Orangesandlemons3 - Orange The Ace

The Blue Spirit putting out firebending with a bucket of water is the absolute funniest thing ever done in avatar combat. It just is.

hey here's a website for downloading any video or image from any website.

works w/ youtube, soundcloud, twitch, twitter (gifs and videos), tumblr (video and audio), and most other websites you're probably lookin to download stuff off of.

Superman: Man of Tomorrow #12 - “Superman’s Day Off” (2020)

written by Robert Venditti art by Scott Hepburn & Ian Herring

downside: going to have to include a picture of the Giza pyramids in the slides for the lecture upside: i get to give people a crash course in why perspective matters in two frames, because

followed by

is such a funny sequence

Another worldbuilding application of the "two layer rule": To create a culture while avoiding The Planet Of Hats (the thing where a people only have one thing going for them, like "everyone wears a silly hat"): You only need two hats.

Try picking two random flat culture ideas and combine them, see how they interact. Let's say taking the Proud Warrior Race - people who are all about glory in battle and feats of strength, whose songs and ballads are about heroes in battle and whose education consists of combat and military tactics. Throw in another element: Living in diaspora. Suddenly you've got a whole more interesting dynamic going on - how did a people like this end up cast out of their old native land? How do they feel about it? How do they make a living now - as guards, mercenaries? How do their non-combatants live? Were they always warrior people, or did they become fighters out of necessity to fend for themselves in the lands of strangers? How do the peoples of these lands regard them?

Like I'm not shitting, it's literally that easy. You can avoid writing an one-dimensional culture just by adding another equally flat element, and the third dimension appears on its own just like that. And while one of the features can be location/climate, you can also combine two of those with each other.

Let's take a pretty standard Fantasy Race Biome: The forest people. Their job is the forest. They live there, hunt there, forage there, they have an obnoxious amount of sayings that somehow refer to trees, woods, or forests. Very high chance of being elves. And then a second common stock Fantasy Biome People: The Grim Cold North. Everything is bleak and grim up there. People are hardy and harsh, "frostbite because the climate hates you" and "being stabbed because your neighbour hates you" are the most common causes of death. People are either completely humourless or have a horrifyingly dark, morbid sense of humour. They might find it funny that you genuinely can't tell which one.

Now combine them: Grim Cold Bleak Forest People. The summer lasts about 15 minutes and these people know every single type of berry, mushroom and herb that's edible in any fathomable way. You're not sure if they're joking about occasionally resorting to eating tree bark to survive the long dark winter. Not a warrior people, but very skilled in disappearing into the forest and picking off would-be invaders one by one. Once they fuck off into the woods you won't find them unless they want to be found.

You know, Finland.

Thinking about Edward Elric as the Amestrian Military's specialest little unfireable boy

State alchemists can be fired for underperforming. We know this up front from the likes of Shou Tucker. And this makes a ton of sense from the homunculi's standpoint since the state alchemists are sacrifice candidates, and the homunculi would want to cull the weakest candidates and focus only on cultivating the strongest ones who stand the best chance of opening the portal.

........Then there's Edward. Who's already opened the portal.

There's no need to cultivate him. No gamble taken on whether he's good enough to open the portal. He passed the final test already. Graduated 4 semesters early.

And as such, has a free pass to do Absolute Fuck All.

And I'm imagining how funny this is from like an outside perspective.

Some newish state alchemist who'd only ever read up on the stories of Edward Elric, ready and excited to start their career of being paid handsomely with endless freedom to research and travel and do anything they want in the pursuit of science... surprised and confused to find themselves put on probation their first month for things like "ignoring orders." Which is, as best they had thought, a famous Edward Elric pastime.

Roy showing a slight bit of stress about his yearly state alchemist report, and Ed just snorting and rolling his eyes at Roy because every year HE just hastily does his on the train ride over (canon in the manga, a travesty it was left out of the anime) and it gets rubber stamped. Ed not realizing that other alchemists' reports get genuinely scrutinized and torn apart while Ed is free to turn in whatever absolute bullshit he thinks of 36 hours ahead of time. One year his report was about whether alchemy could be done via dance (conclusion: no it can't) and no one cared. Roy WANTS to tell Ed there's some kind of unknown favoritism around Ed making him literally bullet-proof but Roy has no way to phrase this that doesn't sound like he's just in denial and mad at how good Ed's train-reports are.

Guy from the Internal Amestrian Affairs sector who's responsible for auditing other internal military personel for any suspicious activity hitting about 1 million red flags for Edward Elric, issuing a STRONG and URGENT recommendation to suspend the alchemist pending further investigation into things like "literal bunk-buddies with two members of the Xingese royalty (enemy nation)" and "spent $10,000,000 of his stipend on a librarian to make her re-copy (what he seemed to interpret as?) military records in some extremely transparent effort to unearth state secrets (it was a recipe book but he was literally asking her about state secrets)" and "literally has never once obeyed an order, ever, not even once in his career, and is on public record having said 'I do not care about the goals and protections of the Amestrian Military. I am in fact only pursuing my own interests several of which are diametrically opposed to the safety and well-being of the governing body of Amestris'"

The issued recommendation is intercepted before it even reaches its intended desk. President Bradley himself has taken issue with it and denies it before a single set of eyes has seen it. The President's veto stamp is a terrifying hammer, used rarely, and it is now sitting on the auditor's desk.

The auditor sleeps with one eye open from then on out.

Roses are red, that much is true, but violets are purple, not fucking blue.

Me: I'm Asexual.

Person: Wat.

Me: It means i dont give a fuuuuuuuck

Person: ...

