My Favourite Twitter Accounts and Other Recommendations

Twitter ain’t what it used to be. Once a fun space with punning hashtag games, TV live commentary, and beautifully dumb gags, in 2025 all of the jokes are stolen and all of the photos are A.I. Thank goodness then for the pure wholesome art of mr. joshua AKA @pants. Their endearing art, usually a black and white singe panel illustration with an occasional splash of colour – is a welcome balm in what can frequently be a disorientating platform.

All too often, Twitter’s algorithm serves me incomprehensible posts about topics I cannot decipher due to a lack of context clues. @pants’ near daily posts provide a respite, injecting a bit of warm-hearted whimsy into the feed. Their distinctive world is one populated predominantly by men with tiny glasses, high foreheads, and tidy moustaches. These earnest fellas commit to their work, whether it’s decorating a gingerbread house or sewing costumes for mice. But these humble Dairy Free Boys also know how to relax, taking time out to paint and dance. I love the artist’s work so much that I bought a couple of prints in their recent sale. The world needs more handmade distinctive art and mr. joshua has personality by the bucketful.

Twitter this year also introduced me to Dropout. This American streamer primarily promotes itself by posting scenes from their shows on socials and by gum, it’s effective. After watching approximately two billion clips, I was sufficiently intrigued enough to subscribe and find out more about these very funny shows.

It turns out that Dropout is an absolute treasure trove of gameshows, comedy formats, and tabletop / board game playthroughs starring some of the funniest improvisers working today. Emerging from the ashes of CollegeHumor, this ever-growing underdog dropped scripted content in favour of looser formats they could film in bulk with a revolving cast of top improv talent. Whereas major networks have struggled to translate this not at all new artform into something fit for broadcast, Dropout settled the question ‘how do you put improv on TV’ with a simple ‘you just film improv’.

Goofy show Make Some Noise is a prompt machine, giving players specific scenarios to act out solo, in pairs, or as a three. Off-kilter Very Important People gives guests a full makeover, transforming them into a variety of creatures or objects, before sitting them down for an impromptu in-character interview. Flagship panel show Game Changer sees participants faced with a new format each episode, requiring them to adjust quickly to convoluted rules and new twists. This latter programme is the closest America has got to creating their own Taskmaster.

All three of these shows are brilliant and I have binge-watched them all, but, of Dropout’s catalogue, their actual verifiable phenomenon that has broken containment is Dimension 20. This Dungeons and Dragon actual play show sold out a night at Madison Square Garden.

To reiterate the significance of this: a stadium full of people went to New York to watch seven actors sit on stage and roll dice. That is how engaging and funny the series’ core septet is.

I have watched one and a half campaigns featuring the Intrepid Heroes, the inaugural lineup from the show’s first series, and I love them. This gang has been playing together since 2018 (and many different combinations of them were in home games together before that) so their chemistry together, the joy they find in each other, and the big leaps they trust they can make are wonderful. Their latest series together, a twenty-episode steampunk / sky pirate mashup of Jules Verne and eldritch horror entitled Cloudward, Ho!, showcases all of this and proves they are each working at the top of their game.

Episode one of this campaign is an exceptionally executed “get the gang back together” plot which sees the former adventurers recruited one by one for a mission to find their missing captain / mentor. The roleplaying gives room for heavy emotional moments (their former leader inspires a lot of conflicting difficult feelings) but also has time for dumb bits and messing around. The projected illustrations are beautiful. The practical models on the table are amazing. Cloudward, Ho! is a really good caper with complicated interpersonal relationships, timey wimey shenanigans, and an adorable invasive species named nut pugs.

Fittingly for a franchise which frequently puts capitalism in the spotlight, Dimension 20 proved to me that trickle-down economics does work, albeit in that I loved their core cast so much that I sought out their other actual play projects.

Rotating Heroes, a DnD podcast originally helmed by Dimension 20 stable and Make Some Noise Noise Boy Zac Oyama and now captained by Jasper William Cartwright, has a killer format. Three comedians play a short arc. The story ends. One character from that game stays on and has a new adventure within the world with two new guests. The cycle continues after every arc, therefore keeping the lineups fresh without fully dropping an entire cast. This neat premise solves the logistical problem of how to book your funny friends without tying them to a long-term commitment and results in a wonderfully interconnected world where fan favourites can return.

The first campaign’s best combination of guests comes in arc three: improv teammates Devin Field, Victoria Longwell, and Jacob Wysocki. As with Dimension 20, their long history of collaborating is the key to their success here – their chemistry is off the charts. The trio spar and joke with ease, establishing multiple running comedic bits including Wysocki repeatedly teeing up major character reveals which will be dropped in the next session and the party’s tenuous grasp of object permeance resulting in them instantly mourning an ally as soon they move from view. The three are such a standout cast that it is no surprise that their entire gang is brought back for a further outing later in the show.

Also in regular rotation on my playlists is Not Another D&D Podcast. Very much a D&D podcast, this lovely silly show boasts not one but two Dimension 20 regulars. Cocreated by Brian “Murph” Murphy and Emily Axford with Jake Hurwitz and Caldwell Tanner, this series’ hook is that each campaign takes place after legendary heroes have already saved the world.

