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#HEY KEEP POLITICS OUT OF MY COMICS DC!!! THIS IS WHAT THEY MEANT BY THAT RIGHT
twiststreet · 4 months
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Meanwhile in Comic Books: if I understand recent events correctly, and who knows, who gives a shit, but.... Mark Millar (the creator of Trouble, the comic where Aunt May fucks) got so angry that "people" (I only know one name and it's another comic creator) made fun of a comic retailer for putting out some dopey video or another about How Comics Are Bad Now for a (very incoherent) reason on Youtube (incoherent to me, as "reported", but I ain't watching that shit) that Millar became a Comicsgate supporter (or whatever they're calling themselves now)... except while simultaneously saying he's not a Comicsgate supporter...
Except while attacking people he described as "the cancel pigs" (?) who he claims have been terrorizing high profile DC Comics writers... by... doing posts?? (That bit's unclear, but okay; posts; oh well). (No idea who the high profile DC Comics writers are right now either. The guy who writes Captain Carrot? I don't know who).
(And also he's using quote tweets to sort of promote some kind of weird loser theory that the "Cancel Pigs" are actually "paid shills" of some kind of weird PR company's scheme to ... do Comics Evil, you know... for the money that would generate... somehow...???).
Anyways, he then said anyone who is Doing Evil Posts will never get to write Batman... the Ultimate Punishment! Let's assume there've been at least 1,028 issues of Detective Comics since 1939, so ... and assuming each issue had a different writer (which isn't true), and a global population of 8.1 billion people... a Comics Pig is being threatened with being part of ... basically 99.9999873% of Earth's population. I don't know-- it's comics so that's how they always try to police people-- "only the pure and penitent get to writeth the Batman." It works. I mean, it works, so.
(He's doing this while talking to retailers who apparently keep telling him the problem with comics right now isn't politics-- it's that the whole scene is fucking boring. But Millar has the solution-- get John Byrne to write and draw two books a month. It's time to get the 73 year old man to draw 40 pages a month-- it all hinges on that...).
Anyways, then Millar might have tweeted something (that might have gotten deleted or I'm too bored to find it) about how someone was writing a book about the "Cancel Pigs" or the comic terrorism or the badness of posts or something or another... And it turns out that there's some anonymous person is writing some kind of smear attack book that features a photo of Gail Simone and Kelly Sue Deconnick on the cover?? So people were like "oh, he meant that book, he's going after Gail Simone, the war has begun" or whatever the fuck, and Mark Millar said he meant ... he meant an entirely different (print-on-demand Lulu.com?) book that is being written (!!!!!) about comic book industry drama (??!?!?!?), so Gail Simone said everything is hunky dory now. The war has been averted; this is all very sane now hahaha.
And also Mark Waid lost his temper about all of this, or something, but on Blusky, which...??? I mean, I don't know-- all those Blusky codes are too fuck ugly and inelegant to ever be curious what happens there. "Hey, want to get into Blusky? Here's how to do it-- 13295359859.blusky.cobaltirondeathfrombelow.12392389202." You're being weird, Twiki! "You need a code"-- I have a code-- the code of the samurai!!!!!! (Samurai with asthma).
I don't know. American comics have such a massive loser energy around them (myself included)(unless my hair looks good, but today it doesn't), and they're just soaked in these aging dried-up creators with no real new ideas, like... I don't know. I just read manga now. And it's so much better; life's so much better. I cancelled myself from out of comics, and it's great. Highly recommended-- be your own cancel-pig. (I also bought a rice cooker that I'm really happy with this year, the Greenlife rice cooker, but this post isn't about rice)(But should it be?).
In summation: the comics industry's used-up elderly creators and fans are calling each other cancel pigs now, to save comics, and/or to promote books that they are writing, about how secret cabals are keeping comics from being good, for politics, or something. So you know: that's probably a healthy development, or not, whichever.
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gronjon44 · 3 years
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My thoughts on WONDER WOMAN:1984
⚠️⚠️⚠️SPOILERS⚠️⚠️⚠️
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I wanna like this movie, and there are parts of this film that I genuinely do like.
There are some funny moments and I like some if not most of the themes.
And I want to be as critical and non political as possible with this analysis as possible.
But, speaking not as a Center Republican and as an average movie goer,
The political refferences in this just ruin the film for me, on top of other issues.
Max Lord is too blatant a Trump reference, the big business persona aside; I read an article by NBC News (I'll link it at the end) says the director used Trump as "one inspiration for the character".
Yeah no, that wasnt one reference that was all reference I looked up Max Lord in the comics and frankly it looks like Trump was the only reference the director used.
The article goes into detail about how the director steps around Trumps more controversial policies and essentially whitewashed Trump with Lords character which, i can see what they mean when they say that.
I won't get into all the details, as I don't agree with everything in the article but you can read for it yourself at the end.
Now getting past the Trump refferences and whatnot I'd like to say that most parts of this movie are actually really enjoyable.
Diana Prince/Gal Gadot are a joy to watch as always, Barbra was a joy to watch as a villain, Steve Trevor was fun to see and ⚠️⚠️⚠️SPOILER⚠️⚠️⚠️the invisible jet was a fun twist that I was genuinely surprised to see.
But some complaints I have involve the ending, a few in-between bits, and some minor details that just stuck with me.
So again, ⚠️⚠️⚠️SPOILER⚠️⚠️⚠️ for anyone who hasn't seen it yet.
The ending was very mcguffined and frankly, kinda cheap.
I get that, yes, the point of the end was to show Max Lord what he was doing was truly wrong and to have him undo the wishes that followed his bad decisions, I get that.
But for there to be no real consequences for what he did? And that he gets to run free and return to his son without being reprimanded for what he did (outside of a few minor ass beatings) It feels cheap and unsatisfying, at least in my opinion.
Something that the article brought up (that I disagree with frankly) is that film ⚠️⚠️SPOILERS⚠️⚠️ treats Barbras choice to become more like Diana as a bad thing then a good thing, saying that Wonder Woman is meant to show Woman that they can be like her, and that some woman do want to be like her. They go one to say that (quote) "Instead of congratulating Barbara, the movie presents her as a warning. Gaining power and beauty makes her cruel and violent and selfish — a villain, not a hero. It's like the film has included its own cranky superhero-film hater to tell fans they're doing it wrong." (end quote)
Now, heavy spoiler talk incoming so be warned.
The stone acts like the monkeys paw, where in when you wish for something, you get it but at the cost of losing something (i.e if I wish for a million dollars, but when I get the million dollars I lose my house and prized possessions)
Now, if someone is inspired by Wonder Woman and wants to be like her, then great! Be like her! If you can strive to be like Wonder Woman then hey be like her.
There's nothing wrong with wanting to be like those you admire. But here's the thing that I think this article misses. Barbra didn't strive on her own to be like Diana, she wished it. She didn't earn anything that was given to her.
She was a good person before yes, and there was nothing wrong with wanting to be like Diana. But the problem that this article misses is that she was given these gifts and opportunity, she didn't earn them.
She never had any of these things before, and being given these things so suddenly may have gone to her head; so much so that she was quickly consumed by her new gifts that she lost touch with her old self.
And let's think about that a moment. The stone takes as quickly as it gives. What did the stone take from Barbra? Well I think its meant to be pretty clear that, in return for becoming "strong, sexy, cool, and special," she had something taken away from her.
When she had nothing she was a kind person, yes she was ignored but she wasn't lashing out about it, she was her own personal. When she was given her wish she slowly became consumed by it, focused not on others or her work, but on herself and her own greed. She wanted to be admired and to be seen, and there's nothing wromg with that.
But she did not earn her beauty, strength, or popularity. She was handed them on a silver tray at the cost of losing touch with herself. She was consumed by a lie she wanted to believe.
This film has a heavy theme about accepting truths and seeing past veiled lies; Diana used a shortcut to get ahead in the contest as a child, Max Lord used the stone to lie to himself about how shitty a person/father he was, Barbra used it to lie to herself and make her something she wasn't, hell Diana lied to herself twice thinking she could keep Steve Trevor and stop Max Lord together, even while her powers were being taken away.
And there's another example of having what you hold close taken at the cost of what you want. Diana's powers at the cost of having Steve Trevor back in her life; Diana wanted nothing more then to have Steve Trevor back in her life and to be with him, but he was dead.
Until the stone heard her internal thoughts/wish and made it come true, but at the cost of her powers. But Diana didn't care. Diana knew Steve was someone else and she knew her powers were being taken away to have him back in her life, she knew this was all a lie (the stone was even created by a God of Lies)
All in all the accepting truth theme is fine I like it, but I think it gets overshadowed by all the politics and wonky CGI.
And on to that side of my thoughts.
You can really see the CGI in this film. Some parts aren't that bad but others are just... really noticeable.
Like, there's a scene where Diana is running down a street and she's speeding up down the road. You can see the CGI in her legs and how they try to make her run faster then she is.
You know how Chris Evans has that unique running style that can't be easily recreated? Yeah they try to have Diana run like that and you can see the CGI they used to make it.
And there are other little moments that you can't help but notice (a body flies too fake here or a hand grabs at the ground too smoothly there) little moments.
I know CGI is useful for some scenes and I have nothing about extra CGI in a film. But this felt like those scenes in Horror Movies where you can really see the CGI blood and just how cartoonish it really looks.
Also just, jumping on after this, can we talk about the acting?
Gadot, Pine, Wig, and Pascal all perform amazingly in this film (while I don't like his character I will commend Pascal for putting in a solid performance as Max Lord) But when you focus on some of the side characters and their acting its just really cringy.
The initial jewelry heist scene starts off fine I liked it, but when the guy drops his gun it all just gets so cheesey and corny.
Now, I like cheesey and corny acting I do. But honestly this film felt like it was trying way to hard to be in the 80s.
Stranger Things does this well with its 80s setting (the background, the characters, small moments throughout the series)
Wonder Woman 1984 tries to act like the original Wonder Woman from the 80s, and it doesn't hit that mark.
Now, I didn't grow up with the 80s Wonder Woman, but my dad did. He knew the references and he could tell what they were trying to do. But even he thought it was a little too much (he said that she fought the villain the exact same way and the acting of multiple characters reminded him of that cheesey 80s acting)
In short, most the acting was fine, but alot of it was... also not fine.
This next bit will be my last complaint and then I'll be done (its minor but its does bug me)
Why did they even make the wishing stone?
Now, I'll admit I'm no expert on DC comics, let me be the first to say that. But this stone is a magical artifact that can grant wishes at the cost of taking something valuable to you (like a monkeys paw) They even refference the Monkeys Paw on several occasions in this film, basically acting like the stone is the paw itself.
Now just, here me out for a minute.
The stone acts like the monkeys paw-
It has the same rules as the monkeys paw-
They even reffer to it like the monkeys paw-
Why not just use the monkeys paw?
Legitimately they treat this thing more like the actual Monkeys Paw rather then a mystical genie rock that it actually is. Yes they try to make the rock interesting (it destroyed the Mayans, it brought down multiple Roman Emperors etc) but I just can't get past how useless it all is.
You could replace the stone with a real monkeys paw, give it the exact same origins, and even still have Max Lord bond to the monkeys paw-
And it would still work.
There is no thematic purpose for the stone to be a stone when you can just use the paw. When Max bonds to the paw make his own hand turn into the monkeys paw, and now it has more thematic purpose for why he needs to actually touch people.
Just, its so small a thing that it technically doesn't matter but at the same time I really think that it does.
Thats the last of my complaining/ranting. Like I said I want to be as neutral and genuinely critical of this film.
I wanna like it but I just... there's alot issues that I think should've been addressed before this film was released. I have nothing against referencing current politics or making something pro-this or anti-that, but if your gonna do it at least write it in a cohesive way.
If I had to rank this with the other DC films in the last Decade (I haven't seen Birds of Prey yet and I don't remember much of Man of Steel so bear with me)
Wonder Woman 2017
Shazam
Wonder Woman 1984
Aquaman
Suicide Squad
Justice League
Batman V. Superman
It isn't the greatest film but its still better then DC's worst, so I'll give them that. I rate it a 6/10
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microwaveabl · 3 years
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Alright fuckers,
I decided to post what I have right now of my story, starting at Comic Con. @septicake​ hasn’t responded all day, but I hope they like it. Flowey, sentient toilets, and gay Obi Wan are here!
9
The next morning, we were both excited. We were finally going to get our answers. Fairly early that morning, we set out. It took us a bit to find the convention center, which Robin remarked upon: “This sounds exactly like the sort of thing we should’ve prepared for earlier this week”. I hate it when he’s right.
When we got there, we were awestruck at the spectacle before us. Hundreds of people, dressed as wizards, elves, orcs, comic book superheroes, video game characters, and soooooooo much more were there. Cosplayers of every kind, colors everywhere, it was incredible! I can’t begin to describe the wonder I felt, or everything I wondered at.
“All the hype was worth it,” Robin whispered to me, and I slowly nodded.
“This is… wow,” I responded, my eyes large. The twos of us, Robin and I, walked into the center, and my jaw dropped. It was even better than the outside! So many people, packed into the place! I knew it was big, but now I was wondering how exactly I was supposed to entertain everybody while Robin looked through them.
“Okay, slight change to the plan. I’m going to go up on that stage and begin my act. I’ll invite some people up, do some cool stuff. I’ll use a spell to broadcast my voice, for I think it’d be difficult to get a connected microphone headpiece thing. You get up there-” I pointed up to some of the pathways near the ceiling, probably so that those large posters on the wall could be hung, or something “- and use this charm of seeing” -I produced a small magnifying glass from my pocket - obviously enchanted, not just a magnifying glass “-and scan the crowd. You know what to look for, and, I don’t know, figure out a way to contact them. Maybe you have a charm, or something, I’m not sure. Improvise, you’re good at that!”
“This is a terrible idea,” Robin told me, “and you’re going to get kicked out. Still, I can’t think of a better idea.”
I grinned. “Good, and besides, if I do well enough, they won’t want me to leave. Now go up, and get ready.”
I waited while he made his way through back ways and such, until he was up on the pathways (I should really figure out what they are called, but we don’t have them where I come from, and I don’t feel like learning it). He tossed something down at me, not sure how it got to me through the crowd, and I looked questioningly at him. He mimed putting it in my ear, and it did look like some kind of earpiece. I gently placed it in my ear, wincing slightly, for I didn’t think it was meant for my pointy elven ears. 
“Hey,” a voice that sounded like Robin’s came into my ear. I jumped, and looked up at him. He was grinning, of course.
“Can we communicate through these?” I hesitantly asked, to which I heard, while noticing it was definitely Robin speaking, “Yeah, I found a couple earpieces and tuned them to each other. Don’t know how I managed, but hey, if it ain't broke, don’t knock it.”
I chuckled, and responded, “Fair. Let’s get this show on the proverbial road and the literal stage.”
I pushed my way through the crowd, passing Captain Americas, Captain Rogers’, Captain Mal Reynolds’, and many others that were not Captains. Finally, I made my way to the stage. Wondering what exactly I would say, I jumped up onto it, where there were luckily no people, and muttered to myself, “I’m an introvert, and yet I’m here at such an extrovert place, about to do something terrifying. It’s a good thing I really want to get home, and I really hope this works.”
I activated my charm as people looked up at me, wondering what an elf was doing up on stage, and began speaking.
“Hello, all of you. You might be wondering what I’m doing up here on stage. To be honest, I am not sure either, but I think I’m supposed to give a demonstration or whatever it’s called for my cosplay, but they didn’t really tell me. Hey, can I get some boxes or something destructible up here?”
A couple confused convention workers brought up some empty boxes, while I sweated, wondering if I should make a run for it. Somehow, though, nobody came up and stopped me. I wasn’t even sure why there was a stage up here in the first place. Was an event or actual demonstration supposed to happen? Whatever the case, this was working, and I could see Robin up there scanning the crowd, though none of them really should be interested yet.
It was time to change that.
I deftly pulled out my sword, keeping it in this dimension. I did some basic fighter’s moves, which seemed to impress the people. 
“This is one of two Vorpal blades of mine. The name is misleading, or rather, does not do my blades justice. A vorpal blade simply is one that has the capacity to decapitate a foe, especially in fantasy games such as Dungeons and Dragons. However, all of my blades are like that.”
A few nervous laughs floated to me. I looked up at Robin for support, and he gave me a thumbs up. He spoke to me, saying, “Now, tell them the special thing and give them a little demonstration.”
“Okay. My blades are special, for they are enchanted. They can change dimensions at my will, and thus pass through objects in this one when I desire, and join back up in this one to cut what I want.”
To demonstrate, I deftly stabbed my sword at the first box, phasing it just before it broke the flimsy cardboard.
“Now, that may not look impressive, as you do not know that my blades do any damage at all, or that these boxes were not staged so I would not appear to do any damage. Furthermore, optical illusions could render it such that I did not stab the cardboard at all, and thus am a fraud. Now, will someone please come up here? I really don’t care who.”
People murmured amongst themselves, until one person stepped forward.
“I will,” they said, and I asked them a little about themselves. They were John, a human male, who came alone, dressed as The Arrow from DC. He loved coming to Comic-Con, and was excited at the opportunity to be a part of what he thought of as a very real and planned demonstration. He came up on stage, and I appraised him.
