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Fannish Wishlist
I'm not doing Fandom Snowflake but everybody's fannish wishlists are going up today and I realized I actually have one for once (other than 'the ability to finish my wips', which is standard.) So if anybody is feeling helpful, here are five things that would make me very happy:
1. Very specific podcast recs:
All of my favorite podcasts fit at least four of these five qualifications:
1. Between two and four regular hosts, at least one of whom isfemale not male, who are clearly legitimately good friends off mike;
2. Talking unscriptedly but intelligently and skeptically about interesting science-y, history-y or true-but-strange topics (KUEC gets in here on a technicality because I'm pretty sure some of that food counts as true-but-strange)
3. Except when they constantly go off on hilarious tangents
4. With fairly good sound quality but deliberately bad production quality (bonus points for constantly mentioning things that should be cut but aren't, people getting distracted by birds or food mid-taping, on-air bathroom breaks, etc.)
5. Pets that wander in and out and contribute important podcast content.
Things I am less likely to like:
1. Lots of interviews, especially if the interviewee is the topic or if the interview interferes with the hosts' dynamic (ones where it's more like guest experts with the regular team are fine)
2. Consistently bad sound quality
3. Fiction, drama, or podcasts about fiction/fandom, or current political events - I usually give about half my attention to a podcast, and these grab too much of it
4. Podcasts where I am constantly yelling at the hosts NO YOU ARE WRONG (I tried to listen to the Ufology podcast but they were just SO WRONG about EVERYTHING. Including stuff like WHETHER OR NOT SCULLY WAS THE SKEPTIC ON THE X-FILES????) They can be comically wrong on occasion about things like whether there is a carnivorous horse, but not consistently wrong about basic stuff, and need to have a basic ethos about facts being important and learning new things being good.
5. Podcasts that take themselves seriously and have hosts who act professional on air and do their research in advance and are heavily edited and stay on topic and stuff (these are either really boring, or too good to give only half my attention to.)
Current podcasts I listen to like this: My Favorite Murder (1-5), KUEC (1-5), Skeptics with a K (1-4), Archaeological Fantasies (1-4), Palaeo After Dark (1-5), Thinking Sideways (1-4). I have a few more that hit only 3 out of the five, so that's okay too, as long as they don't lean heavily on the nos.
I'd especially like to find a (not pseudo-)archaeology one, or an astronomy/space sciences one, or more science ones on all topics in that format. Any recs?
2. I STILL WANT A GOOD WAY TO CATALOG MY COMICS.
Surely there is some website or app out there that will let me put in the title of a comic, and then tell me a)how many issues total, b) what trades they are in, c) related series I might want to know about; and then let me check off the ones I have and the ones I want; and then give me a searchable list of the ones I have and the ones I want. And the database it's checking against has to be good enough to have stuff from small publishers, and funny animal comics from the 50s, and be flexible enough to let me manually enter stuff like the free comic from Kenya that I got at the folklife festival and the bootleg Indian Phantom from the 70s and photocopied minis from SPX.
There are multiple places I can do this with books! Comic geeks are supposed to be super into that sort of thing. Surely such a thing exists? I'm even willing to pay money for it as long as I know in advance it will do what I want and have reason to believe it will still exist in five years, but so far even the for-pay ones I've poked at don't look like their databases are that great OR that flexible OR that reliable.
3. An LKBV Master/Doctor vid to "Paradise By The Dashboard Light" by Meatloaf. I've even solicited people for it at the last few fandom charity auctions but no takers. :/ I will give a ludicrous amount of money to the charity or crowdfunding account of choice of any experienced vidder who will do this for me, plus pay for takeout for them for an entire weekend, if necessary.
4. Art of Siffha'h that I can add to my Yuletide fic. Tiny angry butch kitten with comedy eyebrows and more power than she knows what to do with! Why is there no art of her yet. Book excerpt descriptions provided on request.
