#the recent boxset was so good

[riversofmars]

Hear me out: The next "Diary of River Song" release should be entitled "The Wives of River Song" and include the following stories:

1: River runs into Missy again in the midst of a museum heist. Shenanigans ensue and of course, Missy would be delighted to marry the Doctor’s wife - if just to annoy them.

2: River gets into a temporary pickle with UNIT in 21st Century Earth, dealing with two alternate timelines regarding a Royal Wedding. Why the only solution to it appears to be wedding Kate Stewart is anybody’s guess.

3: River reunites with Liv and Helen and they finally get to go “somewhere nice and relaxed” as promised at the end of “Companion Piece”. None of them had bargained for it being their honeymoon.

4: River finally meets the 13th Doctor! It’s about time! And the Doctor has a lot of questions as to why she is not her first wife! If only the meeting wasn't at the Library... (Bonus appearance by the Fugitive Doctor.)

Here is the concept art for the covers. Call me Big Finish 🤙🤓🤳

[clamorybus]

babysat my niece all day and it went really well! we spent most of it on the trampoline, just shooting the shit

[kowarth]

Osgood's Nightlight: a ramble of thoughts on hopeful symbolism in Cosmosgate

Last night I completed my latest reread of Technically Write's "My Cosmos is Yours" through to Chapter 41. As always, I highly recommend it even though I have biased myself by falling in love with thier carefully curated lyrical prose. You can thank me later and avoid spoilers by doing that now.

All done? Wasn't that a fantastic 40+ hours?

Anyways, right there, in amongst everything else happening in c41 is the introduction of Osgood's TARDIS Nightlight. It bathes the entire midnight of the chapter in streaks of blue grading with convenient yellow highlights which the cinematographer in my head adored.

It's a lovely little touch at Osgood's fangirl credentials that she has one.

But UNIT exists in a universe where the Doctor is a grey area of conspiracy theory/folk hero/folk horror / startling top secret fact. Police boxes existed, as they did in the real world, but even etsy might struggle to find a market for led street furniture ornaments.

So, it's safe to infer that Osgood, a genius across multiple fields who at this point still idolises the Doctor (even if the one she has met was a bit of a loon) made that herself.

These stories are supposed to take place before "Day of the Doctor" which introduced the brunette genius to her adoring public. So why make a TARDIS Nightlight?

Nightlights exist to make one feel safe in the dark. Osgood hasn't really shown a lot of issues with the dark up to this point but an awful lot has happened to her in recent weeks.

When Kate, Sarah and the Dr visit in C14 no mention is made of the device. But it is daytime and unlikely to be lit.

Unless it doesn't exist yet.

And if it is crafted by Osgood, why would she choose to do so after c14?

From here on, the action elements ramp up as the events of 3 boxsets of audio impact on our hero's. Critically, all four major trauma epsodes have issues of light.

First, after being blown up on a submarine, Osgood is assaulted by the Silurians fear device causing her to hide amongst corpses while hallucinating a cave. Her escape from those events involve swimming through a natural cave structure while not quite herself.

Secondly, Peru. The sunglasses she used in her disguise have mostly been represented so far in the story as a barrier to Kate communicating with her. But it places her in the dark, and shortly thereafter we learn she has been suffering from recurring nightmares about those events.

It is here, in the frozen weeks where she is avoiding Kate, that I suggest she has constructed her Nightlight.

Why not buy one though? In 2012 even a good led Nightlight would have been around £5.

I surmise that it goes back to disguise. That's what the Police Box is, after all. A disguise that's gone a bit wonky. A comfort in the dark. This is still the osgood that cowers on the floor of the undergallery chanting 'The Doctor will save me.' to herself. Right up until she finds the ability to save not only herself but Kate in short order.

It also ties into the essence of the DOTD script. That the TARDIS is an avatar of safety and hope.

"You know that sound the tardis makes?" "Yes?"

"That wheezing groaning sound brings hope, wherever it goes."

Thirdly, her concussion at the hands of fake Sontarans immediately opens with a light sensitivity issue. For her own safety she needs to stay in the dark, instantly forming a bond between the dark and the pain of not only the initial injury but the ensuing memory loss which is still being felt in this very chapters flashback!

Finally, like the sunglasses, the VR headsets used to partially convert her to the cyberiad's way of thinking, place her as much in the dark as the sunglasses had. Escaping the headset Osgood crawls under a desk, out of the light.

When C40 opens and we catch up to Osgood at home her safe space is lit by one lamp on the floor throughout the chapter but she is still hiding in a dark she would otherwise actively avoid. Is this a self imposed punishment?

Kate asking to stay evokes relief and yet...

The Nightlight goes on.

It's not just for Osgood, she tells Kate that the option to turn it off is hers.

It's symbolism therefore, returns to one of Hope.

Kate Stewart has the power, in that instant, to turn out that hope.

Without realising it, perhaps, she chooses to leave that light on. To watch her beloved Osgood sleep.

Hope, against the darkness.

And thats why I love this work so passionately. Every syllable is deftly handpicked for the most eloquent of reasons.

It's also why the gap between chapters, thanks to existence of life itself, is trivial.

Great art takes time.

Thank you for reading if you made it this far

[disabledrunner5]

Well, it’s my birthday!

I’m officially slap bang in my mid twenties now 😅 but more to the point, that means it’s also my Runner Five’s birthday!

So I thought it would be cute to show you guys what I imagine what my Five received from Sam when she woke up on her birthday that took place during season 6 and some headcanons:

Five woke up alone to this on her birthday ^

The map is shit, I mean there’s no mystery around where she was going or where she needed to stop but she wasn’t going to say anything. She liked how there was no mystery about it and she was 100% going to humour Sam by doing it properly.

The picture did have a comment on the back of ‘the pink thing is a worm’. But Five teared up when she saw the picture.

One of the stops was Runner 8’s statue which is where Five goes to think. She said good morning to the statue on her way round.