“I loved your T.V. show,” I said, saying the first thing that popped into my head. I had never seen a single episode, but knew that it was a thing and hoped he wouldn’t question me.
He beamed at me, and said, “Thank you! You are a really good elf!”
“I try. Now,” I directed this at the crowd, “I shall prove, in front of a witness, that these blades are no joke.”
I quickly pulled the handles close to myself, phased them back into reality, and drove them into the boxes. They easily cut through them, for they were designed to cut through things much tougher than some boxes. I then rapidly whirled, phased my blades out of sync, swept the handles just in front of John’s face, and phased them back in sync with the world. I asked a stunned, slightly scared John to touch the blades, and he reported they were very sharp.
“Now, was that an optical illusion? I think not. I am also a great fighter, and master of small charms.” At this, I tossed up a charm I had created haphazardly and quickly earlier, which exploded into a sunburst of light. I had built it to be merely light and not also heat, a better model, I think, than the fireworks of Earth. I pulled another from my cloak, threw it to the ground, and watched as the image of a unicorn burst from it, dazzling the crowd as it dashed between them, an apparition and nothing more. After lapping the center, it returned to the charm, which I picked up. I asked John to return, and I thought about what I would do next.
I heard Robin tell me, “I may have found someone. Here, let me give you some sight.” Before I could protest, I was looking through one of Robin’s eyes and one of my own, which was quite disconcerting. I closed the eye connected to my own vision, and looked through Robin’s. He was looking at a wizard, quite a well done cosplay, perhaps too well done. He was staring attentively at me, but not the same way as the others. He wasn’t awed, or surprised, just kinda wide-eyed, like he couldn’t believe someone else was here. I nodded, prepared for vertigo, and opened my other eye.
After a moment, I noticed the position of the wizard. I noted him in my mind, noted where he was, and whispered to Robin to disconnect us. My vision was yanked back to my own perspective, which was nice, and I prepared my next bit. Everyone was still oohing and aahing at my magic, and so I decided to have a little fun. 
“You there!” my voice boomed, my finger pointed at the wizard. He panicked, and I quickly said, “No, please, come on up. I won’t hurt you, I just want another person for my next part. John was lovely, but you look like you know some real magic!” I laughed, and the audience laughed as well. He was pushed forward, and reluctantly got up on stage. 
“Now, what is your name?” I asked him, which was the polite way to go about things, I believed.
He glared at me, and responded, “I am Thuzhal, a wizard banished to this realm for many heinous acts.”
“Ooh, nice backstory. I like it! What kinds of acts?” I replied enthusiastically.
He sighed, and said, “Well, people don’t really ask me, so I say they’re heinous. I was just kinda messing around and apparently broke something important, and so I was magically exiled. I was trying to figure out how to get back in, looking through probably forbidden texts, when I tried a spell to return me to the place so I could undo my exile, but it instead sent me across dimensions and I ended up on this technology-ridden, climate-changed planet.”
I clapped, and people in the audience followed my example. “I like that! Gives you an objective, something dark, and just enough flare of mystery. Now, my good sir, I am also not from around here. I was transported here when I tried to figure out the true magical nature of my staff, here-” I gestured at the staff I had leaned against a wall, yes, obviously the one topped with the spider, “-and found myself in a cornfield in Illinois! Naturally, I was confused, as corn does not exist in my world, and I did not know that I had changed dimensions. Now, my man, I believe we can help each other! You know magic and magical items, and I have my staff! Now, for my demonstration…” I decided to try a little something. I pulled out my blades, and concentrated on making them visible, but slightly out of sync with Earth. The sword blades usually became invisible when phased, but I did my best to keep that from happening. 
The blades flickered, trying to change dimensions, but I did my best. Eventually, they came into full view, but I passed them gently through my hand to make sure they weren’t physical. I then whirled and, similarly to what I did with John, tried to swing it through the wizard’s neck. However, he was also armed, and so tried to block my attack, which obviously failed. My blade passed straight through him, and he retaliated, swinging a small dagger at me with ferocity and a wild look in his eyes. From the way he handled his blade, I could tell he wasn’t experienced. This was going to end quickly, luckily, I thought, and parried his frenzied swing. 
With a series of quick swipes, jabs, kicks, and punches, I disarmed the wizard and sent him to his knees. “Look, man, I didn’t want this to happen. I’m sorry for swinging at you, but it was part of the demonstration. You can get up and help me, or leave, alone, stuck here, probably never to return to your home. Which would you prefer?”
Thuzhal considered my words, and grudgingly got to his feet. I handed him his dagger, which appeared to be made of mithril, and smiled. 
“Good, now let’s get out of here. I’m not even supposed to be demonstrating anything here, I just got up on stage and nobody stopped me for whatever reason.” I deactivated my microphone-like charm, and told Robin, “Come on, let’s go.”
He ran into a door, and quickly joined me. I surveyed the crowd, which was full of whispers, no doubt about me and what I had just said. I jumped down, followed by Thuzhal and Robin, and we pushed past the crowd, out of the door, and ran a block before slowing to a walk. We returned to our motel, and I was happy we had managed to complete our goal for that day.
10
“I’m afraid we may have a problem,” Thuzhal said, walking into the bedroom.
“What kind of problem?” I asked, a little surprised by his sudden entrance and a little frustrated that he couldn’t immediately solve all of our problems.
He winced at the strength of my words, and responded, “Well, I know what kind of magic it uses, and I can partially control it. However, I cannot control the exact dimension. I can make it so that we don’t end up places we can’t survive, like in the vastness of space, or on a planet where the air is poisonous. We will have to travel many worlds until we either get lucky and end up in the right one, or find someone who can use your energy signatures to lock onto our universe. Will that work?”
I thought about it, looked over at Robin, who was sitting cross-legged on his bed, and looked back at Thuzhal. “Well, I guess we don’t really have a choice, so let’s go with that. Do we have any idea how long this will take?”
Thuzhal grinned, and said loudly, “Nope!”
I sighed, and replied, “Well, pack your bags. Might as well get right on down to it.”
*
We packed the gear we wanted to bring with us, which included some probably illegal items. It has been neglected to mention that these items included two assault rifles, lots of ammo, a couple grenades, a few other guns, including a sniper rifle and a pistol (of course we also had plenty of those ammos as well, and I intended to get a blacksmith or something to break them open and figure out how to make them and potentially augment them/the gun.). There were others, but I shouldn’t really mention them.
We gathered behind the motel, in the parking lot, after checking out and getting our stuff all ready. I readied myself for what was about to happen, planted the staff at arm’s length in front of me, and Robin and Thuzhal both grabbed it. After exchanging grim looks with both of them, I grabbed the spider, and it did the same thing as the previous time we used it, though the eyes seemed to glow brighter and the wind seemed stronger. I closed my eyes, and wondered what would happen on the other side, just before I lost consciousness.
11
When I returned to consciousness, I was confused. The sky was a pastel purple, with red dots swirling through it. It seemed like some kind of strange dream, and its colors were chaos. The ground was some kind of acid green, and there were portable toilets everywhere. They were in every shade, from green to blue to pink to yellow. I closed my eyes, as I felt a migraine coming on. I shaded my eyes and reopened them, looking at the ground for Robin and Thuzhal. I found Thuzhal covering his eyes, peeking through his fingers at the landscape, and Robin was still passed out on the ground. Oh, and, by the way, Thuzhal is a human. 
“This is a strange world you have brought us to, elf,” he told me, and I followed his gaze. I had originally thought that the toilets were just sitting there, but as I really looked at them, I saw that they were moving. There was even a small village, made of what I couldn’t say, as there wasn’t a tree or rock around. Even the ground itself was a deep green, and made of a substance I couldn’t make out. It was smooth, and I could push my hand through it, like a partial liquid. It was strange, as none of us were sinking into it, but it didn’t seem like good building material. The toilets weren’t walking, or splitting apart in any way, but just seemed to glide, all of which seemed very strange and impossible to me. When they came to a step, they seemed like they just jumped, but with no downward movement to create thrust upward, if that makes sense.
“Let’s… explore?” I said hesitantly, and Thuzhal strode toward the settlement. I followed him, after a moment’s consideration, and dragged Robin behind me. When we got closer, we could see that it was made of some kind of wood, and so I guessed that they had just taken down any trees in view. It seemed similar to a Wild West town, minus the dust everywhere, horses, natural colors, or people. I was quite unnerved, and moved close to one of the johns.
“Uh… hello?” I said (asked?) hesitantly. It’s door turned to me, and it seemed to make an annoyed, squishy sound from within it. 
“Do you guys have any wizards or magic folk at all?” I asked it. It moved toward me, making angry sounds from within it, and I backed away. “I don’t think it likes the sound of ‘wizard’.” It moved faster, squishing louder, and other toilets started coming over. I pulled Robin into a fireman’s carry on my back, and readied one of my blades. 
“We should get out of here, Thuzhal,” I told him, and he nodded, his eyes frantic. I turned and ran, but there were toilets everywhere.
“No time! We have to do it here!” I shouted, and he grabbed the staff. I shrugged Robin forward and held his hand around the pole, and grabbed the arachnid on top.
*
When I awoke, I simply lay there. I didn’t really want to open my eyes and find out where we had landed, but I suppose it would have to happen eventually. I slowly opened my eyes, and squinted at the bright light coming from the sun… suns? There were two shining orbs in the sky, one more yellow-y, and one more orange-y. It was very hot, and the ground was grainy. When I looked at the landscape, I saw that we were in a large desert of sand, and there were a couple houses in the distance. It looked like about midday, but I couldn’t be sure how long the day lasted, so it would be best to start moving. I got to my feet, and noticed that both Thuzhal and Robin were still passed out.
“Hey,” I said, shaking Robin. He stirred, and started moving. I moved over to Thuzhal, and patted his shoulder.
“Wakey, wakey, time to get up sleepyhead,” I told Thuzhal, and his eyes snapped open, then quickly shut.
“Where are we, and why is it so bright?” Thuzhal said, and Robin nodded in agreement.
I shrugged. “I’m not sure, but there are some houses over there, we can ask them. I hope it goes better this time than last time.”
Robin looked confused. He held up a finger, and said, “Last time? Do you mean Earth?”
I was also confused for a second, before I remembered that Robin had been asleep the previous dimension.
“Well, we travelled dimensions, and you know how we always fall unconscious when we do that? Well, you were asleep while Thuzhal and I almost died from sentient Porta-Potties.”
This only served to bewilder him even more, and I described the events that had taken place in the strange, colorful dimension.
“Anyway,” I said, finishing up, “we should get moving. We aren’t going to kill ourselves, after all!”
With that lovely remark, we started walking toward the houses. It was extremely hot, hotter than Calimport, even hotter than California in summer. I didn’t know how people handled it, but then I thought, perhaps the people here are different and more adapted to this environment. 
After probably 15 minutes, we got to the houses. They were strange, quite small and kinda dome-like, circular, with person-height walls and a sloped, domed kinda roof. It was similarly colored as the sand, probably so that it could blend in, though the satellite dish looking thing on top of it kinda ruined the effect. It was silvery, and very much did not blend in.
“Sh-should we go in?” I asked tentatively, and Thuzhal marched forward, grinning. “Um, is that a yes?”
“I recognize this place!” he said in response, and knocked on the first door. I rushed toward him, but it was too late.
“HOW, exactly can you recognize this? You’ve never been here! You were directly transported to-” A thought rushed into my mind, causing me to stop in my tracks. “It’s like Faerûn, huh? Someone came from this world, or travelled here, and made a story or whatever based on this place?”
He slowly nodded, and simply replied, “Star Wars.”
*
The door opened, sliding to one side, and a man came out. I hadn’t seen a lot about Star Wars, but there were a lot of cosplayers at Comic-Con that I had recognized as probably being from this universe. The person that opened the door looked like Obi-Wan, except his hair was black. I blinked, for, while it was true I didn’t know much about Star Wars (already mentioned, but it makes this sentence flow better. Shut up, stupid), I knew that: 1. He wasn’t supposed to be on Tatooine until much later, when he looked old with white hair, or something, and 2. His hair was brown, not black. All of this was very confusing, especially once Qui Gon Jinn walked past, asking, “Who is it, honey?”
“U… u-um, I’m Alushtas, and these are Robin and Thuzhal,” I stammered, my eyes searching for answers I doubted I would easily find.
“Ah, hello! What lovely and strange names! What can I do for you?” he asked nicely, and I looked at my companions. 
“Uh, can we come in? I think we need to talk to you,” I said kinda randomly, for I was still very confused and needed to figure out what was happening.
He smiled, and ushered us in. “Honey, come meet our guests!” he said, and Qui Gon walked back in.
I looked back and forth between the two men, and I asked Obi-Wan, “Why does he keep calling you ‘honey’?”
They looked at each other and smiled, and Obi-Wan told me, “Well, we were dating for a while, but then this wonderful man approached me, what, probably almost a year and a half ago, and proposed to me! Of course, I said yes, and we’ve been living here ever since, happier than ever!” Qui Gon came over and hugged Obi-Wan deeply, and the two men sat down on a couch, holding hands. 
Thuzhal looked confused as well, though I had realized that this was not the normal Star Wars universe I knew, and the wizard asked, “Where is Luke? I thought he lived here.”
“Well, yes, he has, but once he married his spouse, they’ve been travelling the galaxy. Would you like some blue milk?”
“Uh, sure,” I said, and Obi-Wan waved his hand. A glass came over to me, as if by magic, and I sipped it warily. It was good, similar to Earth milk, but more coconut-y. 
“Soooo, who has Luke married, anyway?” I asked Qui Gon, taking a longer drink from my glass.
“Oh, he ran off with that hooligan, Han Solo, for a bit, but he came back eventually, and told me they were getting married. I was shocked, for it seemed sudden, but they were happy, and so we gave them our blessing,” he replied, and I, suddenly realizing something, asked another question (we really wanted to ask questions, I guess), “So what happened to Chewbacca?”
“Ah, good old Chew. They are going around the galaxy, exploring, happy by themselves. They liked Han, but they always felt less, you know? They are very introverted, and just like to explore. They find people difficult to understand, and they’ve told me that everyone just goes too quickly for them. Last I heard, they were going to Coruscant, which is nice.”
“Mhm. Anyway, you guys haven’t mastered inter-dimensional travel yet, have you?” I asked, realizing that, while cool, this place wasn’t really gonna help us.
“Unfortunately, that project was shut down because of its possible repercussions and side effects and all that,” he told me, “did you need something like that?”
I shrugged, and said, “Yeah, it would’ve been nice, but I think we might be able to manage. We should be going, though. Thank you, both of you, for everything.”
Qui Gon smiled at us, and asked, “Are you sure you want to leave? We’d be happy for you to stay.”
I sadly smiled back at him, and replied, “Yeah, we need to go.”
We said our goodbyes, and left. When we were out of sight of the house, it was probably about midnight.
“Well guys? Shall we?” I said, holding out the spider-adorned staff.
*
We travelled through many more dimensions, probably more than I could ever describe. As we travelled, and got used to dimension-hopping, we slept for less and less time, and eventually simply got tired, and then slightly dizzy.
Something that I have talked about, but not really explained, was that Earth was a Chaos realm. This means that both magic and technology work there, though there are other realms in which magic works and tech doesn’t, ones where tech works and magic doesn’t, and ones where neither work. However, this is a flawed perspective. It is one described by wizards of old in my world (yes, interdimensional travel isn’t completely unknown back home in Faerun), and their experiences in other realms. 
This is flawed for a couple reasons. It isn’t so simple as just ‘technology and magic, or one, or neither’. Magic can take many forms, and magic that works in one place doesn’t necessarily work in another. In the Star Wars-like world, there were Jedi that could manipulate objects using their mind and what they called the Force, which seems to be a type of magic. Meanwhile, my own magic could have been unstable or unusable, because it is a different world than mine. Similarly, magic could exist on Earth, though its inhabitants didn’t usually have it, leading to unpredictable results. I was lucky that only a couple of my charms failed or had issues, and not more of them. There were many other forms of magic, but to go into detail would take too long.
Technology is also a difficult thing to pin down. It’s basically just the application of knowledge for practical purposes, and so almost anything creature-made could be said to be technology. Again, some technology could function in some places, but not in others. Some steampunk worlds, for instance, couldn’t ‘fathom’ the existence of further innovation, like cars or computers. Other worlds were stuck in the Stone Age, and in some, not even bird’s nests could be made. I am not sure what would happen if one tried to make a bird’s nest in that world, but I had decided not to find out.
As we went along in our journey, I collected items. I wanted mementos of our travels, and hey, they might be useful in the future. Unfortunately, I wasn’t always able to pick things up, whether because of being chased by the inhabitants of the world or something else (and if you’re wondering if I took something from the Star Wars world, yes, I palmed a handle-looking thing with a button from a counter). This led to some fights, some running, and some pain. Still, I wanted certain items, like I think one was called a “Babel fish”, which allowed me to understand others, no matter what language they spoke. 
