#pretends to be funny

[flowerandthesongstress]

You would not find my country on the map.

Not because you’re an ignorant dumbass of course but simply because my country is so small that it just doesn’t fit on some paper maps for example it doesn’t fit on this particular map you own and you’ll be looking and looking trying to find my country on your map and you will squint your eyes straining them irresponsibly to almost dangerous levels and in the end you will only find a thin black line that leads away from a tiny dot to some text which says hello please be aware that the country you’re trying to find is somewhere over there but it’s just such a small country that we didn’t have enough space at our disposal to paint that country on this map yikes sorry and you’ll be like whAT what the heck is this nonsense I am feeling mildly outraged this isn’t a good way to make world maps and atlases and then you will huff and look at the corner of the map to see where it was printed and there will be a number with an annotation that says hello person who bought this beautiful map which we printed could you please be so kind as to call this number on the phone if you have any feedback for us and so you will go uh-huuuh and call the number and say uh yes hi I’m calling you about those maps you’re printing and I have feedback as requested namely my feedback is about how I think you should not print world maps in such small sizes because not everything fits into them for example I could not find my friend’s country on your map I only found an explanation for why it isn’t there and as a sidenote I also have to tell you that I needed to squint when looking at that map which can’t be good for my eyesight and so I wonder if you have considered only printing bigger maps with more readable fonts and they will tell you yes yes of course we have because after all we make big maps meant for boardrooms and classrooms and all that and actually with the deforestation problem being as dire and with all of the necessary maps being available online anyway we try not to print too many paper maps but only make them to order and I assure you that every map we make can fit everything because no one but schools and businesses is ordering paper maps of the world from us nowadays so ma’am could you please tell us which size of the map do you mean and you will tell them the size of the map and additionally inform them that the map looks glossy and brand new and they will gasp and say oh wow ma’am this particular map you’re describing has been out of print for over thirty years moreover you should know that due to it containing a misprint there was a very very limited number of copies and yet you’re saying it’s in pristine condition congratulations you basically own an antique map you should hold on to it especially if you’re a map collector and you will say whoah this is fantastic and very interesting although no I am not a collector but I could use some cash right now so I’ll sell it to a collector I suppose hello rich people troy is joining you yes I’ll hold hahaha but seriously thank you so much for this information it comes at the best time and they will tell you in amicable tones oh no problem no problem hope you have a nice day after which you will hang up the phone and give a meaningful and pensive slow nod while somewhere else in the world and likely somewhere nearby let’s be honest here someone else would not find my country on the map because he is an ignorant dumbass, yes.

[flowerandthesongstress]

come play with us, Danny

Before we continue, is this a personal moral failing or a mental illness? I need to know whether I should treat you like an evil monster or a helpless child when I unperson you.

[yeepof]

Local PHD student at wizard school HARRASSED!! FOR SHAME!!

[ryan-sometimes]

My favourite Da Vinky twins trans ally moments:

When they said their pronouns are they/them because there’s 2 of them

“It doesn’t matter what your pronouns are, because at the end of the day, it’s night”

[beebfreeb]

[calicorobin]

beanbag chair psychology

[anna-scribbles]

so this summer i am nannying a 5 year old who loves miraculous ladybug (my dream) & every day she asks if we can play ladybug and chat noir at the park. these are some comics based on our various games<3

[fckbatmanhiskidsareminenow]

batfam meets the JL but it’s just the bat kids breaking into the watch tower during a debriefing or meeting to ask bruce the most mundane questions. they go about it like they’re interns that need to speak to the CEO during a board meeting. they walk over waving their hands and mouthing “i’m so sorry just need to ask batman something 😬��� and then they lean over to bruce and ask something like “alfred wants to know if you’re gonna be home for dinner” and then they dip.

one of them started this when bruce didn’t answer their texts (it was probably tim or something) and now everyone does it.