Anyway when she got to the comms shack Sam was there with a huge smile and a ginormous pastry spread picnic for breakfast. Five had no idea how he pulled that off since a) pastry isn’t readily available and b) the comms shack is kind of vital (she later learned they’d set up a back up Comms shack from a old van they used on the run from Sigrid)

Then their friends joined (bringing chocolate cake, this is before the chocolate factory got blown up in season 6) and they opened the presents:

Janine got her a Bletchley Park quiz book.

Jodie knitted her a Gryffindor beanie hat

Maxine and Paula got her a few survival bits and bobs, like a first aid kit and the most recent player handbook for DND.

Baby Sara insisted on giving her a teddy with a orange hoodie on it ‘because it reminds her of daddy’ so if Sam was away from Five all she needed to do was hug the bear. Five nearly genuinely cried at that gift. (Baby Sara is probably in her toddler years in season 6 but I imagine its a ‘Gavin and Stacey’ situation where Baby Sara is now a nickname)

Jamie got her a pair of brand new trainers, he’s the kind of England but he he knows what Five really needed.

Amelia unfortunately got her some cosmetics claiming she looked tired all the time which really rubs Five and Sam up the wrong way because of course she looks tired, she’s a runner!

Brett Valmont even sent her a gift which confuses her, he gifted her the eleventh Doctor’s sonic screwdriver that was used in the show. The actual prop (or one of them).

Peter got her the full boxset of Red Dwarf with special features, and I mean all of Red Dwarf up until the apocalypse started.

Veronica made her a real life working K9 model (lasers not included).

Then Five found out how Valmont knew it was her birthday, Sam had been given by him the actual ring that Catherine Tate wore in the Doctor Who episode The Runaway Bride, the bio damper ring. Sam asked whether he could give it to her as a proper engagement ring for her birthday and he’d agreed.

That is Sam’s present…well part of it, he had commissioned Maxine to work on a special module for Demons and Darkness for Five’s birthday!

So they spend the rest of the day eating cake, and playing DND (although Paula had to take Sara out for a while because restless toddler not good and Amelia excuses herself claiming she’s too good for dnd)

Five has a really good, and more importantly stress free day (well as stress free as playing dnd can get)

She couldn’t have asked for better friends to celebrate with.

[blundergato]

while i was away:

i got big into Magic Knight Rayearth again. Bought the special edition boxsets of the series. the series has incredible art and i like that instead of focusing too heavily on things like worldbuilding or plot, it kind of just goes with vibes and it works for me. I like these older short series that are kind of just chaotic and all over, like this or Real Bout High School. its charming.

I renovated my gym room. Repainted the walls orange and grey and installed vinyl flooring. I bought some new gym equipment too and it's starting to look like a proper gym. This was a tremendous amount of work, but i really wanted to get it done. My dad had helped me get it started, so i wanted to finish it as soon as i could.

I watched the newer Planet of the Apes movies, except for the most recent one. man, those are some good ass movies. big fan of Caesar. me and my sister are constantly quoting the movies.

Saw my first cybertruck in the wild. looked shit and i hope they had a bad day.

I watched Sign of Affection, a romance anime about a deaf college girl. I liked it A LOT. all the characters were likable.

i stopped training for half marathons. my goal for the year was 1 a month for the whole year, but that got derailed in may and by the time june rolled around i was already out of half marathon shape and it was so hot that it was hard to put any real miles in. so im probably going to end up skipping july and august too and pick it back up in september.

i completed all of chun li's combo trials in sf6. this seems like nothing, but i literally spent 2+ hours on a single advanced combo and i think it took years off my life.

[sorenblr]

What is your opinion on the sexual cutscenes of FF16? I think a similar question was previously asked about Triangle Strategy and it seemed rather forced for the sake of pretending to be a more mature story, when FFT didn't rely on the explicitly sexual content to tell a mature story.

(This ask and the response are based on information that has been available as early as the demo and shouldn't contain any spoilers for the full game).

I don't mind a good sex scene and find the strangely puritanical reaction against sex depicted in film and television to be one of the most alien and frustrating discourses in recent years, but in this case it just seems to be the natural consequence of Yoshi P. demanding that his team watch the fucking GoT box-set:

...We wanted to create something that really resonated with a lot of people. And when we saw how Game of Thrones, and before that the Song of Ice and Fire series, has really resonated with players, we knew that this was something that we wanted to do as well. When we first started creating the game, we had our core team of about 30 members very early on buy the blu-ray boxset of Game of Thrones and required everyone to watch it, because we wanted this type of feel.

Game of Thrones made a lot of people a lot of money, and we thought to ourselves, boy, we would also like some of that money.

A larger distinction is that GoT features real actors who are, you know, people, and so it's not terribly embarrassing to see them stripped and smashing their shit together or jacking off or whatever. FFXVI, according to the aesthetic preference of an entire industry, is populated by uncanny digital homunculi only crudely approximating the appearance of real people with the animating force of God's breath filling their lungs. I don't anticipate that FFXVI will have full-bore, hog-out ramming or anything- I assume it's just a lot of post-coital sideboob, maybe a glimpse of Clive's weird little ass here and there- but in this presentational mode it would play closer to comedy if you're not catastrophically addicted to Overwatch porn.

There is a reason the camera would always cut away before Kratos starts fucking. You don't want to see that shit. You think you want to see it, but you don't want to see it. Do you expect to profit by seeing what David Jaffe in his wisdom has obscured from our eyes? This isn't In the Mood for Love. A color pencil rendering by some chronically masturbating teenage fan submitted to EGM in 2006 would be more stimulating than whatever these games are capable of showing you. You don't need to see Kratos' stroke game. You haven't even earned the right.

Beyond the unintended aesthetic effect of these things, I don't really trust this team to incorporate that influence in a meaningful or considered way, based on what I've seen of the game thus far. It extends to the 'epic medieval violence' and the prolific use of 'fuck'. I love fuck like a brother so please understand when I say that this is an incredibly remedial deployment of the term. The fuck sauce is not imitable. You simply have it or else it'll never be yours. A decade of stewarding radically PG-13 MMO quest dialogue has closed off the way to that place for Michael-Christopher Koji Fox.