Something that I realized was that no matter where we went, some items were still able to be used. I eventually figured out that it was because they were dimensional items, which transcended some of the ordinary rules of the realms. We started with two - the staff itself, which is a good thing, because otherwise we would’ve ended up stranded on a random world. The other was my Vorpal blades, which was nice, because I liked them. However, the realm we received the third (and fourth and fifth?) dimensional item(s) was very… strange…
 *
We had come from a world of robots. There wasn’t a single human, elf, dog, orc, sentient species of any kind, or really any organic being that we found. Everything was automated, and seemed as though there had once been people, but then they had left, potentially leaving the robots there to keep things up until they returned. However, we realized that it was unlikely, if not impossible, that a machine could bring us home, rather than magic. Therefore, we left pretty quickly, though not before I got a small bracelet that had nanotech that could form a dagger in my hand in a millisecond, which could be quite useful.
When we arrived in the new realm, we found ourselves in a smallish room. There was a bed of flowers, yellow flowers, illuminated by a fairly dim light coming through a hole in the ceiling of the room. Actually, it seemed more like a cave, though we couldn’t really be completely sure. There was a hallway, or corridor, or whatever to our right. We went through it, and found a doorway.
We went through it, and walked through a system of rooms, some of which had puzzles, and traps, though none of them actually hurt us (well, except for Robin, who got a sprained ankle after falling through some leaves). We saw beings, some might call them monsters or abominations, which had very strange physical makeups. This wasn’t really uncommon for us to see, because of everywhere we had already been, but weird stuff is weird. One had a large eye as most of its body, and another looked similar to a frog. They ran from us, so we didn’t have to worry about fighting them, and when we got to the end of the rooms, we came to a small house.
We tentatively opened the door, and found the house deserted (or at least visibly so, and nobody came to the door to see who was there). There were stairs leading down to what I assumed was a basement right in front of us, a living room looking area to our left, and a hallway to our right. It seemed like an odd way to set up a house, but again, lots of places were quite queer (in both senses of the term). 
Anyway, we entered the living room. There was a table with chairs, bookshelves with books on them - “How to Cook Snails, Snail Basics, Meals with Snails?” -, and an armchair in front of a fireplace, fire included, which seemed like a fire hazard, but whatever. We didn’t find anyone, so we went through the door leading out of the room (not the one we entered).
We were in a kitchen, which seemed normal, except the stove didn’t work, there was white fur in the sink, and a pie on the counter. There was a faint smell of pie crust and cinnamon in the air, and I took a slice for later, in case I might want it (hey, I’m a thief, what would you expect, perfect morals?). We went back to the first room, and entered the hall.
There were three doors, two of which were bedrooms. We decided not to explore them, though one looked more like a child’s bedroom and one like an adult’s. The third was locked, however, and had a sign that read, ‘Room under Renovations’. Because there was no more of the house to explore, we went down the stairs to the basement.
There wasn’t really an actual basement, as far as we could tell. It was a long hallway, which, after walking the entirety of, showed us a doorway, similar to the one at the entrance, which we went through, as we didn’t want to walk back. We found ourselves in some kind of snowy, forest-y area, though, when we looked up to the sky, we could faintly see a cavern roof.
I’ll spare you the details, but basically, we went through this region, a very wet, cave-like region, and a very hot area. In the hot area, we came across a laboratory, which we chose to go into. It had a large video screen, seemingly inactive, though I couldn’t tell its use. As we continued walking through the building, we saw a cluttered desk, a bag of dog food(?), and a dark hole in the wall. When we got to the hole, the door to a bathroom hitherto unseen opened, and a tall lizard woman (?) came out. She looked quite surprised to see us, but hurried over nonetheless. 
“More humans? This is quite unusual… umm… hello? Who are you?” she asked hesitantly.
“I am Alushtas, and I am not a human… which I only tell you because I don’t know why. I am an elf, This is Robin, he’s a human, and Thuzhal, whose race I never actually found out, I think,” I responded.
“And I would prefer to keep it that way,” Thuzhal said, smiling and extending his hand toward the person. “And you are…?”
“Oh!” She blushed furiously. “M-my name is A-alphys, and I’m the-the royal scientist for King Asgore.”
“Oh, that’s cool. Do you guys have any, you know…, magic?” I asked Alphys. We seemed to do a lot of questioning in these worlds, and not much else.
“K-kinda, we have magical a-attacks and the like, and fire magic, and probably other kinds.”
“Oh.” I must’ve looked really sad, because she immediately responded with, “B-but that’s okay! Here, I can improve your phones! You… don’t… have phones? Um, I can get you phones!”
She rushed upstairs up an escalator, then quickly came down another closer to the entrance. She was holding three small objects, which I assumed was a phone, and hoped her word for phone meant the same thing it meant for me, because it could be useful. It seemed that way, so yay.
“Here! I have a phone for each of you! Y-yes, I had them l-laying around… anyway, they can text, access the internet wherever, access special Dimensional Boxes, defuse bombs, and activate a jetpack! Here, t-take them!”
We each took a phone, and I immediately checked out the Dimensional Boxes. They each had space for 8 items, seemingly no matter the size, which didn’t make sense, but whatever. There were 3 boxes, which was nice, so I didn’t have to worry about 24 items taking up space in my Bag of Holding. 
“Sweet, thank you!” I said, and she blushed again. “Oh, don’t worry, I just like helping people! S-speaking of which, there was this human that came through a bit ago. Have y-you seen them? I think Toriel is coming after them, and I’m a b-bit worried.”
Thuzhal and I exchanged looks as Robin looked between us. “No, we haven’t seen anybody except a couple dudes back at that purple place,” I told her, and her eyes widened.
“O-oh! You n-need to go… I’m s-sorry I can’t help more! Now, g-get out of here!”
She pushed us out of a back door, while I protested and tried to ask her about dimensional travelling. She didn’t listen to me, and locked the door after us.
“Well, now what? Do we go after the human? Do we go see the king? Do we leave? What do you dudes think?” I asked, looking at Robin and Thuzhal, whose backs were to the lab. 
“I think I can help!” a cheery voice said from behind. I whirled around, dagger forming in my hand. A little yellow flower had popped up from the ground, and it had a face which was smiling at us.
“I’m sorry, who are you?” Thuzhal asked, suspicious of the small being.
“I’m Flowey! Flowey the flower! You were just talking to that overgrown lizard, huh? Don’t listen to her, she doesn’t know what she’s talking about!” the golden flower told us.
“Um, she seemed nice, while you were insulting her. Not really the way to play the ‘nice guy’ card,” Robin interjected.
Flowey gave a wide smile, and said, “Oh, sorry. We all insult her, ‘cause she’s senile and ignorant of the world. Even nice old King Asgore cracks jokes about her!”
By this point, I was very unsettled, but decided to humor Flowey. “So, you said you can help us. How?”
“Easy! The rules down here are simple. You k i l l, o r   y o u   b e   k i l l e d.” As he spoke, his face grew ugly, into a mixture of a smile and a look of utter hatred. He sent little white bullets at us, which we tried to dodge, but some still hit us. They really hurt, and it felt like my life force itself was being sapped. I swung my dagger at him, but he popped back into the ground and back up a bit further on.
“Hope you guys have fun! See ya later!” he said, smiling, and vanished into the ground.
“That… was horrible,” I said, and both of my companions nodded. 
“We should leave and never return.” Again, they nodded.
I pulled out the staff from my Bag, held it out, and we did our thing. However, as we began to flicker out of the strange, underground world, none of us noticed the edge of a flower root curling around the base of the staff.
wasn’t really sure how to say that Flowey was comin with the gang (obv without them wanting hiim to :P) with the exact wording, so I used ‘flower root’, but I am open to suggestions or changes if you think soething should change. It mgiht not, because I know hwere this is going and you don’t, but you coudl definitely help!
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simonjadis · 4 years
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Anon I’m ASSUMING that these are from the same person; apologies if they are not
I would say that my feelings are similar to yours, but not quite identical ...
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Disney’s handling has been imperfect, and some of the mistakes have been made the highest level (I know that people give Kathleen Kennedy a hard time, but if rumor is to be believed, some of the interference that made IX kind of weird came from higher than that)
for example, Kennedy said in an interview that she tries to find people who just make big, successful movies to make sure that these are also big, successful movies. I can understand that as being a safe bet from a business stand point, but that’s not the same thing as finding someone passionate about very specifically telling good, new Star Wars stories, which we did not really get in the Sequel Trilogy
(one of the most common theories that I saw from TLJ apologists was that people didn’t like that it was new/different than what they were expecting, which was really not the issue for me or my friends. Also it was just a speedrun of parts of Episodes V and VI)
I think that I’m “too close” to Star Wars to see it as a financial asset rather than a beloved universe full of characters and stories that I adore, but I don’t think that “literally just rehash the Original Trilogy for two movies and barely acknowledge any other part of Star Wars until IX” was a good idea
Rey deserved her own story. and Luke deserved to not be retroactively robbed of his
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as for George Lucas, I do think that years of backlash over the Prequels sucked the fun out of it for him. Also, who doesn’t want four billion dollars? it was a sweetheart deal for Disney, of course
the sad thing is that this meant the end of Clone Wars, because Disney took one look at Lucasfilm’s budget and was like “OH NO YOU CANNOT SPEND THAT KIND OF MONEY ON A CARTOON” which is why Season 6 was paid for by Netflix and why Maul: Son of Dathomir was a comic
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I love Star Wars Rebels and I’m not trying to knock the show at all, but the budgetary difference was palpable. Clone Wars did have it a little easier because of the Clone Troopers (all having the same face), but on Rebels, you notice that 90% of the Imperials are the same guy wearing a hat with his visor obscuring most of his face. market scenes show just a few people (but plenty of Storm Troopers)
the designs of the main characters -- Ezra, Hera, Sabine, Zeb, Kallus, Thrawn, Kanan, etc -- are great and loving and detailed and most of those change a little over time, but there’s a reason that we only see so many planets on Rebels. look at the huge armies and crowds in Rebels. my friend @drunkkenobi​ is the first who pointed out to me that in Clone Wars, you sometimes see lines of ships (Space Traffic) and each ship in line will be unique, distinct from the others
it’s not Rebels’ fault that they didn’t have that kind of budget. that’s also why their space battles (and space ships) never quite look right. meanwhile, for Clone Wars, if they wanted a particular scene or ship that went over their planned budget, all that they had to do was ask Uncle George
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eccentric billionaires funding expensive media isn’t necessarily the most sustainable model for storytelling, but it sure worked out well for Clone Wars and for The Expanse
(Jeff Bezos personally called up the head of Amazon Prime programming, who had already been considering acquiring the extremely good but expensive show, and was like “hey the cast from this show is at a thing where I am, I’d love to just tell them that their show is saved, give me it?” and we saw as many new locations in Season 4 as we did in the first three seasons)
but streaming -- where you actually get money directly from customers who then, through their activity on your platform, show you exactly what they want to see aka what is keeping them on your platform -- offers a new opportunity for high quality genre media. remember, scifi and fantasy were EVERYWHERE in the ‘90s and the early aughts, and then because too expensive for regular TV unless they had huge audiences. only through streaming do we have these new Star Treks, The Witcher, and the real possibility of a new Stargate series
why do I bring up streaming? because
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The Mandalorian goes to show that Disney can 100% do good Star Wars. Rebels was good, despite its budget, but can you imagine how much better it would have been if it had aired on Disney+
as with the DC movies (three of which are good and I’m also excited for Birds of Prey), the solution to the our-movies-made-a-lot-of-money-but-aren’t-strictly-speaking-good is literally just “let the people who do the cartoons make the movies”
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and now we’re getting a final, seventh (half) season of Clone Wars! twelve episodes looking better than the show has ever looked!!
if you’re like me, you probably thought to yourself “gee, only 12?” and, cynically, you figured that it’s a trick -- announced at ComicCon in 2018 to build up the first wave of hype for Disney+
and it is ... but it 100% worked on me, I signed up for Disney+ and will pay anything for Clone War
my HOPE is that this is a test run to see if people really like high-quality animated Star Wars stories enough to continue with it. there’s only so much clone wars that one can cover (my suspicion is that we will see Ahsoka fake her death during Order 66 in these eps, so yep, that’s the end of the Clone Wars right there)
imagine a well-written series with everything that Clone Wars had in terms of content and visual quality, but it’s set after Episode IX. to my frustration, IX ends with effectively the same worldstate as VI which essentially means that nothing much happened in the Sequel Trilogy. but imagine a series set after IX. we could see a new set of (Force-wielding) characters. we could see Rey, Finn, Poe, and Rose during some episodes. Rose could finally get to do something that’s not an insulting fool’s errand (she deserves so much better!!!!!)
we don’t need a new Big Scary Empire/First Order thing, just organized crime and pirates and Hutts and bounty hunters and individual planet systems going to war as the characters try to assemble a NEW New Republic (gods I hate the unchanged worldstate)
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now, I know that Star Wars Resistance is not ... reassuring. this is the only screencap that I have from it because I couldn’t get into it. it’s not the animation (I enjoyed Tron Uprising and Iron Man: Armored Adventures and this is the same kind of deal), but three things:
-I watch Star Wars for the Force primarily; other stuff can be cool but I need the Force
-I will never care about ships racing and really I don’t care about an individual ship flying; I’m a Command Ship kind of space nerd
-apparently the writing doesn’t improve much during the first season. people tell the main character to not do something, then he does it, and disaster ensues. that’s ... it’s fine, it’s fine to exist as a show, it’s just not for me
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obviously, not all Star Wars media is for me, but when something -- like TLJ or the Sequel Series as a whole (even though VII and IX are enjoyable) or Resistance -- disappoints me, I would never accuse it of “ruining Star Wars”
Star Wars is a whole franchise. the breadth of canon isn’t all wiped away by some disappointments. was the MCU ruined by Age of Ultron? no. it was a bad movie but from the same franchise that gave us The Winter Soldier and Thor Ragnarok. hell, Dawn of Justice doesn’t “ruin” Wonder Woman or Aquaman or Shazam. bad movies aren’t contagious
for the past several years, the Entitled Dude crowd has felt empowered. they were radicalized in the altright/redpill/MGTOW/meninist/nazi/gamergate/comicsgate/etc spheres of the internet and now they just have a reflex where they see any sort of representation and decry it as “SJW,” which they also seem to think is a bad thing
in the same way that well-meaning people on tumblr can get radicalized into being antis/puriteens, people with certain vulnerabilities on reddit or youtube can get sucked into a world that tells them that they are the default and that other people existing is “political” in media and in real life, and that people being upset by outright cruelty towards them is both funny and means that the cruel person is the victor. they need therapy and studios need to not listen to them
unfortunately, sometimes there are movies that are bad despite having things like solid representation. Ghostbusters 2016 was a delight, but my friends and I with whom I saw TLJ (all of us queer feminists) left the theater angry. we’ve bitten our tongues a lot (even if it seems otherwise) because publicly criticizing the film too often leads some incel monster to chime in with agreement, and we’re just like
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the redpillgate crowed et all is a natural ally of conservative white evangelicals, even though the former group is generally made up of New Atheists (the short version is atheists who hold socially conservative views because racism/misogyny/transphobia benefit them without using christianity as an excuse). it’s kind of like how terfs will side with conservative hate groups because, though they’re natural enemies, they both despite trans people just for existing
unfortunately, when you’re looking at who went to see a movie or who hated it, not everyone posts with an ID card saying exactly their demographic. which is only going to make studios like Disney even more nervous about including queer content in Star Wars and in the MCU (I mean real queer content with characters whose names don’t have to be searched on a wiki)
that was a bit of a tangent, but yeah. sorry if I missed anything
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lady-hammerlock · 5 years
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Through the Looking Glass - Chapter Seven (Telltale Batjokes & DC Comics Crossover)
AN: Hi everyone! The next couple of chapters are going to be a little bit different. You may notice that this chapter only deals with what's happening in the comic book universe. Similarly, the next chapter is only going to cover events in the Telltale universe. It was just an easier way to break things up for this particular section.
Also, I didn't intend for this to be JayDick but feel free to read it as such, or as completely platonic/brotherly if you prefer. Its up to you guys. :)
Thank you all for continued support, and all of your kind comments! I'm terrible at replying to them, but they make my day, and they make writing this sort of thing absolutely worth it. 
CHAPTER SEVEN
Jason and Dick were already waiting in the Batcave when Bruce and John arrived. Dick was in civilian gear; jeans and a dark blue t-shirt, which probably meant he wasn’t taking any of this too seriously and didn’t consider John a threat. It was harder to tell with Jason. He wasn’t wearing his helmet, but that was pretty much the only difference between what he was currently wearing and what he would wear if he was ‘working’.
It was hard for Bruce to tell how much he and John should be on their guard. He was hoping that things would go relatively smoothly, but he was still fully prepared for the eventuality that he would have to physically defend John from his two allies.
Bruce indicated for John to stay in the Batmobile, stepping out first to meet his two protégés.
“Hey Bruce,” Dick said, immediately taking up a place leaning against the Batmobile’s hood.
“Sup old man,” Jason added, his hands shoved in his pockets and his eyes not meeting Bruce’s own.
“So,” Dick said, drawing the word out far longer than he needed to. “We heard a rumor…”
“Where the hell is he?” Jason snapped, interrupting Dick.
Bruce looked to Dick, who at least had the decency to look embarrassed on Jason’s behalf.
“Who?” Bruce replied, trying to gauge the level of Jason’s anger as much as stall for time, while he tried to think of a way to stop this all from going to hell.
“The Joker,” Jason said, spitting out the name as though it was poison in his mouth.
