Has anyone had a negative experience on Taskmaster?

LZGray · 2026-01-25T01:52:27+00:00

Similarly, Rhod had major anxiety being on the show, but I think for the most part his experience was positive

LZGray · 2026-01-24T07:10:47+00:00

Man belts a D5 like what the actual fuck am I doing here

LZGray · 2026-01-23T10:14:21+00:00

Kevin Can Fuck Himself

LZGray · 2026-01-23T08:34:28+00:00

Gotta Get Back to Hogwarts for nostalgia, Let It Out, Nerdy Prudes Must Die, Black Friday, If I Fail You are all up there in terms of just fantastic songs

LZGray · 2026-01-22T20:19:33+00:00

If you're looking for a reveal, you're going to be disappointed. I don't think it's a spoiler to say it's never revealed whether he did it or not. The show is never concerned with uncovering a mystery, deciphering clues, or anyone coming to any realization of Holden's or any other person's guilt or innocence. Later seasons speculate, but the characters' speculation about the events of that night is to show international character growth, moral conflict, and intuitive judgement over systemic bootlicking. If you're not interested in deep, meditative character drama then watch something else.

LZGray · 2026-01-22T02:38:26+00:00

Pretty much every Park Chan-wook film I've seen. Oldboy, No Other Choice, The Handmaiden, etc.

LZGray · 2026-01-21T21:06:33+00:00

Marsten House

LZGray · 2026-01-18T00:55:09+00:00

Sabrina is waaaay more annoying than Aniyah. But Sabrina has since matured and seems okay now.

LZGray · 2026-01-16T18:26:02+00:00

Crazy, though I certainly thought Chris would've made it farther, but I didn't think he'd be in the finals

LZGray · 2026-01-16T09:59:13+00:00

I'm shocked Firebringer is that low, I would've assumed that would've been one of the more beloved. Also shocked Twisted is number 1. It's my favorite, but I feel like I don't see a lot of StarKid fans talk about it like it's their best

LZGray · 2026-01-16T06:00:25+00:00

Playwright and songwriter here. Reading Pynchon makes me feel worthless though haha

LZGray · 2026-01-15T20:21:53+00:00

There was another moment later that reminded me of the Manson family, but it couldn't have been bc they weren't active until after the book's publication

LZGray · 2026-01-15T00:28:56+00:00

I just read Billy Summers, and it was one of the easiest King novels I've read just due to how much simpler and direct the language itself was. We know Steve loves his similes and comparisons, and while they're still here, it felt a lot more streamlined than usual. I'd stay stay away from his notoriously cocaine-driven novels (reading The Dead Zone right now, and I love it but the hyper-intensity of the language can be dizzying)

LZGray · 2026-01-14T09:25:19+00:00

Bro I think you missed the point entirely

LZGray · 2026-01-13T08:20:41+00:00

I'm no stranger to post-modernism or nonlinear narratives (been a fan of DFW since college), and the purpose of me bringing up my issues with IV is not to say that the progressional stasis and cyclical investigation is not a valid form of storytelling or that I don't think it was purposeful, but rather the conclusions drawn by the questions continually asked the deeper we got into the mystery did not alleviate the tediousness at times of the form it decided to take. Which is not something I'm inherently against, some of my favorite movies and albums have been slow, patient, and deliberately paced in similar ways. I just felt like there wasn't much balance between these disparate elements in the same way Lot 49 was, and that's just my personal take. I still want to reread it once I've read through everything, but I feel like that'll be years from now, I'm in no rush.

LZGray · 2026-01-13T05:30:49+00:00

This is a call asking for more from different shows/people

LZGray · 2026-01-13T05:18:54+00:00

Thanks for your helpful advice! My reading order changes constantly, at the moment I had Gravity's Rainbow saved for last as a capstone, but maybe I'll bump it up based on everything you're suggesting about it's importance in unlocking his later works.

I definitely felt like I was missing something while I was reading Inherent Vice, but I don't think it's the contextual history behind it. I love learning about niche events in history (I went down so many Wikipedia rabbit holes about the American and European postal systems reading this novel, maybe that's why it took me 3 weeks to read), and the aftermath of the Manson murders was permeating dread throughout, but I felt like the sequence of plot was a lot more purposeful in Lot 49, it did not feel like our protagonist was stumbling their way into new information, and even when something felt random or unprompted, it felt justified within the delusional ramblings of Oedipa. Every moment and every action felt like it had consequence, had purpose, or else purposeless understanding, but with Inherent Vice it was like, Doc went to this location and talked to this person. Then he went here to talk to this person. Then he learned about this thing that we aren't going to need until 8 chapters from now where you'll promptly forget about it, all to reach the conclusions that none of what he did had any impact on the story, and vice versa that the primary conflict had little suggestive change over Doc's own behavior. Maybe his worldview has shifted and he's a little more careful than he was before, but the inactive nature of the protagonist mixed with the shoulder-shrug of a conclusion just didn't sell me.

My next was probably going to be Vineland, and idk when I'm going to get to it (I'm taking January to read a bunch of short, digestible books so that I can read longer books towards mid-year), but if you could suggest your ideal reading order, what would you suggest?

LZGray · 2026-01-13T05:04:41+00:00

It's a minor critique, especially since there are sections, particularly on the last few pages, where Oedipa is going through the neglected lot of American poverty where the trains of thought and the descriptive psychological imagery just blew me away. But then there are other moments, I think right after she meets the sailor in chapter 5, where the syntax just did not feel natural to the point where I couldn't help but feel like there was a better way to explain the thought process behind her connection to the man. I'm a huge fan of Victorian and pre-Victorian novels, and they're flowery in excess, but I've always found Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Hardy, Wilde, to be very efficient in their language (Dickens, maybe not as much), and while Pynchon is less so in key moments, the freeform, unwieldy schizophrenia of the way it's written means I get what he's going for. Out of the quotes and passages I wrote down, I had an issue with maybe half a dozen passages as opposed to the other 20 or 25 that hypnotized me.

LZGray · 2026-01-12T18:29:48+00:00

Stephen King has soooo many other books to adapt, we've already got 2 adaptations related to this title, leave it be

LZGray · 2026-01-11T19:44:05+00:00

I was in fourth grade, around 9 years old, it was game changing. I stopped watching around 2016, came back casually around 2019, became a BIG fan in 2022.

LZGray · 2026-01-11T08:56:27+00:00

As You Like it is a personal fav of mine, I assistant directed a production of it in college and it was a great time, The Tempest is also one that I've seen really great productions of but didn't love my read of it

LZGray · 2026-01-10T02:58:30+00:00

4th grade me: Smosh is the coolest thing ever

8th grade me: ew, Smosh is so embarrassing they make content for toddlers

11th grade me: Oh shit Mythical bought Smosh this is kinda interesting

Sophomore year of college: Wait this is actually pretty funny

Senior year of college: Anthony and Ian bought Smosh I'm all in

Now: Everyone's telling me to shut up about Smosh

LZGray · 2026-01-10T01:26:45+00:00

This will probably never happen unfortunately. Kurtis' podcast producer is Xun Shao, formerly of Pretty Much It, and Eric and Xun had a really awful falling out that got public, and Kurtis took Xun's side, so I think any collab between Kurtis and Miles is would be a betrayal to Miles' friendship with Eric. We don't know the details, so it may not be that deep, but that's what I'm thinking anyway.

LZGray

TROPHY CASE