And the insistent comparisons to Matsuno's oeuvre from the fanbase, often as a defensive appeal to legitimacy wherever the GoT influence is noted, are bordering on the absurd. Vaguely medieval politicking was apparently the only mark of his work that ever found purchase in people's minds, and none of the particular aesthetic, aural, or tonal distinctions that made those games living and vital. I don't expect that this game will have a meaningful resonance with those works except that people will be furious when the narrative inevitably ends with Clive facing off against some sort of ogre or deity instead of late medieval Karl Rove. But I also don't expect I'll have anything meaningful to share on the matter until I've seen for myself if it's as blandly imitative as it all seems. I mean, it's at least coming from an incredibly cynical place, as evinced in the quote above.

I don't have $650 USD burning a hole in my pocket at the moment, but I would love to be proven wrong whenever I have the chance to play it in like, late 2024. I similarly thought that FFXV looked totally insipid but then found it very affecting. Combat is an easy sell as one of the last living "character-action guys". You can use 'Stinger', that's good. There's a cooldown on the launcher? What the fuck is wrong with these people? It's probably still pretty good.

final fantasy sex thoughts postscript: they should make FFX-3 but it's about wakka and he always has one nut hanging out of his shorts and every 15 minutes he tucks it back in and says "sorry 'bout that brudda" to no one in particular but then it just immediately falls back out. also he's racist against al-bhed again

[danielfeketewrites]

Not Normal About Doctor Who

Back in June, I went to a fae-themed picnic with my girlfriend and my girlfriend's girlfriend (not an official title, they're not dating (or are they?)) and my girlfriend's girlfriend confessed that next month she's not going to be normal about Good Omens. She just knew it. I guess a large portion of tumblr can relate.

I replied that I am definitely going to be less and less normal about Doctor Who when we get closer to November.

Well, I was right. It's like a full moon is for a werewolf. For the past month, there hasn't been a single hour when I haven't thought about Doctor Who for at least a little bit. Maybe when I'm asleep. Maybe. Sometimes, I'm just lying in my bed, thinking about Doctor Who for hours and hours.

I've started reading two Doctor Who books. The first is an eighth Doctor book called Alien Bodies by Lawrence Miles. The second is an anthology - The Target Storybook.

I've also been writing my own short story for a small Czech fanfic competition. I picked a more recent Doctor rather than a classic one, which is quite unusual for me. (It's a Thasmin story set in the Land of Fiction. Yeah.)

I've been scrollig through the eyespider website (check it out if you haven't already), spotting stories that I would place elsewhere. Thinking about making my own version. Again. I once tried to make my own version as a Czech translation of the original website, but now I actually want to do it as a way to track which Doctor Who stories from the EU I've experienced. Also, fixing the placements that I disagree with. That's a big reason as well.

Also scrolling through Altered Vistas again. And TARDIS Wiki, but that one's obvious. Although I do recommend checking out the old classics like Fire, Grass, and, of course, the best one.

I've obviously rewatched some stuff. Outside of The Mind Robber and Shada, I'm watching series four with my mum and my girlfriend in preparation for the 60th anniversary trilogy, because they haven't seen the episodes with Donna before.

I've also been listening to some Big Finish. Mainly Once and Future, but I'm also thinking about listening to 10th Doctor and Donna boxsets, as well as the Companion Chronicles stuff featuring Sara Kingdom.

Probably gonna read more comics very soon, it seems inevitable. Maybe that digital scan of Abslom Daak - The Dalek Killer that somehow appeared on my external harddrive? Some 13th Doctor comics too. I desperately need to find more stories with her that I actually like.

I can name every Doctor Who TV story in order. But the other day, I caught myself trying to also remember every writer to all of the stories in the 60s Who. I'm gonna have to memorise that one properly, I still have some gaps. The Space Museum was written by Glyn Jones.

I've been thinking about sharing my top 10 favourite stories for each Doctor here, on tumblr. And yes, those top 10s are gonna include EU stories. Some of them will have more EU stories than TV stories. I will obviously have to update them next year. Could be my new November tradition!

Oh, and I'm also writing a Doctor Who fanzine for a Czech Doctor Who by-fans-for-fans convention. I am also one of the organisers of said convention.

So yeah. I'm not normal about Doctor Who right now. And The Star Beast hasn't even aired yet! Meep meep!

art by Dave Gibbons

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

I was listening to some real people comedians (as in, local comedians whom I have met in real life, and can therefore not be considered to have in any way “made it” in comedy, because if they had then they would not be hanging out around me) talk the other day, and they were discussing the concept of “laughs per minute”, and whether it’s a bullshit way to judge comedy. Which I think it usually is, depending on the context. In a really short club set, it probably does matter a lot because you don’t have time to do more than that. In a Stewart Lee Edinburgh hour, he can go 35 minutes setting something up and everyone will just trust that the punchline at the end will be worth it.

Anyway, it got me thinking about the concept, and how I judge comedy in lots of different ways, and what has made me laugh the most – both in terms of most laughs per minute and hardest laughs overall – is not exactly the same as my favourite comedy shows ever. But anything that manages any kind of notable laughs per minute rating is impressive, because lots of shows I really like never clear that bar. If we define a “laugh” as something outwardly expressed and audible, more than just a smile and a nose exhale, then it doesn’t actually happen all that often. I’ll consider a show very successful if it gets me to do that just a few times across an hour.

So I’ve tried to think of what comedy shows have successfully gotten more than that, have made me properly laugh out loud really consistently for their entire runtime (whether that’s an hour or 15 minutes, though obviously it’s more impressive if they can sustain it for longer). If I’m thinking about this across my whole life, I have to take into account the fact that everything’s funnier when you’re a kid, you haven’t already seen every obvious joke so nothing is hack or overdone. I remember the shows I was into as a kid (ages 7 to 14 or so, I think) as the funniest things in the entire world, I used to watch every episode over and over and over. The main ones on rotation being Flying Circus, Blackadder, Fawlty Towers, Mr. Bean, Ripping Yarns, Yes Minister, M*A*S*H, and Cheers.

