last year and a half (against Lewis) and that gives me the confidence I can do it”

- “I recon I’ve got a good 15 years left in me”

[bookgeekgrrl]

My media this week (10-16 Mar 2024)

📚 STUFF I READ 📚

🥰 Art Thief, Heart Thief (odetteandodile) - 58K, stucky white collar inspired AU - enjoyed how author took the WC set up (fbi art agent, criminal consultant) and made it theirs & perfect for stucky

💖💖 +195K of shorter fic so shout out to these I really loved 💖💖

Midlife Crisis (profoundalpacakitten) - MCU: stucky, 7K - reread, forever fave - the quiet, piercing, understated tenderness in this fic is unmatched

Progredi (justanotherStonyfan) - MCU: shrunkyclunks, 37K - the next installment in the fabulous Honey Honey series

Pistachios and Rose Water (goldsaffron) - The Old Guard: kaysanova, 15K - J&N spend 10 years putting down roots, building a home & collecting a found family as Nicky learns to express his love through food

Consensual Catfishing (foresthearts) - Stranger Things: steddie, 32K - modern AU, told via social media - delightful story! adored these characters & their voices and using all different sorts of SM to tell it. brilliant idea, adeptly executed. the art is also pretty great

they're going to send us to prison for jerks (greatunironic) - Stranger Things: steddie, 16K - another really fun modern steddie with a strong social media AU premise

Os Impurum (the_deep_magic) - The Eagle | The Eagle of the Ninth: Marcus Flavius Aquila/Esca Mac CunovalMarcus/Esca, 18K - solidly good fic about marcus/esca post canon, esp marcus discovering some new things about himself 😉

📺 STUFF I WATCHED 📺

Ghosts (US) - s3, e5

Game Changer - s6, e3

D20: The Unsleeping City: Chapter II - "For the Hoard!" (s7, e15)

D20: The Unsleeping City: Chapter II - "Treachery at Gramercy" (s7, e16)

D20: The Unsleeping City: Chapter II - "Two Sides of the Same Coin (Part 1)" (s7, e17)

D20: The Unsleeping City: Chapter II - "Two Sides of the Same Coin (Part 2)" (s7, e18)

D20: Adventuring Party - s3, e12-16

Um, Actually - s9, e2

D20: Fantasy High: Junior Year - "Cursed Out" (s21, e10)

D20: Adventuring Party - "Cool Ranch Communion" (s16, e10)

D20: Tiny Heist - "Big Little Crimes" (s4, e1)

D20: Tiny Heist - "Chicanery at Shoeby's Casino" (s4, e2)

D20: Tiny Heist - "Scheming and Scoring Fairy Dust" (s4, e3)

Agatha Christie's Marple - "The Secret of Chimneys" (s5, e2) [shout out to @leupagus for this rec; they were not wrong about the acting choices made here 🤩]

🎧 PODCASTS 🎧

Worlds Beyond Number: Fireside - Fireside Chat for WWW ep001 The Open Door

What Next: TBD - Instagram’s Pedophile Problem

Desert Island Discs - Cillian Murphy, actor

WikiHole - Lenny Kravitz (with Paul F. Tompkins, Drew Tarver, and Heléne Yorke)

This Cultural Life - Andrew Scott

Pop Culture Happy Hour - Our 2024 Oscars Recap

The Atlas Obscura Podcast - The Grave of XYZ

Vibe Check - Hey, Sis: featuring Morgan Parker

WikiHole with D'Arcy Carden - Fear of Dolphins (with Kumail Nanjiani, Emily Gordon, and Jonah Ray)

The Allusionist - 190. Craters

WikiHole with D'Arcy Carden - Tetris (with Adam Pally, Jon Gabrus and Blair Socci)

The Atlas Obscura Podcast - The Lighthouse Keeper

⭐ Vibe Check - A Special Conversation with Afeef Nessouli

Short Wave - What We Know About Long COVID, From Brain Fog to Fatigue

⭐ Decoder Ring - Why Stylists Rule the Red Carpet

⭐ 99% Invisible #573 - Toyetic

You Are Good - My Best Friend's Wedding w. Sam Sanders

If Books Could Kill - Lean In

The Atlas Obscura Podcast - Law of the Tongue

Imaginary Worlds - The Nine Lives of Red Dwarf

Today, Explained - Lip gloss, gum, and the Pill

Dear Prudence - My Ex Had Sex With My Brother. Help!

What Next: TBD - Is TikTok Cooked This Time?

Short Wave - Are We On The Brink Of A Nuclear Fusion Breakthrough?

