#can you believe i learned how to draw them just for an unfunny joke?

[applecranberryjuice]

i NEED to know how he's dealing with the news

Sonic Prime was really entertaining and fun actually, i have only a couple comics and the fandubs as base of what these characters should act like, so i enjoyed it with a fresh mind and liked the interactions This was my first time drawing them, i am so very bad at them

[lispectore]

yeah i agree in general there are a lot more reasonable takes here than on twitter. like personally genuine irl shipping (like.. actually believing they are together or even fanart/fics) makes me cringe for some reason even though i respect ppl’s art and know they don’t care and i don’t have a problem with most shippers. however the way dnf act /is/ funny and weird and i like their dynamic, so it’s much easier for me to get people talking about that reasonably (whether they ship it or not!) on this site which is why i’m here. the only thing that makes me uncomfortable on here are like very detailed analyses that can come across as kinda delusional and obsessed (like in a larry way where people believe he has a fake child or whatever lmao) but those are pretty rare.

on twitter, i feel like there’s a small amount of people who are hardcore shippers, some of who are very nsfw. again, i get dnf are okay with it, but also in every example dream has given for nsfw stuff it was that he thought it was weird to complain about because you would have to go looking for it to find it, which i feel like isn’t the case now that people are doing that out in the open on a site they interact with. the rest of twitter imo are largely /j shippers who get away with saying weird, unfunny, and out of pocket stuff directed at them by adding a /j (ie “george is a bottom!!!1 /j”) i feel like they’re in denial about being irl shippers or something and have a little bit of a parasocial relationship which leads to them being weird about boundaries because they think they’re just joking with their friends or something. i’ve also seen people cite their friends making jokes about dnf as reasons why they should also be able to reply with these jokes to them, but the underlying difference is like you guys are not their friends and i highly doubt any of their friends actually think they’re together or interested in each other lol.

i’m not trying to draw their boundaries for them (also like george literally bait posted yesterday he kissed dream so lmao) but as a bystander it’s weird and tbh cringey to me to see people replying to every tweet with weird shit that even as a joke is overdone and unfunny lol. sorry this got kinda out of hand it’s just i started on twitter and now can’t interact with it because of the weirdness i get such bad second hand embarassment even tho i know a lot of these people are kids. imo twitter just sucks as a platform for fandom stuff that i feel like should be separate from the ccs. sorry if this is too much or unwanted but here is my perspective as someone who is uncomfortable with irl shipping

always feel free to share your opinions with me as long as you’re being respectful! i don’t mind talking about such things. :]

imo i don’t think shipping is that much of a big deal, like i’ve been part of fandoms since 2011? to give you an idea, i used to read fics on livejournal, so i’ve seen the worst of the worst, i’ve literally been kissed by the fires of hell, and now everything that i’ve seen so far is pretty mild, especially here, i’ve never really encountered nsfw fanart or fics thrown around on twitter (these are usually on ao3 which i consider to be okay since cc’s are not lurking there like they’re on twitter). 

luckily, people got educated and learned how to ship irl people in a healthy way. 

the first time i encountered such gate keeping against shippers was here. i was so surprised it was almost a cultural shock to me, but i think that this amount of gatekeeping comes from the fear of what has happened to other celebrities/ccs that got shipped; and also, dream and george are very active on twitter and they know everything that goes on the fandom. 

which i agree that there are things that should be kept hidden from them, like fanfics - which didn’t work out that well since george ended up reading heat waves anyway, but he found it because people were always talking about it and disrespecting the author’s wish. (and i can’t tell you how happy i am that they didn’t react like assholes about it, and dream even dm’ed the author talking about how much of a good author she is) 

it’s weird for me because i’m part of a fandom that is twice (or even bigger) than the size of mcyt, and they’re pretty chill (of course you have the bad apples as always), but the community for mcyt on twitter is on another level of shitty. i almost gave up on keeping up with george and dream because of them, they have a cult like mentality where they think they are famous celebrities or something just because they’ve been on the fandom for a long time, which actually means nothing lol and i do agree with you that most of twt that is like “george kisses dream /j” is actually someone that ships them but doesn’t want to admit it because they’re afraid people will make fun of them, but the thing is if you’re old enough and you know how to respect content creators as human beings, you can ship them and continue to do your own stuff without it becoming something weird.