Bruce couldn’t blame him. If anyone had a reason to hate the Joker then it was Jason. Still, all of this would be so much easier if Jason could just keep that hatred in check for a short while.
“I’m assuming Oracle told you?” Bruce asked.
“Of course,” Jason replied. “Babs isn’t in the habit of hiding important shit like this from her friends. Unlike someone I could name.”
Jason pointed an accusing finger into Bruce’s chest. Bruce did not flinch or back down at all.
He glanced over at Dick, who was being almost suspiciously quiet. The younger man’s eyes had gone to the passenger side of the Batmobile. Clearly he was just waiting for John to emerge.
“It’s not true though right?” Jason said, approaching Bruce with his hands balled into fists at his side. “You’re not helping him, are you Bruce?”
“Things are more complicated than you might think,” Bruce began.
Jason wasn’t willing to give Bruce time to finish explaining though.
“Damn it Bruce!” he screamed. “All of those times you let him live or saved his life or chose to go easy on him? I looked the other way then, but actually helping him? What the hell are you playing at?”
“John needs our help!” Bruce snapped back before he could stop himself.
Within seconds Dick was insinuating himself between the two of them, his hands reaching out to land on either of their chests. Bruce hadn’t realized how close he and Jason had gotten to each other in their anger until Dick was pushing the two of them apart.
“Okay, let’s just talk this through for a moment,” Dick said. “Remember what Babs said Jay?”
“He’s not…” Bruce said, meaning to explain to Dick and Jason that John was a far cry from the Joker that they were used to; kinder, more vulnerable and in desperate need of their help, but he didn’t get very far, because at that moment he heard the door of the Batmobile opening, and the next thing he knew John was approaching the three of them with a wide smile that was so obviously forced it was painful.
Bruce took a step back, away from Jason and away from Dick’s hand.
“John, this is Jason and Dick,” he said. “Dick, Jason, this is John Doe.”
Bruce saw Jason mouth the name at Dick, as though he didn’t quite believe it was really the other man’s name, or perhaps found it, for whatever reason, at least a little amusing. Dick wasn’t watching Jason though. He was just looking over at John with wide eyes.
“How much has Alfred told you?” Bruce asked.
“Only that he doesn’t approve of any of it and that he thinks the entire endeavor is absolutely ridiculous,” Dick replied, grinning as he did. “But that at least John is polite and hasn’t threatened to kill anyone yet, so that’s a plus. Al said that it was probably better if you explained the rest of it to us. I get the feeling he isn’t buying into whatever’s going on quite as much as you are Bruce.”
“John’s from a parallel universe and managed to accidentally switch places with our own version of the Joker,” Bruce said. “He hasn’t been any threat at all so far, and just wants our help to get home. I see no reason why I shouldn’t give it.”
“Maybe because then we’d be bringing that arsehole of a clown back to our… Hey!” Jason went silent as Dick elbowed him none too gently in the ribs.
“It’s okay,” John said. “From what Bruce has told me the other me was absolutely awful. Don’t worry. I’m not like him at all. I promise.”
“And as much as I’m sure you’d all like to keep John here rather than go back to our version of the Joker, we are going to help him get back to his own world, whether you like it or not,” Bruce said.
Jason continued to cross his arms and frown in Bruce’s direction, but Bruce had a feeling that no matter what he did, Jason wouldn’t be warming up to John any time soon.
Dick however was now openly smiling, and he approached John with that smile still on its face.
“So it is true huh?” he said, grabbing hold of John’s hand and shaking it enthusiastically. “A version of the Joker that isn’t totally evil. That’s crazy.”
Bruce wasn’t sure what was more worrying; Jason’s anger or Dick’s enthusiasm.
--
John had to assume that the two men in front of him were good guys. After all, they wouldn’t have been allowed in the Batcave unless Batman trusted them.
“Hi,” the newcomer said, sticking out a hand for John to shake. “I’m Richard Grayson but my friends call me Dick.”
“I’m John,” John replied, shaking Dick’s hand somewhat cautiously. At least this guy seemed friendly. “John Doe.”
“Really?” Dick exclaimed. “Not even any snarky comments about my name. Although, that probably makes sense considering people are probably making fun of yours all the time. Which I promise I won’t do, by the way. Oh my god!”
The younger man turned around to face Bruce again. Dick seemed overjoyed to meet John, for reasons that John hadn’t quite worked out yet.
“Bruce, this is incredible!” Dick exclaimed.
Bruce shrugged, and Dick, whose hand was still holding John’s own, turned back to face him once more.
“So then, is Batman evil in your universe?” he asked.
“What?” John replied. “What!? No. Batman is amazing, and the best person ever. There’s no way he could ever be evil.”
“Am I evil then?” Dick asked, still sounding incredibly excited.
“I… I don’t know,” John replied honestly. “I don’t think we’ve ever met.”
It was at that moment that Bruce’s hand descended on Dick’s shoulder, pulling him a few feet back from John and giving him a little more personal space.
“John’s been through a lot over the past few days,” Bruce said. “Give him room to breathe.”
“No, it’s all right,” John tried to argue. Honestly he was just glad to finally meet someone in this universe who was friendly, and who hadn’t freaked out as soon as he had seen John. “He seems nice. And he’s your…?”
Brother? Son? Crime-fighting partner? Lover?
John wasn’t sure which one he was expecting, or which one he wanted this version of Bruce to say. They all seemed equally likely to him, although really, Bruce didn’t look nearly old enough to have a pair of fully grown sons.
“Why the hell would you be evil in John’s universe?” Jason interjected, looking at Dick as though he thought he was being an absolute idiot.
“It sounds like John is Batman’s ally in his own world,” Dick said. “So if the Joker is his sidekick then maybe his sidekicks, aka us, are evil.”
“That’s fucking stupid,” Jason said.
It sounded like Jason was calming down at least. And well, maybe Bruce hadn’t answered the question, but John had an answer now at least. Sidekicks. Dick and Jason were his sidekicks, or allies, or… something like that. Only a teensy, tiny reason for him to be jealous and not a ridiculously big one. He was sure that he could get along with these two well enough. Assuming at least that Jason wasn’t going to try and kill him.
Batman had already left the three of them behind, and had walked over to the Batcomputer. They’d left the Looking Glass by it while they had visited Tetch in Arkham, and Batman sat down, roughly tugging the cowl off before picking up the Looking Glass and inspecting it.
John was torn between continuing to talk to Jason and Dick or running over to help Bruce out with whatever it was he was doing.
“Be careful with that,” John said. The last thing that they needed was for the two Batmans to change place as well.
Although honestly, now that he thought about it, John would be completely okay if that happened. He wouldn’t even care about getting back home if he had his Bruce here. It would be like an adventure, and as long as they had each other they would find a way to get through it all. That was how it always worked with the two of them after all.
For a moment he found himself entertaining the idea of making sure this version of Bruce ‘accidentally’ activated the Looking Glass. That wasn’t a nice thought though; not one that he should have been thinking, and so he quickly banished it.
“Don’t worry,” Bruce said, suddenly sounding even more tired than John felt. “I kept the Batcomputer monitoring the radiation levels of the Looking Glass while we were out.”
Bruce let out a long sigh and fell back into his chair.
“At this rate it’s going to approximately two weeks before it can be activated again,” Bruce said.
Two weeks suddenly felt like the longest time in the world.
“That thing will send him home?” Jason asked. He glared at the Looking Glass. John wondered if Jason spent all of his time glaring at things. It certainly seemed like he did. He could only hope that Jason wouldn’t attempt to destroy it; at least not before John could be reunited with Bruce.
“In theory,” Bruce replied.
“You see?” Dick said, and John jumped a little when he felt the other man’s hand land on his shoulder. “It’s just a matter of time and then you’ll be able to get back home. In the meantime…”
“Whatever it is you’re about to suggest,” Bruce replied. “Don’t.”
He hadn’t even been looking at the three of them, so there was no way that he could have seen the devilish grin that had appeared on Dick’s face just then, but apparently he hadn’t needed to.
“Aww,” Dick said. Jason just rolled his eyes at the other man.
“I don’t intend for John to be here that long,” Bruce replied. “Can you imagine the amount of destruction that the Joker could wreak on an unsuspecting and unprepared Gotham in two weeks?”
Bruce stood up, a look of fierce determination on his face, one that made John’s stomach do interesting little flip-flops, despite the fact that this was a different Bruce to the one that he loved. Bruce clutched the Batsuit’s cowl in one hand and the Looking Glass in the other as he continued.
“In the meantime, I’m going to pay the Justice League a visit,” he said. “Can I trust the two of you to look after John while I’m gone?”
“What, seriously?” Dick asked. “Of course you can.”
Bruce had put the cowl on while Dick had been speaking, and he turned to glare at Jason.
“What?” Jason said, frowning and folding his arms in front of his chest. “I’m not going to try anything, okay? This clearly isn’t the guy that I have a beef with. I mean, I was worried for a second, but fuck, Bruce; this guy didn’t even recognize either of us.”
“Besides,” Dick added. “If Jason does try anything I’ll be there to stop him.”
Jason scoffed.
“Like you could stop me from doing anything if I really wanted to,” Jason said.
“If I come back and find out that the two of you have harmed John in any way…” Batman said, trailing off and leaving an unspoken threat hanging in the air, and ooh boy, that certainly wasn’t doing anything to help the butterflies in John’s stomach, especially when he was threatening the two of them on John’s behalf.
“Don’t worry,” Jason said. “We’re not going to hurt him.”
Batman continued to glare at him.
“Promise,” Jason added.
That seemed to be enough to satisfy Bruce. He stalked back over to the Batmobile and threw the Looking Glass into the passenger seat. Within moments he was taking off, leaving John alone with Jason and Dick.
The three of them stood there waving goodbye to Bruce for a few moments; or rather, Dick and John waved goodbye while Jason stood there with his arms folded in front of his chest.
Once the roar of the Batmobile had faded however, Dick and Jason both turned and smiled at John.
John wasn’t sure which smile he should be more afraid of.
--
“What are the two of you even going to use these for?” John asked, pausing to smile for the camera. He was wearing… well, he wasn’t even sure what it was supposed to be, except that it was green and yellow and red. He assumed it was a crime-fighting outfit of some sort, but it didn’t seem particularly practical and showed a lot of skin, although maybe that was just because it was a bit too small for him.
“Taunting the real Joker when he gets back,” Jason said.
“Taunting Bruce,” Dick added.
“Taunting Tim,” Jason said. “Serves him right for being so sensible and choosing not to come along with us. You know, maybe we should have used his old Robin suit instead of mine.”
“We still could, you know,” Dick said, before taking another photo. John made sure to smile extra wide for this one.
Things had started simply enough. Dick had said that he wanted to take some selfies, which John was absolutely all for, and even though Jason had complained the two of them had eventually roped Jason into a few photos as well.
At first the photos had just been innocent enough and relatively goofy, but then Jason had suggested getting photos of John wearing the costume for… some reason, that John still didn’t fully understand. Still, if taking photos and playing dress-up was the worst that the three of them were going to get up to then John was going to count himself lucky.
“So, you still called the Joker back in your world?” Dick asked a few minutes later, as John was getting changed back into his normal clothes. Dick and Jason thoughtfully had their backs turned, although John wasn’t sure why they bothered when they had all seen pretty much all of his leg just a few moments ago.
Their photo session had come to an abrupt halt when Dick had jokingly (or at least, John had assumed it was jokingly considered how much Dick had been giggling about it) suggested that he and Jason should dress up in their old crime-fighting outfits as well.
“I was for a while,” John confessed. “But that was ages ago.”
“Did you have a costume?” Dick asked.
“Of course,” John replied. “I made it myself and everything! It had this cool purple jacket and a friend helped me make a grappling gun and I had Jokerangs and… well… huh, it was pretty cool. At least, I thought it was pretty cool, and Bruce said he thought it was cool too. I don’t wear it so much these days though.”
“Why not?” Dick asked.
John adjusted his vest as he stepped back out to join Dick and Jason properly once more.
“Well, since I got out of Arkham I’ve spent my time helping Batman here in the Batcave instead,” John explained. “It’s safer that way.”
He caught Jason eyeing him strangely as soon as he mentioned Arkham, but tried not to think about it too much. Jason might have agreed that he wasn’t going to hurt John, but John had a feeling that Jason still didn’t trust him.
“God, this is weird,” Jason eventually said, making an exaggerated stretch and leaning back against a nearby desk. “And I don’t think it’s going to stop being weird any time soon, no matter how much time we spend playing dress-up.”
“You think it’s weird for us?” Dick commented. “Imagine how hard this has to be for John. Finding out that everyone hates him in this universe has to suck.”
John appreciated the sympathy, if not the fact that Dick was talking about him like he wasn’t even there.
Jason just rolled his eyes in response to the sentiment.
“You know what?” he said, pushing himself up from the desk he had been leaning against. “I need a drink.”
--
‘A drink’ ended up only being alcoholic for Jason. Dick had tea, and John joined him, if only because he didn’t want to be rude, and Alfred was brewing the tea anyway, and John really didn’t like the way his brain worked when he had been drinking. It always went to dark places, and he could never think straight.
Tea, or, in Jason’s case, something golden that smelled a little too strong and chemically for John, was consumed in the kitchen, where Dick kept trying to get Alfred to join in the conversation. Alfred kept his distance, and John at least noticed the outline of a pistol tucked into the butler’s jacket.
“Bruce wouldn’t like you having that,” John said, pointing towards the gun.
“I’m quite aware,” Alfred said. “But in this instance I don’t really care about Master Bruce’s opinion on the matter.”
Jason had guns sitting on his belt as well, but that was different. Jason didn’t live at the manor, as far as John could tell, and John already knew that he fought crime. Alfred didn’t. Alfred was supposed to be a butler, and more importantly, Bruce’s butler, and John had learned the hard way how much Bruce didn’t like guns. Boy, John had really messed up with that one, hadn’t he?
He tried to bring up the matter with Alfred; knew that getting rid of the gun would make Bruce happier, no matter what universe they were in, but he didn’t get very far. Conversation in the kitchen after that was stilted and awkward, and Alfred remained distant, no matter how hard Dick tried to include him in the conversation.
The three of them moved to the living room, which was much larger and more obviously lived in than the one that John was used to. It was cozy though, and the three of them lit the fireplace and Dick pulled a pack of cards from somewhere.
They played a few rounds of ‘go fish’, while Jason nursed another glass of whatever it was he had been drinking and complained that weren’t playing poker instead.
There was something about the two men, Dick especially, that put John at ease, and before long he found himself relaxing more than he had since he had been transported to this strange world.
“So you and Bruce huh?” Dick began, grinning at John as he shuffled the deck of cards. “How the hell did that happen?”
“You mean how did we meet?” John asked. “Or the rest of it? Us becoming partners and me moving into the manor and stuff?”
“Holy shit,” Jason cursed. “You and Bruce are a couple in your universe?”
“Jason!” Dick hissed, clamping his hand down on top of Jason’s own and stopping him from getting to his feet any more than he already had. “He didn’t say that! And even if they are a couple would that really be so weird?”
“No, I gotta hear this story now,” Jason said. “Your world is even more fucked up than I first thought if that’s the case.”
“No!” John finally objected. He could feel himself growing hot and embarrassed, and knew that he would be blushing if it wasn’t for his unusual skin. “It isn’t like that. I mean, we’re not… not yet anyway.”
“Not yet?” Jason said.
Ooh boy. John could tell that there were definitely going to be more questions, at least from Jason. He wasn’t sure how much he should say, or rather, how much he wanted to say. He and Bruce had both used the word ‘love’ in regard to their relationship, and there had been the occasional kiss on the forehead or hug that lasted a little bit too long, and John at least knew that he was madly in love with Bruce and wanted to spend the rest of his life with him. When Bruce was ready for the two of them to take the next move then John would be ready as well.
He just wished that he knew when Bruce was going to finally make that next move. Or, for that matter, that he was definitely going to make it.
“No way,” Jason said, still looking at John as though he had said or done something really, really weird. Why did this guy find it so difficult to believe that he and Bruce might be more than friends? Was it because John looked so weird? Was that it?
John wasn’t crazy or delusional, or at least not when it came to his relationship with Bruce. He knew that Bruce was way more handsome than he would ever be, and he was just so darned cool and smart and he had all of that money.
Perhaps that wasn’t it though. Perhaps it was just the fact that this universe’s version of Bruce and the Joker were the worst of enemies that had Jason so shocked.
“You and Bruce are seriously… what? Friends? Kind of a couple?” Jason continued to ask. “Come on John. Give me something to work with here, and please don’t say ‘in love’ or I think I might vomit a little.”
“Knock it off Jason,” Dick said, elbowing the other man in the ribs.
Dick glanced over at John and offered him a gentle smile; one that said ‘sorry’ just as well as any words might have.
Jason rolled his eyes.
“Come on Dick,” he said. “You don’t find this whole situation just a little far-fetched? I mean, John might be ‘good’ and all, but he’s not that different from our Joker right? Just a little less homicidal. And you know how the fucking clown likes to go on about how he ‘loves’ Bruce and how they’re supposed to be together and everything right? How do we know that this asshole’s any different? He could just be making all of this up. For all we know he could have the same, fucked-up, one-sided bullshit going on in his universe that we’re used to with our Batman and Joker.”