Now, at 33, I can understand why it’s annoying to have the parrot sketch memorized – because it’s been quoted so often than at this point repeating it is almost like, for example, trying to sell someone something that's long dead and nailed to a perch. At nine, I could recite every word in it, over and over for hours, and it never stopped being funny. As an adult, I’m still pretty sure Blackadder was a work of genius, but I don’t think I’ll ever again find anything as funny as I found Hugh Laurie’s acting power stance when I was eleven years old. I used to wake up at 5:30 AM to watch a few episodes of whatever show I was re-watching at the moment (my list of shows on rotation was heavily determined by what was in my parents’ DVD boxset collection), until I could mouth along to all the lines but they never got less funny.

I did re-watch every episode of all those British shows in 2020 (so everything but M*A*S*H and Cheers, though I’ve rewatched a few episodes of both those recently as well) to see how they held up, and while they didn’t make me cry with laughter the way I did as a kid, I still thought almost all of them were very good. And by “almost all of them”, I mean… look, I think Mr. Bean is just meant to be a kids’ show. I loved it when I first watched it, because that shit’s hilarious when you’re a kid. As an adult, it looked like a kid’s show with a few genuinely funny moments. The turkey on the head is still funny. Playing with the toy Daleks in the Christmas store is still funny. My family still watches the Christmas special every year on that holiday. The rest of it we can probably leave behind.

Anyway, the point is that you can’t count that because I was a kid. Then I think of my favourite comedy shows that I got into as a teenager. Major ones to come to mind are The Thick of It, 30 Rock, Parks and Rec, Community, Arrested Development, Flight of the Conchords, Freaks and Geeks. My favourite comedy shows of my twenties: Bojack Horseman, Veep, Archer, Brooklyn Nine Nine, The Good Place, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Portlandia, Broad City, Party Down, Bob’s Burgers. I supposed I should add a mention of my mixed and up-and-down longterm relationship with South Park.

I remember a lot of things I’ve loved about those shows besides pure laughs per minute – the characters, the ideas, the atmosphere. I’d go back to certain shows over and over just because I liked the way it made me feel to spend time in the world they created. But for pure, really hard, out-loud laughs? Looking at that list, I think the ones to get the most of those out of me were The Thick of It, Veep, 30 Rock, Arrested Development, and maybe when they were at their best, Portlandia, Archer, and Community could do it. But not all the time. There isn’t really that long a list of comedies that have consistently made me laugh really hard once I wasn’t a kid anymore.

Anyway, that isn’t actually what I was thinking about that made me decide to write this post. The conversation I heard from local comedians, about laughs per minute, made me think of what has done that to me in my thirties, the few years since COVID occurred and I decided to not do anything except British comedy. I have seen and heard and read so much comedy in the last few years, and I have really really loved quite a lot of it. So I was surprised when I realized that I think, if you judge it entirely by out-loud laughs per minute, there aren’t a huge number that come to mind as consistently providing a high rate of those.

In terms of full-length stand-up hours, I think there might still be no one who’s gotten more proper laughs per minute out of me than Rhod Gilbert. All four of his DVD shows are incredible – I think I’d say the first one (The Award Winning Mince Pie) is my favourite, though I might just have a soft spot for the first one I saw, when I first had my eyes opened to that captivating style.

I hesitate a little to comment on his health from the perspective of how much I love his comedy specials, because I don’t want to make something as serious as a person’s life or death about whether I’ll get to hear more comedy specials (I feel the same way about Mark Steel’s current situation – I did make a post a while ago in which I said he has to recover for the sake of Radio Four, but obviously, he has to recover for the sake of himself and his family, even his annoying son, I wish them all the best and it’s not about the comedy fans). But for everyone’s sake, mainly his, God am I ever glad he’s back and by all accounts okay. He’s said he was diagnosed with cancer the day after he recorded his latest special, and you can really tell in that video that he was being slowed down and struggled to match his usual frantic energy levels, but it was still brilliant.

Anyway, I think Rhod Gilbert still wins at laughs per minute from me in stand-up. Proper laughter. Laughing so hard I can’t breathe and have to pause the video so I don’t miss the next bit and end up with tears in my eyes and my throat and stomach hurt. I think Rhod Gilbert has done that to me the most. I’ve tried to think of whose stand-up material might do that to me the second most, and I’m slightly annoyed that I think the main two names that come to mind are Sam Campbell and Nish Kumar. Slightly annoyed because when I look at those two names alongside Rhod Gilbert… okay, is it possible that I might just like being shouted at?

I’m now trying to think of a non-shouty comic who’s done that to me. Kitson, obviously. I think my favourite stand-up hour ever is Daniel Kitson’s Where Once Was Wonder, which is fucking incredible for its ability to get every single aspect right. Brilliant on an emotional level, hitting multiple themes and topics that all have deep emotional resonance and saying original and significant things about them. Brilliant on an intellectual level – every time I listen to it I marvel at the number of layers in its structure, how its conceit of being full of contradictions is embedded in almost every line, how I catch more each time and he points lots of them out but throws even more away. And crucially, brilliant on a humour level. It is consistently, all the way through, hilarious. He probably never goes ten minutes without at least one bit that makes my whole body seize up from laughter until I can’t breathe right.

But honestly, most of the Kitson things that have gotten the highest laugh per minute out of me were not the intricately written shows. I wince at how much he would hate this, but probably, at laughs per minute from me, some of his 2007-2008 Graveyard Triple R radio shows beat some of his best proper stand-up shows. Same with some of his WIP/pre-WIP just messing around shows. There’s some audio footage of a 2007 Late ‘n’ Live night where Daniel Kitson and Andy Zaltzman do an incredibly stupid sketch that has put tears of laughter in my eyes. If you want to know what level of humour we're talking about, that sketch contains the line "That was three ladies booing my dick because it chose the wrong member of We Are Klang to fuck" (which it did, by the way, by which I mean Andy Zaltzman chose wrong while portraying the role of Daniel Kitson's penis, but not for the reasons that this Greg Davies-fancying website would expect, if you'd heard the Triple R shows with Steve Hall you'd understand. He then went on to choose the wrong member of Pappy's Fun Club, what does Andy Zaltzman know about the most attractive members of the most successful British fringe comedy sketch groups of 2007?). It's definitely not better than properly written Kitson shows, or Zaltzman shows, for that matter. But it might have made me laugh out loud more times.

