wizard detective

PASTA!?

WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU ON THAT MAKES YOU CLASSIFY RAVIOLI AS PASTA?! IN WHAT WORLD IS IT CLASSIFIED AS PASTA?!! HOW DO YOU SEE THIS AND THINK, “ah yeas beloved pasta”

I shrugged and said "I have no opinion."

The student was baffled. "What do you mean? You either like her or you don't."

I said that my life was completely independent from Taylor Swift and whatever she did or said. It doesn't affect me. I don't care. I'm not going to spend time hating some rando who doesn't know I exist. (And isn't a politician. Because I'll always fistfight Republicans.)

She was so confused that someone could be neutral.

I had randomly generated 2 words, which is where “mole interest” came from. I failed to consider that by generating a new tag, it wouldn’t have had enough posts already in it to prove what I now call “the mole interest effect”.

But now it does.

In 2023, we said “fuck it” a la mythbusters and ended up doing whatever it took to get #mole interest to trend. And it did. And it happened to be September 11th that day, and we managed to get #mole interest to trend ABOVE #9/11.

it’s still not trending! so far this could mean:

20k is not enough for one post to make a tag trend, but it could be possible with more notes

All the other trending tags have more activity in general at the moment, but the mole interest effect could work on a particularly slow day

“Oops! all filk!” playlists for the main characters of Wolf 359, because I've spent SO long thinking about this and was delighted to learn that as of 2023 all of them DO have recorded versions on the internet! "Swamp Gas" had been the last one I was missing haha.

Minkowski: If You Dare To Take The Journey, And You Give The Wolf His Due

Anna - Vixy & Tony

Good Ship Manatee - Leslie Fish et al.

Do Lemons Grow In Space - Paul MacDonald

Skybound - Anne Prather (as Aislinn)

The Price of Command - Mercedes Lackey, Leslie Fish, and Larry Warner

Hymn to Breaking Strain - Julia Ecklar and Leslie Fish (and Rudyard Kipling)

Burn It Down - Vixy & Tony

Chances & Choices & Fortunes & Fates - Astrisoni

I don't love "Skybound" for Minkowski, and I'm still looking for the perfect song to encapsulate early-show Minkowski who desperately wants to be an astronaut and is desperately afraid of failing and proving everyone right about her. However "Burn It Down" is the most Minkowski song ever so it evens out.

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Eiffel: Swamp Gas

Bitch Song - Leslie Fish

Rocket Rider’s Prayer - Steve Savitzky, Cecilia Eng, Ernie Mansfield, and Kristoph Klover

Just an Old SF Movie - LA Filkharmonics

Don't Push That Button - Duane Elms and Larry Warner

Swamp Gas - Leslie Fish

Long Distance Transmission - Love Patrol Beta

Guardians - Leslie Fish

The Thousandth Man - Leslie Fish (and Rudyard Kipling)

Chances & Choices & Fortunes & Fates - Astrisoni

The first couple are about Vibes(TM), but "The Thousandth Man" is intensely right for who Eiffel becomes.

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Lovelace: Thoughts of a Homeless Alien

Signy Mallory - Leslie Fish

Sam Jones - C. J. Cherryh and Leslie Fish

The Price of Command - Mercedes Lackey, Leslie Fish, and Larry Warner

Thoughts of a Homeless Alien - Julia Ecklar

Save You - PhemieC

Dr. Von Braun - Kathy Mar

Still Alive - Leslie Fish

Chances & Choices & Fortunes & Fates - Astrisoni

Some slightly weird pulls here but Lovelace is such a specific character. I'm still not completely satisfied, but it's a solid core. Yes that's a Homesuck filk, fight me. I also considered putting a Destiel filk on here and I haven't fully decided not to in the final versions when I make nice folders of MP3s and covers and liner notes haha. The only reason "Odysseus" by Annie Moriondo isn't on here is that it's a biiiit of a stretch to call that filk even though it has very filk-y vibes and the songwriter wrote it for a sci fi audio drama. Haven't fully decided against that either. Anyway Isabel Lovelace the woman that you are.

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Hera: Can Anybody Hear?

The Phoenix - Julia Ecklar

The Collars - Escape Key

The World Inside the Crystal - Steve Savitzky (or possibly the Kathy Mar version)

Pioneer's Song - Julia Ecklar and Leslie Fish

Elizabeth's Song - Technical Difficulties

Bugs - Steve Savitzky

One Final Lesson - Technical Difficulties

Let the Path Grow Over - John Callaghan

Chances & Choices & Fortunes & Fates - Astrisoni

This one was a struggle, and I'm still not sure if "Pioneer's Song" has the right vibes, and keeping the Steve Savitzky songs to a minimum was tough because he wrote 90% of the filk songs about computers and coding by volume. Choosing ones about Hera rather than just about computers was also a challenge. John Callaghan is also not actually a filker per se but he does weird sci fi and Doctor Who inspired stuff sometimes so it BASICALLY counts and it's SO post-Memoria Hera.

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Hilbert: Or Who Is Heaven For?

Likho's Lullaby - Vixy & Tony

Surprise! - Leslie Fish

Wernher von Braun - Tom Lehrer

Eight Legged Blues - Vixy & Tony

Blue Bread Mold - Leslie Fish

Lucifer - Don Simpson and Leslie Fish

Roses are Blue

Wait that was wrong

because we as a species were so lonely and we wanted friends so bad, we wanted to meet other species and we wanted to talk to them and we wanted to learn from them and to stop being the only people in the universe

and we started realizing that things were maybe not going so good for us– we got scared that we were going to blow each other up, we got scared that we were going to break our planet permanently, we got scared that in a hundred years we were all going to be dead and gone and even if there were other people out there, we’d never get to meet them

and then

we built robots?

and we gave them names and we gave them brains made out of silicon and we pretended they were people and we told them hey you wanna go exploring, and of course they did, because we had made them in our own image

and maybe in a hundred years we won’t be around any more, maybe yeah the planet will be a mess and we’ll all be dead, and if other people come from the stars we won’t be around to meet them and say hi! how are you! we’re people, too! you’re not alone any more!, maybe we’ll be gone

but we built robots, who have beat-up hulls and metal brains, and who have names; and if the other people come and say, who were these people? what were they like?

the robots can say, when they made us, they called us discovery; they called us curiosity; they called us explorer; they called us spirit. they must have thought that was important.

This is my favorite post on this website. 

I’ve seen this post in screenshots before, and the first time I read it, I cried. Just sat there with tears running down my face. 

Because this, right here, is the best of us, we humans. That we hope, and dream of the stars, and we don’t want to be alone. That this is the best of our technology, not Terminators and Skynet, but our friends, our companions, our legacy. Our message to the stars.