Jason was talking as though John wasn’t even in the room anymore. John didn’t like it at all. They had all been getting along so well too.
“’One-sided,’” Dick repeated. “You really believe that?”
“Of course,” Jason said, before taking a long drink from his glass. “And don’t you dare suggest otherwise.”
“Bruce’s relationship with the Joker is… complicated,” Dick said gently. “You know that as well as any of us.”
Jason downed the rest of the drink in one go.
“I wish I didn’t,” he concluded, before slamming the now empty glass back down on the table between them. “And no matter what you say, the thought of Bruce actually having a relationship with that clown is fucking ridiculous, and if you dare suggest otherwise Dick I’m going to throw this glass at your head, you understand?”
Dick shrugged and held up his hands in an almost comically over-exaggerated manner, before flopping back into his chair.
John almost felt like the other two men had forgotten he existed. The conversation wasn’t even really about him anymore, he knew, or not about him in any way that really mattered.
“So, you guys want to hear about how Bruce and I met or not?” John asked, eager to break the weird tension that had settled over the three of them.
Dick didn’t reply; just raised an eyebrow in Jason’s direction.
“Sure,” Jason said, although he didn’t sound sure; more resigned than anything else. “Why the hell not?”
--
The Watchtower was, mercifully quiet and relatively empty when Bruce arrived. Superman was noticeably absent for a start, which was a blessing in and of itself. Batman had already had to defend his keeping the Joker alive and on Earth to Clark more times than he would have liked.
By this stage Bruce had gotten explaining the situation with John down to a fine art. This time there weren’t even any questions. Compared to what the Justice League usually dealt with this must have seemed like a very small problem in comparison. Bruce wished he could feel the same way.
“You know…” Green Lantern eventually suggested. “You could just… not do any of that.”
Bruce groaned softly.
“I mean, this new version of the Joker sounds a lot nicer and like he’s going to be a lot less trouble than the old one,” Hal continued. “I vote we keep him.”
“Why does everyone keep suggesting that?” Bruce snapped.
“Maybe because there’s something to it?” Hal replied, apparently not realizing that Batman had intended the question as rhetorical and really hadn’t wanted an answer, especially from Hal. Damn it all, he sometimes found himself wanting to punch Hal even on a good day.
“The matter isn’t up for a vote,” Batman replied, trying not to sound, or to feel too much, like he was having to explain advanced moral issues to a toddler. “It’s not fair to John, or to the universe that he came from.”
“Batman is right,” Martian Manhunter said. At least one person here was able to see the light. “It is our duty to restore order, no matter how much we may dislike it.”
“Come on though,” Hal complained. “How many people has that guy killed? Surely displacing one person is an acceptable loss if it saves people’s lives?”
Batman glared at Hal. If Hal was at all bothered by the glare then he didn’t show it.
“You have the object with you?” J’onn asked. “May I see it?”
“I do,” Bruce said, pulling the Looking Glass out from under his cloak and passing it to Martian Manhunter, making sure to glare at Hal again as he passed.
Martian Manhunter took the object in both of his hands and held it still. He was very careful with the object, holding it almost reverentially as he studied it. He did not turn it this way and that as a human might when studying it. Rather he seemed to be observing it in some way that would have been completely impossible for Bruce.
“Curious,” Martian Manhunter said. “Very curious. This object is… it’s very odd. I can’t even tell what its purpose is, or where it came from originally, but I suspect that it was meant to do something far grander than simply transport people between parallel universes.”
“You think that’s just a side effect?” Bruce asked.
“I think it may be broken,” Martian Manhunter replied.
“Can I have a look at it?” Hal asked.
The words had barely left Hal’s mouth when Bruce snapped ‘no’ in response.
“Broken?” he asked Martian Manhunter.
“Well, not completely,” J’onn said, and once again Bruce got the distinct impression that he was observing the object on some level that would be impossible for the rest of them. “But I don’t think it’s working as its creators originally intended.”
“Do you think you could fix it?” Bruce asked. Even as the words left his mouth he found himself wondering whether fixing the object would really be the best idea. They didn’t even know what it would do when fixed, after all.
“Possibly,” J’onn said, finally turning the object this way and that in his hands. “Even if I can’t fix it completely I am sure that I can readjust the energy flow inside of it so that it charges at a normal speed.”
“It’s supposed to charge faster than it has been?” Bruce asked.
“Yes,” J’onn said, closing his eyes and doing something that made his hands and the object within them glow a bright green. “Much faster.”
Bruce had been hoping that was the case.
J’onn kept his eyes closed as the Looking Glass glowed brighter and brighter; so bright that Bruce couldn’t stand to look at it any more. Bruce winced and turned away as a flash of bright light flooded the room. When he turned back Martian Manhunter was holding the Looking Glass between both hands and smiling softly.
The strange artefact didn’t look any different, but the serene look on J’onn’s face told Bruce that something had changed.
Martian Manhunter passed the object back to Bruce very slowly and cautiously.
“Be careful,” he said. “It is fully charged now, and as far as I can tell it should continue to charge at a more normal rate. You don’t want to set it off accidentally.”
“Don’t worry,” Batman said. “I’ll be careful. The last thing we need is for this situation to get even more complicated than it already is.”
--
Bruce had heard John tell his story once already; to Poison Ivy and Harley Quin, but that had been quick and factual for the most part, although John certainly had a rather colorful way of telling stories, full of random observations and small sidetracks.
What he overheard when he arrived back at the manor was something different; something more vulnerable and intimate. John sounded relaxed as he talked to Dick and Jason, and Bruce found himself lurking near the doorway to the sitting room and just listening to the other man talk rather than announcing his presence.
“And Doctor Leland, at least at the beginning, she would tell me not to get my hopes up; that I was probably going to be in Arkham for a long time, and that Bruce Wayne was a very important person with a lot of responsibilities,” John said, pausing for a moment to chuckle to himself.
“If only she knew all of his responsibilities, am I right?” John continued. “Well, anyway, she would tell me that Bruce might not… that even though he kept visiting me, that he might not have the patience to wait until I got better and could leave the asylum. But he did. He came to visit me every week, except for a couple of times when there were really bad cases that he was working on, and he was always so patient and kind and understanding; way more than anyone else ever was.”
“How long were you in Arkham in the end?” Dick asked.
Jason wasn’t saying anything. If Bruce knew him well enough then Jason was probably doing a very good job of pretending that he didn’t care. But he’d still be listening.
“Five years,” John said. “And at the end of it Bruce was still there, and I didn’t know it but he’d been talking to Doctor Leland and she’d agreed that I could stay with him as long as we both checked in with her, and when I left Arkham Bruce was right there, waiting for me at the front gate, and smiling so handsomely and… and…”
John’s voice began to break, and he trailed off. Bruce found his heart clenching in a way that was more than a little uncomfortable as he listened to John’s soft sniffles and Dick’s gentle attempts to comfort him.
He had known that John and the other universe’s version of himself had been close, or at least, John had tried to tell him that they were, but it was one thing to be told it, and another to hear the affection and desperation in the other man’s voice.
Bruce closed his eyes and tried to imagine it; tried to imagine waiting five years for someone to get out of Arkham, and then being so damned happy when they were finally able to leave and come and stay with him in the manor. There were people he would wait that long for; Dick and Jason and Tim and Barbara and Alfred, but it certainly wouldn’t have been easy, and it was hard for him to imagine any reason why any of them would be committed for that long in the first place.
He tried to imagine himself waiting that long for the Joker, and if he had felt uncomfortable before then that particular thought had him feeling like his stomach and his heart had just tied themselves in knots.
He listened for a moment longer, as Dick continued to comfort John as best as he could.
Bruce waited for the right moment to enter the room, and tried to ignore the part of him that insisted that the ‘right moment’ had already passed; that if it existed then it had been when Bruce had first arrived back at the manor and before he had decided to eavesdrop.
Eventually he took a deep breath and stepped into the room, trying to pretend that he hadn’t heard anything and that his guts didn’t still feel as though they were trying to strangle themselves inside his torso.
“Good news,” he said, causing all three other men in the room to turn and look at him. John at least no longer looked as though he had been crying, and Bruce noticed for the first time that playing cards were spread all over the sitting room table, and that there was the vague scent of bourbon lingering in the air.
He held the Looking Glass up in one hand, and saw John’s eyes light up as he did.
“It’s time to send you home,” Bruce announced.
--
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yurigoggles · 4 years
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Joker [Movie]
  JOKER
Joker is not only the greatest origin movie I have ever seen, it is not only a villain origin movie, but it is also a great hero origin movie and thus by extension, it is also a great origin movie for the greatest antagonistic relationship in all of comic books!
For dear Readers who are scratching your heads wondering why this movie is here, it is no secret that I love comic books and CBM, I mean, I am only alive currently, right? In all seriousness, I do love comics, I think everyone grew up with some kind of comics. Yeah, sure I have more manga in my collection than DC/Vertigo/Titan comics but believe you me, I am a die hard fan of Batman and everything Batman! Well, not everything (see Batman/Catwoman relationship…bleh)
Which brings me to this movie JOKER. If someone is going to sit there and they are fans of Batman but don’t have this movie in their top movies of their CBM list, please don’t let me know because I will do everything to ignore you from now on!
Another point, JOKER is a true comic book movie! It is more movie than comic (like Batman v Superman, The Dark Knight) but that is more because the director (Mr Todd Phillips) actually gave a fuck about what they were doing and made a true to god film, based on a character from comic books!
There is no live action CB reality where this Joker can fit in except the original DCEU world. Hey, there is one point to add to my list as to why American beta critics hate this movie so much! Speaking of which, all this propaganda about the violence in this movie? Like WTF, you all need to watch more movies! If there was a list of violent movies, Joker doesn’t even make it in the top 20%! It is so tame all these loud mouths must be having their adult movie cherries popped or something! Seriously, like, it is even rated 16 here, that’s teen years like…
Any way, what a movie! It starts slow, and so blank that I gave up at one point looking for Easter Eggs because I surrendered to there being none. Big Mistake! If you have seen every Batman movie there is to see and you are a Batman fan, you are going to be grinning from ear to ear in that third act! It is not my character but I nearly stood up and fuckin hollered in the cinema at one point!
Speaking of hollering, this movie is actually pretty funny! Not in the *brunch* kind of funny but more like in the Snyder kind of funny! Yes, I am saying that you all fellow Cultists, this movie is basically for yous all! You have to go watch this movie if only to thank Mr Phillips for fighting the good fight! Hell, I shudder to think what kind of Batman this Bruce will grow up to be! Jesus!
Speaking of that, you can’t mention Joker without bringing up Batman! While I am lost as to what they did with the Batmobile that we saw on set of the movie, this movie had waaaay more Bruce than I was anticipating! And I don’t even mean to show off but when I watched the trailer and saw Arthur with that boy (the one he forced to smile), I fuckin knew it was Bruce Wayne! And yes, that was Bruce Wayne!
And yes, when I mentioned this was also a great hero origin movie, I was talking about Batman of course! Yes, they were killed, again, and I have to confess right here, I have always been lost as to why his parents got gunned down like so. All the previous reasons we got never quite clicked with me! There was always a vagueness about it! Also, I always had this urge to know why they were killed! I always had an inkling that maybe they weren’t such good people as they have always been made out to be! Billionaires like themselves in times like those, that money had to have been made on top of some skulls and I finally got that side of the story touched upon in this movie!
Perhaps it’s the saying that every person is a hero of their own story but scratch that, the world in this movie supported the theory that these Waynes were dicks! Bruce himself and even Alfred (I think that was him) were also proof that they were dicks! Bruce looked like what most movie rich kids look like, totally depressed and sad and lonely, something that always points to cold parents!
Speaking of the Waynes, there was this thread that ended up being left to the viewer to decide if it was true or not but at one point, it was made out to be that Arthur is actually Thomas Wayne’s son and that after some legal things went down, they decided to keep that life a secret! So his mother kept sending these letters to Thomas Wayne in order to get help in their hard times and one night Arthur opens one of the letters before it was sent out and finds out that he was an abandoned son.
I so fuckin wanted that to be true because can you imagine the implications of that when Bruce grows up to become Batman and has to fight Joker?!! But from the looks of things, I think they decided to go with it being a lie and Arthur’s mother being insane which I think is a complete waste! I mean it’s not like they were going to make a universe out of that so what if they were related? I could have read those fan fics so damn hard!
I still will, if there is some sane people that decide to do them!
And speaking of that, remember the Easter Eggs I was talking about? If you watch this movie and don’t get the connection with Batman v Superman, you failed! All I could think of was Wally Keith and his letters/checks from Bruce which were meant to help him while here Arthur’s mother kept sending letters to Thomas asking for help but either none got anything or the receiver kept rejecting them (MoSAnswers has the theory that Wally got the checks but kept sending them back)
Speaking of Easter Eggs, there are others, like Arthur’s name which we all know (A. Fleck as in Ben Afleck, get it?), then when Joker went on Robert De Niro’s Live TV and just before he was cut off, he almost said Ledger Joker’s line. Also when he was getting a ride on a police car afterwards, he looks like both Ledger and Let’s Jokers in cars! Heck, even the interview where he was asked if the chaos was his plan and he asked if he looked like a guy with a political agenda, almost like, yep, Joker asking Dent if he looked like a guy with a plan!
And then the McGuffin of all Easter eggs – The Death of the Waynes! Heck, that was no Easter Egg, that was the real shit! In fact that scene had two other BvS eggs, one being the Zorro movie showing, though I think it was coming soon in BvS? No, it was Now Showing and Excalibur was the one coming soon! Here though thehre was a twist. It wasn’t The Mask of Zorro but rather some title that went something like, Zorro; The Gay Something…I forgot the what the last word was. Believe you me, I want to watch that gay version of Zorro! And no, I am not making things up!
In fact the killing joke (heh couldn’t resist), I mean the last joke that made the Joker laugh was in fact the birth of The Batman! No idea how he would know or why he was 4th wall breaking but they made a point of showing Bruce standing over his parents’ bodies and to bring my point about the Waynes here back, he wasn’t crying over them like all the other interpretations. One can argue about it being shock of it all but I think there passed enough time for him to at least get on his knees and cry out in despair.
But he didn’t!
Hence why I am scared to think of what kind of Batman this Bruce would become! Just thinking about the Gotham he is going to grow up in…Jesus!
Which brings me to another thing, this movie is also the origin of the Gotham that we know, the Gotham that is a dumpster fire, the Gotham that will need a Batman unlike the one we have ever seen before, well, partially with BvS Batman after the Black Zero event! That Batman is the Batman that this Bruce will be since the moment he is born! But he will be necessary with the type of villains he will be dealing with if his Joker is this kind of Joker!
God, I love this movie! I love it so much it made it on this site! So forgive me dear Readers, I just can’t contain the love!
Best! Movie! Of! The! YEAR!
Ja
  JOKER [Movie]   JOKER Joker is not only the greatest origin movie I have ever seen, it is not only a villain origin movie, but it is also a great hero origin movie and thus by extension, it is also a great origin movie for the greatest antagonistic relationship in all of comic books!
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thcodcre · 6 years
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beep beep hey y’all ,, ur local gremlin ‘n dumpster dweller here but u can call me kay !! don’t mind the trash like state of my blog atm i just have attachment issues from old threads when i was previously in this lovely group. but yes !! feel free to yell at me in my it’s if u wanna plot or just *youtuber vc* smash that like button and i’ll slide on over for plots !!