[redsray]

i think one of my favourite parts about the "Jason has an army of kids in Crime Alley that will do anything to protect their protector" HC is that they absolutely would inherit all of his 'little shit' traits. they'd throw the other Bats off course on purpose. Dick, trying to find Jay: Have you seen Hood, by any chance? Kid: Sure I did. 'e's gone to the ice-cream store down in th'Narrows. He buys us ice-cream, sometimes. Dick: okay, thanks kid! (backflips away) Dick: Dick: there's no ice-cream store near the Narrows. Tim, just walking by Crime Alley: The kids, throwing rocks at him while Jason watches in amusement:

[chloesimaginationthings]

The more circus babies in FNAF the better,,

[ber--32]

that one scene in farewell my turnabout

[flowerandthesongstress]

Hi I'm dropping by to share an opinion that might be controversial, but might just as well be common and widespread among the 'loved this show as a child, rewatched as an adult' crowd. I'm not sure. I'm always out of the loop. All of the loops.

Anyway.

Recently I'd learned that my SO never watched the X-Files, the show that was my favorite when growing up (yes, I should not have been watching it, but oh well...frankly, I had much worse sources of childhood trauma in my life) and we decided to amend the fact.

Over the course of a few months, we went through approximately 85 to 90% of the episodes. We skipped a few insignificant ones. With insects.

Some short remarks first. One: all of my favorite episodes still hold up and some go twice as hard and Clyde Bruckman goes ten times as hard. Two: Mark Snow might have been in an abusive and mutually codependent relationship with an oboe. Three: "Everything Was Inspired By The X-Files" seriously, so much media in the last two decades has just been 'a person who watched the x-files when growing up is now writing stuff' and I'm not immune ... Four: this video essay that I found after we'd gotten to 'JS's from OS' and I was like "waaaaait I minute, this is... postpomo? in 1996? released around the time Infinite Jest was published? when metamodernism still was little more than a concept in DFW's head? what the heck?" and looked it up to see if my brain was wishful-hallucinating, and found this video essay. Five: when watching the show for the first time, I only knew three names: Anderson, Duchovny, Carter. Like, 'Hello yes this a cool scary TV program with The Anderson and The Duchovny as my Mom and Dad, and all of this program in its entirety is made by The Carter'. That was it. Because only those three names were translated in the credits.

And now I'm going to ask you to please don't kill me. Please. I'm going to die, I promise, I just don't want to be killed right now because of a possibly controversial X-files opinion. This is just a personal opinion. You are free to not share it, you are free to hate me, but could we please avoid conflict and arguments? I love you. I was drugged.

Anyway x 2.

Here's the most important thing I realized now that I'd rewatched the show in English as an adult who'd loved the X-Files as a minor (and watched it dubbed), and then went on to receive a university education that very specifically gives her a shmauthority to determine if a writer is actually a crap writer...

...Chris Carter is actually a crap writer.

He's uuuhm. He's bad at writing. Wait, no, that's unfair. He is what I like to call 'painfully mediocre'. Slightly paraphrasing a quote from my other favorite American show: he's every kid on the playground that didn't get picked on. He's a business casual potted plant, a human white sale. He's VH1, Robocop 2, and Back to the Future 3. He's the center slice of a square cheese pizza. Actually, that sounds delicious. Vince Gilligan is the center slice of a square cheese pizza. He's Jim Belushi.

He's just so. painfully. mediocre as a writer. Some of his choices were BAFFLING. Not just bafflingly bad, but simply baffling in a 'how and why and why would anyone ever think this is a compelling idea' sense. Some moments made me wonder if there's zero self-awareness or negative self-awareness.

Chris Carter would hardly make you mad with how bad he is. He's seldom bad in a memorable way. He was cliche when those cliches weren't yet cliches. When the TV tropes website didn't exist. When metamodernism still was little more than a concept in one bandana-covered, troubled head.

