Robin Johnson

for the record I'm certain she's not a zionist, the UK just has absolutely fucked up laws

Quentin Collins (David Selby) looking sly, resourceful, menacing, enchanting and cocksure, approaching Beth the maid (Terrayne Crawford) who looks bored

wild how both these actors were brought on to play silent noddy ghosts, so when the writers did their backstories it was pure chance whether they'd be able to act, and one elevated the show from "funny bad" to "schlocky good" and the other had one facial expression which is "Easter Island head"

Quentin encounters Beth the maid and catches an unfortunate case of the straights

OK this episode had kind of a downer ending but on the other hand this tornado of a character has made me genuinely engaged with a Dark Shadows plotline AND moved me up at least one notch on the Kinsey scale

Quentin and Barnabas totally about to take the Smooch Express to Tonsiltown

KISS KISS KISS KISS

Evening at Collinwood, and a glowing mushroom cloud bursts over the old house

wait did the house just get nuked

Jenny, a wild-haired Brontëan madwoman who has been locked in the Collins' cellar for reasons that are unlikely to become apparent for the moment, dancing to imaginary music and reaching for a consonant

Carol Vorderman's let herself go (complimentary) #DarkShadows

Quentin Collins, international playboy, part-time Satanist and three times winner of the Sideburns World Cup, holds up a vaguely humanoid clay figure which is allegedly a "voodoo doll" of his dracular cousin Barnabas

Beloved tiny plasticine skinwalker "Morph" of the eponymous British 1980s stop-motion shorts

Morph making a guest appearance in Dark Shadows

it's a good episode! you should all check it out :) midnight-pals.simplecast.com/episodes/the...

A continuity nod to Biffo's Superbus, last seen in January bsky.app/profile/oocb...

oh, I thought it was an ordinary episode!

Sounds like cause for alarm for the wasps

I want men to be able to wear pretty soft dresses in bright colors and openly express emotions other than anger without it being a Statement About Gender!

reading between the lines I suspect she was in an awkward position, she clearly thought it was bullshit

(don't know if you're in the UK but an occasionally property-damaging pressure group was proscribed as Official Terrorists so you can now get 14 years in prison for liking them 🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧)

aha! yes, that's a true ESWAS then, I think

Or is movie!Buzz a top-level-existent spaceman with a spaceship, like the framing of the Buzz "toy" in Toy Story? If so that would be an example, albeit a weirdly complex one

I dunno, Buzz exists as a sentient being masquerading as a toy, as are all toys, in the same sinister universe as the other Toy Stories so unless there's something I don't know about the framing I think it's just an ordinary spinoff?

wait that shouldn't be possible 🧠💥

I think someone wrote "Lady Don't Fall Backwards" from Hancock's Half-Hour, which is a book within a show at least

One listicle includes Wayne's World as a SWAS but I don't think it counts - WW was a mock show made as an SNL skit, but there was never a fictional world in which WW was a show. The movies even 'demoted' WW by a plane of reality so they could be about the 'real' Wayne and Garth making it

There've been Itchy and Scratchy centric episodes, but I don't think a whole one set at Itchy & Scratchy's "layer" of fiction, let alone a whole separate I&S show? I could be wrong though, I've probably seen less than 10% of the known Simpsons

(best shows-within-a-showses: The Scary Door, Sanctuary Moon, Androids)

Have any shows-within-a-show ever transcended realities to become shows of their own?

The only examples I can think of are some Roger Rabbit cartoons. (TV Tropes might list them under Spin Off or Defictionalization but it's like trying to find a needle from a fire hydrant)

I sometimes wonder whether the global fascist turn (yes it’s been building for years) would have accelerated as it has been now without the pandemic making it ‘acceptable’ for both individuals and collectives to be not only content but gleeful about deciding that disabled/older pops were expendable

Simple notepad table of eye colours mapped to a roll of a D6

I got a brand new genAI tool to sell him. It’s pricey, but I believe he’ll find it worth the $50/month subscription (minimum commitment of 5 years, billed up-front. Auto renewal; cancellation requires in-person visit to the customer service department on Pluto)

Jeanne Calment - Wikipedia

122 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_...

Evan (Humbert Allen Astredo), a young lawyer with a Charles Dickens beard, stands in Collinwood House looking ambivalently guilty. Quentin Collins (David Selby), a Dashing Anti-Hero with huge sideburns and huger bisexual bad guy energy, stands well under an inch behind him and quips into his ear

Happily, google tells me I am not the first to spot this censor-whooshing line in Dark Shadows (episode 708, 1969)

Evan: (refusing to let Quentin, the Dashing Anti-Hero, get him tangled up in criminal shenanigans again): You know my position.

Quentin: I know several of your positions!

What’s a technology that you think is overhyped? I’m going to give a sideways answer to this, which is that the venture capital business model needs to be understood as requiring hype. You can go back to the Netscape IPO, and that was the proof point that made venture capital the financial lifeblood of the tech industry. Venture capital looks at valuations and growth, not necessarily at profit or revenue. So you don’t actually have to invest in technology that works, or that even makes a profit, you simply have to have a narrative that is compelling enough to float those valuations. So you see this repetitive and exhausting hype cycle as a feature in this industry. A couple of years ago, you would have been asking me about the metaverse, then last year, you would have asked me about Web3 and crypto, and for each of these inflection points there’s an Andreessen Horowitz manifesto. It’s not simply that one piece of technology is overhyped, it’s that hype is a necessary ingredient of the current business ecosystem of the tech industry. We should examine how often the financial incentive for hype is rewarded without any real social returns, without any meaningful progress in technology, without these tools and services and worlds ever actually manifesting. That’s key to understanding the growing chasm between the narrative of techno-optimists and the reality of our tech-encumbered world.

Stand by this: www.politico.com/newsletters/...

Em dashes are named after Emily Dickinson

that's... better??

"am I a good writer" you're not even a bad one bro