( tom holland / twenty-one / he&him ) is that ( theodore caldwell ) ordering a ( white chocolate mocha ) at mocha? i heard they’re a ( paralegal ) who’s known as the ( polymath ) around here. however, they say ( theo ) is very ( pragmatic ), but ( headstrong ). well, better get their drink before it gets cold!
okie so first things first ,,ya boy’s full name is theodore dashiell caldwell but prefers the nickname of theo to those close to him bc it’s simpler and doesn’t like how proper it sounds ,,given in the public sphere he’s known by his full name but only those who get the Seal of Approval get to call him teddy,,, he was born in brooklyn, new york to virginia caldwell ( the current united states ambassador to the united nations and ex-chief executive officer of greenpeace ) and quentin caldwell ( current new york senator and democratic whip minority leader in congress )
while v democratic and liberal in beliefs, theo was always v uncertain about following a path that strayed away from what his parents expected of him since both are v established in the political world so theo always felt like he had to put forth this perfect appearance of himself so he was worthy to be boasted about by his parents to colleagues and political opponents alike with his academics, accomplishments, etc.
due to him being brought up in the public eye as his parents built their respective careers ( lowkey trash in viewing his parents as frank and claire underwood but with more chill rip ), theo didn’t have many friends so partly as a way to give him a hobby to pursue outside of school and to meet new friends, his parents signed up a 5 year old theo for language lessons and a soccer lessons ,,,u know ,, lil kid things ,,, so it’s here that begins theo’s love for languages bc he’s a nerd and a bit of a polyglot but as of now he’s fluent in italian, spanish, french, german, russian and latin ,, ur boy is currently learning arabic and mandarin
being raised by his parents meant that theo was brought up with the caldwell ambition and hard work ethic, believing in order to succeed you must work hard for what you want and that change can only be made in the world if you fight enough for it. this transferred over to theo’s academic standing who worked to keep up his 4.0 gpa

for real though,,,theo was the kid in all ap classes and managed to seem effortlessly cool but also was a giant ass nerd ?? ask him about harry potter, star wars or marvel ( bring up dc to him and he will rant off on why marvel is better ) and he’ll sure as hell have a vocal opinion ( don’t get him started on hp,,,snape was a bully and can choke,,,while draco is his fave that he’ll defend forever )

on top of him being a raging nerd, he was also a big activist while in high school and was that kid handing out flyers for an upcoming protest to the school board demanding for healthier school lunches and fair prices for such since the unhealthy options were much cheaper, and standing on cafeteria tables for change in school policies

at the time he was a smol in the local private catholic school so he often got beat up from the sports teams ( i’m just a lil emo picturing tom is the school uniform and internally crying nbd ) for protesting school fundings being unfairly distributed, more often than not benefiting the sports teams rather than the drama department, the art department or even better academic resources

im gettin emo thinkin of lil theo and lil tom wearing uniform blazers and being a lil politician in the making  r…ip me,,but yes so he graduates valedictorian and accepted into princeton as a politics major of which theo had to nearly threaten his dad not to donate money for a new library to sway his acceptance
it’s during theo’s time at princeton that he truly begins to find himself and grows more confident ??? gone are the days of string bean theo and bada bing bada boom enter tom’s spider-man physique bc theo starts taking more care of himself and just v self assured in his place in the world and just wanting to help people and make a change ?? for now he just wants to make a difference as a lawyer and maybe work for the state and maybe down the line turn political ,, but he’s debating whether to go aim toward corporate, constitutional law, or international humanitarian law
since the past few years in college have been super !!! especially throwing in helping out his parents with appearances, stress of keeping up his grades, and generally running off of caffeine and the determination of elle woods ,, theo is taking a year or so off to steady himself but he got an internship position at baker & mckenzie law firm here in chicago as a paralegal to get some experience in the field before going off to harvard law ,, plus his dad has connections that may have tilted the scale in theo’s favor for the job but theo is a bit ,, naive in his optimism 
overall though theo is the least bit pretentious person and is a p chill dude,,,understands his privilege and knows that not everyone is born into money like his family is,.,, loves helping people and just wants the world to be a better place ??? v openly liberal in terms of political beliefs and 10/10 would fight donald trump and jeff sessions in a heartbeat do it for the vine

likes to think he’s kinda cool but don’t let him fool u he is a Nerd ,,,will probably rant off to u about harry potter and why draco malfoy is not only the best character but why he and the slytherin house are done dirty and snape can choke ,..also list an abundance of reasons as to why he will defend tony stark until the end of his days ,,,also probably has a collection of iron man comics and harry potter wands bye
his sense of humor is the worst i swear legit it’s all pop culture references with a mixture of shitty puns and jokes beware ,, he’s extremely level headed though and knows how to make good decisions, pragmatic as shit but can often lead to him being very over-analytical and dwelling on things too much
v charismatic and loves talking to people,,,and this isn’t a personality trait,,,well maybe considering he’s fashionable as shit and loves cardigans and button down shirts and chelsea boots,,,but also loves to be casual in joggers and a light shirt,,,but his fave designers are paul smith, ted baker and givenchy
 bc i hate him
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5 Stupid Things We Need To Stop Clicking On
We “re living” the final choke of the Information Age. Experts estimate that 62 percent of all the points we now receive is purposely mistaken, and that includes the percentage and professionals I made up at the start of this sentence. The sad fact is, the majority of members of you are able to never have the critical envisage or research abilities to know what’s real, and that will simply manufacture you more absolutely convinced the erroneous situations your stupid ass belief. The good story is that this article isn’t about that shit. The imitation information fighting is over, and stupid won. No, this article is about the dumb things we all keep falling for — even you, the genius who chose the right political area and religion. 5 Pointlessly Insane Product Are Not That At All Last year, Tiffany& Co. started selling the Sterling Silver Tin Can, an empty can that costs $1,000. You’ll notice that this is far more than you’d naturally pay for soupless garbage. To be clear, this wasn’t some tin can that once impounded Prince’s final dark-green nuts. It’s simply a can. As an imaginative word, it was 50 years stale, and as a money-making strategy, it was somewhere between a portable diarrhea carton and that same product without a eyelid. It’s the kind of sentiment that they are able to offset the other Saved By The Bell novelists tell, “Look, if you’re not ready to come back to effort, make more time off to deal with the death of your son.” The item I’m building is that it’s hard-boiled not to comment on Tiffany’s silly can, and that’s more appealing to Tiffany& Co. than where reference is comment on how the ones who quarried their concoctions all lived of slavery. “Darling, I was part of many someones transcending penetration to convert a utilitarian men’s room into an installment of signature Tiffany oeuvre.” — this Tiffany copywriter justifying to his wife why “theres” seven colourings of pubic hair in his underpants Read Next 8 Baffling Poop-Themed Toys Kids Are Lining Up To Buy And it’s is not simply tin cans and Wu-Tang recordings that are marketed in intentionally strange modes. Food advertisers have figured out that they can get more attention by being ridiculous than by being delicious. Retain when KFC employed fried chicken as sandwich food in the Double Down? Or when Chick-Fil-A announced that their fried chicken detested lesbian people with the Cajun Titty Jiggler? We all made amusing of them, but they perfectly did not care. These are people souring pigeon meat and “deported” foreign nationals into nugget figures. They’ll take any press they can get. We need to stop doing this. It’s very possible the only conversation any of us had or will ever have about Dr. Pepper started when they liberated a special copy of their soda for men exclusively . We all went on Twitter to add stuffs like, “Forbidding females from savor Dr. Pepper Ten will only retard the disclosure that it’s made from semen , not stop it completely.” We asked questions like, “Why would you make a soda for men exclusively? Are you trying to find the perfect drink to pair with losing custody of your adolescents? ” Or maybe you are only pondered, “Dr. Pepper Ten sounds like the refreshing discus you contact for when defending an alleged rapist you haven’t met.” SORRY LADIES, OUR CREATIVE DIRECTOR IS STILL DEALING WITH SOME CHILDHOOD TRAUMA INVOLVING PENISES . b> Products should conclude the customer happy , not be so intentionally foolish that the customer hears about them during a Jimmy Kimmel monologue. You shouldn’t spawn every tenth new Oreo out of cat suppository in the hopeles said he hoped that cookie influencers tweet about it. And pizza, you peculiarly need to get your shit together. In 2012, a Pizza Hut employee happened upon the relevant recommendations of a hot-dog-stuffed crust, relatively by coincidence, when his administrator caught him fucking a pizza and asked written explanations. This distinguished the last experience there would ever has become a non-insane pizza ability. Today, pizza marketing is a series of deranged inventions, like a serial killer’s pilgrimage toward becoming the Minotaur. For speciman, Pizza Hut created “smart” shoes that situate an degree for you. Aside from get the elderly to wonder what they’re going to come up with next, what the fuck good do pizza shoes do anyone? If you have a use for dictating Pizza Hut via shoe, your foot is going to fall off from diabetes long before you get to make love a second time. essay > And did you know that Domino’s devoted millions of dollars promoting something called “carryout insurance? ” It’s what it sounds like — a monetary guarantee that when your haphazard ass puts a pizza, they give you another one. Aside from getting us to mention how foolish that is, what’s the pitch? Was there a community of overweight idiots devouring pizza off the foot and involving their representatives do something? Let’s say it’s only to place your subconsciou at ease. Let’s profess you’re “ve been thinking about” prescribing Domino’s, but decide against it because you’re always stopping pizza. Will this convince you? Of track not. You’re not even here. You were taken in the night by mad scientists, and now you’re a bulge of brain material named “HISTORY’S SADDEST FUCK.” “CARRYOUT INSURANCE !? Hey, boss? Yeah, I just perceived a loophole that gives me boundless flooring pizza. So what I’m saying is you can kiss my ass . i> “ div > 4 All Things “Of The Year” Are Arbitrary Decisions Made By Small Teams Of Random Assholes We are living in the darkest of goes. Our current sexiest guy alive looks like a rectangle who acquires its living hustling milk-drinking contests. “I’m digesting four gallons of Half& Half. Hi, I’m Blake Shelton, your sexiest mortal alive.” When People store announced hoedown music standout Blake Shelton as the sexiest humankind alive while Casper Van Dien was still not dead, it stumbled like a bomb. Every Gab report and Safeway express lane had a hot take on it. It wasn’t simply controversial; it was a direct challenge to what vaginal lubrication even wanted. What will it do to society if passably handsome NASCAR dads are the brand-new standard of seductive? Do we need to stop doing sit-ups? Will there be enough denim? What will Casper Van Dien do with this boner? div > You know what we should have been doing that whole season? Not establishing a shit about how handsome Blake Shelton is. Don’t get me wrong, Blake Shelton is alright. His condoms maybe don’t expire, and if he was arrested for sodomizing a dairy moo-cow, you’d anticipate “Him? ” But let’s not play games. He’s not the sexiest male alive. At best, he’s “Oklahoma’s Hottest Mostly Ham DNA.” But we should remember that this isn’t some enormous honor decided by appraising the gonad stimulation of test subjects. “Sexiest Man Alive” is picked by four or five journalists desperately trying to hang onto print media chores, and every now and then one of them is smart enough to say, “What if we trolled everyone? ” With all respect to Blake Shelton’s fuckability, if you died trying to learn a prosthetic forearm how to give a handjob, the People organization would write your figure up on the “Sexiest Man Alive MAYBES” board. It’s important is maintaining mind how insignificant these entitlements are before we get outraged. Before Donald Trump, Time opened its 2006 “Person of the Year” title to You, as in the second-person pronoun. And in 1938 they gave it to Hitler, the Donald Trump of 1938. These are meaningless choices meant to engender awful conversations between uninteresting people. Did you think LaTonya from Fayetteville was chosen as Jet ‘s “Beauty of the Week” because of her prevailing tits and smile? Wake up. It’s because her front tattoo announces “Abortion is Bae.” Please, all of us, we have to stop get outsmarted by the Jet magazines of the world. 3 It’s Not An Contest When Fictional Characters Die In 1992, DC Comics killed Superman — an indestructible ventriloquist with laser noses, frost wheeze, and chronosphere-bending flight speed — with a rock ogre who was pretty good at punching. Despite it being the third occasion he had died, the country is entered into mourning and the tale was picked up by the actual bulletin. Which was weird, because if the media wanted to cover upsetting Superman fibs, where were they when his girlfriend get turned into a pony and fucked his mare? I think about this every day. Every day. div > Why are we so preoccupied with fictional deaths? Most of the time, they’re not even real in the make-believe macrocosm in which they happen. Captain America and Batman vanish around 20 epoches a year, each in different combinations of fake-outs, resurgences, and universe reboots. If a dead guy’s best friends own a meter machine and the Eye of Agamotto, you can probably hold back on making funeral proposals. And if your favorite person dies on The Walking Dead , perhaps don’t debris an hour watching Chris Hardwick cry until you accompany the body. It should help you relax knowing that most fictional fatalities are exclusively abusive escapades, but the “real” ones are about as meaningless. I mean, you knew there wasn’t going to be any more Firefly . This death cost us maybe two wisecracks. div > Remember when Han Solo expired? He was a 73 -year-old laser gun fighter scheduled to get his own movie in three years. His death was both long overdue and altogether inconsequential to the amount of Han Solo you will continue to see on your TV. His father-in-law, Darth Vader, was on screen for about 36 minutes before he died in 1983, and since his death, there have been more Anakin Skywalker narratives than anyone could ever require. Anakin Skywalker is the Nicolas Cage of outer space. He stopped making good movies three decades ago, more he’s still everywhere and radiating inexplicable planetary energy. If George R. R. Martin gone on TV to announce that a comet smacked Westeros between works and everyone in A Song Of Ice And Fire is lead, how is that different from “the worlds” you’re living in now? The chap have undoubtedly wanted to focus more on snacks for about four works. You know what’s sadder than identifying Ned Stark get his head chopped off? Watching some fragile-hearted slobs go across the various stages of sorrow in a YouTube video afterwards. Mothers, if your child is filming themselves weep over a make-believe death, that’s a bigger default than if your child is filming themselves pee into a tube sock for Patreon advocates. I symbolize, you can do whatever you demand, but when you cry over forgery people whom you can still hear every day for as long as you miss, you’re exclusively sending a message to the people around you that you’re a drastic piece of shit. But I know something that will ovation you up! 2 Being Special Is Free That’s right, I said it. You’re welcome. It’s pretty easy to sell someone nothing more than the notion that they’re special or important for actual money. For illustration, somewhere right now, a Todd is looking through a rack of keychains to see if they have one with his reputation on it. “I hope they have a Todd, ” he might announce as he thumbs through dusty debris. “They do! And it’s spelled right ! b> ” So Todd will buy it, a cute remember of the worst collected in the least interesting part of a town he formerly called, and it will never occur to him that an Indonesian plant gambled and won that a completely shitty Todd would one day pay money to prompt himself of his own name. This next part is way off-topic, but not even the Indonesians could have foreseen that this keychain would one day be used to frame Todd … … for Toddslaughter. div > Back to the point I was trying to utters: We are all prone to this idiocy. Coke had its first marketings increase in more than a decade when it introduced the idea of adding the customers’ stupid fucking lists to their cans and bottles. And the internet has been recurred by ego-stroking personality quizs and IQ tests since before we used it to pay girlfriends peeing into tube socks. We are so desperate to be told we’re special that we will expel all disbelief and critical consider to hear it. You should know that answering a few simple-minded personality interrogations does not determine you the coolest ninja turtle, and you shouldn’t trust the scores of an Iq test that you watched yourself cheat on which likewise advertises free Slavic women and four new pounds of dick girth. One of my favorite a few examples of this, and favorite things in general, is an online community announced Intertel — “An International Society of the Intellectually Gifted.” It’s very difficult to get in. You can only affiliate if you tally in the top one percent of any self-administered intelligence test and mail in a $10 lotion reward. You may have considered that this in fact checks to see whether you’re stupid enough to forward in a test with a 98 percent composition or less and nothing else. If you get accepted, you then compensate a $39 annual reward to be a part of a genius squad for people who are very specifically not. What do you get? I’m so glad you asked. For the annual reward, you get inexhaustible pity and the human rights of berth a photo and bio about your singularly unsophisticated soul. It has created an avalanche of unearned narcissism that looks like a late ‘9 0s Casper Van Dien supporter page whose webmaster travelled mysteriously missing. Image courtesy of the property of the Casper Van Dien Fan Page& Genius Community webmaster. div > OK , no, but seriously, this next epitome is a real screenshot from the Inertel( An International Society of the Intellectually Gifted) website. This is a real person who really thinks he’s in the 1 percent of intellectual nobilities, and this is his real profile. I didn’t doctor this. This is what an actual genius named BigJim3 69 remunerations $39 a year to expose. Fucking! This macrocosm is spell and you get to live in it! div > Another business that employs your adoration of yourself on a big, sprawling magnitude is the pop-up museum manufacture. The reputation implies that there are things to do or learn inside them, but they’re more like oversized photo booths than artistry halls. For speciman, if you take a junket to the zany, world-famous Museum of Ice Cream, you will memorize zero to one things about ice cream and feed ice cream worth $45 less than the entering ticket. What you will do is wait in line to make photos of yourself next to what you’d describe in any other situation as “nothing of interest.” So to be clear, we are so self-obsessed that it’s now an efficient business model to charge us money to make pictures of ourselves so we can promote you online. You didn’t fool ME, Museum of Ice Cream. But my family loved it. Five stars. div > 1 Stop Attaining It Seem Like There Are Nazis OK, so the world has just fairly stupid prejudiceds to elect Donald Trump chairman, but not all of those voters were full white supremacists. Some of them were simply extremely theological to know when someone is lying or too old to change their memory about politics. And yes, a troubling number of them were Nazis. But in a lot of ways, most things are fine and the world isn’t as unpleasant as you think. You’re welcome again. div > Impossibly shitty parties, like the Trump supporters who made that Garfield mug privately, looks a lot like they’re everywhere. A pile of that is our omission — the good beings making fun of them. They use us to amplify their articulates, like Han Solo( R.I.P .) reassuring a hallway of Stormtroopers that he’s acces more people than he actually is. Every few minutes, a website publishes a variant on the article “These Miserable Fucks Said Something Racist About A Thing And Got Annihilated By Twitter.” They’re fun and vaguely heroic, but if you read more than one, you’ll start to see that they all share the same content. It’s the same three or four prejudiced tweets quoted in each article, tweeted by the same three or four prejudiceds who “attacked” the Star Wars with the Asian girl and “staged boycotts” of the all-lady Ghostbusters . We need to stop treating these three or four beings like they’re a threat to anything other than skewing PornHub’s algorithm to favor mother-son incest. BREAKING NEWS: Regional high school’s least-likable puncture still manufacturing quite a sight out his irrelevant awfulness. div > Here’s a comforting information: A analyse of Reddit found that 1 percent of communities were responsible for 74 percent of all conflict. We are taking the intentionally insensitive notes of a Kia’s worth of debate club hobbyists and feigning they’re a tidal wave of detest “were supposed to” stand together against. The “alt-right” movement is 30 sons more cranky to year and too slow to hear Dungeons& Dragons . Their adherents are a lethal group of gamers who will disappear once they sour 17, and their media channel is a cable network whose entire audience will be dead in two more flu seasons. All these people want is for the other side to get upset, so if we stop writing thinkpieces about the rise of dapper grey patriotism and focus more on how liberals hate suicide religions, we can be rid of them almost immediately. BREAKING NEWS: C-word who are tweets C-wordy antisemitic concepts DOES! div > Ann Coulter is a good example. She’s the skeletal are still in relic antipathy, and she has about as much cultural affect as Corey Feldman’s band, Oral Thrush and the Yeast 2000 s. Has she ever done anything other than hiss bad acts at impatient Tv identities or suppose that clinical antisemitism is antisemitic slapstick? She only seems like she is a thing because 10,000 of us dunk on the bitch each time she condemns her oral thrush on the Jews. Without all of us excusing to one another how mistaken she is, Coulter would just be straying through Home Depot to see if there are any lily-white works she can ask about the lavatory refuge rails. And soon she would be spawning spider eggs in her lip while her parakeet watched their own bodies rot. “Rawk! The Jews are at it again! ” it would recite to her undiscovered body. “The Jews are at it again! “ We all seem to get how foolish it is when the story answers “teens” are doing a comically apeshit circumstance like human centipede gatherings or detergent eating. Why can’t we use those same beings psyches to figure out how one Nazi nerd looking for attention isn’t “the Right”? I know it’s tough to stand trolls, but Kim Kardashian owning all the world’s money should have taught you that there is virtue in shutting the fuck up about some things. We need to stay strong not in the battle against the “alt-right, ” but in the battle to ignore them. The next time you verify another tower about how maids won’t time republican people, leave it alone. Let those dickless Nazis prevent writing versions of that section into the empty vacancy until they discover evil campaigns brides to dry up. And the next time someone on your Facebook thread attacks their Second Amendment liberties after local schools shooting, don’t confirm their child assassination fandom with tending. Move your cursor to the left and click on their mother’s chart. Pose as Blake Shelton, acquire her moist rely, and calmly destroy that child-murderer’s family. Every one of us can shut up and make a difference. Seanbaby devised being funny on the Internet. You can follow him on Twitter, or frisk his hit mobile competition Calculords . b> Did you realise Casper van Dien was in a Tarzan movie in the 90 s ? i > b> Support Cracked’s journalism with a tour to our Contribution Page. Please and thank you . i > b> For more, check out 5 Deeply Embarrassing Thing The News Keeps Doing and 6 Time The News Went Totally Overboard Chasing A Story . i > b> You should click on this join and follow us on Facebook . i > b> Read more: http :// www.cracked.com/ blog/ 5-stupid-things-we-need-to-stop-clicking-on / http://dailybuzznetwork.com/index.php/2018/06/30/5-stupid-things-we-need-to-stop-clicking-on/
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trendingnewsb · 6 years
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5 Stupid Things We Need To Stop Clicking On
We are living through the final gasps of the Information Age. Experts estimate that 62 percent of all information we now receive is deliberately false, and that includes the percentage and experts I made up at the start of this sentence. The sad truth is, most of you will never have the critical thinking or research skills to know what’s real, and that will only make you more sure about the wrong things your stupid ass believes. The good news is that this article isn’t about that shit. The fake news fight is over, and stupid won. No, this article is about the dumb things we all keep falling for — even you, the genius who chose the right political side and religion.