I think It’s the Fireworks Talking is one of the best pieces of performance ever written, but recordings I’ve heard of that have probably made me laugh fewer times than a recording I’ve heard from the Melbourne Festival of when he finished performing It’s the Fireworks Talking and then went into a radio studio to talk shit with David and Claudia O’Doherty all night. Or than the Zaltzman/Kitson penis sketch, put together with everything else from that Late 'n' Live recording.

I know I’m not saying anything new here; I’m hardly the first person to point out that Daniel Kitson is absolutely fucking hilarious when he’s messing around with no script. Lots of people have pointed it out before me, and he has clearly heard those people point it out, as he’s often mentioned that it annoys him, and understandably so. What’s the point of working so hard on proper shows if people just like your unplanned stuff better?

But I don’t think I actually like that stuff better. I don’t think his radio shows are better than It’s the Fireworks Talking (I sort of don’t think penicillin is better than It’s the Fireworks Talking). And this is where I come back to the fact that laughs per minute are not the best way to judge a show (I’d like to clarify at this point that It’s the Fireworks Talking did have quite a high laughs per minute rate out of me, just not as high as Kitson and some O’Doherties getting weirdly competitive about indie music at 3 AM).

Anyway. I think Sam Campbell recently became the first person to make me laugh so hard that I had tears in my eyes, from hearing something that was performed in 2023. He did that with some of his recent stand-up. On Taskmaster he has, more than once, made me laugh loud enough to cause a cat to run across the room (I’m currently catsitting and one of the cats gets easily spooked by sudden noise, so whether I make her jump is a good gauge of whether something’s made me laugh out loud). But only his stand-up has actually made me cry.

I’ve been lucky enough to get to hear quite a bit of recent stand-up in the last couple of months. I’ve really liked a lot of it, but I’m now trying to think of how much of it has actually made me consistently laugh out loud, which is several steps beyond just being funny. I think the only people who’ve done that are Sam Campbell, Olga Koch, Nish Kumar, Greg Larsen, Sarah Keyworth, and Fern Brady. Which actually isn’t that short a list, but it’s a shorter list than the list of comedians I’ve enjoyed at all in the last couple of months.

Anyway, I didn’t start writing this post because of stand-up. I started writing this post because of a conversation I heard some comedians have the other day, but I started thinking of that conversation, and decided I wanted to write a post about that conversation, because I was re-watching some No More Jockeys today. And fucking hell, I have to say, this is supporting the theory that laughs per minute can come so much from unscripted shows that it could justifiably make comedians despair as they wonder what the point is of honing their craft. I’ve listened to a bunch of Tim Key’s properly written stuff in the last few days (went on a bit of a binge of his radio show and some of his old stand-up), absolutely loved it, it’s intelligent and funny and very well written stuff, but it still didn’t make me laugh out loud quite as hard as No More Jockeys does. Almost nothing makes me laugh out loud quite as hard as No More Jockeys does.

I tried to think of some non-stand-up thing that makes me laugh as hard/loud/often as No More Jockeys. The Bugle has managed it, at its best. I've only heard a few episodes of Pappy's Fun Club, but that's done it at times. Catsdown at its best has accomplished it.

The main thing I can think of that's done it really consistently is Taskmaster, but even that probably loses to NMJ at laughs per minute. It’s up there, though. Beats a lot of scripted sitcoms at it, including some really good scripted sitcoms. So from Taskmaster and No More Jockeys, you get the laughs, and the fun of getting emotionally invested in following a competitive game. Why are people still bothering to craft well written sitcom worlds?

This post has been massively disjointed, I think I've hit about six different topics since I've started, somehow including who's the most attractive member of Pappy's Fun Club. I finally have a weekend to myself and have decided I feel like writing things again, and it's started with this. I don't think there was any point to it. All I was really trying to say is I can't believe how fucking funny No More Jockeys is.

Mark Watson desperately, pleadingly trying to argue with Alex Horne about whether Donald Duck has been to prison – I'm sorry but I don't think Rowan Atkinson has done anything funnier than that in his entire life. He's done lots of things that are better than that. But not that can make me laugh harder than that while I'm over the age of 30.

[joshhhhhhhhhhhhhhh]

Prescription: Murder

Yeah so here's something different. Very directly as a consequence of me mostly watching anime I don't enjoy recently, but then neither wanting to rewatch anything and being apprehensive about starting something new for a variety of reasons, I felt I needed a change of pace. Just launch myself into something completely different, that I could hopefully be invested in. And Columbo is what I ended up with. It's been implanted into my mind with its somewhat recent resurgance on tumblr, randomly getting recommended the blog Columbophile, seeing the very nice looking DVD boxset for sale in hmv, and the final nail in the coffin being some even more recent twitter memes regarding the series. "Let's watch Columbo" I decided. And here we are.

So, this is my first introduction to Columbo, with its pilot episode. And I liked it! Quite a bit! This is a very different type of media in general for me, so I don't know how much I'll have to say about any given episodes just because they're completely not what I'm used to, but certainly I like where we're at right now.

There's a lot of time well spent on merely setting up the murder - I believe this is what's famous about the series anyway but it's entirely not a whodunnit - we see exactly how the murder happens, exactly who does it, pretty much every part of why they did it, and even a lot of time spent on clean-up. Honestly at the beginning of the episode, Flemming is so meticulous that you begin to wonder how he's even gonna be caught. And throughout the episode they answer that very well, and very very gradually.

It turns into this clash of personalities really, two bright minds up against one another, one intentionally demeaning himself and the other so prideful that he basically admits to everything. But the pair have a read on one another as well - Columbo knows Flemming did it and Flemming basically explains Columbo's entire shtick to us anyway. Undermine himself, present as small, unkempt, distracting, downright annoying most of the time. Flemming gets the read on him but even then Columbo is so persistent and annoying that the man cracks.

