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benblacker.bsky.social
Ben Blacker
@benblacker.bsky.social
4.3K followers 400 following 600 posts
The Writers Panel // Cut+Run: http://bit.ly/CutRunAudible // Hex Wives: http://bit.ly/HWtrade // Thrilling Adventure Hour // Dead Pilots Society

Re:Writing: benblacker.substack.com
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benblacker.bsky.social
In today's Writers Panel, I sample Star Trek! STARFLEET ACADEMY showrunners Alex Kurtzman (Picard) + Noga Landau (Nancy Drew) discuss what they look for in a collaborator, story from the inside out, learning storytelling through Trek + more.
benblacker.substack.com/p/star-trek-...
February 10, 2026 at 5:58 PM
Reposted by Ben Blacker
tedleo.bsky.social
🚨BREAKING: Late night decision leads to late night posting of new double A-side single for #bandcampfriday!

tedleo.bandcamp.com/album/februa...
FEBRUARY 2026 DOUBLE A SIDE, by Ted Leo & The Pharmacists
2 track album
tedleo.bandcamp.com
February 6, 2026 at 2:13 PM
Reposted by Ben Blacker
roxanegay.bsky.social
1. It was not an accident.
2. It was not a staffer.
3. While the president may have dementia his racism is not due to dementia.
4. He isn’t sorry. He means every racist thought he shares.
5. His base agrees with him.
6. He will do it again.
7. No one in power will hold him accountable.
February 6, 2026 at 5:42 PM
benblacker.bsky.social
Want to feel good for a few minutes tonight? Watch this.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8XF...
"The Obvious Child" - I'm With Her (LIVE on The Late Show)
YouTube video by The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
www.youtube.com
February 6, 2026 at 3:21 AM
benblacker.bsky.social
Thanks for reading. We’re proud of the book! No plans for more since DC owns it and shut down that iteration of the label. The new Vertigo books look great though! Check those out.
greggorybasore.bsky.social Greggory Basore (pronounced Bay-Soar) @greggorybasore.bsky.social · 12d
@benblacker.bsky.social

Hello,

I finished reading Hex Wives and returned it to my local library yesterday. After looking for anything further I saw that the series had been cancelled.

I'm sure I'm not the first person to ask, but are there any plans/chances of a follow up happening someday?
February 4, 2026 at 5:10 PM
benblacker.bsky.social
In today's Re:Writing, THE CONJURING writers The Hayes Brothers answer my 6 Questions about research, not making a plan B, their new writer-friendly evaluation tool, what they're suckers for in a script +more.
Ask your Qs this Sunday in our live Zoom Q&A!
benblacker.substack.com/p/6-question...
January 27, 2026 at 6:31 PM
benblacker.bsky.social
A good one in today's Writers Panel pod. PONIES creators @davidiserson.bsky.social & Susanna Fogel on going from The Spy Who Dumped Me eight years ago to Ponies, comedy with stakes, American culture through a funhouse mirror, why pitching is a scam + more.
Listen: benblacker.substack.com/p/ponies
January 20, 2026 at 6:36 PM
Reposted by Ben Blacker
mcnees.bsky.social
You have to block them immediately. The full nuclear. They are only here to make folks angry, and that can’t happen if we lock them out.
January 16, 2026 at 11:59 PM
benblacker.bsky.social
In today's Writers Panel pod, I talk to PLURIBUS writer/director/EP Gordon Smith about the origins of the show, what gives it legs, story as algorithm, a non-mystery mystery, parsing notes, getting sand in your eyes + lots more.
Listen: benblacker.substack.com/p/gordon-smi...
January 13, 2026 at 6:39 PM
benblacker.bsky.social
In today's Re:Writing newsletter, I wrote a post about goals (for your characters, but maybe they apply to you too?). Used three of my 2025 favorites by way of example, and there's some good advice in here too from David Goyer, @malcolmspellman.bsky.social + more.
benblacker.substack.com/p/goal-post
January 8, 2026 at 6:28 PM
Reposted by Ben Blacker
lindaholmes.bsky.social
It’s one of my favorite days of the year! Here are my 50 Wonderful Things From 2025.