5
Pointlessly Insane Products Are Not That At All
Last year, Tiffany & Co. started selling the Sterling Silver Tin Can, an empty can that costs $1,000. You’ll notice that this is far more than you’d normally pay for soupless garbage. To be clear, this wasn’t some tin can that once held Prince’s final green beans. It’s only a can. As an artistic statement, it was 50 years stale, and as a money-making scheme, it was somewhere between a portable diarrhea box and that same product without a lid. It’s the kind of idea that would make the other Saved By The Bell writers say, “Look, if you’re not ready to come back to work, take more time off to deal with the death of your son.” The point I’m making is that it’s hard not to comment on Tiffany’s silly can, and that’s more appealing to Tiffany & Co. than when we comment on how the people who mined their products all died of slavery.
“Darling, I was part of many souls transcending penetration to transform a utilitarian men’s room into an installment of signature Tiffany oeuvre.” — this Tiffany copywriter explaining to his wife why there are seven colors of pubic hair in his underpants
Read Next
8 Baffling Poop-Themed Toys Kids Are Lining Up To Buy
And it’s not only tin cans and Wu-Tang albums that are marketed in intentionally strange ways. Food advertisers have figured out that they can get more attention by being ridiculous than by being delicious. Remember when KFC used fried chicken as sandwich bread in the Double Down? Or when Chick-Fil-A announced that their fried chicken hated gay people with the Cajun Titty Jiggler? We all made fun of them, but they absolutely did not care. These are people turning pigeon meat and “deported” foreign nationals into nugget shapes. They’ll take any press they can get.
We need to stop doing this. It’s very possible the only conversation any of us had or will ever have about Dr. Pepper came when they released a special version of their soda for men only. We all went on Twitter to say things like, “Forbidding women from tasting Dr. Pepper Ten will only delay the discovery that it’s made from semen, not stop it completely.” We asked questions like, “Why would you make a soda for men only? Are you trying to find the perfect drink to pair with losing custody of your kids?” Or maybe you simply speculated, “Dr. Pepper Ten sounds like the refreshing treat you reach for when defending an accused rapist you haven’t met.”
SORRY LADIES, OUR CREATIVE DIRECTOR IS STILL DEALING WITH SOME CHILDHOOD TRAUMA INVOLVING PENISES.
Products should make the customer happy, not be so deliberately dumb that the customer hears about them during a Jimmy Kimmel monologue. You shouldn’t make every tenth new Oreo out of cat suppository in the desperate hope that cookie influencers tweet about it. And pizza, you especially need to get your shit together.
In 2012, a Pizza Hut employee happened upon the idea of a hot-dog-stuffed crust, quite by accident, when his manager caught him fucking a pizza and demanded an explanation. This marked the last time there would ever be a non-insane pizza invention. Today, pizza marketing is a series of deranged innovations, like a serial killer’s journey toward becoming the Minotaur. For instance, Pizza Hut created “smart” shoes that place an order for you. Aside from getting the elderly to wonder what they’re going to come up with next, what the fuck good do pizza shoes do anyone? If you have a use for ordering Pizza Hut via shoe, your foot is going to fall off from diabetes long before you get to do it a second time.
And did you know that Domino’s spent millions of dollars promoting something called “carryout insurance?” It’s what it sounds like — a financial guarantee that when your sloppy ass drops a pizza, they give you another one. Aside from getting us to mention how dumb that is, what’s the point? Was there a community of fat idiots eating pizza off the ground and demanding their representatives do something? Let’s say it’s just to set your mind at ease. Let’s pretend you’re thinking about ordering Domino’s, but decide against it because you’re always dropping pizza. Will this convince you? Of course not. You’re not even here. You were taken in the night by mad scientists, and now you’re a lump of brain tissue labelled “HISTORY’S SADDEST FUCK.”
“CARRYOUT INSURANCE!? Hey, boss? Yeah, I just found a loophole that gives me unlimited floor pizza. So what I’m saying is you can kiss my ass.“
4
All Things “Of The Year” Are Arbitrary Decisions Made By Small Teams Of Random Assholes
We are living in the darkest of times. Our current sexiest man alive looks like a rectangle who makes its living hustling milk-drinking contests.
“I’m digesting four gallons of Half & Half. Hi, I’m Blake Shelton, your sexiest man alive.”
When People magazine announced hoedown music standout Blake Shelton as the sexiest man alive while Casper Van Dien was still not dead, it hit like a bomb. Every Twitter account and Safeway express lane had a hot take on it. It wasn’t merely controversial; it was a direct challenge to what vaginal lubrication even meant. What will it do to society if passably handsome NASCAR dads are the new standard of sexy? Do we need to stop doing sit-ups? Will there be enough denim?
What will Casper Van Dien do with this boner?
You know what we should have been doing that whole time? Not giving a shit about how handsome Blake Shelton is. Don’t get me wrong, Blake Shelton is alright. His condoms probably don’t expire, and if he was arrested for sodomizing a dairy cow, you’d think “Him?” But let’s not play games. He’s not the sexiest man alive. At best, he’s “Oklahoma’s Hottest Mostly Ham DNA.” But we should remember that this isn’t some great honor decided by measuring the gonad stimulation of test subjects. “Sexiest Man Alive” is picked by four or five editors desperately trying to hang onto print media jobs, and every now and then one of them is smart enough to say, “What if we trolled everyone?” With all respect to Blake Shelton’s fuckability, if you died trying to teach a prosthetic arm how to give a handjob, the People staff would write your name up on the “Sexiest Man Alive MAYBES” board.
It’s important to keep in mind how meaningless these titles are before we get outraged. Before Donald Trump, Time gave its 2006 “Person of the Year” title to You, as in the second-person pronoun. And in 1938 they gave it to Hitler, the Donald Trump of 1938. These are meaningless choices meant to inspire terrible conversations between uninteresting people. Did you think LaTonya from Fayetteville was chosen as Jet ‘s “Beauty of the Week” because of her winning tits and smile? Wake up. It’s because her face tattoo says “Abortion is Bae.” Please, all of us, we have to stop getting outsmarted by the Jet magazines of the world.
3
It’s Not An Event When Fictional Characters Die
In 1992, DC Comics killed Superman — an invincible ventriloquist with laser eyes, frost breath, and chronosphere-bending flight speed — with a rock monster who was pretty good at punching. Despite it being the third time he had died, the country went into mourning and the story was picked up by the actual news. Which was weird, because if the media wanted to cover upsetting Superman stories, where were they when his girlfriend got turned into a pony and fucked his horse?
I think about this every day. Every day.
Why are we so obsessed with fictional deaths? Most of the time, they’re not even real in the make-believe universe in which they happen. Captain America and Batman die around 20 times a year, each in different combinations of fake-outs, resurrections, and universe reboots. If a dead guy’s best friends own a time machine and the Eye of Agamotto, you can probably hold off on making funeral plans. And if your favorite character dies on The Walking Dead, maybe don’t waste an hour watching Chris Hardwick cry until you see the body.
It should help you relax knowing that most fictional deaths are only abusive pranks, but the “real” ones are about as meaningless.
I mean, you knew there wasn’t going to be any more Firefly. This death cost us maybe two wisecracks.
Remember when Han Solo died? He was a 73-year-old laser gun fighter scheduled to get his own movie in three years. His death was both long overdue and completely inconsequential to the amount of Han Solo you will continue to see on your TV. His father-in-law, Darth Vader, was on screen for about 36 minutes before he died in 1983, and since his death, there have been more Anakin Skywalker stories than anyone could ever want. Anakin Skywalker is the Nicolas Cage of outer space. He stopped making good movies three decades ago, yet he’s still everywhere and radiating inexplicable cosmic energy.
If George R. R. Martin went on TV to announce that a meteor hit Westeros between books and everyone in A Song Of Ice And Fire is gone, how is that different from the world you’re living in now? The guy has clearly wanted to focus more on snacks for about four books. You know what’s sadder than seeing Ned Stark get his head chopped off? Watching some fragile-hearted slob go through the stages of grief in a YouTube video afterwards. Parents, if your child is filming themselves weep over a make-believe death, that’s a bigger failure than if your child is filming themselves pee into a tube sock for Patreon supporters. I mean, you can do whatever you want, but when you cry over fake people whom you can still see every day for as long as you want, you’re only sending a message to the people around you that you’re a dramatic piece of shit. But I know something that will cheer you up!
2
Being Special Is Free
That’s right, I said it.
You’re welcome.
It’s pretty easy to sell someone nothing more than the idea that they’re special or important for actual money. For example, somewhere right now, a Todd is looking through a rack of keychains to see if they have one with his name on it. “I hope they have a Todd,” he might announce as he thumbs through dusty garbage. “They do! And it’s spelled right!” So Todd will buy it, a cute reminder of the worst store in the least interesting part of a city he once visited, and it will never occur to him that an Indonesian factory gambled and won that a completely shitty Todd would one day pay money to remind himself of his own name. This next part is way off-topic, but not even the Indonesians could have foreseen that this keychain would one day be used to frame Todd …
… for Toddslaughter.
Back to the point I was trying to make: We are all susceptible to this crap. Coke had its first sales increase in more than a decade when it introduced the idea of adding the customers’ stupid fucking names to their cans and bottles. And the internet has been haunted by ego-stroking personality quizzes and IQ tests since before we used it to pay girls peeing into tube socks. We are so desperate to be told we’re special that we will suspend all disbelief and critical thinking to hear it. You should know that answering a few simple personality questions does not make you the coolest ninja turtle, and you shouldn’t trust the scores of an IQ test that you watched yourself cheat on which also advertises free Slavic women and four new pounds of dick girth.
One of my favorite examples of this, and favorite things in general, is an online community called Intertel — “An International Society of the Intellectually Gifted.” It’s very difficult to get in. You can only join if you score in the top 1 percent of any self-administered intelligence test and mail in a $10 application fee. You may have considered that this in fact checks to see whether you’re stupid enough to mail in a test with a 98 percent score or less and nothing else. If you get accepted, you then pay a $39 annual fee to be a part of a genius club for people who are very specifically not. What do you get? I’m so glad you asked. For the annual fee, you get unlimited pity and the right to post a photo and bio about your unusually gullible self. It has created an avalanche of unearned ego that looks like a late ’90s Casper Van Dien fan page whose webmaster went mysteriously missing.
Image courtesy of the estate of the Casper Van Dien Fan Page & Genius Community webmaster.
OK, no, but seriously, this next image is a real screenshot from the Inertel (An International Society of the Intellectually Gifted) website. This is a real person who really thinks he’s in the 1 percent of intellectual elites, and this is his real profile.
I didn’t doctor this. This is what an actual genius named BigJim369 pays $39 a year to display. Fuck! This world is magic and you get to live in it!
Another business that exploits your love of yourself on a massive, sprawling scale is the pop-up museum industry. The name implies that there are things to do or learn inside them, but they’re more like oversized photo booths than art galleries. For instance, if you take a trip to the zany, world-famous Museum of Ice Cream, you will learn zero to one things about ice cream and eat ice cream worth $45 less than the entry ticket. What you will do is wait in line to take photos of yourself next to what you’d describe in any other context as “nothing of interest.” So to be clear, we are so self-obsessed that it’s now an effective business model to charge us money to take pictures of ourselves so we can promote you online.
You didn’t fool ME, Museum of Ice Cream. But my family loved it. Five stars.
1
Stop Making It Seem Like There Are Nazis
OK, so the world has enough idiot racists to elect Donald Trump president, but not all of those voters were full white supremacists. Some of them were simply too religious to know when someone is lying or too old to change their mind about politics. And yes, a troubling number of them were Nazis. But in a lot of ways, most things are fine and the world isn’t as awful as you think.
You’re welcome again.
Impossibly shitty people, like the Trump supporters who took that Garfield mug personally, seem like they’re everywhere. A lot of that is our fault — the decent people making fun of them. They use us to amplify their voices, like Han Solo (R.I.P.) convincing a hallway of Stormtroopers that he’s way more people than he actually is. Every few minutes, a website publishes a variation on the article “These Miserable Fucks Said Something Racist About A Thing And Got Annihilated By Twitter.” They’re fun and vaguely heroic, but if you read more than one, you’ll start to see that they all share the same content. It’s the same three or four racist tweets quoted in every article, tweeted by the same three or four racists who “attacked” the Star Wars with the Asian girl and “staged boycotts” of the all-lady Ghostbusters. We need to stop treating these three or four people like they’re a threat to anything other than skewing PornHub’s algorithm to favor mother-son incest.
BREAKING NEWS: Local high school’s least-likable prick still making quite a spectacle out his irrelevant awfulness.
Here’s a reassuring fact: A study of Reddit found that 1 percent of communities were responsible for 74 percent of all conflict. We are taking the intentionally ignorant comments of a Kia’s worth of debate club hobbyists and pretending they’re a tidal wave of hate we must stand together against. The “alt-right” movement is 30 boys too cranky to date and too slow to learn Dungeons & Dragons. Their supporters are a toxic group of gamers who will disappear once they turn 17, and their media outlet is a cable network whose entire audience will be dead in two more flu seasons. All these people want is for the other side to get upset, so if we stop writing thinkpieces about the rise of dapper white nationalism and focus more on how liberals hate suicide cults, we can be rid of them almost immediately.
BREAKING NEWS: C-word who only tweets C-wordy antisemitic things DOES!
Ann Coulter is a good example. She’s the skeletal remains of antique intolerance, and she has about as much cultural influence as Corey Feldman’s band, Oral Thrush and the Yeast 2000s. Has she ever done anything other than hiss wrong things at impatient TV personalities or pretend that clinical antisemitism is antisemitic comedy? She only seems like she is a thing because 10,000 of us dunk on the bitch every time she blames her oral thrush on the Jews. Without all of us explaining to each other how wrong she is, Coulter would just be wandering through Home Depot to see if there are any white employees she can ask about the toilet safety rails. And soon she would be hatching spider eggs in her mouth while her parakeet watched her body rot. “Rawk! The Jews are at it again!” it would repeat to her undiscovered corpse. “The Jews are at it again!”
