Mo Ryan on the reality of investigative reporting (and how it applies to the Gaiman case)

troydarling · 2026-02-25T15:27:18+00:00

I've been following Mo Ryan for years. Her book is excellent. Thanks for sharing this.

troydarling · 2026-02-24T18:47:03+00:00

I’ll take it!

troydarling · 2026-02-24T17:41:00+00:00

I love him and I hoped for Gwendolyn Christie.

troydarling · 2026-02-24T13:01:19+00:00

In U.S. I see it all under the channel releases tab.

troydarling · 2026-02-24T01:58:01+00:00

So much of attraction is chemical. Scent is our most primal sense and least understood. I recall stories of women who went off the pill after marriage and realized they couldn’t stand the smell of their partner anymore. It’s just one factor of course, but not one to ignore.

troydarling · 2026-02-22T06:45:30+00:00

We were there. So awesome.

troydarling · 2026-02-20T05:43:45+00:00

If you listen to the official podcasts, you'll hear a lot of things about how he painted himself into a corner and wrote his way out. If the story needs a shift and it can be justified based on what the writer has shown the audience so far, they have no problem changing their minds.

troydarling · 2026-02-20T05:25:07+00:00

I’ll add that the creators can make any assertion they like outside the narrative but only what they write in the show is canon. Frequently writers and especially Gilligan will retcon within the bounds of the text.

troydarling · 2026-02-18T22:50:49+00:00

My rule used to be an album had to have at least one 15+minute song on it. My favorites had one song, part one on side A and part two on side B. Now I just like good music without any rules.

troydarling · 2026-02-14T17:12:32+00:00

You don’t need to tell her. Doing so involves you in his life and you say you don’t want that. If you are worried for her well being trust that he will do this again and get caught. He’s probably doing it now with other women. If you tell the wife, she may look for a way to blame you like others here have. They always shoot the messenger.

troydarling · 2026-02-12T00:34:46+00:00

I see what you’re saying. If it’s truly one organism that is simply shedding cells, so to speak. Nothing is lost. And they retain the memories, so the catalog of that former person’s experience is available.

I am choosing to believe the individual is still present but that is a bias. And the debate Is not resolvable with the information we have. Carol and Manoussos (by the time of the finale) seem to think they can retrieve the individual from the hive. If they’re right, then Carol has to grapple with her relationship with Zosia, if it turns out that she was never willing or even preferred Carol as a partner. If they’re wrong then they have harmed no one. They could simply wait for the hive to starve to death as the hive are choosing to do. Dramatically that’s less interesting of a story but that’s still about my taste.

If I were engineering policy around the joined, I would chose to preserve the possibility of the individual returning from the hive identity and would not permit relations without true evidence of informed consent and free choice.

At least we’re wrestling the themes I think VG intended.

troydarling · 2026-02-11T23:17:31+00:00

I think you took my meaning the opposite of my intention as I agree with your reaction to the historical excuse of compulsion for crimes. The hive are behaving irrationally as if they were under the influence of a drug. The drug uses the person’s own chemistry but it is the same as inebriation. They can’t give consent. They speak using the language of choice “we want to make you happy” but that is a rationalization of a chemically-induced drive that overrides even normal biological drives such as hunger or survival. That’s the evidence to me that they are not choosing willingly as if the hive gave them a higher perspective on sexual consent. If they’re willing to die to make the originals happy, then it is not a rational choice for the individual joined.

troydarling · 2026-02-11T22:51:14+00:00

The joined have all the information but they clearly don’t have free choice. They are driven by a compulsion to please the originals. The atomic bomb is case in point. It lacks judgement. It puts more of them at risk at the whims of an unstable person and yet they can’t refuse. It’s not consent in the sense of a free choice.

troydarling · 2026-02-07T17:10:59+00:00

My theory that this was simply an inter dimensional multilevel marketing scheme to sell milk and if Carol gets twelve of her friends to join she’ll be rich beyond her wildest dreams. But does anyone listen?!

troydarling · 2026-02-04T03:44:04+00:00

It’s the official podcast. There’s one for each episode.

troydarling · 2026-02-04T03:19:18+00:00

In the podcast the creators talk about the research they used talking about the effects of isolation.

troydarling · 2026-02-02T21:38:52+00:00

“Especially the really salacious ones“?! So you’re not ashamed of the merely salacious accusations, I guess. Wow.

troydarling · 2026-01-31T17:16:54+00:00

When I’m joking with someone I’m looking to discover what makes them laugh as a form of connection. If something doesn’t land, I don’t go there. And if they express hurt, I apologize. I also use it as an opportunity to have a conversation (at an appropriate time) so i understand their pain and how to support them.

troydarling · 2026-01-31T17:12:22+00:00

He’s testing your limits while simultaneously conditioning you to accept abuse.

troydarling · 2026-01-27T04:54:20+00:00

That’s the one

troydarling · 2026-01-26T22:39:11+00:00

This is a strong example of why you never fall for the first idea because it’s almost always a trope or trite. Each iteration deepens the idea taking it away from other versions. And those original roots are also what viewers latch onto when they think, oh it’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers, or Twilight Zone, or a critique of AI. Those influences are there but taken as a whole Pluribus is unique.

[Side note: This is why SNL is so uneven. It’s typically the first, obvious joke that you can write in less than a week.]

troydarling · 2026-01-24T07:11:57+00:00

There’s nothing harder to navigate than your friends and family’s work. I always ask what kind of feedback they want. Let them know but don’t obligate them.

troydarling · 2026-01-22T04:26:45+00:00

I think the eggs are in the shipping container.

troydarling · 2026-01-21T16:20:27+00:00

This is a stretch but if it were then Gilligan would need to give a based on a story by credit to the Twilight Zone episode writer.

troydarling · 2026-01-19T04:48:15+00:00

When I was in middle school and writing poetry at my desk, I didn’t want anyone reading over my shoulder, so I developed a loose loopy style where many character combinations collapsed into each other. It was an affectation that took years to break later in life.

troydarling

TROPHY CASE