[whydoyouthinkileft]

Biospec for the ship meme!

-who cries when someone dies in a movie

Jemma, and listen, the first time Grant totally got so worried because the side he saw of her was so tough before, between sassing him at first, then becoming friends and her being so excited about everything or so strong when thinking she’d die (he wasn’t around to see her tear up over smaller things), and then even what happened to her couldn’t entirely break her spirit and when it did it was reasonable, given what she was going through… so he did not expect her to start crying over Doctor Who. There had to be something behind it, right? Wrong. Two minutes later she was laughing over a scene. And at the end she was crying again.He has learned to pet her hair and give her tissues without questioning it. 

-who wears the ugly holiday garb

Jemma. She thinks he’ll believe himself to cool to wear it too but it doesn’t stop her from getting him extravagant accessories that he can wear for a few minutes while they are alone, which he’ll do because he’s a sap who wants to hold hands and buys plants to people because she’s like “come on, boyfriend! It’s a couple thing!” and kiss him all sweetly and whatever, he can wear it 

-who pays for the meals

Jemma went “I will let myself starve to death if you pay for everything” with the usual tact so they agreed on alternating - unless it’s a romantic date, then he can pay. (once she surprised him with a romantic date she planned because she decided he wasn’t pampered enough and paid and got him a rose too at the end of the night, it happened.)

-who slams the oven door and who plays the trombone

he plays trombone, she said if he slams the oven door he’ll break it. Then she proceeded on breaking it herself. 

-who brings home stray animals

both. I feel Ward would, at first, worry about her reaction more than necessary due to his… upbringing and the fact that he’s suddenly throwing this at her (he’d probably get a pet away from a storm), but one look at the two adorable beings in front of her and Jemma is looking for food and blankets for them. Jemma sends 54 photographs with ‘LOOK AT THIS’ ‘IT’S OURS FOR NOW’ ‘LOOK AT THAT LITTLE FACE’ shamelessly.

-who leaves the bathroom door open

I feel like Ward wouldn’t really care all that much, but Jemma always closes hers unless she’s doing little things like fixing her hair, so he closes it for her. Though he does appreciate a lot that she leaves the door open when drying her hair because then he gets to see her pull a singing and dancing performance while she does. She tries not to get in the bathroom when he’s showering unless it’s to join or to at least knock also because due to his life (family, then the woods, then op academy and field) she thinks he didn’t have enough privacy before.

-who tells the ‘dad jokes’

that’s hard to tell. They both pun, but he does it the most. She says unfunny jokes on purpose. It’s kind of a mix? Also it’s funny to make each other stare in disbelief so Jemma says particularly dark ones around him, and he says particularly stupid puns to get those looks. 

-who wants kids more

okay, I think they are both afraid of being bad parents, but Ward more. He wouldn’t exactly think about kids necessarily, not right away, while Jemma has a vague future plan that involves them. But I also think that looking at Jemma play with a kid would pull every possible string of Ward’s heart, and being left to babysit with Jemma and doing a good job would give him a hell of a push towards wanting them. 

-who travels more

both do due to their jobs (Jemma will soon travel in another planet tho, so… that’s…)

-who spends more cash

okay they are both so damn extra. Canonically he was in cool hotels while on the run. She has lots of outfits. They would both spend money to spoil each other when they have off time, and buying quality food too. I’m for once going to say that it’s not Jemma, it’s Ward. He’d spend more money for her. Renting a room on a day off so they can relax like she wanted, getting her truffle fries delivered no matter where they sell them, making sure they are still hot, that sort of thing. He hasn’t had the chance to care for people often lately, and she always appreciates it so much that he’s happy to make her happy. 

-who buys the things in infomercials

neither, though if he comments on anything looking useful she will immediately take an interest in it and see if she can make it for him with Fitz’s help. 