5. Something - art or fic or, idk, moodboard? Something - about what Luke Amidala's wardrobe would have turned into if he was raised by his mom as a prince of Naboo in a no-Clone-Wars AU. Post-TFA there was a bunch of Kylo Amidala stuff where he had some amazing outfits, but just THINK about what Luke Amidala could have done with a poncho and/or his Goth phase if he had an unlimited wardrobe budget and his mom's favorite fashion designers and hairstylists egging him on! (Bonus points if his sister is around but refuses to wear anything but military uniforms to formal events, since she has her brother around to be the pretty one.) (I SO APPRECIATED that even after all the time on Ach-To he went for the all-black drama cape at the appropriate moment. Luke understands the important things.)
1. Very specific podcast recs:
All of my favorite podcasts fit at least four of these five qualifications:
1. Between two and four regular hosts, at least one of whom is
2. Talking unscriptedly but intelligently and skeptically about interesting science-y, history-y or true-but-strange topics (KUEC gets in here on a technicality because I'm pretty sure some of that food counts as true-but-strange)
3. Except when they constantly go off on hilarious tangents
4. With fairly good sound quality but deliberately bad production quality (bonus points for constantly mentioning things that should be cut but aren't, people getting distracted by birds or food mid-taping, on-air bathroom breaks, etc.)
5. Pets that wander in and out and contribute important podcast content.
Things I am less likely to like:
1. Lots of interviews, especially if the interviewee is the topic or if the interview interferes with the hosts' dynamic (ones where it's more like guest experts with the regular team are fine)
2. Consistently bad sound quality
3. Fiction, drama, or podcasts about fiction/fandom, or current political events - I usually give about half my attention to a podcast, and these grab too much of it
4. Podcasts where I am constantly yelling at the hosts NO YOU ARE WRONG (I tried to listen to the Ufology podcast but they were just SO WRONG about EVERYTHING. Including stuff like WHETHER OR NOT SCULLY WAS THE SKEPTIC ON THE X-FILES????) They can be comically wrong on occasion about things like whether there is a carnivorous horse, but not consistently wrong about basic stuff, and need to have a basic ethos about facts being important and learning new things being good.
5. Podcasts that take themselves seriously and have hosts who act professional on air and do their research in advance and are heavily edited and stay on topic and stuff (these are either really boring, or too good to give only half my attention to.)
Current podcasts I listen to like this: My Favorite Murder (1-5), KUEC (1-5), Skeptics with a K (1-4), Archaeological Fantasies (1-4), Palaeo After Dark (1-5), Thinking Sideways (1-4). I have a few more that hit only 3 out of the five, so that's okay too, as long as they don't lean heavily on the nos.
I'd especially like to find a (not pseudo-)archaeology one, or an astronomy/space sciences one, or more science ones on all topics in that format. Any recs?
2. I STILL WANT A GOOD WAY TO CATALOG MY COMICS.
Surely there is some website or app out there that will let me put in the title of a comic, and then tell me a)how many issues total, b) what trades they are in, c) related series I might want to know about; and then let me check off the ones I have and the ones I want; and then give me a searchable list of the ones I have and the ones I want. And the database it's checking against has to be good enough to have stuff from small publishers, and funny animal comics from the 50s, and be flexible enough to let me manually enter stuff like the free comic from Kenya that I got at the folklife festival and the bootleg Indian Phantom from the 70s and photocopied minis from SPX.
There are multiple places I can do this with books! Comic geeks are supposed to be super into that sort of thing. Surely such a thing exists? I'm even willing to pay money for it as long as I know in advance it will do what I want and have reason to believe it will still exist in five years, but so far even the for-pay ones I've poked at don't look like their databases are that great OR that flexible OR that reliable.
3. An LKBV Master/Doctor vid to "Paradise By The Dashboard Light" by Meatloaf. I've even solicited people for it at the last few fandom charity auctions but no takers. :/ I will give a ludicrous amount of money to the charity or crowdfunding account of choice of any experienced vidder who will do this for me, plus pay for takeout for them for an entire weekend, if necessary.
4. Art of Siffha'h that I can add to my Yuletide fic. Tiny angry butch kitten with comedy eyebrows and more power than she knows what to do with! Why is there no art of her yet. Book excerpt descriptions provided on request.
