Christmas lockscreens bc I can’t wait for December to let myself have some dopamine as a treat.

CDF Characters and their YouTube channels

Vancha: Nature channel featuring him chewing his toenails, fighting the sun, and getting stung or bitten by every creepy-crawly known to man. 

Gannen: Movie reviews, but only of “good” movies no one likes. His most popular video isn’t actually a review, but a full-length rage reaction to Avengers: Endgame. 

Steve: Doesn’t make his own content, just reacts to everybody else’s and tries to start trouble. He’s convinced that Larten is his nemesis, but he’s never gotten a response video from anybody, other than Gannen telling him to shut up during the intro to his review of Fight Club. 

Darren: The lawful good version of Vancha’s channel, and the second-highest subscriber count in the clan. He’s also the only one with monetized ads on his channel, but they’re for things like Mud Water and Grammerly. His most popular video is one of him cuddling with the wolf pups. The shot of him drinking wolf milk straight from the wolf was left on the cutting room floor. 

Larten: His channel is run by Darren, and it’s a lot of magic tricks and reaction videos to what Kids These Days are up to, although his most popular video is the one where he tries and fails to saw Gavner in half.

Gavner: Exclusively video-game playthroughs, and the friendliest fanbase in the clan. Sometimes he features other clan members, and his most popular video is of he, Darren, and Kurda playing Mario Kart blindfolded. 

Arra: Parkour channel with the third-highest number of subscribers in the clan. She hates having to edit her videos, so she usually just takes the raw footage and uploads it. The only time she ever edits is when she falls down, and she thinks nobody notices, but they do. 

Mika: Philosophy channel with really high production value, but he’s garbage at self-promotion. He has twelve subscribers and three of them are Darren’s burner accounts. On the bright side, he has the smartest comment section of anybody in the clan, and all nine of his subscribers will defend him to the death. 

Kurda: Has the highest subscriber count in the clan. His channel is called “Cooking With Kurda” and it’s part self-help, part cooking, and part political commentary. He goes viral for a video where he gets so angry talking about Holocaust deniers that he forgets to take his souffle out of the oven.  

Anyway, that’s enough of an introduction. If you’re ready, let’s begin. If this were a made-up story, it would begin at night, with a storm blowing and owls hooting and rattling noises under the bed. But this is a real story, so I have to begin where it really started.

It started in a toilet.

– Cirque du Freak, Darren Shan

****

If I were making up a story, I would have it gray and miserable outside, but it was sunny and miserable instead, glaringly bright and bitterly cold, as if the sky could not decide if it was in a good mood or would spend all day growling. I didn’t mind this kind of weather, weather that cannot make up its mind, because I am often the same way, or at least I think I am. I don’t know.

– Poison for Breakfast, Lemony Snicket

So, incidentally, my experience with the movie Megamind is that I ended up watching it backwards in a hotel once when I was younger and nothing else was on. And by “backwards” I mean, the first day I only caught the latter half of it and then it was on again the day after and I saw the first half.

That said, that one dang scene, is kind of an immortal one in my mind, because it’s one that has a lot more depth than it seems to.

The part that people often miss is that right after that pithy one-liner of how the difference between a villain and a supervillain is presentation… that whole conversation gets context.

Because Titan makes an immediate lunge for Megamind.

And immediately gets crunched by the giant head, and stuck in that situation because Megamind just drops out of the bottom, to a waiting vehicle, and maneuvers around him to focus on the actual issue: rescuing the hostage while Titan’s occupied.

That whole setup isn’t just, “watch me out-drama you”, it’s showing off an actual tactical asset.

Because Megamind as a character is someone who was always, always motivated by getting attention. The reason why Roxanne is never afraid of being his hostage isn’t because of her unshakable faith in a rescuing hero as much as it is that she knows, ultimately, what Megamind is doing is overwhelmingly a show. His atrocities are symbolic in nature. When he actually needs to take somebody out he dehydrates them into a cube for a while. And it’s not just Roxanne that calls him on this, either- Metro Man’s entire retirement scheme hinged on the idea that Megamind really didn’t need someone keeping him at bay from innocent civilians, because, as we’ve seen, innocent civilians really don’t have much to fear from him. Ultimately he is still, actually, just a kind of needy person desperately looking for validation and approval, neither of which can be provided by dead people.

But that’s not to say he can’t actually fight. Like any actual proper magician, he knows how to hold attention and an element of danger is how that works. He’s actually brilliant, and plenty capable of raising genuine hell.

However- he’s been doing this stageshow thing for ages. He’s mastered this. Titan may have him outgunned practically in every respect- but the guy has no conceivable head for subtlety.

So the real kicker to that whole setup, is this isn’t just Megamind being Megamind for the sake of drama- this is Megamind knowing exactly how easy Titan is to bait, dangling the largest trap he could possibly conceive in front of the guy, and doing it in an unapologetically glorious manner as any true performer would.

“Presentation” is not a superpower to be overlooked.

rb and tag your fictional problematic faves

Kurda Smahlt,

a twink? or an alpha male? 😩

Vampire Mountain Nine-Nine (V99):

Gavner: I know that you hate the Festival of the Undead. But stick with me and I promise you will love it.

Kurda: Can you magically make everyone kind, sober, and fully-dressed?

Mika: "Kind, Sober, and Fully Dressed." Good news everyone, we found the name of Kurda’s sex tape.

Larten: Remember, Gavner; do not do anything I would not do.

Gavner: I think I crossed that line when I got a date.

Here's a fight scene: Egotistical naturally gifted street fighter vs a martial artist who has spent years honing their craft. There are no stakes, no true sides. They both revel in conflict and simply wish to see how they measure up in the greatest and most fun fight in their lives

two thrill seeking idiots punch the shit out of each other and call that a bonding experience

vampire that corrects all the historical inaccuracies on wikipedia

girls be like *he is my comfort character* and then bam its the most emotionally traumatised ficitonal man you’ve ever seen

I watched a Cirque Du Freak review at some point last year, and the way in which the person delivering the review described Steve and Darren as “A Happy, Well-Adjusted Twelve-Year-Old and his Not Happy, Not Well-Adjusted Friend.”  has just popped back into my head, so I must now share it with you.

trying to sincerely convey feelings

you know what? fuck it (unproblematics your fave)

idk about you guys but I think sometimes its a little fun for fictional characters to go “I am going to be a little bastard man for no reason” like I’m over the agonizing about right and wrong, and wrestling with one’s darker nature. I wanna see people go “hey wanna see something fucked up?” and then do it

Headcannon that Steve (In all universes) has a thing for churros, like, in the DisasterSiblings AU he definitely pillages the cirque’s churro-stand with some regularity.

people don’t only have gay/bi headcanons for the purpose of shipping… sometimes you just look at a character and go ‘yeah that is not a heterosexual’. it’s just about. vibes. it’s about what’s in your heart.