-who draws in the dust on their cars

listen, canonically cactus guy wasn’t even gonna, but then his girlfriend left him cute messages (meant for him to just erase them once he read them but really, he has some trouble erasing ‘love u’ from the trunk and considers leaving it) and he found that when he left her drawings or messages she took photos of it and she has them on her phone, so they both do it now.  

-who starts the snowball fights

I feel like he’d have been more hesitant to start them at first? Big op guy, trained to kill, grabbing something to throw it at 5′’4(3) Jemma, not knowing how she’d take it in the first place? But then Jemma tossed it at him anyway - with unexpected good aim - and he returned the favor. They never start long because once she starts laughing hysterically it’s difficult to continue - one time he started them and she somehow managed to actually tackle him down and then kiss him up nicely, so he’s not against starting anymore.  

-who throws away the directions to things

Grant normally is okay with following them, but once he was being all cool in a ‘let’s wing it, it doesn’t matter if we take a wrong turn’ sort of way, and Jemma made them drive through woods somehow, and wanted to get a raccoon in the car, and then made him take another turn and they ended up in the middle of some town’s celebration that he knew nothing of and nearly insulted the police woman who vaguely flirted with him while he had to ask for directions, which okay, was pretty funny for him, and then despite his training she got them lost and from now on there is no throwing directions away. 

-who puts up holiday decor

he wasn’t going to, and then Jemma so happily brought up how they were getting their own ‘family traditions’ and how happy she was that they’d get the chance to have their own place and even invite friends to have coffee/tea with them and have normal domestic times, and Grant found himself hanging reindeers plushies on the wall, above her desk and feeling all warm and fuzzy because every time Jemma is putting up decorations she either climbs his back and then kisses his cheek and head constantly, or has to be lifted and giggles to death, or simply stops whenever she walks by to cuddle him and show how happy she is with him

-who is more likely to forget to bathe

he has looked way too clean on screen after all kinds of battles that I feel he might need to be unconscious to forget to tend his looks. Jemma forgets her shower after work only if she’s working so hard she doesn’t remember how to person, so it’s Jemma. 

-who gets more obsessed about things

they are both pretty obsessive about bad things, while fiction and happy things is more Jemma’s area, so Jemma but only because of the wider range of obsessions. Surprisingly, he is more ‘obsessive’ about her health than she is about his or hers, maybe because while yes, his life is often in danger due to his job, her life is also in danger due to job but she also doesn’t take care of herself at all, not the way she’d make him take care of himself if sick, or she dismisses her being sick the same way he would, but she’s more frail when it comes to her health and he’s so not letting her do the dishes while she has fever, nor go back to work with a horrible headache, and will keep being overprotective for days if she gets hurt. 

-who sings in the shower more often

Jemma, who once they are together gives up on trying to look like a proper serious scientists and just welcomes him singing at this point if he walks on it. I don’t know if Ward sings, but I can definitely see him laughing if they are taking the shower together and actually cleaning themselves and she starts singing with the radio (until they kiss and then the shower isn’t just a shower anymore) 

[doopcafe]

Searching for Comedy, Part I

In an attempt to discover a comedian Akina could like, I polled a few people to elicit suggestions and compiled a list of eleven comedians’ skits into a playlist. 

Initially, I thought it would be impossible to “rate” the comedians under the mistaken belief that it’s a binary metric: either they are funny or they are not. Turns out, there’s various shades of “funny” and I’ll attempt to quantify that in a minute. 

But first, a few comments...

(1) I’ve learned something obvious: A large part of how funny a comedian is is how much you can relate to what they’re saying. Chris Rock’s bit about $5,000 bullets to prevent gun violence was funny, because it’s a topic Akina and I are familiar enough with to understand. Ali Wong’s bit about having children was not funny, because neither of us knows what she’s talking about.

(2) It’s not fair to the comedian if your introduction to them is an out-of-context section of a stand-up routine. Watching only Robbin Williams’ bit about the invention of golf is funny if you’re familiar with his other work, but for Akina (who had never seen him prior to this), his skit was a complete flop. Summarizing, she said “He just swears a lot.” True for that bit, not true in general.

