Quippy little title

A treatise on general things and conditions in our environment and culture. Things are bad generally! but also good specifically! It feels never ending with all the bullshit, doesn’t it? And yet, I bet you can think of one thing immediately that made you feel good this last month. What do you do when you can’t do anything? You do something anyway. We hope that the somethings that you’re doing are good for your communities but also good for you. Survive to watch them die. Literally just imagine it when he finally goes. You’ll feel it in the air, in your skin. The world will sigh a sigh so deep it can be heard from space.

Anyways! As always, we've included things coming in the upcoming month, and a look at what's happening on our Patreon (which you can join for ~as little as a dollar~) & Discord which is open to all!

Ladies, Theys, and Gentlemen: The Feelings

STELLA:

Big shocker, I’ve sort of burnt myself out on internet d&d content. So I’ve pivoted back to podcasts. The best podcast episode I listened to was Tara Raghuveer on Caleb Heron’s podcast. His podcast is usually lesser known comics bantering about which is very funny, but this episode was about the Kansas City Tenant Union. It’s funny, informative and really inspiring. 

I bought myself like WAY too much PBS is punk rock merch and so should you! 

I watched some TV! Wow, who is she? Was it a years old design reality show? Yes, yes it was. 

I highly recommend seeing the Scissor Sisters live in concert. They are so FUN! Like truly no other word for it than fun. It was also sort of life affirming to see a bunch of old queer performers being sexy and slutty onstage. Like YES bitch show me your thong. Twerk on the ground. Just because you’re over 40 doesn’t mean you have to stop being a weird freak (affectionate). It was awesome. 

A thoughtful article about why fanfic and AI are incompatible. Oh and another one! Because AI needs to stay the fuck out of fandom. 

Fantastic Four was good, but like in a very…hetero way. (Valeria WHEN?) IDK go see Superman again instead. 

I’ve been on my comics bullshit lately and decided to read all of The Runaways. I usually sort of hate BKV - Saga sucks and I will die on this hill - but The Runaways is really fun. I’m almost caught up on the old series which means I get to finally read Rainbow Rowell’s Runaways and you KNOW I love me some RR. Maybe I will also read the infinity comics, though I sort of hate infinity comics. Why? Who knows. Maybe I will also watch the TV show. Probably not tho. We’ll see. Bonus, reading this series has me back at the Library and it feels good baby! 

Baby? Oh yeah. I’m pregnant. 

ERIN:

TOO PERSONAL DO NOT POST

my favorite painting: René Magritte, The Banquet.

We read the Star Trek Year 5 comics in book club ages ago but I've finally pulled out of my slump just enough to read them. They're delightful and have so many great callbacks and references to the original series. Highly recommend.

I’ve been watching these cool videos of the CTA in real time - they documented each line end to end and have them out for all to watch. I've been enjoying the red line one but the rest are great too. Highly recommended as ambient or asmr sounds as well. 

I’m currently obsessed with The Happy Fits, who I’m absolutely going to see in November and I’m so pumped about it, a band I discovered purely on the availability of their tickets and my subscription to basically every venue’s mailing list in Chicago. lol jk but sort of fr. They have a new album coming out in September and all three released songs are fucking bangers. I can feel the inevitable pull of my Depression Playlist - It has 243 songs, is 14 hours and 11 minutes long, is dramatically named, and is extremely private … it calls to me - but for now I’m happy to be grooving to something new.

PRODUCER BOBBY

Ayo okay so I’m gonna soap box for like just a brief minute below this and there is SO MUCH SHIT to rage and rally against right now that if you just can’t get mad at another thing I totally get it so I’ll start and end the rant with our friend, punctuation’s butthole, the *asterisk and you can skip it if you’d like ok herewego: 