Although per the episode's own calling attention to it, Joan was the real weak link in the entire ordeal - frankly she was just less invested than Flemming was, tripped him up because of it. I do think the final scene that plays out to get the confession was maybe a little contrived - wasn't really a conclusion to the bouncing pride and intelligence of Columbo and Flemming, rather just a scenario that came up to end the story, but like, eh. I appreciate that Joan... doesn't quite get off scot-free or anything but she could've had it worse, I think Flemming would rather she had it worse. This ending ends up working the best narratively for pretty much everyone involved. Like if she died it'd be unfair that she had the worst fate even though she was hesitant, you know? This was good.

That's pretty much the main things I've got to say about the episode. Fascinating as a more general statement to go back to a live action show from this long ago - honestly there are devices I don't even recognise, an aesthetic so far removed from my life but recent enough to feel real, or something. It's neat. I don't usually watch anything this old or anything live action to begin with, so like, yeah.

As two other quick little notes - I don't actually know if every episode has a neat title card like this one does, but I would like the format for these posts to be the episode title as the tumblr post title, followed by the episode title card. I hope the show lets me keep to that. Also, I've not got a schedule for this or anything. I've got 68 episodes still to watch which would be a lot even if they were 24 minutes long a la the anime I spend all my time watching. Instead, they're all 70-90 minutes long. I cannot even pretend to promise a consistent "yeah I'll watch it this week" or something. Next post on Columbo will be when I watch the next episode. I will watch the next episode whenever I watch it. You know how it is. But yeah, swag.

[tathrin]

✏ 🐺 ⚠ 📚 please! :D

Answers for this LotR ask-game.

✏ rewrites: here's a pencil, which ONE thing in the novels/films are you changing?

Oh gods, just one? Ughhh that's hard. Okay, even stretching the definition of "one thing" to the utmost limit to be an entire character subplot...I'm still torn between Give Arwen An Actual Coherent Plotline (which I think would do the best thing to fix for the movies) and Show Legolas And Gimli's Friendship Arc (because that's at least something that just gets largely overlooked-and-glossed-over with the occasional flicker of lip-service paid to it at random rather than being an absolute cluster-fuck of incoherent half-assed thoughts that stumble all over themselves without any actual fucking resolution/explanation like the Arwen Stuff). Much as I would personally like to see the latter, I think if I were actually given the chance to change one thing, then it would be the Arwen Situation just because that's such a fucking MESS and it really needs fixed.

If we're going with literally just one single thing, then: Denethor burns to death on the pyre instead of running like three fucking miles to the end of the city what the fuck.

🐺 GROND GROND GROND: which of the battles is your favourite to watch? is there a combat scene in particular that you enjoy?

The Battle of Helm's Deep. As much as it bothers me that the elves are there without any plausible explanation, and especially that they just fucking disappear from the entire plot as soon as it's over, it also looks so damn good to watch! And my irritation is mitigated by the GRIN that I absolutely cannot stop from breaking out over my features every single time I hear "that is no orc-horn!" and see the look on Théoden's face when Haldir walks in (and the smug little grin on Legolas's face too because let's face it, he doesn't get to be a little shit in the movies the way he is in the books and that is a crime) as well as by the absolute fucking BEAUTY of that battle itself, not least of all the heart-wrenching scene where Haldir dies. THAT MUSIC OH MY FUCKING GODS AM I RIGHT!? Gods, even when you're watching it as critically as possible and picking-out the bits where cause/effect break-down and narrative order was shuffled in ways that don't make logistical sense and picking up on the minute little errors and inconsistencies...it's still so damn fucking good.

(btw I know I cannot be the only one who noticed, but since it seems that many of the little details that the early movie-fandom used to talk over obsessively in the 2000s have fallen out of common knowledge in more recent years...who else desperately wants to see the footage of the cut where it's Legolas who hauls Gimli out of the water after the wall is breached, rather than Aragorn? Because it's Legolas's hand that actually pulls him up, but then the footage cuts to Aragorn helping Gimli away...but it was Legolas whose hand pulls him out of the water, Legolas who yeeted himself down the stairs on an orc-shield to get to Gimli, so why don't we get to see the rest of that!?)

PJ, the Extended Editions are godsends don't get me wrong...but could we have ALL the deleted footage sometime? Pretty pretty please with elevensies on top?

⚠ fucking buckleberry ferry: from the clip of Dom and Billy discussing the one swear word they could theoretically get by censors, which line would you change?

I honestly don't know, because I don't know that that would actually do anything to add to the weight of things? But a very soft, "oh fuck" when Théoden sees the Nazgûl flying towards him, perhaps!

📚 boxset: how were you first introduced to Middle Earth?

My little brother actually read them first, and he made me read them. I think I was in eighth grade? Give or take a year or two.

Our mom had a collection of "classic novels" that she'd gotten from some kind of book-club some years back, so we had copies of all four books on the "fancy shelves" in the living room next to all the "real literature" and boring biographies and stuff, so I read nice pretty leatherbound editions first, with lovely maps and illustrations, and I think that added to the "weight" of the story in a way, because none of my other fantasy/sci-fi books ever merited such treatment so it made them feel special.

But it also made me leery of reading them tbh, because I'd spent my whole youth being told that the books I liked were crappy books that just Could Not Compare to the Worthwhile Literature that real readers liked (and which were, imo, usually shit). So I'd actually ignored LotR my whole life because it was on the Fancy Book Shelf so I assumed they were also crap. But my brother insisted that I suck-it-up and read them anyway, and that I had to read all of them and not just The Hobbit and call it a day (he knows what a stubborn, contrary person I am, and that it was A: going to take several thousand words for me to give them a fair chance and also B: the Hobbit alone wasn't going to blow me away) and I was reluctant, but he persisted and I did and oh boy was he right. Then like one or two years later, we found out they were making movies so of course we had to re-read them so we'd be ready and I think we both read them at least a dozen times between then and the release of Fellowship, to the point where mom eventually bought us each our own paperback copies so keep us from pestering each other lmao.

(The Silm took a while. I had to literally trap myself on a train freshman year of college with nothing else to do in order to get through that one the first time shhhh.)

[jennyandvastraflint]

Would you like to answer either/both of these?