We all seem to get how dumb it is when the news says “teens” are doing a comically apeshit thing like human centipede parties or detergent eating. Why can’t we use those same giant brains to figure out how one Nazi nerd looking for attention isn’t “the Right”? I know it’s tough to resist trolls, but Kim Kardashian owning all the world’s money should have taught you that there is virtue in shutting the fuck up about some things. We need to stay strong not in the battle against the “alt-right,” but in the battle to ignore them. The next time you see another column about how women won’t date conservative men, leave it alone. Let those dickless Nazis keep writing versions of that article into the empty void until they learn evil causes women to dry up. And the next time someone on your Facebook thread defends their Second Amendment rights after a school shooting, don’t validate their child murder fandom with attention. Move your cursor to the left and click on their mother’s profile. Pose as Blake Shelton, win her moist trust, and quietly destroy that child-murderer’s family. Every one of us can shut up and make a difference.
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5 Stupid Things We Need To Stop Clicking On
We “re living” the final choke of the Information Age. Experts estimate that 62 percent of all the points we now receive is purposely mistaken, and that includes the percentage and professionals I made up at the start of this sentence. The sad fact is, the majority of members of you are able to never have the critical envisage or research abilities to know what’s real, and that will simply manufacture you more absolutely convinced the erroneous situations your stupid ass belief. The good story is that this article isn’t about that shit. The imitation information fighting is over, and stupid won. No, this article is about the dumb things we all keep falling for — even you, the genius who chose the right political area and religion.
5
Pointlessly Insane Product Are Not That At All
Last year, Tiffany& Co. started selling the Sterling Silver Tin Can, an empty can that costs $1,000. You’ll notice that this is far more than you’d naturally pay for soupless garbage. To be clear, this wasn’t some tin can that once impounded Prince’s final dark-green nuts. It’s simply a can. As an imaginative word, it was 50 years stale, and as a money-making strategy, it was somewhere between a portable diarrhea carton and that same product without a eyelid. It’s the kind of sentiment that they are able to offset the other Saved By The Bell novelists tell, “Look, if you’re not ready to come back to effort, make more time off to deal with the death of your son.” The item I’m building is that it’s hard-boiled not to comment on Tiffany’s silly can, and that’s more appealing to Tiffany& Co. than where reference is comment on how the ones who quarried their concoctions all lived of slavery.
“Darling, I was part of many someones transcending penetration to convert a utilitarian men’s room into an installment of signature Tiffany oeuvre.” — this Tiffany copywriter justifying to his wife why “theres” seven colourings of pubic hair in his underpants
Read Next
8 Baffling Poop-Themed Toys Kids Are Lining Up To Buy
And it’s is not simply tin cans and Wu-Tang recordings that are marketed in intentionally strange modes. Food advertisers have figured out that they can get more attention by being ridiculous than by being delicious. Retain when KFC employed fried chicken as sandwich food in the Double Down? Or when Chick-Fil-A announced that their fried chicken detested lesbian people with the Cajun Titty Jiggler? We all made amusing of them, but they perfectly did not care. These are people souring pigeon meat and “deported” foreign nationals into nugget figures. They’ll take any press they can get.
We need to stop doing this. It’s very possible the only conversation any of us had or will ever have about Dr. Pepper started when they liberated a special copy of their soda for men exclusively . We all went on Twitter to add stuffs like, “Forbidding females from savor Dr. Pepper Ten will only retard the disclosure that it’s made from semen , not stop it completely.” We asked questions like, “Why would you make a soda for men exclusively? Are you trying to find the perfect drink to pair with losing custody of your adolescents? ” Or maybe you are only pondered, “Dr. Pepper Ten sounds like the refreshing discus you contact for when defending an alleged rapist you haven’t met.”
SORRY LADIES, OUR CREATIVE DIRECTOR IS STILL DEALING WITH SOME CHILDHOOD TRAUMA INVOLVING PENISES . b>
Products should conclude the customer happy , not be so intentionally foolish that the customer hears about them during a Jimmy Kimmel monologue. You shouldn’t spawn every tenth new Oreo out of cat suppository in the hopeles said he hoped that cookie influencers tweet about it. And pizza, you peculiarly need to get your shit together.
In 2012, a Pizza Hut employee happened upon the relevant recommendations of a hot-dog-stuffed crust, relatively by coincidence, when his administrator caught him fucking a pizza and asked written explanations. This distinguished the last experience there would ever has become a non-insane pizza ability. Today, pizza marketing is a series of deranged inventions, like a serial killer’s pilgrimage toward becoming the Minotaur. For speciman, Pizza Hut created “smart” shoes that situate an degree for you. Aside from get the elderly to wonder what they’re going to come up with next, what the fuck good do pizza shoes do anyone? If you have a use for dictating Pizza Hut via shoe, your foot is going to fall off from diabetes long before you get to make love a second time.
essay >
And did you know that Domino’s devoted millions of dollars promoting something called “carryout insurance? ” It’s what it sounds like — a monetary guarantee that when your haphazard ass puts a pizza, they give you another one. Aside from getting us to mention how foolish that is, what’s the pitch? Was there a community of overweight idiots devouring pizza off the foot and involving their representatives do something? Let’s say it’s only to place your subconsciou at ease. Let’s profess you’re “ve been thinking about” prescribing Domino’s, but decide against it because you’re always stopping pizza. Will this convince you? Of track not. You’re not even here. You were taken in the night by mad scientists, and now you’re a bulge of brain material named “HISTORY’S SADDEST FUCK.”
“CARRYOUT INSURANCE !? Hey, boss? Yeah, I just perceived a loophole that gives me boundless flooring pizza. So what I’m saying is you can kiss my ass . i> “
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4
All Things “Of The Year” Are Arbitrary Decisions Made By Small Teams Of Random Assholes
We are living in the darkest of goes. Our current sexiest guy alive looks like a rectangle who acquires its living hustling milk-drinking contests.
“I’m digesting four gallons of Half& Half. Hi, I’m Blake Shelton, your sexiest mortal alive.”
When People store announced hoedown music standout Blake Shelton as the sexiest humankind alive while Casper Van Dien was still not dead, it stumbled like a bomb. Every Gab report and Safeway express lane had a hot take on it. It wasn’t simply controversial; it was a direct challenge to what vaginal lubrication even wanted. What will it do to society if passably handsome NASCAR dads are the brand-new standard of seductive? Do we need to stop doing sit-ups? Will there be enough denim?
What will Casper Van Dien do with this boner?
div >
You know what we should have been doing that whole season? Not establishing a shit about how handsome Blake Shelton is. Don’t get me wrong, Blake Shelton is alright. His condoms maybe don’t expire, and if he was arrested for sodomizing a dairy moo-cow, you’d anticipate “Him? ” But let’s not play games. He’s not the sexiest male alive. At best, he’s “Oklahoma’s Hottest Mostly Ham DNA.” But we should remember that this isn’t some enormous honor decided by appraising the gonad stimulation of test subjects. “Sexiest Man Alive” is picked by four or five journalists desperately trying to hang onto print media chores, and every now and then one of them is smart enough to say, “What if we trolled everyone? ” With all respect to Blake Shelton’s fuckability, if you died trying to learn a prosthetic forearm how to give a handjob, the People organization would write your figure up on the “Sexiest Man Alive MAYBES” board.
It’s important is maintaining mind how insignificant these entitlements are before we get outraged. Before Donald Trump, Time opened its 2006 “Person of the Year” title to You, as in the second-person pronoun. And in 1938 they gave it to Hitler, the Donald Trump of 1938. These are meaningless choices meant to engender awful conversations between uninteresting people. Did you think LaTonya from Fayetteville was chosen as Jet ‘s “Beauty of the Week” because of her prevailing tits and smile? Wake up. It’s because her front tattoo announces “Abortion is Bae.” Please, all of us, we have to stop get outsmarted by the Jet magazines of the world.
3
It’s Not An Contest When Fictional Characters Die
In 1992, DC Comics killed Superman — an indestructible ventriloquist with laser noses, frost wheeze, and chronosphere-bending flight speed — with a rock ogre who was pretty good at punching. Despite it being the third occasion he had died, the country is entered into mourning and the tale was picked up by the actual bulletin. Which was weird, because if the media wanted to cover upsetting Superman fibs, where were they when his girlfriend get turned into a pony and fucked his mare?
I think about this every day. Every day.
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Why are we so preoccupied with fictional deaths? Most of the time, they’re not even real in the make-believe macrocosm in which they happen. Captain America and Batman vanish around 20 epoches a year, each in different combinations of fake-outs, resurgences, and universe reboots. If a dead guy’s best friends own a meter machine and the Eye of Agamotto, you can probably hold back on making funeral proposals. And if your favorite person dies on The Walking Dead , perhaps don’t debris an hour watching Chris Hardwick cry until you accompany the body.
It should help you relax knowing that most fictional fatalities are exclusively abusive escapades, but the “real” ones are about as meaningless.
I mean, you knew there wasn’t going to be any more Firefly . This death cost us maybe two wisecracks.
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Remember when Han Solo expired? He was a 73 -year-old laser gun fighter scheduled to get his own movie in three years. His death was both long overdue and altogether inconsequential to the amount of Han Solo you will continue to see on your TV. His father-in-law, Darth Vader, was on screen for about 36 minutes before he died in 1983, and since his death, there have been more Anakin Skywalker narratives than anyone could ever require. Anakin Skywalker is the Nicolas Cage of outer space. He stopped making good movies three decades ago, more he’s still everywhere and radiating inexplicable planetary energy.
If George R. R. Martin gone on TV to announce that a comet smacked Westeros between works and everyone in A Song Of Ice And Fire is lead, how is that different from “the worlds” you’re living in now? The chap have undoubtedly wanted to focus more on snacks for about four works. You know what’s sadder than identifying Ned Stark get his head chopped off? Watching some fragile-hearted slobs go across the various stages of sorrow in a YouTube video afterwards. Mothers, if your child is filming themselves weep over a make-believe death, that’s a bigger default than if your child is filming themselves pee into a tube sock for Patreon advocates. I symbolize, you can do whatever you demand, but when you cry over forgery people whom you can still hear every day for as long as you miss, you’re exclusively sending a message to the people around you that you’re a drastic piece of shit. But I know something that will ovation you up!
2
Being Special Is Free
That’s right, I said it.
You’re welcome.
It’s pretty easy to sell someone nothing more than the notion that they’re special or important for actual money. For illustration, somewhere right now, a Todd is looking through a rack of keychains to see if they have one with his reputation on it. “I hope they have a Todd, ” he might announce as he thumbs through dusty debris. “They do! And it’s spelled right ! b> ” So Todd will buy it, a cute remember of the worst collected in the least interesting part of a town he formerly called, and it will never occur to him that an Indonesian plant gambled and won that a completely shitty Todd would one day pay money to prompt himself of his own name. This next part is way off-topic, but not even the Indonesians could have foreseen that this keychain would one day be used to frame Todd …
… for Toddslaughter.
div >
Back to the point I was trying to utters: We are all prone to this idiocy. Coke had its first marketings increase in more than a decade when it introduced the idea of adding the customers’ stupid fucking lists to their cans and bottles. And the internet has been recurred by ego-stroking personality quizs and IQ tests since before we used it to pay girlfriends peeing into tube socks. We are so desperate to be told we’re special that we will expel all disbelief and critical consider to hear it. You should know that answering a few simple-minded personality interrogations does not determine you the coolest ninja turtle, and you shouldn’t trust the scores of an Iq test that you watched yourself cheat on which likewise advertises free Slavic women and four new pounds of dick girth.
One of my favorite a few examples of this, and favorite things in general, is an online community announced Intertel — “An International Society of the Intellectually Gifted.” It’s very difficult to get in. You can only affiliate if you tally in the top one percent of any self-administered intelligence test and mail in a $10 lotion reward. You may have considered that this in fact checks to see whether you’re stupid enough to forward in a test with a 98 percent composition or less and nothing else. If you get accepted, you then compensate a $39 annual reward to be a part of a genius squad for people who are very specifically not. What do you get? I’m so glad you asked. For the annual reward, you get inexhaustible pity and the human rights of berth a photo and bio about your singularly unsophisticated soul. It has created an avalanche of unearned narcissism that looks like a late ‘9 0s Casper Van Dien supporter page whose webmaster travelled mysteriously missing.
Image courtesy of the property of the Casper Van Dien Fan Page& Genius Community webmaster.
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OK , no, but seriously, this next epitome is a real screenshot from the Inertel( An International Society of the Intellectually Gifted) website. This is a real person who really thinks he’s in the 1 percent of intellectual nobilities, and this is his real profile.
I didn’t doctor this. This is what an actual genius named BigJim3 69 remunerations $39 a year to expose. Fucking! This macrocosm is spell and you get to live in it!
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Another business that employs your adoration of yourself on a big, sprawling magnitude is the pop-up museum manufacture. The reputation implies that there are things to do or learn inside them, but they’re more like oversized photo booths than artistry halls. For speciman, if you take a junket to the zany, world-famous Museum of Ice Cream, you will memorize zero to one things about ice cream and feed ice cream worth $45 less than the entering ticket. What you will do is wait in line to make photos of yourself next to what you’d describe in any other situation as “nothing of interest.” So to be clear, we are so self-obsessed that it’s now an efficient business model to charge us money to make pictures of ourselves so we can promote you online.
You didn’t fool ME, Museum of Ice Cream. But my family loved it. Five stars.
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1
Stop Attaining It Seem Like There Are Nazis
OK, so the world has just fairly stupid prejudiceds to elect Donald Trump chairman, but not all of those voters were full white supremacists. Some of them were simply extremely theological to know when someone is lying or too old to change their memory about politics. And yes, a troubling number of them were Nazis. But in a lot of ways, most things are fine and the world isn’t as unpleasant as you think.
You’re welcome again.
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Impossibly shitty parties, like the Trump supporters who made that Garfield mug privately, looks a lot like they’re everywhere. A pile of that is our omission — the good beings making fun of them. They use us to amplify their articulates, like Han Solo( R.I.P .) reassuring a hallway of Stormtroopers that he’s acces more people than he actually is. Every few minutes, a website publishes a variant on the article “These Miserable Fucks Said Something Racist About A Thing And Got Annihilated By Twitter.” They’re fun and vaguely heroic, but if you read more than one, you’ll start to see that they all share the same content. It’s the same three or four prejudiced tweets quoted in each article, tweeted by the same three or four prejudiceds who “attacked” the Star Wars with the Asian girl and “staged boycotts” of the all-lady Ghostbusters . We need to stop treating these three or four beings like they’re a threat to anything other than skewing PornHub’s algorithm to favor mother-son incest.
BREAKING NEWS: Regional high school’s least-likable puncture still manufacturing quite a sight out his irrelevant awfulness.
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Here’s a comforting information: A analyse of Reddit found that 1 percent of communities were responsible for 74 percent of all conflict. We are taking the intentionally insensitive notes of a Kia’s worth of debate club hobbyists and feigning they’re a tidal wave of detest “were supposed to” stand together against. The “alt-right” movement is 30 sons more cranky to year and too slow to hear Dungeons& Dragons . Their adherents are a lethal group of gamers who will disappear once they sour 17, and their media channel is a cable network whose entire audience will be dead in two more flu seasons. All these people want is for the other side to get upset, so if we stop writing thinkpieces about the rise of dapper grey patriotism and focus more on how liberals hate suicide religions, we can be rid of them almost immediately.
BREAKING NEWS: C-word who are tweets C-wordy antisemitic concepts DOES!
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Ann Coulter is a good example. She’s the skeletal are still in relic antipathy, and she has about as much cultural affect as Corey Feldman’s band, Oral Thrush and the Yeast 2000 s. Has she ever done anything other than hiss bad acts at impatient Tv identities or suppose that clinical antisemitism is antisemitic slapstick? She only seems like she is a thing because 10,000 of us dunk on the bitch each time she condemns her oral thrush on the Jews. Without all of us excusing to one another how mistaken she is, Coulter would just be straying through Home Depot to see if there are any lily-white works she can ask about the lavatory refuge rails. And soon she would be spawning spider eggs in her lip while her parakeet watched their own bodies rot. “Rawk! The Jews are at it again! ” it would recite to her undiscovered body. “The Jews are at it again! “
We all seem to get how foolish it is when the story answers “teens” are doing a comically apeshit circumstance like human centipede gatherings or detergent eating. Why can’t we use those same beings psyches to figure out how one Nazi nerd looking for attention isn’t “the Right”? I know it’s tough to stand trolls, but Kim Kardashian owning all the world’s money should have taught you that there is virtue in shutting the fuck up about some things. We need to stay strong not in the battle against the “alt-right, ” but in the battle to ignore them. The next time you verify another tower about how maids won’t time republican people, leave it alone. Let those dickless Nazis prevent writing versions of that section into the empty vacancy until they discover evil campaigns brides to dry up. And the next time someone on your Facebook thread attacks their Second Amendment liberties after local schools shooting, don’t confirm their child assassination fandom with tending. Move your cursor to the left and click on their mother’s chart. Pose as Blake Shelton, acquire her moist rely, and calmly destroy that child-murderer’s family. Every one of us can shut up and make a difference.
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