Instead, it’s better to introduce the comedian using one of their short, stand-up routines from, say, a talk show. Tig Notaro’s five-minute routine from The Ellen DeGeneres Show was a more fair presentation, as the comedian chose the material, pacing, etc. 

(3) Laugh tracks are obnoxious and distracting. In particular, the Monty Python skits suffered because you could barely hear what the comedians were saying over the sounds of fake laughter. 

(4) Some comedians’ routines really suffer because of their content being outdated. Rodney Dangerfield’s interview on Carson’s The Tonight Show was an example of this, as half the references were to people/things we’re unfamiliar with. Similarly, the more people “in general” are familiar with a comedian, the worse the comedy is. When Dangerfield says “I get no respect” the first time, the audience went absolutely crazy, but an explanation was necessary for Akina who thought she missed a joke. 

With that out of the way, here is my attempt to force comedy into levels of ratings, paralleling my system for movie reviews:

Uncomfortably Unfunny: ☆☆☆☆☆ (0/5)  This means “it’s so unfunny that it’s uncomfortable.” I do not want to watch these comedians again.

Unfunny: ★☆☆☆☆ (1/5)  This is “bland” humor that elicits an infrequent “heh.” It’s clear it’s meant to be funny, but falls just short of actually being funny. 

Humorous/Amusing: ★★☆☆☆ (2/5)  It’s clear this is comedy, and there may be a great deal of skill behind it, but it’s either too dated, the material has since been overdone, or it’s just not “my type of humor.”

Funny: ★★★☆☆ (3/5)  This is the default level of humor. Any decent comedian should be capable of achieving this level of funniness. It’s a few actual laughs plus some enjoyment. 

Hilarious: ★★★★☆ (4/5)  This is laugh-out-loud funny. It is enjoyable, I want to see more, and it feels like a good use of my time. These are comedians I can say I “like.”

Ridiculous: ★★★★★ (5/5)  This is the “I’m laughing so hard I cannot breath” type of funny. I believe there has to be something extra special to achieve this level. I would actively seek out these comedians to see them live. 

Undoubtedly, these ratings will change, but it’s a starting point. And now on to my ratings of the comedians we watched: 

Uncomfortably Unfunny: ☆☆☆☆☆ (0/5)  Ali Wong

Unfunny: ★☆☆☆☆ (1/5)  Tig Notaro 

Humorous/Amusing: ★★☆☆☆ (2/5)  Abbott and Costello (Who's on First) Rodney Dangerfield  Monty Python (Cheese Shop, Silly Walks, Dead Parrot, How Not to Be Seen) Robin Williams (Golf)

Funny: ★★★☆☆ (3/5)  Eddie Izzard  Kyle Kinane (Pancakes) Mitch Hedberg

Hilarious: ★★★★☆ (4/5)  Chris Rock Donald Glover

Ridiculous: ★★★★★ (5/5)  None

There isn’t enough data here to draw a conclusion regarding the overlap of my sense of humor with that of people who recommended comedians, but Luke’s two recommendations I’ve rated the lowest... It’s also interesting to note that a few (Eddie Izzard and Monty Python) I’ve seen so many times that they suffer as a result. Part of the formula of humor is the unexpected twist, which is dampened by knowing the punchline. 

Anyways, what did Akina think? 

Ali Wong: Not funny  Tig Notaro: Seems too intellectual, but speaks very clearly and is easy to understand Abbott and Costello: Akina considered the act cliche and overdone (it’s from 1938!) Rodney Dangerfield: Unclear references Monty Python: No Robin Williams: “All he does is swear” Kyle Kinane: Seems like we’re just hanging out with a friend who’s telling a story Eddie Izzard: “Has promise” Mitch Hedberg: Weird Donald Glover: Funny (she chuckled a bit at his jokes) Chris Rock: The only time Akina actually laughed was during one of Chris Rock’s skits...

So the winner of this round was Chris Rock. Which was completely surprising.