Vastra

4. what about their personality i like

7. the moment of theirs that made me the happiest

9. my favorite canon outfit of theirs

13. what i dont like about the way the fandom portrays them

Osgood

3. whether or not i have any merchandise/objects with them

5. what about their backstory makes me emotional

10. my favorite moment with them in canon

14. what i liked about the way canon portrayed them

(I know nothing about Osgoods backstory tbh but I imagine you might know more? If not feel free to answer with a headcanon OR for Vastra instead :) )

Thank you for the fugitive Doctor ask!!

Thank you so much for the ask!!

So first, let's begin with Vastra!

4. what about their personality i like

Gosh, where do I even start! So, one thing I love about her is how direct she can be, cutting out all the nonsense she doesn't care about in conversations, and I looove her sarcasm. She is so witty, while at the same time absolutely horrendous at talking about things about her past and trauma and emotions, and hnnng! I also love how utterly in love she is with Jenny, and that she can and will bite someone if Jenny is in danger.

7. the moment of theirs that made me the happiest

I don't think I can name just one singular moment, I love all the scenes that show her and Jenny's love so plainly. I think that's a general rule of thumb: if Jenny and Vastra are happily flirting, I'm happy as well. One particular moment I have in recent memory is a scene from the first Trespassers boxset in which Jenny and Vastra lie in bed at night. Jenny can't sleep and Vastra asks what's troubling her, and as her mind begins working, she asks Jenny to get her butterfly book. Jenny refuses because she's sleepy, and Vastra whispers a "Good night, sweet one" to her, and when I first heard it, I legit burst into tears and sobbed for twenty minutes. In the show, I think I'd have to say the painting scene? XD It's a classic, really. But they don't get that many comedic scenes in the show, it feels like. Most are given to Strax. Am I rolling my eyes at the scene a bit? Yes, because they are impossible. But I'm also over here kicking my legs.

9. my favorite canon outfit of theirs

Okay, so I have two, technically, one for THIS IS SO FUCKING COOL and one for Oh my god she truly is such a classy, special silly, I love her so much.

Also, death on the catsuits, death, death! Vastra would FREEEEEZE in them... Also they're ugly and impractical. Just look at how HOT she looks in the Demons Run look!!!

13. what i dont like about the way the fandom portrays them

Vastra communicating openly about her emotions.

No, I'm joking. I think it might be (this is something I dislike about Big Finish as well at times actually) that people believe she's the one in charge in the relationship with Jenny. Because... No, this is where our opinions differ. I will say, though, as the fandom is rather small, I know pretty much everyone who does write fanfic/draw fanart personally atp (or most of you anyway), so we share a lot of opinions due to our negotiating.

And now, I'll follow up with Osgood!!

3. whether or not i have any merchandise/objects with them

I have bought "The Wintertime Paradox" by Dave Rudden because of Osgood's story (without realising it has the wonderful story "A Perfect Christmas" about the Paternoster Gang as well), so if that counts? Oh, actually, does Big Finish audio count? If not, just as well. I don't think I have any merchandise with Osgood specifically, but I do have a lab coat that could be used as part of an Osgood cosplay. Most of my Doctor Who stuff though, is audios and books!

5. what about their backstory makes me emotional

I think it's at least brushed upon in the show as well, but her (lack of) relationship with her family? Osgood has a sister who's basically better at everything, and they feel a bit pushed to the side. I unfortunately don't remember the precise details, but in "The Wintertime Paradox", Osgood is working on Christmas Eve, and that's made me a bit emotional... Also that they struggle with self-worth which is brought up in a few audios! Oh, and obviously the entire thing with the second Osgood and how they are both and neither, and everyone always asks Which are you? (I think I've written a bit of that into... Uhhhhh... One of my fics. One of the fairytale AUs)

10. my favorite moment with them in canon

Gosh, Osgood isn't in that many scenes of the show, hu! I think it's the bonding with 12 in the Zygon episodes. In extended media, there is much more, but it's been too long since I've listened to it all.

14. what i liked about the way canon portrayed them

I love that despite Osgood being a sort of "fan character", they aren't turned into a mere mirror, but Osgood is a character in their own right. One of the little quips throughout the audios that stuck with me and definitely influences my perception of them as some form of enby, is that Osgood tells people quite a few times that she wants to be "just Osgood", no Miss, or whatever. It's just a really nice thing for me personally to hear. Oh yeah, also that Osgood is totally autistic-coded.

I hope my answers satisfy! Thank you again for the ask!

[aliensmoothie]

tagged by @bladeofavernus ( THANK YOU EWBIE ❤️❤️❤️ )

3 ships : ohhh ah umm . im not much into shipping anymore so this is hard . buut . rhysha zerhys ( im a man of multitudes i suppose ENSJFK . they are both good to me ) annnndddd . umm . OH nark is fun :)

1st ship : I WANT TO SAY SOMETHING LIKE A FNAF SHIP LMAO . but i dont remember which one . this was many years ago .

last song : hatredcopter by dethklok . 😁

last movie : memento ! it was very neat ... i just watched it tonight LOL

currently reading : god's own junkyard by peter blake ... though i am not very far in . and it has been a While since i picked it up . but i am counting it ok .

currently watching : THERE ARE ALOT OF THINGS ON THE BURNER KINDA . but i think most recently i have been watching metalocalypse with shawn . 😁

currently consuming : starfielddddd ........

currently craving : augh . its quite simple but . jerk chicken w/ spinach and rice . it would make me happy rn :)

tagging : @nil-number @sunstar121 @cyberfunked @postalocalypse @marlboro-boxset and whoever else would like to play consider yourself tagged by me . hehe :)

[eutravels]

Doctor Who 60 Years - Once And Future : Past Lives (1)

I recently embarked on the 60th special Big Finish adventure! Starting with Past Lives, I was really happy to finally listen to my first real Doctor Who audio drama. (Short Trips are audio books and Worlds of Doctor Who boxsets aren't really proper Doctor Who adventures)

The story was really cool, very lively but without leaving you behind. I loved every part of it!

The overall plot is still underdeveloped at the moment, but I guess we will see more about it in future chapters.

It's one you can listen to without any EU baggage, so you can totally feel free to jump right in with this one. I was glad it introduced me to Hound's monk and to Miller's Sarah Jane. Osgood and Kate also worked really well in that format, and I'm starting to wonder if I should start listening to the UNIT Big Finish Series.