Me: *mental high five*

the edit itself

this edit is getting taken down from tiktok every time someone reuploads it, its straight up censorship at this point

Im not even american but im having a great time with this

DONT LET THIS DIE

credit to miraculousgastropod for the original

I want to write a movie that is sort of the flip side of a Hallmark holiday movie. Not an anti-Hallmark movie, just like the other side of the same coin.

It starts with a well-dressed professional woman driving a convertible along a country road, autumn foliage in the background, terribly scenic. She turns onto a dirt road/long driveway, and stops next to a field of Christmas trees, all growing in neat, ordered rows, perfectly trimmed and pruned to form. She steps out of the car--no, she's not wearing high-heels, give her some sense!--and knocks on the door of a worn but nice-looking farmhouse. An older woman, late fifties maybe, answers the door, looking a bit puzzled. The younger woman asks if she can buy a Christmas tree now, today. The older woman says they don't do retail sales--and the younger woman breaks down crying.

Cut to the two women sitting at the kitchen table with cups of tea. The young woman (Michelle), no longer actively crying, explains that her mother loves Christmas more than anything, but is in the hospital with end-stage cancer. Her doctors don't think she'll live to see December, let alone Christmas. Nobody is selling Christmas trees in September, so could the older woman please make an exception, just this once? The older woman (Helen) regretfully explains that they have a contract to sell their trees that forbids outside sales. The younger woman nods, starts to stand up, but the older woman stops her with a hand and asks her what hospital her mother is in. After she answers the older woman says that "my Joe" will deliver a tree the next day. "Contract says I can't sell you a tree, but nothing says I can't give you one."

Next day "Joe" shows up at the hospital in flannel and jeans, with a smallish tree over her shoulder. Oh, whoops, that's Jo, Helen's daughter, short for Joanna, not Joe. Jo sets up the tree and even pulls out a box of lights and ornaments. Mother watches from hospital bed with a big smile as Jo and Michelle decorate the tree. Cue "end of movie" type sappiness as nurses and other patients gather in the doorway, smiling at the tree.

Cut to Michelle sitting in her dark apartment, clutching a mug of tea, staring out at the falling snow and the Christmas lights outside. Her apartment has no tree, no decorations, nothing. She starts at a knock on the door, goes to open it. Jo is standing there, again holding a tree over her shoulder.

Plot develops: the second tree is a gift, because Michelle might as well get it as the bank. The contract for the tree sales was an /option/ contract, which prevents them from selling to anyone else, but doesn't guarantee the sale. The corporation with the option isn't going to buy the trees, but Helen and Jo can't sell them anywhere else, and basically they get nothing. They'll lose the farm without the year's income. Michelle asks to see the contract and Jo promises to email it to her.

Next day at a very upscale law firm, Michelle asks at the end of a staff meeting if anyone in contract law still needs pro bono hours for the year. No one does, but a senior partner (Abe) takes her to his office and asks about it. She says the contract looks hinky to her ("Is that a legal term?" "Yes.") but contract law's not her thing. He raises an eyebrow and she grins and pulls a sheaf of paper out of her bag and hands it over. He reads it over, then looks up at her. "They signed this?"

More plot develops. Abe calls in underlings--interns, paralegals, whatever--and the contract is examined, dissected, and ultimately shredded (metaphorically). It's worse even than it looks--on January 1st Helen and Jo will have to repay the advanced they received at signing. The corporation has bought up a suspicious number of Christmas tree farms in previous years after foreclosure, etc.

Cut to Abe explaining all this to Helen and Jo while sitting with them and Michelle in a very swanky conference room. The firm is willing to take on the case pro bono, hopefully as a class's action suit for other farmers trapped by the contract--but there's no way it can go to court before January. Which will be too late to save the farm's income for the year. They might get enough in damages to tide them over, but….

After Michelle sees Helen and Jo out, she comes back and asks Abe if there's anything they can do immediately. Abe looks thoughtful for a long moment, then gets a really shark-like grin on his face. "Maybe…."

Cut to Helen wearing a bathrobe, coming into her kitchen in the morning. She looks out the window…and there's a food truck stopped in her driveway. She pulls a coat on over her robe and goes out--two more trucks have pulled up while she does this. Driver of the first truck asks her where they park. Another truck pulls up behind the others. Behind that is a black BMW--Abe rolls down the window and waves. Helen directs the trucks to the empty field/yard next to the house. Abe pulls up next to Helen's car and Jo's truck and parks. He and Michelle get out--Abe wearing a total power suit, Michelle in weekend casual.

The case will be easier if the corporation initially sues them for violating the (uninforcible!) contract, rather than them suing to corporation (damn if I know, but it's movie logic). So they're going to sell the trees now, and rounded up some food trucks and whatnot to draw people in.

Cue montage of Jo and Michelle running around helping people set up while Abe and Helen watch from the kitchen table. The table starts out covered in file folders…and slowly gains coffee cups and plates of cinnamon rolls. It becomes increasingly clear here that Abe and Helen are becoming as close as Jo and Michelle.

Everything gets set up and a very urban, very motley crowd appears--tats and studs and multiracial couples and LGBTQ parents and everything--and everyone is having a wonderful time eating funnel cake and choosing their tree so Jo and a bunch of rainbow-haired elves can cut it for them. At which point someone shows up from the corporation (maybe with a sheriff's deputy?) and starts yelling at Helen, who's running checkout. And suddenly Abe appears from the house and you realize why he's wearing that suit on a Saturday….

Cue confrontation and corporate flunky running off with their tail between their legs, blustering about suing. Cue Jo kissing Michelle. Cue Helen walking over and putting a hand on Abe's shoulder and smiling at her.

I want the lawyers to be the heroes because they are lawyers and know the law. I want a lesbian who lives in the country with her mother. I want urbanites to turn out as a community to help someone who isn't even part of their community. I want Michelle to keep working at her high-power job, loving Christmas and grieving her mother.