I am currently nearing the end of the first campaign (Bahumia) and it is a giddy delight. Murph is a master at creating dweeby irritating heels that the party can mercilessly make fun of. Emily and Jake early on start a seemingly game-blocking joke that Tanner’s cheery boy scout is the only one of the team who can read but across the course of the game their characters overcome this now-canon trait through a series of sweet faltering steps towards literacy. Also, Emily’s character has a possum companion named Paw Paw. Protected by Plot Armour so he be injured but not killed, he is “voiced” by Murph making various frantic squeals and animal sounds. He may be my favourite character in the game.

Sticking with my go-to soundtracks while I work, this year I finally watched comedy troupe SpitLip’s award-winning musical Operation Mincemeat. This show also came on my radar via Twitter, this time because I started seeing posts from their devoted fans, the Mincefluencers. As with the Dropout clips, curiosity led to me investigating and the cast album soon went into regular rotation on my playlists. I Liked the cast videos posted by the show’s socials, rooted for them whenever they were up for major awards, and was pleased when the original cast / creators were able to transfer the hit to Broadway. Throughout all of this, I had not actually seen the show.

This changed when a family friend came to London and wanted to treat us to some theatre. I pitched Operation Mincemeat and, as they had missed seeing it on a recent trip to New York, we duly booked a matinee. I am relieved to report it is a really great show with tightly choreographed farcical sequences, fast costume quick-changes, and a wonderful performance from Peter McGovern as shy scientist Charles Cholmondeley. As someone with a background in improv, sketch, and fringe theatre, I’m a sucker for anything where a small cast plays all the parts so this – where the quintet plays a range of characters across nationalities and genders – is right up my street. Both the show, and the bizarre true war story it is based on, are unlikely British triumphs.

Speaking of homegrown franchises, Taskmaster has now been on TV for a decade. Originally a comedy format Alex Horne could run remotely ahead of a single live show at the Edinburgh Fringe, this entertainment behemoth has now spawned books, a VR game, and countless international versions (the Australia and New Zealand iterations are each great).

Both UK series this year (series nineteen and twenty) had terrific lineups. Series nineteen’s contestants particularly were absolutely electric together. This bunch of silly sausages frequently proved to be embarrassing, oblivious, or outright weird – and it was a delight. Special mention must go to visiting American fireball Jason Mantzoukas who adored watching the show so much that he asked to be on it, flew himself over to the UK repeatedly in order to do so, and shot the final two studio recording sessions while suffering from food poisoning. Loving something so much that you want to crawl inside your television and join in is a relatable feeling and parlaying your celebrity status into achieving it is absolutely one of the few acceptable uses of fame.

In stark contrast, chasing your dreams and failing is the subject of Glen Berger’s book Song of Spider-Man. This is a firsthand account of the disastrous and expensive Spider-Man musical which resulted in multiple cast injuries. This slow burn retelling reveals a surprising (to me at least) fact: everyone involved was trying to make this show good.

Nobody was looking to rush out something sloppy to make a quick buck. The core creative team (Berger, director Julie Taymor, U2’s Bono and the Edge) sincerely wanted to produce a show with rocking songs, highbrow references, and, well, edge. Instead, it spent so long in development that it set a record for the most Broadway previews and became a laughing stock at the Tonys. Despite this, the story is not disaster porn. Berger throughout believes in the work and tries to fix the show. While he is ultimately unsuccessful, he is happily able to walk away with minimal regrets and enemies.

Struggles of a different kind are the central topic in Gabrielle Drolet’s Look Ma, No Hands. This breezy book of essays centre on the writer-artist adjusting to a life of chronic pain affecting her neck, arms, and hands. Typing, dating, and assembling IKEA furniture – all are now impacted by her restricted mobility. This is however by no means a misery memoir. It is a charming funny read which also covers the bizarre assignments she tackles as a freelance writer (one essay - about a project best summarised as Horse News - ran in The Guardian).

Once again, my exposure to this artist comes courtesy of Twitter. Her animal-centric art provides another bright light in the darkness, with her Rat A Day offering every October being a firm favourite of mine. I was lucky enough that my suggestion kickstarted the month this year (in line with my love of DnD, I suggested a rat wizard).

Incredibly, when you order the book directly from her, you can request a custom pic. I like squirrels and Halloween so naturally my suggestion was the fluffy critters in costume. When my copy of the book arrived, I was delighted to see this:

Personal stories also fuel Antosh Wojcik’s debut poetry collection Suburban Locust. Reading this gently surreal book, which features family traumas and feelings of displacement, feels magical. I’m fortunate enough to know the author I.R.L. – we met at university, collaborating on multiple plays and podcasts. I am delighted he found poetry and proud that he kept pursuing it.

As is evident from some of my earlier picks in this post, I like art and I like Dungeons and Dragons. Dungeons & Dragons: Art & Arcana: A Visual History therefore hits a bullseye in my Venn diagram of interests. Written by Michael Witwer, Sam Witwer, Kyle Newman, and Jon Peterson, this chronological look at artwork and designs for the world’s most famous tabletop game is a treat for the eyes full of pullout maps, concept art, and monsters. It’s a hefty tome, but absolutely worth it for almost half a century’s worth of cool illustrations and paintings featuring dragons.

If there is one thing to gleam from these reviews, it's that social media is still able to connect creatives and small businesses with people who love their work. Twitter definitely feels different from its innocent early days, but art still reaches fans and future fans, so please keep on posting.