He attempted three other shows. All of them were canceled. Two of them he had to wrap up in the X-Files, and he wrapped them up with as much poise as I wrap burritos when high. One was canceled before airing, but he put a piece of it into an X-Files episode: a minor character in the cold open watches and praises this show, so enraptured that he doesn't hear his daughter being kidnapped by a serial killer or abducted by aliens or neither or both, tbh I'm still not 100% sure what happened and what didn't happen, because that episode was written by Chris Carter. The highest rated episode out of all the episodes in all of the three canceled shows has Darin Morgan's writing credit, and it's a sequel of an X-Files episode. Where Jose Chung just goes 'you know what? this sucks' and dies.

Yes, I did enjoy The Lone Gunmen, but guess who has the most writing credit? Yes, Vince Gilligan. Perhaps, executives didn't really understand and didn't bother looking into why X-Files was such a popular and beloved show? And kept on greenlighting Carter's pet projects and then going: Wait, Where Money? Probably. That's how I imagine the reason. Thing is, the X-Files was so beloved and popular not because of Carter's obsession with Christian symbolism and conspiracies and apocalypse and ambiguity so vague and lazy and full of itself that I felt vicarious embarrassment, not because of his narcissism God complex that is manifested on screen in such a way that watching it feels exactly and very specifically like grinding your teeth while there's a bit of slightly wet sand on them, and not because people ached to learn how aliens would colonize Earth. Characters. We loved the characters. We loved the relationships in the show. And we loved the CRAZY and the over-the-top. And all of the Human, all the Silly, and the Funny, and the Tragically Funny.

Every single episode I remember loving the most, and every single episode that tops every single 'bestest X-Files episodes evah' list, has the writing credit of either Darin Morgan (Humbug, Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose, Jose Chung's From Outer Space, War of the Coprophages), or Vince Gilligan (Soft Light, Pusher, Bad Blood, Small Potatoes, Paper Hearts, Meme— you know what, this is easier), or Glen Morgan + James Wong (Squeeze, The Field Where I Died, Never Again, Musings of the Cigarette-Smoking Man). Not Carter. Although according to a WaPo article I read, Carter was insanely controlling and everything had to go through him. Duh. :-\ Not to mention, his entire writing room was a sausage fest, apparently? And Gillian Anderson finally got to write an episode only in season seven, when the show was about to be foreclosed by Fox and turned into a movie franchise (never happened, alas), and around the 'f*ck it who cares anymore we're rich and uncancellable' time when Gilligan was allowed to write the episode where Mulder solved existential nihilism via freeing a genie? Not surprised.

Meanwhile, Carter himself had written the episodes I was looking forward to the least during this rewatch. And my SO would be like: wow, you're rolling your eyes so hard I'm worried about your vision, should we maybe skip this one..? And I'd be like: no-no imma just do some chores, I really wanna do some chores, I'll be nearby, yes please keep on watching babe, no need to pause, I'll keep the bathroom door open to hear everything while I do my favorite very entertaining things like clean the toilet and scrub the shower and wash the litterbox.

Hmmm? What's that? Post-modern Prometheus is highly rated? Hoo boy :-| Can we please not go there... Also, even without all of the problematic aspects of PMP: 1) even a broken clock can do postmodernism is right twice a day, 2) no, it is not a well written episode; it's loved because of its subtly familiar nostalgic visuals and because it attempts to imitate Darin Morgan's signature style with about as much success as I had while trying to imitate Lovecraft when my English was at ~C1 level and then I started crying and went to Postmodernism and told him 'please mister postmodernism sir, please save me by making it all into a long setup to a punchline'.

Anyway x 11:21.

This whole realization made me dislike the Auteur theory even more. My relationship with it was already so hostile that we've been sending each other death threats every month since I was seventeen.

Yes, I should be fair(er). Chris Carter's primary role is NOT that of a writer, but a producer and director and *cringes* shOwRuNnEr. He was the one who pitched the show to Fox, was rejected, and fought for it until they agreed. Without him, the X-Files would not have existed at all. And all bad jokes aside, this show helped me a lot when I had no one and nothing else to help me. I was indeed in a parasocial relationship with its leads. They were my TV parents. Thing is, everything you love about the X-Files' writing... like me, any other casual viewer might discover that all of these things were not done by Carter. Yet he was getting all of the credit.