In the end, this story is a great introduction, with great action, good laughs, incredible music and realisation in general. I couldn't recommend it more!

[discipleofmothra]

Figured I'd start documenting my blunders into the One Box Challenge to pressure myself into actually finishing the game. So here's entry one:

The challenge is to make a game using only one Box /set of wargaming miniatures. So step one was to pick a boxset to make a game around, obviously. I decided to limit to favorite Wargames Atlantic STL sets. I've been a member of their Myminifactory Tribe since day one, so I have a lot of options without having to buy any new sets. I limited my pick down to my three favorites:

What about a game around Rebell Yell? The perennial loser confederate soldiers of the Death Fields universe? This faction has some of my favorite sculpts in the Death Fields, full of personality and just fun to paint IMO. As an added bonus all you have to do is paint one side blue and one side grey and you have your factions worked out! Sounds like a good start... But the down sides are pretty strong. The set is pretty small, so there wouldnt be a ton of variety in what you can field. I can't think of anything I could add to the genera of sci-fi or civil war era gaming. And then there's you know the whole everything around the civil war. Not sure I want to be a part of that discourse right now.

Verdict: pass

Now this is a cool set. I'm a big fan of Khem, and ancient board games. I've actually been working on programming a Gameboy game that contains Senet, Aseb, and my own take on Mehen in my free time for about a year now. I have always meant to follow it up with an ancient themed wargame that uses stick dice and maybe a few other things swiped from the oldest board games we know of. This could be an excuse to bump that project up and give it a spooky theme...BUT this is a bit of a passion project, I don't really want to limit it or rush it.

Verdict: put this on hold for later.

Kobolds? I do love this set. The WGA Kobolds are really neat critters with lots of fun details, and two built in factions! The set has classic d&d dog headed lizard men and more recent mini-dragon born heads. Pair that with Kobolds' love for traps, digging mines, and obtaining shiny things for their dragon gods and you have potential for some interesting mechanics.

Verdict: yeah this is something I can work with. Kobolds it is.!

[ghosttownwherenoonegoes]

Glad you've got time off to get better! Maybe you should see a doctor, just in case? Wouldn't want your knee to become worse when you go back to work! And ouch motherfucker sounds amazing haha! Whenever things go wrong I always say "for the love of--" it makes my co workers laugh haha

Ugh that sounds like a dream! I've been obsessed with kdramas recently, they're way better than any other TV show I watched. I'm watching Tomorrow right now, wbu?

My morning's okay, another work day of phoning people but I'm getting better at it the more I do it!!

- 🌺

I put in a request last night on the NHS website for a doctor to phone me today (can't go to a doctor since I can barely walk right now) and I got an email an hour ago to tell me that a physio from my local surgery is gonna phone me this morning to discuss my knee. And then after that, I have to immediately phone my workplace to update them on the issue, and then after that, I have to phone the dentist as they recently cancelled my appointment and it needs rearranging. My knee does this at least once every few months; it's because of my job being so physically active that my body doesn't get a proper chance to rest!💗 'Ouch motherfucker' is this event's catchphrase, normally it's "oh for fuck's sake" or "jesus h christ" (Eddie made me feel so seen the first time I heard him say that🤣). "For the love of - " is also a good one!! There's so many ways to show irritation!🤣

Edit: just got off the phone with physio, she said I need some rest but I also need to start moving around a little and just listen to the needs of my knee and she wants me to have an MRI scan of my knees since this does happen every few months. She said it's a good sign there's already improvement and I need to do some knee exercises.

Yeeees ~ kdramas are amazing!! My absolute favourite, the one I'm watching right now, is Black!!! It's a very emotionally dense kdrama; 18 episodes at 90 minutes each, and I recently bought the boxset since they took it off Netflix a few months ago. Tomorrow is a really good kdrama, I hope you're enjoying it!!

Aaaaaaaa we're both in for a day of phone calls!!😭I'm so so proud of you, you got this!!💗

[more-than-a-princess]

@tricksheart asked - Who is an author that inspires you?

Belated Munday Meme - Accepting even though it is Tuesday because writing replies = that's a no from me tonight

The best answer for this?

Anyone I've read and enjoyed, or are currently reading. I could say someone classic and profound, and I certainly do like classic literature. But I will say: Kevin Kwan made me feel the gamut of emotions in all three Crazy Rich Asians books. And the footnotes used are excellent: exactly what those types of people think. Sex and Vanity, while it wasn't as good, nailed a lot of the East Coast upperclass traditions and snobbery, too.

Otherwise, going by my kindle, this is who I'm currently into. I barely buy physical copies these days (though I did just treat myself to a boxset of something I already read and loved/aka. yes I bought ACOTAR in hardback don't judge me, and want to make sure other offline friends and family read):

Sarah J. Maas

Julia Quinn

Tessa Dare

Lisa Kleypas

Kelsie Stelting - I wish she was around when I was a teenager because I absolutely needed curvy/fat/plus sized teen heroines in my life with great love stories

Anthony Horowitz

Sarah MacLean

Evie Dunmore

Deborah Harkness

Diana Gabaldon - though I prefer the earlier Out.lander books to the later ones

Katharine McGee

Aven Ellis - Look her royalty series isn't good but it gives me plot inspo

And I haven't read full books of these, just excerpts from these authors, but they'll be next after I finish Thr.one of G.lass and Cres.cent Ci.ty:

Jennifer L. Armentrout

Kerri Maniscalco

Mary Balogh

Molly Fitz

Elizabeth Hoyt

Rick Yancey

I could've given a highbrow answer to this and I know it...but this is what's currently on my to-read or recently read list. I like historical romances, some mystery, and some horror. I've now added fantasy romance in varying degrees of steam. I also try to read a lot of royalty-based fiction and non-fiction, and novels with plus-sized main characters, as I love seeing people who look like me live fabulous, amazing lives (and not have their weight be a constant plot point).

My shameful secret is this: I've realized I like romance in novels way more than visual novels/otome games. I still play a few but the dynamics are just so much more engaging in books. At least for me.

Where are my fellow mutuals who are also book nerds like me