Spooky Season please deliver us

Congratulations! You’ve made it one whole year into our newsletter! So many of you have been with us since the beginning of our fun little internet hang and we want to say thank you so much and we love you. Being able to share our lives with you guys and have you enjoy it enough to keep coming back really means the world to us. We wouldn’t be anywhere without our internet friends and family. Thanks for everything, and here’s to another year.

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!

Captain’s Log - Stardate 9529.1: the Feelings.

STELLA:

I’m going to be real real here. I’m not doing much! I’m kinda puttering around day by day and counting down the moments until this inside baby is an outside baby. Did you know pregnancy is hard? Grateful but tired AF. 

What’s a thing you can do in this shitty world to take care of yourself and others? Get vaccinated! Obviously, get that flu shot and Covid but also make sure your MMR is still active (it can lose effectiveness ) and hell you’re probably due for tdap too. You don’t want to be left unvaccinated when your dumb neighbor’s kids catch measles! 

This article is a great analysis of the dark side of fics that get traditionally published. And what kinds of fic get chosen (hint - it’s not queer fic!). 

It’s spooky season! If you’re looking for some horror recs may I suggest anything by Gretchen Felker-Martin? Her books rule (but are NOT for the faint of heart) and after the DC Red Hood fuckery buying her books supports an outspoken trans author. Win/win

OMG I just remembered Critical Role’s new campaign starts tomorrow. 😭😭 Maybe there are good things still happening! 

ERIN:

Last month I got to see a French electronic band called Polo & Pan and if you like things such as Pretty Lights, Dancing with a Crowd, or Marijuana then they have the live experience for you. Their tour was literally sponsored by a weed company, it could not have gone any better on a cool 72 degree night at the outdoor Salt Shed had it been scripted in a movie.

The Happy Fits new album, Lovesick, is all I’ve been listening to the last few weeks. It’s an album I both really like and also that I’ve let parts of it grow on me in ways I didn’t expect. Turns out I, too, am a piece of shit.

Truthfully, I had to look back in my calendar to see what I’ve actually been doing despite the Depression - but then realized I actually had a really good month in many ways: 

• I got to go ride rollercoasters for an evening and scream into the night in delight (and had to lug around the carnival prize my husband won me literally first game he walked up to when we got there).

• I went to a really lovely celebration of life dinner for a friend of mine’s dad. If I can give you any advice for life, it’s to show up when your friends need you. Especially as they roll into the time in their lives where the people closest to them start to pass. Give the kind of care you want to receive when the cards come for us all.

• I went to live wrestling!!! Producer Bobby and I went with our friend Ben to Freelance Wrestling and got to see one of the tightest run ships I’ve seen certainly on this side of the pandemic, but up there with Zelo Wrestling at Joe’s on Weed Street for all time - the only perfect venue.

• Went to a really wonderful wedding (that all of us were at and didn’t think to take one single photo).

• I got to see a lot of my friends in a bunch of different ways. It was great tbh.

So, thanks to this newsletter for keeping me honest.

PRODUCER BOBBY

As this releases I’ll be getting ready for my second work trip in a month’s span, and spending time away from home completely out of my bubble reminds me that 1. It is indeed a bubble and 2. Maybe bubbles are ok. The hardest part has been leaving home when home feels ready to explode in unrest and also you have an old cat. I have a great life here where I’m truly never lonely or bored and stepping outside of that to be someone else on a business trip for 5 days reminds me how good I have it even if all I’ve felt is depression. Erin’s notes above reminded me of that as well. Also: It’s amazing how well a lot of theater stage management talents and training pivot to corporate event work, but if you are a burnt-out stage manager reading this do NOT interpret it as encouragement to go into corporate event work! Will scientists calculate the half-life of burnout in our lifetime? Only WHO can prevent forest fires?!  

This would be where I would usually give recommendations but honestly I was not able to branch out to ingest new things this last month. Purely in my comfort zone of No Man’s Sky VR and gloomy broody tunes. What have YOU been listening to? What have YOU been playing? A great place to tell me that is the ol’ NYD Discord, which will become more interesting as we wrap-up X-Treks proper and start to go into movies and videogame territory with that content. Hang out, and send us a message directly if I don’t see you join right away. Spoilers for October, but there’s a fun solo game I want to pass around that community and would love for you to join in. 

Ok, I lied. Elder released a new EP. I love prog metal because I can put on one song for 13 minutes and not have to worry about what song to put on next for 13 minutes. And I love how much this band has let themselves change over time. There it is. Bring on spookymonth, I so desperately need to see the season change.

This month’s Thoughts 4 U:

• There has been a lot of talk about what you’re doing now is what you would be doing in 1930, and I believe that’s true. If you’re worried you’re not doing enough, consider that you’re listening to subversive radio shows, reading underground newsletters, and participating in queer cabarets. Existing is a spit in the face of facism in its own way and we’ll protect each other’s right to exist. End of.

• Remember how we all told Disney to suck our dicks and forced them to reverse their decision to suspend Jimmy Kimmel? They made us defend the guy from the fucking MAN SHOW - that’s where we’re at. This is the kind of energy we whites need to be bringing to every single fight. Give me an address, I’m ready to write the most Strongly Worded Letter of all time and my handwriting looks like I’m at least 65.

• As Stella mentioned above, you can help the chaos of the world by getting vaccinated. I know this is for sure preaching to the choir, but I encourage you to do this as soon as possible. Lest the brainworm in charge of our health shits something else insane out.

Things coming this month:

• New X-Treks episodes this month

• New Not Your Demo

• Will we still be on Instagram in the November newsletter? Only if the Bluesky alternative isn’t up yet! (though they do have a tiktok alternate that’s up and running and tied directly to your Bluesky account already!) Until then at @nydproductions you can get show announcements, hilarious clips, and general revelry. 

• Tumblr! 

• Our Bluesky does exist! @nydproductions

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

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

• Xtras on the Patreon include:

  • Show notes - the very last of them are coming!

  • Scripts - the final scripts and all the things we’ve skipped in recording are coming to ur feed

  • Episode outtakes - what are we going to tangent about this time??! 

  • Surprise content mini episodes

  • and more!

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

• In the gamerz only channel there is activity Erin only barely understands but lots of other people do!

• Silly little memes

• Erin is liveposting fanfic once a month in Stella’s Link Lounge! She’s also documenting it on our Instagram highlights, there’s a lot of smoke involved. 

• The Milk Wars continue (only villains drink milk, it’s just fact!)

Kick kick