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The purity squad are trying to start a new satanic panic with videogames, and this time they are actually succeeding. Last week, at like 11pm central time, itchio (THE storefront for independent videogame and ttrpg creators) made the absolute asinine decision to delist and quarantine off ANY content with an NSFW tag and then followed it up a few days later with some very broad guidelines. This is connected to a hyper-conservative hate group from Australia pressuring Visa and Mastercard to censor what they accept payments for on Steam (just like sex workers warned us they would when they shut down Backpage years ago). Since the issue lies with Visa and Mastercard, the strategy has been to annoy the fuck out of them with calls and emails and this actually seems to be WORKING. I feel bad for the underpaid customer service people having to deal with this, but the shit has already rolled downhill (censorship like this will always hurt independent, trans, queer, and bipoc creators hardest) so we gotta Sysiphus this turd boulder back the fuck upwards. If you have a minute and want to be nuisance check out this link below for all the phone numbers, corporate email addresses, and relevant petitions with instructions as well:

https://yellat.money/ 

If there is a small voice inside of you that’s like “Well I don’t like games with explicit themes in them or I’m against this one bad game made by an awful person” I want you to know that’s fine and ok but this is about so much more than that. This will grow to destroy something you love and the people who will benefit are ones you already hate. You’re here reading this, so I feel comfortable saying that. Okgoodmovingon.

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Last month was my birthday. I can get really overwhelmed when positive things happen to me. I did in July and I still am. I can sum it up by simply stating that I am still so happy to be here. Even in the face of all this awful I get to have my meaningless little existence and that's so amazing. That’s more than enough. Thank you for being around.

This month’s RECOMMENDATIONS all kinda work together to make one tasty disassociation sauce:

You bet your sweet bippy I am just playing Death Stranding 2 any chance I get. I will fully admit Kojima has his shortcomings and will always include some eyeroll shit but I have been a sucker for the near-impenetrable lore and focus on cinematic gameplay he brings from a young age. Walking my Reedus and his lil doll across tar covered plains and mountainsides turns my brain off just enough. The game's own fantastic soundtrack (YouTube Music link) is sparingly used with its own in-game music player, but that also gives me opportunity to provide my own space-out tunes like new releases from Future Magics (lofi blackmetal chillwave?), Witch Bolt (dungeon ambient), and Open Mike Eagle (hip-hop). A different vibe but the new Between The Buried And Me (progressive metal) EP fucks. They still have the ability to sound like three of my favorite bands from different genres all in one song. Absent Thereafter had me throwing that white gurl hand in the air like 30 seconds in. Excited for the full album in September.  

 Was that too much? I never know.

This month’s Links 4 U:

• Adopt a public radio station that has had its funding cut

• Subscribe to PBS and get their digital passport (they have a cool doc about

  Gene Kelly’s ballet in Paris - the first ever choreographed by an American!)

• Sign the statement of solidarity for the NASA Voyager Declaration

Things coming this month:

• New X-Treks episodes this month - it’s almost the end, can you believe it?!

• New Not Your Demo - Have A Wednesday everyone! 

• Will we still be on Instagram in the September newsletter? Only if the Bluesky alternative isn’t up yet! Until then at @nydproductions you can get show announcements, hilarious clips, and general revelry. 

• Tumblr! Interact with it! It’s a scream!

• Our Bluesky exists! @nydproductions is where very little content currently exists… a project in the making

Exclusive to our Patreon (it's only a dollar!) and open for all Discord!

• Join the book club in August! Discord has all the (virtual, do not worry) meetup information!

• Xtras on the Patreon include:

  • Show notes - our live in moment thoughts on the episodes for each theme

  • Scripts - man, sometimes we skip A LOT and everything we glanced over is in our scripts

  • Episode outtakes - “this is the stuff i cut” -Producer Bobby 

  • Surprise content mini episodes

Unofficial Channels is balls out.

And in the Discord, let’s hang out! We’ve got lots of cool little internet rooms.

• Are you holding onto a meme you just couldn’t find the right time to drop? We are always ready in the General Memery channel

• Now is the time to join our comics channel with S U P E R M A N in our lives again

• Everybody has opinions on Spider-Man!

• Erin is liveposting fanfic once a month in Stella’s Link Lounge! She’s also documenting it on our Instagram highlights! (Sometimes she does two if her sleep meds compel her) Give us some recs for her fanfic journey.

  

  tell ‘em who sent you

Whatever, oh well, hell yeah.