This is a very important, and seemingly obvious but not really, factoid that applies to a lot of shows and movies. The person you give credit for a thing is often not the person who should be getting it. If you're rolling your eyes right now and calling me agent Obvious: may I remind you, I'm permanently out of the loop about everything. EVERYTHING.

I'm not going to devolve this into a rant about Auteur theory...Because then I'd be here all day or until I start foaming at the mouth. And I'm sure everything has been said without me and before me, anyway. I'm not even going to write a more detailed analysis to defend my views regarding the 'painfully average'. Shmviews.

I've said what I wanted to say.

This rewatch was an interesting experience.

"Skinner wants our report in one hour. What are you going to tell him?" — "What do you mean what am I going to tell him? I'm going to tell him exactly what I saw. What are you going to tell him?" — "I'll tell him exactly what I saw".

[magicpiano]

DCxDP AU with the typical cultists summon the ghost king stuff, except the spell is supposed to trap him in a mortal body till he agrees to do the cult's bidding.

Danny is obviously not going to just do what they say, he will find his own way out of this body he is trapped in, thank you very much.

After escaping he is found by the police and identified as Tim Drake, which okay didn't expect the human sacrifice to be a famous guy, but whatever. All he has to do is pretend to be Tim for a few days while he figures out how to break the spell. Easy, Bruce Wayne is famously stupid right?

Of course the bat family had been listening in to the cult's summoning the whole time from a communicator Tim activated right before he was captured, so they are very very aware this is not Tim.

They can't say anything though because they have no idea what powers the ghost king has or how to get him out of Tim's body. It is determined that the best solution is to play along till they have a plan so the ghost doesn't run off with Tim's body or hurt him in some way.

Thus begins a game of lies. Danny, fake it till you make it, Fenton, pretends to be Tim with only the info available on his Wikipedia page. The bats pretend to not notice anything is wrong.

Danny can't investigate how to break the spell because no one will leave him alone for any length of time. The bats are struggling to figure out how to get the ghost king out of Tim when all their magic users are saying the guy is basically all powerful.

No one is happy about any part of this.

Meanwhile Tim is playing a 5D chess version of psychological warfare on Danny while stuck inside his own head. Danny is just like, 'please have mercy I am trying to get us both out of this safely.' Tim is like, 'anyway here's wonderwall for the 40th time today.'

[monkesupreme]

Starving and wasting away etc etc

bonus:

Hes tall and huge and HEAVY and he is so overly active that he has to maintain an insanely high caloric intake to make sure his body doesnt collapse from the strain of everything. He will eat virtually anything but he is spoiled from the best takeout Gotham has to offer: 11$ shrimp and broccoli from the chinese food spot that closes at 4am- among other things.

[tizeline]

Now that TikTok has been banned in the US, I want to inform all the US-Americans of the different reactions I've seen so far on the app about it

Everyone being really dramatic and acting like we're the people who survived the Thanos-snap in Infinity War

Some are holding fake funerals to honour the lost Americans

People being sad about TikTok feeling way more quiet than before

People being happy about TikTok feeling way more quiet than before

Everyone yelling about how superior km, celsius, 24-hour-clock, dd-mm-yy, etc is now that the Americans can't argue back about it

A lot of people being scared that TikTok is gonna get bought by an American company and the general consensus so far seems to be that we'd rather the Americans remain banished forever than that happening sorry lol no hard feelings

People being happy that they don't have to compete with Americans for clout anymore

People being insecure that they're not as funny as Americans

People not knowing who they're gonna make fun of now that the Americans are gone (the obvious answer is the English like cmon guys)

Everyone pointing out how the comment-section is way less toxic than usual (prolly confirmation bias, let's be honest)

[megabuild]