Pop Culture Happy Hour - Love Lies Bleeding And What's Making Us Happy

Endless Thread - The Music Man, Part 1

Welcome to Night Vale #244 - A Multiplicity of Kevin

Today, Explained - Hollywood’s still not back

99% Invisible - The Power Broker #03: David Sims

Off Menu - Ep 233: Frankie Boyle (Live in Glasgow)

⭐ Hit Parade - Gotcha Covered Edition

🎶 MUSIC 🎶

The Donnas

Smooth Rockabilly

Respect: '60s Iconic Women

[honeysucklepink]

Tagging @slayediest because she might enjoy it...

(and here’s a whole playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7c4OtBZPwhkehbLDzrfc5L?si=67f9d33d34114b12)

[meanminyxrd]

the monsters spotify wrapped 2022!

(no explanations lmfao just my personal hcs based off of their playlists i have created for them. you can check my pinned post for my playlists!)

neil's spotify wrapped:

-definitely waterparks is top artist

-top song is either something gay and pining and stupid, some hype song from his workout playlist, or a waterparks song from "greatest hits" album.

-got infected by nicky so he has a lot of girly pop artists/music

-top genre is pop/pop punk/indie

-listens to a lot of soundtrack music as well

kevin's spotify wrapped:

-so many stupid history podcasts

-rock/metal music (aaron's influence)

-foreign music/artists (riko/testuji/jean's influence)

-big halsey fan for sure

aaron's spotify wrapped:

-basically an emo 13 yr old

-blink 182

-mayday parade

-my chemical romance

-emo/emo rap/rock/metal top genres

-emo holy trinity for sure

andrew's spotify wrapped:

-lots of the neighborhood

-waterparks for sure (neil's influence)

-also pretty high emo/alt category (tbf aaron and him ARE twins)

-avril lavigne's album was definitely one of his top played

-serial killer podcasts

at some point i'd like to actually do top artists, songs, etc. but i don't know if i will lol. anyways! take this as you will it's just my personal hcs.

[angstics]

my chemical romance has always been a band about death. bullets' bonnie and clyde, three cheers' resurrection-rampage plot, black parade's dying main character, danger days' "where the good guys die and the bad guys win". the vampires and corpse-like make-up and lyrics constantly looking to the end. 1000+ hits when you google: "death-obsessed" "my chemical romance". gerard way's "if we never play another show again, keep yourself alive" in 2008, when the band had an exhausting few years and an uncertain future (video, article).

it took a few years, but the band eventually played its last show. it wasn't just a break or dissolution. the band died. their final song was released posthumously in 2/14 and it was titled "fake your death" -- not a hint at reunification, but a finale that put to rest who they were as my chemical romance. as gerard way said: "i don't think my chemical romance is supposed to happen again. i think it's supposed to stay beautiful forever; it's a beautiful thing. it's supposed to die young in the car wreck" (kerrang , 7/14).

dying young has haunted my chem as long as death has. every single main character of theirs' was both dead and young: irl demolition lovers on the LOTMS cd, the patient being "too young to die", the fab four being teenagers according to the killjoys: california comics. even gun's "never gonna have a son" and "if im old enough to die for your mistakes / then let's go". even helena, who is directly about the ways' grandmother, is played by a young actor -- with make-up matching the bands'. there were fears surrounding gerard's health ending the band then at one point his life, as stated by brian schechter in LOTMS. after the band ended, mikey and frank had near-death experiences. gerard released hestiant alien's how it's going to be, a song about "waking up from the dream and realizing it's not exactly what you wanted" (video): "you said we'd all be dead by twenty five" and "we're just bored you're still alive". the entertainment industry is marked by the iconization of artists who died young. the 90s - 00s was a time + place defined by DARE and AIDS and young veterans. the band coincided with BIG life changes (sky-rocketing careers, new families).

this is all to say that my chem tightly links youth and death. there is also a great emphasis on death as a performance -- dedicating songs and albums and theatre productions and art and stories and appearances to it. the aesthetic of death.

though the band died young, its people didnt. years went by. my impression as an outsider to that time is that even without reason (least of all from these fuckin guys), hope didnt die. it laid dormant. the group friendship and musical relationship was revived sometime 2017 - 2018 because of a family bbq (podcast, quote). that was two years of possibility before they decided to return in 2019. after some hurdles where hope never diminished, they began their first tour after a decade -- filled with projects and personal hardships and children growing up -- in 2022.

this tour has been marked by their visible and stated joy. not a nostalgia tour, not an album tour, but a chance to "reintroduce ourselves to the world" (podcast, quote). the sources of joy are endless (isnt that just so beautiful??) one of them is discovering the link btwn living and old age.

theyre still about death, theyre still about youth, theyre still about drama. gerard's dressed as princess diane and joan darc, famous women who died young. the when we were young night 2 costumes are bout the horror of aging but not changing. it's a forever mcr theme.

[haveyouheardthispodcast]

[robkellycreative]

New M*A*S*HCast! Season 6, Episode 18: “Your Hit Parade” w/guests Tim English and Britt Schramm bit.ly/3PTbrua