5. Something - art or fic or, idk, moodboard? Something - about what Luke Amidala's wardrobe would have turned into if he was raised by his mom as a prince of Naboo in a no-Clone-Wars AU. Post-TFA there was a bunch of Kylo Amidala stuff where he had some amazing outfits, but just THINK about what Luke Amidala could have done with a poncho and/or his Goth phase if he had an unlimited wardrobe budget and his mom's favorite fashion designers and hairstylists egging him on! (Bonus points if his sister is around but refuses to wear anything but military uniforms to formal events, since she has her brother around to be the pretty one.) (I SO APPRECIATED that even after all the time on Ach-To he went for the all-black drama cape at the appropriate moment. Luke understands the important things.)
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Although given that deer will bite the heads and feet off of baby birds in nesting season, I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out wild horses will too...
Also there isn't really a new species of tapir. (That one's from Tetrapodcats, which didn't get on this list only due to not having any female hosts and not having updated in almost six months.)
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This is such a glorious mental image. ^_^
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I probably already told you I've been listening to a couple of HowStuffWorks podcasts on a rec - Stuff Mom Never Told You and Stuff You Missed In History Class. Both are conversational style with female hosts. Mom Stuff varies from history to current events to pop culture to general life stuff vaguely about women and gender-related stuff; History covers a variety of topics but often is in strange-but-true historical territory. They hit 1, 2, and sometimes 3 of your must-haves (Mom Stuff is slightly more informal and occasionally also hits #4, but the hosts on the History podcast try really hard to keep the episodes to 30-45 min so they stay more on topic usually). None of your nos except 5, so their production and research values may be slightly too high for you, but if it's too professional overall you could download just the most interesting topics from their back catalogs and put it on in the background and see.
Museums in Strange Places is interview format but is saved by the fact that the strange places are all in Iceland (it's a current Fulbrighter's project).
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And you told me about the Fulbright project but I hadn't realized there was a podcast already! That one is definitely on the list now.
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And yes LUKE AMIDALA LOVES FLOWING FABRICS AND DRAMA.
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IT WOULD BE THE BEST AU SOMEBODY NEEDS TO DO IT
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And it's not like there's so few podcasts with ladies these days that I have no choice about it, you know?
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I don't know any that fit all of your qualifications, but here are some that fit some of them that I like that you might also be interested in:
Freakonomics
LatinoUSA
On Being (general spiritual stuff)
This American Life
One From the Vaults (OFTV) (trans history)
You Must Remember This (Hollywood history)
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The thing is, if I'm not using the verbal processor at all, it starts trying to do the kind of things that are intensely distracting - mental story-writing, or 'let's surf tumblr instead!' or 'pick up nearest book, start reading'. Putting an audio stream on there to keep it busy helps me keep the rest of myself focused on the non-verbal task, so I tend to listen to a lot of audio. I also use it to put myself to sleep on nights when I need something that will keep me out of anxiety/insomnia spirals but won't keep me awake.
Thing is, it has to be interesting but low-information-density audio - if it's too gripping, or if I'm afraid that shifting concentration for a few minutes means I'll miss something important, or if it makes me feel feelings, it becomes a distraction on its own. But if it's actually boring, I just zone it out entirely. Thus, I look for conversational, rambling, badly-produced, but interesting and entertaining podcasts that sort of give the impression of being in a room with a fun, low-stakes conversation between friends that I can zone in and out of as I need to. I used to use listening to the Harry Potter audiobooks or the Star Wars radio dramas for this, back before podcasts, because I knew them so well I didn't need to listen very hard, but at some point in the early 2000s they went from "semi-memorized" to "completely memorized" and stopped working.
(And, yeah, if am listening to something that I really need to pay attention to, like a training course or a *really good* podcast, I need either crochet, doodles, or mindless phone games to keep the verbal processor front and center.)
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Ymmv, but I've started putting on twitch or youtube streamers - many *are* actually a low-stakes conversation between friends, although it takes some shopping around to find tolerable ratios of dudeliness, exclamations, and content of interest. The geekandsundry twitch takes a subscription, unfortunately, but it has a huge volume of women-playing-games-together content, and I think a fair amount of that is on youtube. Tabletop with will wheaton is the flagship show but I enjoy the d&d one, Critical Role, more.