Thanks as always to the editors who help wrangle this bear.
50 wonderful things from 2025
Each year, critic Linda Holmes looks back on the year and compiles a list of the things that brought her joy.
www.npr.org
December 31, 2025 at 1:30 PM
Reposted by Ben Blacker
baybayfriend.bsky.social
I met R2D2 on the street and he was not gracious at all. C3PO had to apologize for him like, he hasn’t had his crystals today. The crystals that he eats. He has to eat these it’s like cereal to him. He offered to take a pic w/me but I was like lol you are like the Ringo of this. You are below Wicket
November 24, 2025 at 10:49 AM
Reposted by Ben Blacker
joequinones.bsky.social
I wonder if the fall of Rome was this goddamn stupid. Were Romans just walking around, gesturing wildly, 'can you believe this?'
December 30, 2025 at 6:23 PM
Reposted by Ben Blacker
timcarvell.bsky.social
Just a few days until the new year begins and movie releases suddenly collapse into the official two genres of January: “Horror” and “Whoops”.
December 28, 2025 at 12:27 AM
Reposted by Ben Blacker
mckelvie.bsky.social
To me, my X-Mas!
December 25, 2025 at 12:48 PM
Reposted by Ben Blacker
pftompkins.bsky.social
A Proposal for All Parents Worldwide
Santa Opens It Up
YouTube video by Varietopia with Paul F. Tompkins
youtu.be
December 24, 2025 at 12:23 AM
Reposted by Ben Blacker
kentremendous.bsky.social
Once when we wanted to show the ineffectual dithering of The Good Place Committee, we had one of them say, "There are rules, procedures. This is The Good Place -- we can't just *do stuff.*" We almost didn't include it, because we thought it was a little on the nose.
atrupar.com Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · Dec 21
WELKER: Massie and Khanna say they are looking at options including impeachment and contempt for DOJ officials. Would you support those steps?

KAINE: I think that's premature
December 21, 2025 at 5:31 PM
benblacker.bsky.social
Last Writers Panel of the year is a great one. Writer/director CRAIG BREWER (Song Sung Blue; Hustle & Flow) on dreamers, making a narrative out of a documentary, non-musical musicals, the beauty of “Save As,” the Faustian bargain of making art + lots more
benblacker.substack.com/p/craig-brew...
December 17, 2025 at 5:50 PM
Reposted by Ben Blacker
emilynussbaum.bsky.social
Virginia Heffernan wrote this shortly after the 2016 election and it still holds true
THIS is what makes my head spin: The president is not a moral figure in any idiom, any land, any culture, any subculture. I'm not talking about the liberal enlightenment that would make him want the country to take care of the poor and sick. I mean he has no Republican values either. He has no honor among thieves, no cosa nostra loyalty, no Southern code against cheating or lying, none of the openness of New York, rectitude of Boston, expressiveness and kindness of California, no evangelical family values, no Protestant work ethic. No Catholic moral seriousness, no sense of contrition or gratitude. No Jewish moral and intellectual precision, sense of history. He doesn't care about the life of the mind OR the life of the senses. He is not mandarin, not committed to inquiry or justice, not hospitable. He is not proper. He is not a bon vivant who loves to eat, drink, laugh. There's nothing he would die for - not American values, obviously, but not the land of Russia or his wife or young son. He has some hollow success creeds from Norman Vincent Peale, but Peale was obsessed with fair-dealing and a Presbyterian pastor; Trump has no fairness or piety. He's not sentimental; no affection for dogs or babies. No love for mothers, "the common man"" veterans. He has no sense of military valor, and is openly a coward about war. He would have sorely lacked the pagan beauty and capacity to fight required in ancient Greece. He doesn't care about his wife or wives; he is a philanderer but he's not a romantic hero with great love for women and sex. He commands loyalty and labor from his children not because he loves them, even; he seems almost to hate them — and if one of them slipped it would be terrifying. He does no philanthropy. He doesn't - in a more secular key - even seem to have a sense of his enlightened self-interest enough to shake Angela Merkel's hand. Doesn't even affect a love for the arts, like most rich New Yorkers. He doesn't live and die by aesthetics and health practices like some fascists; he's very ugly and barely mammalian. Am I missing an obscure moral system to which he so much as nods? Also are there other people, living or dead, like him?
December 16, 2025 at 4:21 AM
benblacker.bsky.social
Linda Holmes sums up so much of what we loved about Reiner and his films, an enormous part of which is the enormous amount of love in them.
For me it was When Harry Met Sally… which I saw too young and which defined “adult relationships” for me for good and for… misguided.
It’s perfect.
December 16, 2025 at 1:12 AM
Reposted by Ben Blacker
wittywebhandle.bsky.social
Aliens Star Trek, a Vulcan-esque figure w/ two lines about their right eye: - Human with an unsual face tattoo. - Called something like the Kth'Grathi Star Wars, a bug-like creature in a rice farmers hat. - Bug that's vaguely asian - Called Glumshit Chang Doctor Who, a toaster w/ some bread poking out - Household appliance that is a black hole with a Lancashire accent - Called the Kaloxlgorb of Charrr
December 12, 2025 at 9:26 PM
Reposted by Ben Blacker
marygillis.bsky.social
I wonder if calculators had only been invented 3 years ago, we'd be seeing a lot of statements along the line of "these computers can both understand and speak in math, the universal language! They're thinking about math, they're really thinking about it!"
December 14, 2025 at 3:48 PM
Reposted by Ben Blacker
krisbrown.bradyunited.org
The horrific tragedy at Brown University is the 389th mass shooting this year and the 230th gun incident on school grounds so far this year.

This is not normal and we don't have to live this way.

bradyunited.org
@bradyunited.org
December 14, 2025 at 1:04 AM